Dame Janet Beatoun, Lady Buccleuch, who flourished in Queen Mary's time, was a woman of high spirit and great talents. According to the superstition of the times, the vulgar imputed her extraordinary abilities to supernatural knowledge. If Lady Dalkeith will look into the Introduction to the 'Border Ballads,' pages xv and xxix, she will find some accounts of a deadly feud betwixt the clans of Scott and Kerr, which, among other outrages, occasioned the death of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, the husband of Janet Beatoun, who was slain by the Kerrs in the streets of Edinburgh. The lady resented the death of her husband by many exploits against the Kerrs and their allies. In particular the Laird of Cranstoun fell under her displeasure, and she herself headed a party of three hundred horse with the intention of surprising and killing that baron in the chapel of St. Mary, beside St. Mary's Loch at the head of Yarrow. The Baron escaped, but the lady burned the chapel and slew many of the attendants.... The feud was finally ended by Cranstoun marrying the lady's daughter.
ST. MARY'S LOCH
About this fragment of history Scott wove his stirring tale of the Scottish lowlands in the sixteenth century.
The last of all the bards was he
Who sung of Border chivalry,
The aged minstrel is introduced as he passes
where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower.
The old ruin was a favourite resort for Scott, and many a happy holiday excursion was made to those 'rich groves of lofty stature' which Wordsworth celebrated in his 'Yarrow Visited.' The ancient tower stands on high ground above the Yarrow, on a road leading westward from Selkirk, over which Scott often walked or rode. About two miles away is Bowhill, a country-seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, where the poet was always a welcome guest. He refers to it affectionately in the closing stanza of the 'Lay':—