Full many a league his prey could spy”;
and around Minto House, the home, since the Union, of the Elliots, a race great in law and in war, in song and in statecraft, with whom, through their descent from “Gibbie with the Gowden Garters”, a daughter of Harden, Sir Walter could “count kin”. Jed Water and Ale Water come in from south and north, farther down, and here, too, every foot is famous. The “Minstrel” sings of scenes, on the track of William of Deloraine, “good at need”, among them
“Ancient Riddel’s fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountains freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed”.
The inflow of this turbulent stream is below the fine old tree-surrounded Ancrum House. It is overshadowed by Penielheugh and by the ridge of Lilliard’s Edge, across which the main road from Carlisle, that has followed the course of the Teviot almost from its source, toils painfully over to the valley of the Tweed. On a day in 1545, Ancrum Moor
“Ran red with English blood,
Where the Douglas true and the bold Buccleuch