The “Thieves’ Road”, by which the Border reivers made their way into Lothian, strikes athwart the hills enclosing the valleys of Manor and Lyne, descending to the Tweed from the slopes of the Scrape to the woods of Dawick. Veitches were succeeded in this sheltered place by Naesmiths, whose fortunes were built up by an indefatigable seventeenth century lawyer known as “the Deil o’ Dawick”. It boasts possession of the oldest larches in Scotland, brought hither on the suggestion of Linnæus, though the honour is disputed by Kailzie lower down Tweed. Across the river is another fine wooded domain—Stobo—whose ancient church preserves a Norman doorway, a saddle-back tower, and a “jougs”; while, from the hills behind, this level strath seems to be menaced by the fragments of Tinnis Castle, set, like a robber tower on the Rhine, on the summit of an almost inaccessible rocky spur. It is believed to have been the original hold of the Tweedies of Drummelzier, a race whose fabled descent was from a Tweed water-nymph, and whose conduct towards their neighbours, the Veitches of Dawick and the Geddeses of Rachan, sadly belied the motto on their tomb at Drummelzier Church—“Thole and Think”. Hard by that edifice at the meeting of the Powsail and the Tweed, and not far from the ruined castle of the Hays of Drummelzier, is another grave of which tradition has much to say—that of “Merlin the Wild”, who prophesied on the spot the Union of the Kingdoms.

Beyond Drummelzier and Broughton, an estate and parish which in the eighteenth century belonged to two historical personages of dubious repute—“Secretary Murray” of the ’45 and M‘Queen of Braxfield, Stevenson’s “Lord Justice Clerk”—the Tweed is found to have dwindled almost to the dimensions of a moorland burn, enclosed among smooth brown “hills of sheep”. Smaller streams pour down in headlong course on either hand; and there are not wanting places of historic and literary note by the river banks and in the tributary valleys. Every burn and haugh has its story of old feuds, in which Frasers and Tweedies, Hunters and Murrays, Scotts and Hays, and other clans of Upper Clydesdale have had a part; and “forts” and “rings” and “chesters” are plentifully sprinkled on the hill-tops. They are especially rife on the heights looking down on the Holms water, which comes from the grassy and heathery folds of Culter Fell and Cardon, and, after joining the Broughton burn, falls into the Tweed below Rachan. For in this neighbourhood, by the “Pass of Corscrine”, ran for a time the frontiers of the Kingdom, as fixed between Edward I and Edward Baliol. Like many other old families of the district, the Geddeses of Rachan, “chiefs of the name”, passed out of the Upper Tweed in poverty and litigation. The like fate, or worse, befell the Murrays of Stanhope, whose representative, after the laird who lost his head in the ’45, was the “Judas” of the Rebellion, for whom Scott’s father showed his contempt, by flinging out of the window the cup from which his caller had partaken of tea in George Square. The fact that they claimed to have received their lands, “for a Bow and a Broad Arrow, when the King comes to hunt in Yarrow”, from Malcolm Canmore did not prevent the Hunters from parting with the estate of Polmood, after one of the longest lawsuits in the annals of even the Scots law.

Stanhope and Polmood have streams tumbling down to Tweed from the heights of Dollar Law and Broad Law, 2800 feet above sea-level; and on the opposite, or right bank, above the fragment of Wrae Castle, which once belonged to the Tweedies, is the site of “Lincumdoddie”, where dwelt “Willie Wastle’s wife”, whose face, according to Burns’s song, “wad fyle the Logan Water”, which runs by it. Beyond the Kinkledoors burn is the “Crook Inn”, beloved by the many anglers who have sought sport and recreation in this solitude among the hills, where, besides Tweed itself, there are many wild side streams—Hearthstane, Menzion, Fruid, and Fingland; Glencraigie, Glenbreck, and Glencor—frequented by brown and yellow trout. But, chief of all, there is the Talla, which, from its springs in lonely Gameshope, rushes down the rocks at Talla Linnfoot, and rests in the two-mile-long reservoir of the Edinburgh Water Company, before joining the Tweed at Tweedsmuir Church, nearly opposite the scant remains of Oliver Castle, where the Frasers first planted themselves on Tweedside.

The Frasers had fled the scene long before the Hunters and the Hays, the Geddeses and the Tweedies, and other families have succeeded and followed them in their flight. Few, and set far apart, are houses and “bields” of any kind, on the lonely road that keeps high up the hillside above the valley floor, until, at “Tweed’s Well”, passing over into Annandale, it parts company with the “Scott Country”.

Footnotes

[1]“Penmanscore” is the correct reading, though “Permanscore” is given in the Minstrelsy.

BEAUTIFUL ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND

This series of beautifully illustrated volumes has been re-issued in handy size. It is an admirable record of what is most worthy of attention in some of our fairest places. Each book contains 12 reproductions of original water-colour paintings by E. W. Haslehust, R.B.A., in addition to descriptive text.

Attractively Produced Coloured Jacket

Descriptive Text by
The Thames. G. E. Mitton.
Bath and Wells. Arthur L. Salmon.
The Peak District. R. Murray Gilchrist.
In London’s By-Ways. Walter Jerrold.
Winchester. Sidney Heath.
The Shores of Fife. John Geddie.
Heart of London. Walter Jerrold.
Cornish Riviera. Sidney Heath.
Loch Lomond. George Eyre-Todd.
Dartmoor. Arthur L. Salmon.
Edinburgh. John Geddie.
Canterbury. Canon Danks.
Shakespeare-Land. Walter Jerrold.
The Scott Country. John Geddie.
Oxford. F. D. How.
Cambridge. Noel Barwell.
York. George Benson.
English Lakes. A. G. Bradley.