Scenes in Berwick—Border Marriages—Bonnie Ayton.
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
‘This is my own, my native land;’
Whose heart has ne’er within him burned
As home his weary footsteps, turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?”
These lines naturally rang through my mind as I rode on my cycle over the old bridge of Tweed. The caravan was a long way behind, so after getting fairly into Berwick I turned and recrossed the bridge, and when I met the Wanderer I gave the tricycle up to Foley, my worthy valet and secretary, for I knew that he too wanted to be able to say in future that he had ridden into Scotland.
Yes, the above lines kept ringing through my mind, but those in the same stirring poem that follow I could not truthfully recite as yet—
“Oh! Caledonia, stern and wild,
Nurse meet for a poetic child;
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood.”
—Because round Berwick the scenery is not stern and wild, and though there may be roaring floods, the mountains hold pretty far aloof.
Through narrow archways, and up the long, steep streets of this border town, toiled the Wanderer. We called at the post-office and got letters, and went on again, seeking in vain for a place of rest. We were nearly out of the town, when, on stopping for a few minutes to breathe the horses, I was accosted by a gentleman, and told him my wants.
Ten minutes afterwards the great caravan lay comfortably in a pork-curer’s yard, and the horses were knee-deep in straw in a neighbouring stable.
A German it is who owns the place. Taking an afternoon walk through his premises, I was quite astonished at the amount of cleanliness everywhere displayed. Those pigs are positively lapped in luxury; of all sorts and sizes are they, of all ages, of all colours, and of all breeds, from the long-snouted Berkshire to the pug-nosed Yorker, huddled together in every attitude of innocence. Here are two lying in each other’s arms, so to speak, but head and tail. They are two strides long, and sound asleep, only dreaming, and grunting and kicking a little in their dreams. I wonder what pigs do dream about? Green fields, perhaps, hazel copses, and falling nuts and acorns. The owner of this property came in, late in the evening, and we had a pleasant chat for half an hour. About pigs? Yes, about pigs principally—pigs and politics.
Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a wilder, more chequered, or more romantic history than the once-circumvallated Berwick-on-Tweed. How far back that history dates is somewhat of a mystery, more in all likelihood than a thousand years, to the days of Kenneth the Second of Scotland. He it was, so it is written, who first made the Tweed the boundary between the two countries. Is it not, however, also said that the whole country north of Newcastle properly belongs to Caledonia? However this may be, Berwick was a bone of contention and a shuttlecock for many a century. Scores of fearful battles were fought in and around it; many a scene of carnage and massacre has its old bell-tower looked down upon; ay, and many a scene of pomp and pageantry as well.