The island, so called, is on the English coast of the North Sea, about ten miles southeast of Berwick. We reached it by crossing the sands in a two-wheeled vehicle, something like an Irish jaunting-car, in which springless instrument of torture we were compelled to travel about three miles. At intervals along the route there are little groups of poles standing in the water, with miniature platforms near the top. These are havens of refuge. If you get caught by the rising tides you have only to make for one of these, and, after watching your horse drown, wait for five or six hours until, with the turn of the tide, somebody comes along to rescue you. Our enterprising Jehu assured us that the tide would be running out, and that there was no danger. But when about halfway over we began to notice that the ride was rising, and the water was soon nearly up to the bed of the wagon. We had made the entire journey in the face of a rising tide and reached the island none too soon, for it was nearly high tide.
Cuthbert, the patron saint of the Holy Island, flourished in the seventh century. He was a prior of the original Melrose Abbey—not the one which is now a ruin in the town of that name, but its predecessor which occupied a site farther down the Tweed. Later he became Prior of Lindisfarne and afterward Bishop. The ruins of the abbey show that it must have been a very extensive establishment of great antiquity. Besides the foundation stones, little now remains except part of the walls of the church which are best described in the poet's words:—
In Saxon strength that abbey frowned,
With massive arches broad and round,
That rose alternate, row and row,
On ponderous columns, short and low,
Built ere the art was known
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk
The arcades of an alleyed walk
To emulate in stone.
We searched in vain for the dreadful 'Vault of Penitence,' the awful dungeon below the abbey, its position known only by the abbot, to which both victim and executioner were led blindfold. There is no trace of any underground vaults nor of anything resembling the niche where poor Constance was immured, to die a slow death from starvation. As a matter of fact, Lindisfarne was never a convent at all. But at Coldingham Abbey, on the coast of Scotland not many miles away, there was discovered, in Scott's time, a female skeleton which, from the shape of the niche and the position of the figure, seemed to be that of a nun immured very much as Constance was supposed to have been.
LINDISFARNE ABBEY
Returning to Norham Castle, and continuing the narrative, we find Marmion and his men preparing to depart at an early hour of the morning following their arrival. Guided by the supposed Holy Palmer, they travelled all day, following the mountain paths straight across the Lammermuir Hills, in a northwesterly direction, until at close of day they came to the village of Gifford, four or five miles south of the town of Haddington. A night at the village inn, a weird ghost story by the landlord, and a strange, uncanny adventure of Marmion resulting from it, complete the experiences of the first twenty-four hours. The next day the travellers meet a messenger from the King, Sir David Lindsay, by whom they are escorted to Crichton Castle and entertained in royal magnificence. We found the ruins of this picturesque old castle on the banks of the Tyne, a dozen miles southeast from Edinburgh. From his boyhood they had exercised a fascinating influence upon the poet.
Crichtoun! though now thy miry court
But pens the lazy steer and sheep,
Thy turrets rude and tottered keep
Have been the minstrel's loved resort.
During his school days, Scott took many a vacation tramp to visit the scenes in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh which appealed to his fancy, and nothing ever made a stronger appeal than some old ruin to which was attached a bit of history or legend. Referring to the time when he was about thirteen years old, he says, in the brief fragment of his 'Autobiography':—