“The axe he bears, it hacks and tears;
’Tis form’d of an earth-fast flint;
No armour of knight, tho’ ever so wight,
Can bear its deadly dint.
No danger he fears, for a charm’d sword he wears,
Of adderstone the hilt;
No Tynedale knight had ever such might,
But his heart-blood was spilt.”
He invited the young laird of Mangerton to a feast, and treacherously murdered him. The “Cout of Keeldar,” also, was drowned by the retainers of Lord Soulis in a pool near the castle, being held down in the water by the spears of his murderers.
“And now young Keeldar reach’d the stream,
Above the foamy linn;
The Border lances round him gleam,
And force the warrior in.
The holly floated to the side,
And the leaf on the rowan pale;
Alas! no spell could charm the tide,
Nor the lance of Liddesdale.
Swift was the Cout o’ Keeldar’s course
Along the lily lee;
But home came never hound nor horse,
And never home came he.
Where weeps the birch with branches green,
Without the holy ground,
Between two old gray stones is seen
The warrior’s ridgy mound.
And the hunters bold, of Keeldar’s train,
Within yon castle’s wall,
In a deadly sleep must aye remain,
Till the ruin’d towers down fall.
Each in his hunter’s garb array’d,
Each holds his bugle horn;
Their keen hounds at their feet are laid
That ne’er shall wake the morn.”
Tradition says that, when the people complained to the King of the atrocities committed by Lord Soulis, he said to them in a fit of irritation—“Go, boil Lord Soulis and ye list, but let me hear no more of him.” No sooner said than done—
“On a circle of stones they placed the pot,
On a circle of stones but barely nine;
They heated it red and fiery hot,
Till the burnish’d brass did glimmer and shine.
They roll’d him up in a sheet of lead,
A sheet of lead for a funeral pall;
They plunged him in the cauldron red,
And melted him, lead, and bones and all.
At the Skelfhill, the cauldron still
The men of Liddesdale can show;
And on the spot where they boil’d the pot
The spreat and the deer-hair ne’er shall grow.”
At a place called the “Nine Stane Rig” there may still be seen a circle of stones where it is supposed this gruesome tragedy was enacted. The “cauldron red,” in which Lord Soulis was boiled, is now in the possession of the Duke of Buccleuch. The Nine Stane Rig derived its name from an old Druidical circle of upright stones, nine of which remained to a late period. Two of these are particularly pointed out as those that supported the iron bar upon which the fatal cauldron was suspended.
The castle of Hermitage ultimately passed into the possession of the Douglasses, and became the principal stronghold of the “Black Knight of Liddisdale,” a natural son of the good Lord James Douglas, the trusted friend and companion of Bruce. In the year 1342 it was the scene of the following terrible tragedy:
Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, a brave and patriotic Scottish baron, who had specially distinguished himself in the wars with England, was appointed governor of the castle of Roxburgh and Sheriff of Teviotdale. Douglas, who had formerly held the office of Sheriff, was enraged when he heard what had occurred, and vowed revenge against Ramsay, his old companion in arms. He came suddenly upon him with a strong party of his vassals while he was holding his court in the church of Hawick. Ramsay, suspecting no harm, invited Douglas to take a seat beside him. The ferocious warrior, drawing his sword, rushed upon his victim, wounded him, threw him across his horse, and carried him off to the remote and inaccessible castle of Hermitage. There he was thrown into a dungeon, and left to perish of hunger. It is said that his miserable existence was prolonged for seventeen days by some particles of corn which fell from a granary above his prison. Tytler, in commenting on this abominable crime, justly remarks:—“It is a melancholy reflection that a fate so horrid befell one of the bravest and most popular leaders of the Scottish nation, and that the deed not only passed unrevenged, but that its perpetrator received a speedy pardon, and was rewarded by the office which led to the murder.”
In later times Hermitage is chiefly associated with the names of Bothwell and Buccleuch. It is still in the possession of the latter noble family, and is one of the most interesting of all the old Border castles.
In the olden time Liddesdale was chiefly inhabited by two numerous and powerful families—the Armstrongs and the Elliots. The laird of Mangerton was the head of the former, and the laird of Redheugh of the latter. Both families were, almost without exception, notorious freebooters. Reiving was the business of their lives. They were inspired, if not with a noble, at least with an overmastering enthusiasm for their nefarious calling. They were strongly of opinion that all property was common by the law of nature, and that the greatest thief was the man who had the presumption to call anything his own! Might was right.