Thus ends the tale of the Douglas Tragedy. Less famous people are buried there, as another voice tells us,
'For though, in feudal strife a foe
Hath laid our lady's chapel low,
Yet still beneath the hallowed soil
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid
Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'
The river Yarrow flows through St. Mary's Loch, having passed through the small Loch o' the Lowes before reaching the larger water, 'Tibbie Shiel's' lying between the two lochs. Yarrow is well known to every reader of Wordsworth, and we must pass rapidly over what might be suggested by that single word, so soft in sound, so suggestive of the old-world lore of this magical district. Of every nook and dell, hill and valley, stream and loch, there are stories and songs without end, everywhere
'You hear sweet melodies
Attuned to some traditionary tale.'
Heroes and bold outlaws, fair women and sorrowing widows, strifes and plunderings, genealogies and traditions—the Vale of Yarrow and its surrounding hills and streams abound in these. All hushed are they now, and the once warlike burgh of Selkirk is a thriving manufacturing town, but while the 'Flowers o' the Forest' are, in one sense 'a' wede away,' the natural attractiveness of the district remains, with all the stories of byegone times to add to its interest for romantic or poetic minds.
[DUDDINGSTON LOCH.]
The smallest of all the notable lochs in Scotland, its circumference being under a mile and a half, Duddingston is nevertheless famous as the resort of curlers and skaters, and for very many years it has been a favourite playground of the citizens of Edinburgh, whenever John Frost holds reign, and the ice is pronounced safe by the police. The water is deep, and the loch is fed by several springs far down in its depths, so that it is not a mere touch of frost that will produce practicable ice at that part of the loch just under the rocky knoll overhanging the middle. But when the frost has lasted for two or three days, and the word is passed round in the city that 'Duddingston is bearing,' then as if by common consent the city is stirred to wend its way to the loch. Everyone is there, from the arab who has perhaps at no other time a shoe on his feet, and whose sport can only consist of 'keeping the pot boiling' down the long slides that speedily get formed, to grave lawyers, councillors and magistrates, while crowds of the fair sex also don their skates, and anon the surface of the loch gets obscured by the multitudes of people disporting on the ice. There have been times when Duddingston, like the Thames, has been so strongly frozen that an ox has been roasted upon it, and 'Frost Fair' is still a tradition amongst old people. But a thickness of five or six inches of ice suffices to make the entire surface safe and solid, and when by the continuance of frost the ice reaches to nigh two feet thick—no uncommon event—then the frosty carnival is at its best.