And bring four in his companie;
Five earls sall come wi’ mysel,
Good reason I suld honoured be”.
Permanscore is a hollow of the hill, “where wind and water shears”, and here, three hundred years after the “Outlaw’s” time, the “Shirra” assembled and conducted “a perambulation of the marches” in a case of disputed boundaries.
Carterhaugh—the meadow on which faithful Janet met “Young Tamlane”, and, by holding him through all his grisly transformations, rescued him from Fairy-land—lies in the fork between Ettrick and Yarrow. Behind it is Bowhill, at the time when the Lay was written the favourite seat of the Buccleuch family; and the “Duchess’s Walk”, along the right bank of the Yarrow, is named from the lady who suggested to Scott the “Goblin Page” as an episode of the Lay. It leads to where
“Newark’s stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow’s birchen bower”,
and to the “embattled portal arch”
“Whose ponderous grate and massy bar
Had oft rolled back the tide of war”.