Tinnies Castle was also a holding of the Tweedys, possibly before the building of Drummelzier. This castle is believed to date from the thirteenth century, or perhaps earlier, and it seems to have been a place of considerable size and of great strength. "In no part of Scotland was there any feudal keep so like a robber's castle on the Rhine, as that of Tinnis," says Chambers. The building was destroyed under royal warrant in 1592, at the time when the King issued orders to raze Dry hope and Harden. The position of Tinnies is immensely strong. Perched on a lofty eminence, three of whose sides are almost perpendicular and the fourth a long steep slope, the castle in its day must have been almost unassailable. Any approach to the walls could only be made in force by a narrow winding pathway, within shot of, and fully exposed to, the castle bowmen, and the building itself, as may even yet be noted, was of a solidity truly formidable. Immense portions of the walls and flanking towers, yet bound by the old imperishable cement, still lie where they were bodily hurled by the exploding gunpowder when James VI's orders were carried out.
Of Dawyck and its magnificent woods one must not forget to take note. Here in 1725 were planted the first larches introduced into Scotland, anticipating it is said, by a few years those planted at Dunkeld. And while on the subject of natural history, one may perhaps quote that most notable fact regarding Dawyck which Dr. Pennecuick, writing in the early eighteenth century, vouches for in his "Shire of Tweeddale."
"Here," says he, "in an old Orch-yard did the Herons in my time build their Nests upon some old Pear-trees, whereupon in the Harvest time are to be seen much Fruit growing, and Trouts and Iles crauling down the Body of these Trees. These fish the Herons take out of the River of Tweed to their Nests, and as they go in at the Mouth, so they are seen squirt out again at the Draught. And this is the remarkable Riddle they so much talk of, to have Flesh, Fish, and Fruit at the same time upon one tree." There is still a heronry at Dawyck, but not, I think, in an "Orch-yard."
In the neighbourhood of Drummelzier there is a spot that takes us back in thought to those dim, far off days when the world was in its infancy. Near to where Powsayl Burn, the "burn of the willows," joins Tweed, you may see the grave of Merlin the Seer, the Wizard Merlin. Fleeing from the field of Arderydd (Arthuret, near Carlisle), after the terrible defeat of the Pagans by the Christians in 573, Merlin found refuge among the hills of Upper Tweed, and there lived for many years, half-crazed, a homeless wanderer. Finally, the fear raised by his supposed possession of supernatural powers, and the dread of his enchantments, caused a mob of ignorant country-folk to club and stone him to death, and he was buried where he fell, by the Powsayl burn. In a poem still extant, Merlin tells how he wandered long in the wild wood of Caledon.
"Sweet apple tree, growing by the river!
Whereof the keeper shall not thrive on its fruit;
Before I lost my wits I used to be around its stem
With a fair sportive maid, matchless in slender shape.
Ten years and forty, the sport of the lawless ones,
Have I been wandering in gloom among sprites,