“No,” answered he; and, turning to Sir Gideon, he added—“Sir, I am now willing that the ceremony end in matrimony.”
“Be it so,” said the old knight, and the spectators burst into a shout.
The day that began with preparations for death ended in a joyful bridal. The honour of knighthood was afterwards conferred upon the laird; and Meg bore unto him many sons and daughters, and was, as the reader will be ready to believe, one of the best wives in Scotland; while Simon declared that he never saw a better-looking woman in Ettrick Forest, his own wife and daughters not excepted.
LORD DURIE AND CHRISTIE’S WILL.
Who can journey, now-a-days, along the high parts of Selkirkshire, and hear the mire-snipe whistle in the morass, proclaiming itself, in the silence around, the unmolested occupant of the waste, or descend into the green valley, and see the lazy shepherd lying folded up in his plaid, while his flocks graze in peace around him and in the distance, and not think of the bold spirits that, in the times of Border warfare, sounded the war-horn till it rang in reverberating echoes from hill to hill? The land of the Armstrongs knows no longer their kindred. The hills, ravines, mosses, and muirs, that, only a few centuries ago, were animated by the boldest spirits that ever sounded a war-cry, and defended to the death by men whose swords were their only charters of right, have passed into other hands, and the names of the warlike holders serve now only to give a grim charm to a Border ballad. An extraordinary lesson may be read on the banks of the Liddel and the Esk—there is a strange eloquence in the silence of these quiet dales. Stand for a while among the graves of the chief of Gilnockie and his fifty followers, in the lonely churchyard of Carlenrig—cast a contemplative eye on the roofless tower of that brave riever, then glance at the gorgeous policies of Bowhill, and resist, if you can, the deep sigh that rises as a tribute to the memories of men who, having, by their sleepless spirits, kept a kingdom in commotion, died on the gallows, and left no generation to claim their lands from those who, with less bravery and no better sense of right, had the subtle policy to rise on their ruins. Poorly, indeed, now sound the names of Johnny Armstrong, Sim of Whittram, Sim of the Cathill, Kinmont Willie, or Christie’s Will, besides those of Dukes of Buccleuch and Roxburgh, Scott of Harden, and Elliot of Stobbs and Wells; and yet, without wishing to take away the merit or the extent of their ancestors’ own “reif and felonie,” how much do they owe to their succession to the ill-got gear of those hardy Borderers whose names and scarcely credible achievements are all that have escaped the rapacity that, not satisfied with their lands, took also their lives! For smaller depredations, the old laws of the Border—and it would not be fair to exclude those of the present day, not confined to that locality—awarded a halter; for thefts of a larger kind, they gave a title. Old Wat of Buccleuch deserved the honour of “the neck garter” just as much as poor Johnny Armstrong; yet all he got was a reproof and a dukedom.
“Then up and spake the noble king—
And an angry man, I trow, was he—
‘It ill becomes ye, bauld Bucclew,
To talk o’ reif or felonie;
For, if every man had his ain cow,
A right puir clan yer name would be.’”
There is a change now. The bones of the bold Armstrongs lie in Carlenrig, and the descendants of their brother-rievers who got their lands sit in high places, and speak words of legislative command. But these things will be as they have ever been. We cannot change the world, far less remake it; but we can resuscitate a part of its moral wonders; and, while the property of Christie’s Will, the last of the bold Armstrongs, is now possessed by another family, under a written title, we will do well to commit to record a part of his fame.
It is well known that the chief of the family of Armstrongs had his residence[A] at Mangerton in Liddesdale. There is scarcely now any trace of his tower, though time has not exerted so cruel a hand against his brother Johnny Armstrong’s residence, which lies in the Hollows near Langholme. We know no tumult of the emotions of what may be called antiquarian sentiment, so engrossing and curious as that produced by the headless skeleton of “auld Gilnockie’s Tower,” as it is seen in the grey gloaming, with a breeze brattling through its dry ribs, and a stray owl sitting on the top, and sending his eldritch screigh through the deserted hollows. The mind becomes busy on the instant with the former scenes of festivity, when “their stolen gear,” “baith nolt and sheep,” and “flesh, and bread, and ale,” as Maitland says, were eaten and drunk with the kitchen of a Cheviot hunger, and the sweetness of stolen things; and when the wild spirit of the daring outlaws, with Johnny at their head, made the old tower of the Armstrongs ring with their wassail shouts. This Border turret came—after the execution of Johnny Armstrong, and when the clan had become what was called a broken clan—into the possession of William Armstrong, who figured in the times of Charles I. He was called Christie’s Will, though from what reason does not now seem very clear; neither is it at all evident why, after the execution of his forbear, Johnny, and his fifty followers, at Carlenrig, the Tower of Gilnockie was not forfeited to the crown, and taken from the rebellious clan altogether; but, to be sure it was in those days more easy to take a man’s life than his property, insomuch as the former needed no guard, while the other would have required a small standing army to keep it and the new proprietor together. Certain, however, it is, that Christie’s Will did get possession of the Tower of Gilnockie, where, according to the practice of the family, he lived “on Scottish ground and English kye;” and, when the latter could not easily be had, on the poorer land of his neighbours of Scotland.