The Scott Country

by John Geddie

Be John Scott of Buck’s cleuch”.

Neither at Gilmanscleuch, nor on the Deloraine burn, nor at the Dodhead have the men of the type of Jamie Telfer, who, “steady of heart and stout of hand, once drove their prey from Cumberland”, left any trace of themselves in standing walls. A reminiscence of old forest times survives in such names as Hindhope and Hartwoodmyres; the shell of an ancient peel guards, at Kirkhope, the “Swire Road” across the “Witchie Knowe” from Yarrow to Ettrick Bridgend; and Oakwood has something more substantial to show in the shape of the red keep which local legend insists was built by the redoubtable Sir Michael Scott himself, although its foundations must have been laid centuries after his date. Enough for us that it was in the keeping of “Auld Watt” of Harden.

“Wide lay his lands round Oakwood Tower

And wide round haunted Castle Ower.”

At Oakwood we are back again beside Selkirk, and at Selkirk we are near where, each skirting the grounds of Sunderland Hall, Tweed and Ettrick meet, and where we can resume our course up the larger stream. With the delightful section of the Tweed between The Rink and Elibank, Walter Scott had many close ties. The right bank, and part of the left, were within his jurisdiction as Sheriff, in which office he succeeded his friend, Andrew Plummer of Sunderland Hall, in 1799. But even earlier he made familiar acquaintance with the district, on angling and walking excursions, and had visited the Russells and “Laird Nippy”, at Ashestiel. The Rutherfords of Fairnilee—the old house in which was born Alison Rutherford, the author of the popular version of “The Flowers of the Forest”, stands roofless and deserted, but a new mansion has risen in its neighbourhood—were of his kin. He was a welcome guest also with the Pringles of Yair, whose home, bound about by the woods and hills, is across the river, with the “sister heights of Yair”, otherwise known as the “Three Brethren”, as background. It may be remembered that it was with a son of “the long-descended lord of Yair”, Alexander Pringle of Clovenfords, that in later days he went over the field of Waterloo. Clovenfords was the nearest point of his Sheriffdom to town, and it was convenient for him to take up occasional residence there. Leyden had been schoolmaster in the village, which stands high above the rocky den of the Caddon, on the Peebles and Galashiels road, a mile from the “bonny bit” of Caddonfoot. While raising grapes and other fruit it piously preserves the memory of the author of Marmion in the form of an effigy set up before the door of the inn, where, besides Scott, William and Dorothy Wordsworth and other famous travellers have sojourned.

ASHESTIEL: SCOTT’S FIRST HOUSE IN THE BORDER COUNTRY

In 1804, Scott found it convenient to take a lease of Ashestiel; and that leafy cover became his home for the next seven years. It is within a couple of miles of Clovenfords and Caddonfoot. Under Caddonlee, where William the Lion waited with his bands from the Highlands and the Lothians, until he was joined by the Forest men on his ill-fated invasion of England, Tweed is crossed by a single wide arch to where “Glenkinnen’s rill” and glen open a short cut, oft traversed with the “Yair boys”, to Yarrow. Near the Peel burn is a knoll shaded by oak and birch—the “Shirra’s Knowe”—where part of Marmion is said to have been written. The house, much changed since Scott’s day, turns its front and two extended wings away from the Tweed; but its most attractive aspect is perhaps that towards the river. The little stream, that with its hoarse roaring in spate used to keep the great author, then just blossoming into fame, from his sleep, still tumbles through the garden. His armchair, which came back from Abbotsford after his death, and the window through which his favourite dogs sprang in or out at his call, are still shown. In these Ashestiel years he saw the last volume of the Minstrelsy through the press, published the Lay, completed Marmion and The Lady of the Lake, edited Dryden, and began but laid aside Waverley. His legal work was not absorbing, and he had time, aside from literature, for following the hounds, “burning the water”, making raids into the Forest, and holding convivial meetings with his friends. They were perhaps the happiest, if not the most brilliant, years of his life.

At Elibank, a couple of miles above Ashestiel, we leave Selkirkshire and enter Peeblesshire. The bare grey walls of the old castle of Gideon Murray, of the Black Barony branch of the name, a lord of Session and trusted Councillor of James VI, stands well above the tree-line, against the background of the hills, and commands a wide view of Upper and Lower Tweeddale. History, in this region, arranges itself in strata, with the oldest at the top—by the river margin are road and rail, farms with their fertile haughs, and the houses and tweed-mills of Walkerburn and Innerleithen; fragments of peels and bastiles of the fighting times when Thornielee and Holylee were onsteads of the monks or of the king’s forest vassals, are perched on the ridges, or hide in the folds or “hopes” of the hills, on whose summits are found the forts and cairns of a still earlier day. The outposts of the Moorfoots come to the left bank of the river, and behind them are the broad shoulders of Windlestraelaw; while over against them are steep outliers of Minchmoor—Elibank, Bold and Plora Laws. “Juden” Murray’s tower is of feudal date and aspect. Scott tells the story of how Young Harden, son of Auld Watt and the “Flower of Yarrow”, and presumably a personable young man, was captured by the owner of the tower and was about to be hanged, when the more politic lady pointed out that she had three ill-favoured daughters to dispose of, and the prisoner was happily married to the youngest and plainest, “Mucklemou’d Meg”. An injudicial proceeding; but not more so than the transaction by which Murray’s neighbour, Lord Traquair, had the President of the Court of Session carried off from Leith Links, by a Border freebooter, Christie’s Will, and kept in a dungeon of Hermitage Castle, until a case was decided in Traquair’s favour. Doubt has been thrown on both stories, and in particular it has been objected that Gideon Murray, whose descendants, the Lords Elibank of to-day, are established at Darn Hall on Eddleston Water, had only one daughter, that her name was Agnes, and that, although she married Young Harden, the alliance was with full consent of all parties concerned.

Lee Pen and Kirnie Law stand sentinels at the entrance of Leithen Water, up which the houses of Innerleithen straggle for a mile or more, along a road which runs across into Lothian, by the Piper’s Grave, the Heriot Water, and Carcant. It is a way by which Walter Scott, walking or driving, has often reached Tweedside, and he would note in passing Leithen Hopes, where his friend Hogg was once a herd laddie, and on the lower slope of the Pen, south of Lee Tower and above the village, the beginnings of the new “Spa”. The topographical resemblances of “St. Ronan’s” to Innerleithen are not very close; and Sir Bingo Binks, Lady Penelope Penfeather, Dr. Quackleben, and other types in Scott’s solitary attempt at a satiric portrayal of the social manners and humours of his own day, are not of local growth. One looks in vain, also, for a “Cleikum Inn” nearer than Peebles. Yet the spirit of Meg Dods pervades the place, the inhabitants of which eagerly accepted the identification and “recognized some of the characters as genuine portraits”. They have even adopted the device, on the inn-sign, of “St. Ronan and the Devil” as the burgh arms.