“And thinkna ye my heart was sair
When I laid the mools on his yellow hair;
And thinkna ye my heart was wae
When I turned aside awa to gae”.
Unfortunately for tradition, the fact is on record that Cockburn of Henderland, like his neighbour Scott of Tushielaw, was tried and executed at Edinburgh. James Hogg would have made small ado about brushing such obstructions out of the way of romance. His statue stands at the head of St. Mary’s Loch—the presiding genius of the scene. The road up Yarrow, passing through the woods of Rodono, holds out beyond it, by the Loch of the Lowes and Chapelhope to Birkhill, and then, under the “Grey Mare’s Tail” and White Coombe, down Moffatdale. But the seated figure of the burly Shepherd, wrapped in his plaid, faces “Tibbie Shiels”, the rendezvous of generations of thirsty fishers and poets, on the narrow space between the lochs, and looks towards the hills up which the crossroad climbs steeply, making for Ettrick. It was at this famous hostelry that Hogg gave his classical order, after a hard night’s drinking with Christopher North and other congenial company, “Tibbie, bring in the Loch!” “He taught the wandering winds to sing”, reads the inscription on his monument; and the strong song of the winds that blow down Ettrick accompanies the traveller as he climbs over by the Packman’s Grave, descends to Tushielaw and, turning upstream at Crosslee, follows the valley to the Shepherd’s birthplace and grave, beside Ettrick Kirk. This out-of-the-world nook in the hills—for the road up Ettrickdale comes to an end a few miles higher, under Ettrick Pen—may be reckoned the heart of pastoral Scotland. The thoughts and the talk of the inhabitants are absorbed in sheep—except what may be reserved for sport, and “auld farrant tales”, and church affairs. Around the Shepherd rest many of his own kin and kind: farmers and herds, lairds and tenants, reivers, smugglers, and gypsies—and in this strange mixed company, “Boston of Ettrick”, of the “Fourfold State”, the great preacher and Covenanting divine.
The Castle of Thirlstane, on Ettrick, stands a little below the kirk, with a fragment of Gamescleuch Tower facing it on the opposite bank. Thirlstane belonged to the “Ready, aye Ready” Scotts, until it went by marriage to its present possessors the Napiers. Tushielaw was another hold of the clan, and here dwelt Adam Scott—“King of the Thieves”, and “King of the Borders”—the father of Mary, the “Forest Flower” of the “Queen’s Wake”—until his rival from Holyrood came and “justified” him, says legend, on the Doom Tree at his own door.
Across the water from Tushielaw “Rankleburn’s lonely side” leads far into the hills. Rankleburn is the traditional first home of the Scotts in the basin of the Tweed, although Kirkurd in the Lyne valley might put in an earlier claim. They are even said to have drawn their name and their chief title from this deserted glen, high up which lies Buccleuch, now marked only by the foundations of a chapel wall. Scott of Satchells, who wrote the family story in halting rhyme, in 1686, tells how a wandering Scott from Galloway, in the remote days of Kenneth II, seized a hunted buck by the horns, swung it on his shoulders and brought it to the king:—
“And for the buck thou stoutly brought
To us up that steep heugh,
Thy designation ever shall