Mary Queen had stayed at an old house, still standing in Queenstreet, Prince Charles at a house in Castlegate, Burns in the Canongate, the Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, in Abbey Close, because there was no room in the inn. I do not know if it were the Spread Eagle then, but the assizes were being held, Jethart justice was being administered, or, juster justice, since these were more parlous times, and parley went before sentence. Scott as a sheriff and the other officials of the country were filling the hostelry. But Sir Walter, then the Sheriff of Selkirk, sheriff being a position of more "legality" than with us, and no doubt remembering his first law case which he had pled at Jedburgh years before, came over to Abbey Close after dinner, and according to Dorothy Wordsworth "sate with us an hour or two, and repeated a part of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.'"
Think of not knowing whether it was an hour or two hours, with Scott repeating the "Lay," and in Jedburgh.
We lodged in a little narrow lane, near the Queen in the Backgate, with a small quaint garden plot behind; there would be pears in season, and many of them, ripening against these stone walls. The pears of the Border are famous. Our landlady was removed from Yetholm only a generation. Yetholm is the gipsy capital of this countryside. And we wondered whether Meg Faa, for so she ambitiously called herself, by the royal name of Scottish Romany, was descended from Meg Merrilies. Mrs. Faa had dark flashing eyes in a thin dark face, and they flashed like a two-edged dagger. She was a small woman, scarce taller than a Jethart ax as we had seen them in the museum at Kelso. I should never have dared to ask her about anything, not even the time of day, and, in truth, like many of the Scotch women, she had a gift of impressive silence. All the night I had a self-conscious feeling that something was going to happen in this town of Jed, and in the morning when I met Mrs. Faa again and her eyes rather than her voice challenged me as to how I had slept, I should not have dared admit that I slept with one eye open lest I become one more of the permanent ghosts of Jed.
JEDBURGH ABBEY.
The Abbey is, in its way, its individual way, most interesting of the chief four of "St. David's piles." It is beautifully lodged, beside the Jed, near the stream, and the stream more a part of its landscape; smooth-shaven English lawns lie all about, a veritable ecclesiastical close. It is simpler than Melrose, if the detail is not so marvelous, and there is substantially more of it. The Norman tower stands square; if witches still dance on it they choose their place for security. The long walls of the nave suggest almost a restoration—almost.
When the Abbey flourished, and when Alexander III was king, he was wedded here (1285) to Joleta, daughter of the French Count de Dreux. Always French and Scotch have felt a kinship, and often expressed it in royal marriage. The gray abbey walls, then a century and a half old, must have looked curiously down on this gay wedding throng which so possessed the place, so dispossessed the monks, Austin friars come from the abbey of St. Quentin at Beauvais.
Suddenly, in the midst of the dance, the King reached out his hand to the maiden queen—and Death, the specter, met him with skeleton fingers. It may have been a pageant trick, it may have been a too thoughtful monk; but the thirteenth century was rich with superstition. Six months later Alexander fell from his horse on a stormy night on the Fife coast—and the prophetic omen was remembered, or constructed.
The Abbey was newly in ruin when Mary Queen rode down this way, only twenty-one years after Hertford's hurtful raid. Court was to be held here, the assizes of October, 1566, at this Border town. For the Border had been over-lively and was disputing the authority of the Scottish queen as though it had no loyalty. Bothwell had been sent down as Warden of the Marches to quell the marauding free-booters. He had met with Little Jock Elliott, a Jethart callant, a Border bandit, to whom we can forgive much, because of the old ballad.
"My castle is aye my ain,
An' herried it never shall be;
For I maun fa' ere it's taen,
An' wha daur meddle wi' me?
Wi' my kuit in the rib o' my naig,
My sword hangin' doun by my knee,
For man I am never afraid,
An' wha daur meddle wi' me?
Wha daur meddle wi' me,
Wha daur meddle wi' me?
Oh, my name is little Jock Elliott,
An' wha daur meddle wi' me?
"I munt my gude naig wi' a will
When the fray's in the wind, an' he
Cocks his lugs as he tugs for the hill
That enters the south countrie,
Where pricking and spurring are rife,
And the bluid boils up like the sea,
But the Southrons gang doon i' the strife,
An' wha daur meddle wi' me?"