And now, as we run up Tweed's left bank, we have on the one side Stobo, with its ancient church—of which mention has been made earlier in this volume—and its fine woods; on the other bank, Dawyck, and the castles of Tinnies and Drummelzier. From the thirteenth well on into the seventeenth century, Dawyck was the home of a distinguished Tweedside family, the Veitches, once the Le Vaches, of Gascony, of whom one, William le Vache, signed the Ragman Roll at the Castle of Peebles in 1296. At the same time that the Veitches held Dawyck, Drummelzier was the headquarters of another powerful Border family, the Tweedys; and for the delicate questions involved in the origin of this family's name, readers may consult Sir Walter's introduction to "The Betrothed." Of necessity, as things went in those days, these two families quarrelled, and from the quarrel emerged a feud long and bloody, in which, ere it ended, half the countryside was involved. Wherever a Veitch and a Tweedy met, they fought, and fought to kill. On the haughs of the river one summer's day, young Veitch and young Tweedy, each, perhaps, looking for trouble, came together face to face. The grey of next morning saw of the latter but
"A face upturned to the breaking dawn,
Dead by the Tweed, but honour sav'd."
He lay beside the quiet water, and over him, it is said, like a snowy pall drooped the clustering May-blossom.
"His mother sought him on the haugh,
She found him near the white flower'd thorn;
The grass red wet; the heedless birds
Pip'd sweet strains to the early morn."
In 1590, the head of the Veitches, "the Deil o' Dawyck," an immensely powerful man, had for his ally William Burnet, "the Hoolet o' Barns," a man equally powerful. These two daunted the Tweedy of that day; the feud for a space lay-dormant. But, most unhappily for the Veitches, it chanced that "the Deil's" son rode into Peebles alone one morning. And that was the end of young Veitch. For nine Tweedys, in two parties, trapped him near Neidpath, came on him in front and from the rear as he rode towards home; and it was no fight, but bloody murder that reddened the grass that day. Four days later, two Veitches met John Tweedy, Tutor of Drummelzier, in the High Street of Edinburgh, and young Veitch's bloody death was avenged; "a tooth for a tooth," no matter how many were concerned in its drawing. And so it went on ad nauseam, a Veitch killing a Tweedy, a Tweedy a Veitch. The feud was alive even as late as 1611; and for anything that I know to the contrary, it endured as long as the two families were there to neighbour each other on Tweedside.
Of Drummelzier Castle only an angle of the tower and a portion of the main building now stand. It was here that there dwelt that arrogant bully, Sir James Tweedy, who of old was wont to exact homage from every passing traveller; and the traveller who omitted to, so to speak, "lower his tops'ls" as he passed the castle, had cause to rue the day the fates took him that way. It was a pretty enough game from Tweedy's point of view. But, as the saying is, one day he "bit off more than he could chew." A stranger, attended by a very small retinue, passed up the valley without taking the smallest notice of the castle or its formidable owner. Foaming with rage, spluttering dire threats, Tweedy and his men went thundering in pursuit; truly, the back of that stranger should smart to some tune. But, just as you may see the birses and tail of a vicious, snarling cur drop when he finds he has inadvertently rushed out against a bigger dog than himself, so here, Tweedy's mood changed with astonishing celerity when he jumped from his horse beside the man he had been cursing and bawling at to stop, and found that the fugitive he was vowing to flog was his king, James V.