If ilka man had his ain coo,
A richt poor clan your name would be.”
It was from Branxholm, on the Teviot above Hawick, that another Scott of the name—generation after generation were Walters—rode forth to rescue “Kinmont Willie” from prison in Carlisle. The Minstrel’s tale, in the Lay, opens at and returns again and again to Branxholm Ha’; it was at the Tower Inn, at Hawick, where the Duchess Anne of Buccleuch and Monmouth held her receptions, and that the greatest of all the Sir Walters parted from his guests the Wordsworths.
It is a land dedicated to the achievements of Douglases and Scotts, but that resounds also with the deeds of Elliots and Armstrongs, and of minor and broken clans, Turnbulls and Rutherfords, Cranstouns and Olivers. It has its rich endowment of beauty as well as of history. Around the keep of Branxholm, which from the deep bank overhanging the stream has often defied its enemies, have gathered buildings of more recent date and a screen of ancient trees. Below it is the Tower of Goldilands, where a marauding Scott was hanged at his own gate, and here comes in from the left the Borthwick Water. As Leyden has it:
“Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand,
Rolls her red tide to Teviot’s western strand,
Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn,
And springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn,
Towers wood-girt Harden, far above the vale”—
Harden, the cradle of the branch of the Scotts from which the author of the Lay was descended; the “mountain home”, hidden in its narrow glen, to which the “Flower of Yarrow” was brought by “Auld Wat”—“a wide domain, and rich, had purple heath been grain”.