Coaches run, or did before the war, and will after the war, through the pleasant dales of Yarrow and Moffat, dales which knew battles long ago and old unhappy far off things, but very silent now, too silent; almost one longs for a burst of Border warfare that the quiet may be filled with fitting clamour. The coaches meet at Tibbie Shiel's on St. Mary's and it is to Tibbie's that you are bound, as were so many gallant gentlemen, especially literary gentlemen, before you.
Selkirk is the starting point. And Selkirk is a very seemly, very prosperous town, looking not at all like an ecclesiastic city, as it started to be in the dear dead days of David the saint, looking very much as a hill city in Italy will look some day when Italy becomes entirely "redeemed" and modern, and exists for itself instead of for the tourist. Selkirk is indifferent to tourists, as indeed is every Scottish town; Scotland and Scotsmen are capable of existing for themselves. Selkirk hangs against the hillside above the Ettrick, and its show places are few; the spot where Montrose lodged the night before the defeat at Philipshaugh, the statue of Scott when he was sheriff, "shirra," the statue of Mungo Park near where he was given his medical training, and the home of Andrew Lang.
There is no trace of the "kirk o' the shielings," founded by the religious from Iona, from which by way of Scheleschyrche came Selkirk. Nor is there trace of Davis's pile, ruined or unruined, in this near, modern, whirring city. It is the sound of the looms one remembers in Selkirk, making that infinity of yards of Scotch tweed to clothe the world. Selkirk and Galashiels and Hawick form the Glasgow of the Border.
Always industrious, in the time of Flodden it was the "souters of Selkirk" who marched away to the Killing—
"Up wi' the Souters of Selkirk
And down wi' the Earl o' Home."
These same souters—shoemakers—were busy in the time of Prince Charles Edward and contracted to furnish two thousand pair of shoes to his army; but one does not inquire too closely into whether they furnished any quota of the four thousand feet to go therein.
It was a warm sunny day when I made my pilgrimage up the Yarrow to St. Mary's. Although Yarrow has always sung in my ears, I think it was rather to see one sight that I came for the first time to Scotland, to see
"The swan on still St. Mary's Lake
Float double, swan and shadow."
I rather think it was for this I had journeyed across the Atlantic and up the East coast route. Such a sentimental lure would I follow. But then, if that seems wasteful and ridiculous excess of sentiment, let us be canny enough, Scotch enough, to admit that one sees so many other things, incidentally.
The "wan waters" of the Yarrow were shimmering, glimmering, in the morning light as I coached out of Selkirk, and by Carterhaugh.