These are, for the most part, merely excursions of a spirit whose abiding home or favourite haunt was the Valley of the Tweed and its encircling hills. Edinburgh itself, where there are so many rival memories, does not recall the author of Waverley so instantly and intimately to our thoughts and affections as Abbotsford; and the triple Eildon, rather than Arthur’s Seat, is the “high place” of the Scott cult. If he brought a new glory to the Border Country, it was the Border Country that “made him”, as a man still more than as a writer; and he is the most typical, as he is the most honoured, of its many famous sons.
The greatest as well as
“The last of all the Bards was he
Who sung of Border chivalry”.
The pull of the blood has in this instance proved more potent than that of birth and early environment; although Walter Scott was from his childhood, at Sandyknowe and Kelso, familiar with Border scenes, as well as steeped in Border lore. At a later stage in his growth, lame as he was, with Shortreed and other congenial companions he tramped the glens and climbed the hills and hill-passes of Tweedside, gathering and storing as he went its history and romance for the delight of future generations,
“Giving each rock its storied tale,
Pouring a lay for every dale,
Knitting, as with a moral band,
His native legends with his land,
To lend each scene the interest high