The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

Scott saw something of this life at Gilsland in the memorable summer of 1797, the year when he met Miss Carpenter at the dance in Shaw's Hotel. Below the hostelry is a deep and attractive glen, through which flows the river Irthing, and just above the bridge spanning the river, is one of those mineral springs, which have the strange power, whatever may be their medicinal virtues, of drawing hundreds of people away from their homes in the summer months. There is another of these springs at Innerleithen, on the banks of the Tweed, and for this reason—for I can see no other—the people of that town have laid claim to the honour of residing in the original 'St. Ronan's.'

Innerleithen, now a prosperous town of about three thousand inhabitants, is situated amid the hills which border the Tweed in the most picturesque part of its course. In Scott's time it was only a small village. Traquair, on the contrary, a few miles to the south, was of more importance in Scott's time than now, when it is a mere hamlet, remarkable for nothing except the fine old feudal mansion to which I have previously referred.[[1]] If we are to think of Innerleithen, then, as the 'ancient and decayed village of St. Ronan's' we must picture it, not as the thriving commercial town of to-day, but more like its neighbour on the south.

Of course I felt anxious to taste the waters of the real St. Ronan's Well, and made a journey to Innerleithen for the purpose. I gained nothing beyond the experience of exchanging a good shilling for a bad drink. One taste was enough, and when the girl was n't looking I threw the rest away. I found an old two-story house in the town which claims to be the original 'Cleikum Inn'—a claim which is disputed by a public house in Peebles, 'The Cross Keys Hotel,' formerly a pretentious seventeenth-century mansion. The latter was kept in Scott's time by a maiden lady named Marian Ritchie, who seems to have possessed some of the characteristics which the novelist exaggerated in his delightfully humorous picture of Meg Dods. She found fault with the new 'hottle,' and did not hesitate to vent her sarcasm upon those travellers who ventured to stay there in preference to her own respectable inn. Scott, according to local history, was occasionally one of her guests. She ruled with a rod of iron, permitting no excesses, and did not hesitate to send a young man 'hame to his mither' if she suspected him to be imbibing too freely. Scott gave this model landlady the real name of a hostess whom he had patronized when only seventeen years old. It was on a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, in the Moorfoot Hills, when Scott and three of his boon companions stopped at a little public-house kept by Mrs. Margaret Dods. It was thirty-five years later when, in writing 'St. Ronan's Well' the novelist adopted the name of the real landlady for his fictitious character.

So far as the rival claimants of the 'Cleikum Inn' honours are concerned, I do not believe that Scott had any particular house in mind, either for the 'inn,' or the 'hottle.' Nor can I find any evidence of the existence of an 'original' for Shaw's Castle, the family seat of the Mowbrays, though Raeburn House, near St. Boswell's Green may be taken as a excellent type. The same doubt applies to the village of St. Ronan's itself. Scott's design seems to have been merely to place the scene of his story, broadly speaking, in the valley of the Tweed.

This picturesque stream rises in the high lands near Moffat and flows north through a country still wild and solitary. A score of miles or less from its source, it makes a bend toward the east, above the town of Peebles, and from this point, until it discharges its waters into the North Sea at Berwick, there is scarcely a bend in the river or a village or town on its banks that does not suggest memories of Sir Walter Scott.

From the high ground overlooking the river, just at the point where it bends to the east, we had a view, through the trees, of surpassing beauty. Below was the ancient Castle of Neidpath, once a scene of stately splendour, when nobles and monarchs frequented its halls, and richly attired ladies promenaded in the well-kept gardens, laden with the perfume and brilliant with the hues of many flowers; when well-ordered terraces lined the banks of the stream and orchards smiled from the surrounding hillsides. Amid such scenes the 'Maid of Neidpath' sat in the tower,—

To watch her love's returning—

and broke her heart when the lover came and passed with heedless gaze—

As o'er some stranger glancing.[[2]]

Time and Nature, working together as landscape artists, have converted the castle into a picturesque ruin, and replaced the artificial gardens and terraces with thick groves of fine old trees, clothing the hillsides with a richer and deeper verdure, and leaving only the river as of yore, still brightening the scene with the sparkle of its silvery tide. In the distance we could see the spires and chimneys of Peebles.