A solitary and interesting spot is Blackhouse!—a wild extensive sheep-walk, with its complement of traditional story, and the suitable accompaniment of a ruined tower. The farm lies along the Douglas Burn, a small mountain-stream which falls into the Yarrow about two miles from St Mary’s Loch. Near the house, at the foot of a steep, green hill, and surrounded with a belting of trees, is Blackhouse Tower, or the Tower of Douglas, so called, according to tradition, after the Black Douglas, one of whose ancestors, Sir John Douglas of Douglas-burn, as appears from Godscroft’s history of the family, sat in Malcolm Canmore’s first parliament. The tower has in one corner the remains of a round turret, which contained the stair, and the walls rise in high broken points, which altogether give the ruin a singular and picturesque appearance. It is also the scene of a popular ballad, The Douglas Tragedy, in which, as in the old Elizabethan dramas, blood is shed and horrors are accumulated with no sparing hand. A knightly lover, the ‘Lord William’ of so many ballads, carries off a daughter of Lord Douglas, and is pursued by this puissant noble and his seven sons. All these are slain by Lord William, while the fair betrothed looks on, holding his steed; and the lover himself is mortally wounded in the combat, and dies ere morn. The lady also falls a prey to her grief; and, in the true vein of antique story and legend, we are told
‘Lord William was buried in St Mary’s kirk,
Lady Margaret in Mary’s quire;
Out o’ the lady’s grave grew a bonny red rose,
And out o’ the knight’s a brier.’
The tower and legend interested Scott as they had done Laidlaw. He listened attentively to the traditionary narrative, and, like the lovers in the ballad,
‘He lighted down to take a drink
Of the spring that ran sae clear,’
and visited the seven large stones erected upon the neighbouring heights of Blackhouse to mark the spot where the seven brethren were slain.
Mr Laidlaw was prepared for Scott’s mission. He had heard from a Selkirk man in Edinburgh, Mr Andrew Mercer—a Border rhymester, and connected with the Edinburgh Magazine—that the sheriff was meditating a poetical raid into Ettrick, accompanied by John Leyden, and he had written down various ballads from the recitation of old women and the singing of the servant-girls. He had also enlisted the Ettrick Shepherd into this special service. The following is one of Hogg’s rambling bizarre epistles, which relates chiefly to the ballad of the Outlaw Murray: