at "Turn Again," a spot on Scott's estate of Abbotsford. They were foes in 1564-66, in Queen Mary's reign, when Martin Eliott, chief of his clan, plotted with the Armstrongs to betray her strong fortress of Hermitage to the English.
In this feud the Eliotts attacked Scott of Hassendean in his tower on Hassendean burn, the next tributary of Teviot, but the ballad of Kinmont Willie makes Gilbert Eliott of Stobs ride with the bold Buccleuch to the rescue of Willie from Carlisle Castle (1596). Unluckily, in 1596 Gilbert Eliott was not yet the Laird of Stobs.
[Original]
This Gilbert, at all events, married the daughter of the Flower of Yarrow, the wife of Auld Wat Scott of Harden, himself the neighbour and foremost fighting man of the laird of Branksome in Teviot, the bold Buccleuch. His descendant, Sir Walter, has made Auld Wat's name immortal, and, in Jamie Telftr, has certainly interpolated a spirited stanza.
In the village of Denholm, on Teviot, opposite to Hassendean, was born John Leyden, the great friend of Scott, a poet in his way, but much more remarkable as a man of amazing energy of character, an Orientalist, and a collector of ballads. But few now know what
"distant and deadly shore
Holds Leyden's cold remains,"
His memory is twined with that of Sir Walter, and he is one of the most living figures in Lockhart's Life of Scott. Leyden had the poetic quality, not judiciously cultivated, of the old Border minstrels, while the energy which the clans expended in war was given by him to omnivorous studies.