Geologists—who, “knappin the chucky stanes to pieces wi’ hammers”, reminded Meg of “sae many stane masons run daft”—still frequent the locality, along with anglers and tourists; for at Thornilee, as well as across Tweed at Grieston and the Glen, are celebrated beds of fossiliferous rocks. The bridge is not far above the pool—the “Droon-pouch”—from which the body of the young son of King Malcolm the Maiden was drawn by the Innerleithen people, in gratitude for which its church was made a “Sanctuary” with privileges equal to those of Stow and of Tyninghame. On the farther side is the entrance to the valley of the Quair, and the woods surrounding the venerable form of Traquair House. Its claim to be “the oldest inhabited house in Scotland” applies specifically to its western wing, which is said to date back fully nine centuries. However this may be, the antique character of Traquair is written on its outward features as well as inscribed in its record. It passed through the hands of a succession of royal favourites, of whom the last was James III’s musician and “familiar shield-bearer”, Rogers, who was among those hung over Lauder Bridge by the jealous nobles, before it came into the possession of a branch of the Stewart Earls of Buchan. The Traquair Stewarts have been of mixed reputation; but the tradition of loyalty to the cause of their Royal kin now clings to the house and is symbolized in the great Bear Gateway—the prototype of that of the “Barons of Bradwardine” in Waverley—which is not to be opened until a Stewart King comes again this way.
Like the house itself, all its surroundings breathe of the poetry and romance of the past. For was it not behind Plora Craig that “Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen”? Are there not some scrogs of birch left by the waterside of the much besung “Bush aboon Traquair”? Were not the dwelling of Willie Laidlaw, and the scene of “Lucy’s Flitting” in the upper valley, in which stands the lordly mansion of Lord Glenconner—“The Glen” par excellence? And above all, is it not by the road along the Quair that one “turns aside to Yarrow”?
In the nine miles between Innerleithen and Peebles the full current of Tweed winds through a country brimfull of beauty and story. Whether the road followed upstream be that on the right or that on the left bank, one passes the ruins of ancient strongholds and modern country-seats, set among trees and lawns—on the south side, after Traquair, Cardrona, Kailzie, Haystoun, and Kingsmeadows, and on the north Glenormiston, the two Horsburghs, and Kerfield—and, behind these, high hills of grass and heather, Lee Pen, Dunslair and the Makeness Kips, over against the Glenrath Heights and the Dun Rig, from which on a clear day can be seen, it is said, the Calton Hill in Edinburgh and the Isle of May. The little country-town of Peebles is in a level space where Eddleston Water, side by side with rail and highway, meets Tweed; and from time immemorial it has been a resort of royalty, a place for pastime and relaxation—“Peebles for pleesure!”—and, in a modest way, for trade. It had a reputation for sanctity, also, in witness whereof there are the remains of the two mediæval churches—those of St. Andrew and of the Haly Rude. The house of the Archdean of Glasgow is represented by the Lodging, in the High Street, of the Dukes of Queensberry, now become a public library, whose name, the Chambers Institute, recalls the fact that the founders of the publishing house of Chambers were born in a humble cottage in one of the cross streets. Peebles has outgrown the limits marked by the fragment of the town wall, and has spread northwards to the foot of the hills, where on Venlaw—part of its lost patrimony—it has public walks and a “Hydro”; while it has crossed, by the handsome stone bridge, to the southern bank of Tweed; whence a branch railway follows the course of the river to Broughton, on the way to Clydesdale.
A mile out of the town, to the west, is Neidpath Castle, the most commandingly and romantically situated, and, in spite of the yawning gaps made in its walls by Cromwell’s cannon, the best-preserved—Traquair excepted—of the strongholds of the olden time on Tweed. The river is here constricted by the bare cairn-strewn ridge of Caidmuir—once Peebles Common—on the south, and by the Edston heights on the Neidpath side, and has cut a deep ravine through which has drained the great lake that once filled upper Tweeddale. The water swirls around rock and boulder below the castle base; and the screen of trees, whose destruction by that “degenerate Douglas”, Old Q., provoked Wordsworth’s indignant sonnet, has been partially restored. Access to the lofty thick walled double tower, still partly occupied, is by a gateway and courtyard; and over this outer portal are the arms of the early owners—the strawberries of the Frasers of Oliver Castle, from whom are descended the Frasers of the North; and the goat’s head of the Hays of Yester, who here entertained James VI, defied the Commonwealth, and were created Lords of Tweeddale. Afterwards the castle and lands came into the possession of the Douglases of Queensberry, and they now belong to the Earl of Wemyss and March. From the window, now built up, over the arch, as has been sung by Scott and by Campbell, the dying “Maid of Neidpath” looked forth to watch the return of her undiscerning lover. Still discoverable is the casement in the Justice Room of the tower, out of which wrong-doers were hung after summary trial.
NEIDPATH CASTLE
As Pennecuik sang two centuries ago:
“The noble Neidpath Peebles overlooks
With its fair bridge and Tweed’s meandering crooks”.
But it overlooks much else; and a short distance above it there open up, to right and left, the subsidiary vales of the Lyne and the Manor. The former comes from the “Cauldstaneslap”, in the heart of the Pentlands, and passing on its way, at the meeting with the Tarth, Drochil Castle—built as a retreat by the Regent Morton, who was shortened by a head with a guillotine of his own contriving before he had time to complete his work—enters Tweed below the remains of the great Roman Camp of Lyne. The Manor Water draws its springs from the neighbourhood of Yarrow. Once it was defended by eight strong peels, only one of which, Barns—where Mr. John Buchan has laid the scene of his “John Burnet of Barns”—stands erect. Posso Craigs, where the Stewart Kings bred their falcons, and the sites of St. Gordian’s Kirk and Cross and of “Macbeth’s Castle” can be pointed out. But Manor’s chief memorials are the grave and the cottage of David Ritchie, the prototype of the “Black Dwarf”, the “recluse of Meiklestane Moor”. Scott, as a young visitor to Manor with Adam Ferguson, received an impression which never left him when the deformed and eccentric being, who built his own hut with its doorway three feet high, took him into its arcana, and locking the door and seizing his hand, asked him earnestly: “Hae ye the pooer?”—the power of divination!