Between “Leader howms” and Gala Water runs the little stream of the Allan or Alwyne through the “Fairy Dean”. Lovers of Scott will not pass it by, because, apart from the loveliness of its succession of wood-embowered haughs, it leads to a spot where three ruined peel towers—Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw—stand not many bowshots apart, memorials of the time when the smaller lairds had to bind themselves together by a “bond of manrent”, for protection against their more powerful neighbours; and the first of these has been identified, with some sanction from Scott himself, as the “Glendearg” of the Glendinnings in The Monastery and The Abbot. Near the bridge which crosses the Tweed at the “Pavilion of Alwyn”, and the “groves of noble Somerville”, was the scene of the misadventure of Philip, the Sacristan, at the hands of the spirits, and of Mysie Happer, the daughter of the miller of the Halidome. The dairy farm of the “monks of St. Mary’s” was on Allan Water; up it led the “girth-gait” which they often followed on the way to Soutra Hospice. True Thomas’s rhymed sayings cling to this countryside like—in Father Philip’s phrase—“burrs to a beggar’s rags”. The region between Leaderfoot and Galashiels was part of the original patrimony of the Cistercian Abbey; all the way, but especially where Gattonside, set on its hillside and surrounded by its famous orchards, “beiks in the sun”, one sees, in glimpses or in full view,
MELROSE ABBEY: CHOIR AND NORTH TRANSEPT
“Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose
And Eildon slopes to the plain”.
In drawing near to Melrose, especially if one crosses at Leaderfoot, and approaches by the village of Newstead and over the site of the Roman camp, one feels there is something to be said for Dorothy Wordsworth’s disappointment on coming first into near view of the Abbey. It stands back from the river—perhaps because the river has left it—and apart from the hills. It is in the fields outside of the village, the streets of which come to its gate and stop there; and it is surrounded by walls, which interrupt and deform proportions seriously injured by the loss of its central tower. Melrose—“the light of the land, the abode of saints, the grave of monarchs”—is a glorious fragment, more beautiful, perhaps, in detail than in general effect, in ornament than in design; and memorable even more for its legendary and literary associations than for its actual history. The monastery dates from the same abbey-building reign as its rivals on Tweedside; but architecturally the church belongs to another horizon. Of the original Norman fabric that stood on the site scarcely a trace remains. It was swept away during the descent upon it of Edward II in 1322, and what remained must have perished under the equally destructive assault of Richard II in 1385. Between these two dates, a building arose, represented by the eastern end of the nave with its flying buttresses and by adjoining parts of the choir and transepts, that may be regarded as a monument of the piety and the gratitude of Robert the Bruce, whose heart, brought back from the Paynim lands to which the “good Sir James” of Douglas had carried it, is buried in the Abbey. The work of rebuilding was continued for nearly a couple of centuries longer; and it is evident that the highest art and craftsmanship the age could produce were employed in construction and in ornament, which, owing to the fineness of grain of the red sandstone employed, remains in wonderful preservation. It is doubtful whether it was completed before the tempests of the Tudor invasions and of the Reformation fell upon it, and the monks were put to flight. It has not been definitely ascertained how far the long nave extended to the westward, or what was the plan of the monastic buildings, of which and of the cloister only a few fragments are left on the northern side of the church. The presbytery, with its much extolled “east oriel” window, was probably among the later additions, and is one of the finest examples of Perpendicular Gothic extant. Scott would have us view it when the moon is shining “through slender shafts of shapely stone, by foliaged tracery combined”, and to imagine that
“Some fairy’s hand
’Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,
In many a freakish knot, had twined”.
But even more wonderful and beautiful to many eyes is the great Decorated window of the south transept that lightens the aisle in which, as is fabled, the Wizard Michael sleeps with his magic books beside him. Familiar are the lines in which Sir Walter, a constant pilgrim to this shrine, chants its praises—of its cloister garth: