The Scott Country

by John Geddie

By Mertoun’s wood, the screen of Dryburgh from gales blowing from the sea, and now the property of Lord Polwarth, a Scott of the Harden blood, the way winds to the Abbey precincts, overshadowed by the great trees that surround Dryburgh House. Naturally the feet first seek the tomb of Sir Walter in St. Mary’s Aisle. The story of how the best beloved of the sons of the Border came to be laid under this fragment of the north transept and choir—a well-preserved piece of elegant First Pointed work—is itself a romance. His grandmother on the father’s side, Barbara Haliburton, was the daughter of a Merse laird, who was owner of part of the lands of Dryburgh, including the Abbey ruins. She became his inheritor; but before then Robert Haliburton had lost his lands through unwise speculation. David Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan—brother of Lord Chancellor Erskine and of Harry Erskine, the brilliant wit and pleader—who has left the impress of his eccentric mind on the colossal statue of Wallace which stands, “frowning towards England”, above his suspension bridge for foot passengers crossing the Tweed from St. Boswells, became possessor of the ground; and, through Lady Scott, obtained a promise from the author of Waverley that he should be buried in this kindred earth. Lady Scott died in 1826, and Buchan in 1829, while Sir Walter himself was not laid here until 26th September, 1832. In his fragment of “Autobiography”, Scott records how he had come to his own again in this twice-hallowed spot; and, with a touch of prophecy as well as pathos, he wrote: “And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father’s maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own glances over these pages.” Nowhere—not even in Melrose—could the Wizard rest more tranquilly than in this scene where nature and art, the present and the past, and life and death seem to be brought into perfect accord.

The funeral cortège, coming from Abbotsford, crossed the Tweed and Leader at Leaderfoot, and climbing, past Gladswood, by a road with which Scott was familiar, halted where he had often halted, and where multitudes have halted since, at a bold and sharp elbow of the path, raised three hundred feet above the river, whence an unrivalled view can be had into the heart of the Scott Country. Immediately below, across the stream, on a peninsula of land washed on three sides by the Tweed, is Old Melrose, a spot which had gathered sanctity many centuries before the mediæval abbeys rose in the valley. Here a mission station of the Christian faith was planted from distant Iona; and hence, probably, travelled Aidan to convert heathen Northumbria and to found Lindisfarne and Hexham; here dwelt, as first abbot, his companion Eata, and also Boisel, who gave his name to St. Boswell’s opposite, and to whom came for instruction Cuthbert, a shepherd lad who had been reared at Wrangham, near Brotherstone, and had tended his flock and seen visions in the Lammermoors. From “Mailros”, the bald promontory—its very name attests the tongue in which the Celtic founders spoke—St. Cuthbert’s body in its stone coffin floated downstream on its many wanderings by water and land; and, as related by Bede, the hermit Drithelm was wont in winter to break the ice on the river, and, standing up to the neck in the water, recite his prayers. Although it was abandoned before the “Sair Saint” brought to the neighbourhood and to Scotland the first monks of the Cistercian Order, some of the prestige of Old Melrose must have clung to the name and been transferred to the Religious House on the new site, the ruddy walls of which can be descried, sheltering at the foot of the Eildons, across the fields on which, long before the coming of the Columban missionaries, the Romans planted the expeditionary camp and permanent station of Trimontium, that have only lately yielded their secrets to the spade.

This Bemerside Hill is a “Mount of Vision” from which all the chief shrines and high places of the Scott Country can be surveyed, at least with the mind’s eye. Abbotsford itself, if not in actual view, can be mapped into the scene by direction and position. Out of sight, directly under the brow of the hill, is the ancient square fortalice, with later buildings attached, and grounds stretching down towards the Tweed, where Haigs have been resident for seven centuries. They were benefactors of Melrose when Alexander III was king, and when Thomas the Rhymer was their neighbour and wellwisher, and uttered the prophecy that has so mightily helped its own fulfilment:

BEMERSYDE HOUSE

“Betyde, betyde, whate’er betyde,

Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde.”

Sir Walter Scott was a later friend of the family, and was often a guest in the beautiful rose-garden below the mansion. A grateful nation bestowed the house and manor on the late Field-Marshal Earl Haig, who now lies at rest close by Sir Walter at Dryburgh. The whole scene and surroundings seem to be touched by the spirit of prophecy and of poetry. On the hills opposite stood the “Eildon Tree” and the “Eildon Stone”; and beyond these, on Abbotsford property, the reputed “Rhymer’s Glen”, where “True Thomas” encountered the Queen of Faëry, although the tryst may well have been at Huntlywood, behind Brotherstone, on the Eden Water, and near Corsbie Tower, the ruined “Castle of Avenel”. As has been said, Drithelm and Cuthbert were visionaries, so were Boisel, the second Abbot of the old, and Waldave, the first Abbot of the new foundation; and centuries before the time of the Seer of Ercildoune they dreamed dreams and saw things not of this world and far into the future. According to popular belief, of like gifts was “Auld Michael”, whose words “cleft Eildon Hills in three”. The last and the greatest of these “Wizard Scotts” is he who sleeps with his fathers in St. Mary’s Aisle.

When descent is made into the valley of the Leader, one is still in the land of enchantment. The ivy-covered “Rhymer’s Tower” is a few miles up the glen, and on the way, under the Black Hill of Earlston, are Drygrange and the “Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes”. Near by, at Mellerstain, lived and sang Grizel Baillie, who was Grizel Hume; and in the Kirk of Legerwood is the monument of that other Grizel, who, in the dress of a highwayman, saved her father’s life by holding up the King’s officer carrying the writ for his execution. Higher up Leader are Carolside, and, in a side glen, Auld Thirlstane, the seat of “Auld Maitland”, and Spottiswoode, the home of Alicia Spottiswoode—Lady John Scott—writer and composer of “Bonnie Annie Laurie” and other thrilling Scots lyrics. The new Thirlstane—it is hundreds of years old—is in the centre of Lauderdale, beside the venerable Royal Burgh of Lauder, the last of the municipalities in the land to retain its old burghal rights and customs. Many are the hill-forts and camps that look down on the now peaceful scenes through which the road—a favourite tourist coach route—passes on its way from the crossing of the Lammermoors to the Tweed; and among them are Channelkirk where Cuthbert heard the summons of the Heavenly Host, and Edgarshope, by which the message of fire that told of the crossing of the border by the English bands, was wont to be passed on to Soutra Edge, near by the Hospice of the Red Friars, to which, and not to Faeryland, Thomas retired from the world, when he followed the mysterious Hart and Hind up Leaderside.

Not less richly furnished with the relics of eld and with the charms of modern cultivation is the parallel vale of the Gala, the nursery of the “Braw Lads”. The “Shirra” often traversed it on his way by Midleton Moor to his home and sphere of jurisdiction on Ettrick and Tweed, upon which the stream, road, and railway debouch a little below the mill lades and chimney stalks of the town of Galashiels, and almost opposite to Abbotsford. On the links and bends of the Gala, and its side glens of the Heriot, the Armit, and the Luggate, are many places of historic note—Crookston, of the Borthwicks, for example; Stow—the “Stowe of Wedale”, of Arthurian and mediæval fame; Bowland, like Eildon Hall, on the farther side of the Eildons, a possession of the House of Buccleuch; the ruined “broch” on the Bow Hill, facing, across the valley, a similar structure which, with the termination of that ancient and mysterious line of earthworks, the “Catrail”, occupies the crown of Torwoodlee, of the Pringles; finally, Buckholm Hill and Tower, looking over the roofs of the busy seat of tweed manufactures to Gala Hill and Gala House of the Scotts. “Gala Water, Buckholm, Torwoodlee”, were among the last audible words murmured by the dying “Border Minstrel”.