Or rather (for every age has its own type, and old forms of life cannot be stereotyped and reproduced), let us have a philosophic and Christian combination of modern adventure and "gold-digging" with old-fashioned balance of mind, and neighbourliness, and open-heartedness, and thankful enjoyment.
Our Scottish race have been—yes, and notwithstanding modern changes, still are—a joyous people—a people full of what I shall term a lyric joyousness. I say they still are—as may be found any day up the Ettricks, and Yarrows, and Galas—up any of our Border glens and dales. The Borderers continue to merit the tribute paid to them in the odd but expressive lines of Wordsworth:—
"The pleasant men of Tiviotdale,
Fast by the river Tweed."
From time immemorial they have been enthusiastic lovers of song and music, and have been thoroughly imbued with their influences. Bishop Leslie, a contemporary of the state of manners which he describes, has recorded of them, upwards of two centuries ago—"That they take extreme delight in their music, and in their ballads, which are composed amongst themselves, celebrating the deeds of their ancestors, or the valour and success of their predatory expeditions;" which latter, it must be remembered, were esteemed, in those days, not only not criminal, but just, honourable, and heroic. What a gush of mirth overflows in king James' poem of "Peebles to the Play," descriptive of the Beltane or May-day festival, four hundred years ago! at Peebles, a charming pastoral town in the upper district of the vale of the Tweed:—
"At Beltane, when ilk body bouns
To Peebles to the play,
To hear the singin' and the soun's,
The solace, sooth to say.
By firth and forest forth they wound,
They graithit them full gay:
God wot what they would do that stound,
For it was their feast-day,
They said,
Of Peebles to the play!
* * * * *
"Hop, Calye, and Cardronow
Gatherit out thick-fald,
With, Hey and How and Rumbelow!
The young folk were full bald.
The bagpipe blew, and they out threw
Out of the towns untald:
Lord! sic ane shout was them amang,
When they were owre the wald,
There west
Of Peebles to the play!"
Thirty years ago, the same joyousness prevailed in a thousand forms—in hospitality, in festivity, in merry customs, in an exquisite social sense, in the culture of the humorous and the imaginative, in impressibility to every touch of noble and useful enthusiasm. It would be easy to dilate upon the causes which seem to have produced this choice joyous spirit in so unexpected a region as the far, bleak North: but that would be a lengthened subject; and we must content ourselves at present with the fact. And, instead of branching out into general vague illustrations of what I mean by this lyric joyousness, I shall localise it, and embody the meaning in a sketch, light and imperfect it must be, of a real place and a real life—such as mine own eyes witnessed when a boy—and in the fond resuscitation of which, amidst the usual struggles and anxieties allotted to middle age, memory and feeling now find one of their most soothing exercises.
Let me transport the reader in imagination to the Vale of the Tweed, that classic region—the Arcadia of Scotland, the haunt of the Muses, the theme of so many a song, the scene of so many a romantic legend. And there, where that most crystalline of rivers has attained the fulness of its beauty and splendour—just before it meets and mingles in gentle union with its scarce less beauteous sister, "sweet Teviot"—on one of those finely swelling eminences which everywhere crown its banks, rise the battlements of Fleurs Castle, which has long been the seat of the Roxburghe family. It is a peerless situation; the great princely mansion, ever gleaming on the eye of the traveller, at whatever point he may be, in the wide surrounding landscape. It comes boldly out from the very heart of an almost endless wood—old, wild, and luxuriant; having no forester but nature—spreading right, left, and behind, away and away, till lost in the far horizon. Down a short space in front, a green undulating haugh between, roll the waters of the Tweed, with a bright clear radiance to which the brightest burnished silver is but as dimness and dross. On its opposite bank is a green huge mound—all that now remains of the mighty old Roxburgh Castle, aforetime the military key of Scotland, and within whose once towering precincts oft assembled the royalty, and chivalry, and beauty of both kingdoms. At a little distance to the east of Fleurs, the neat quaint abbey-town of Kelso, with its magnificent bridge, nestles amid greenery, close to the river. And afar to the south, the eye, tired at last with so vast a prospect, and with such richness and variety of scenery, rests itself on the cloud-capt range of the Cheviots, in amplitude and grandeur not unmeet to sentinel the two ancient and famous lands.
Upwards of thirty years ago, the ducal coronet of Roxburghe was worn by a nobleman who was then known, and is still remembered on Tweedside, as the "Good Duke James." The history of his life, were there any one now to tell it correctly, would be replete with interest. I cannot pretend to authentic knowledge of it; but I know the outline as I heard it when a child—as it used to be recited, like a minstrel's tale, by the gray-haired cottager sitting at his door of a summer evening, or by some faithful old servant of the castle, on a winter's night, over his flagon of ale, at the rousing hall-fire. And from all I have ever learned since, I judge that these country stories in the main were accurate.