THE LAIRD OF DARNICK TOWER.[12]
"Red glared the beacon on Pownell—
On Eildon there were three;
The bugle-horn on muir and fell
Was heard continually."—JAMES HOGG.
There is no country in the world that has so many legends, and legends of so remarkable a character, as Scotland. The fact is attributable to the peculiar mental form of the Saxon; always with a disposition to look back, to cull glorious memories of the past, and from these, again, to distil the spirit of a noble emulation for the present and the future. We are not now speaking of a dilettante antiquarianism, which becomes blasé over a household utensil, or learned on a relic from the cradle of art; but of that moral antiquarianism which courts examples of a grand courage, exercised for the sake of liberty or Christianity, or searches for traits of the domestic or social virtues, upon which the true greatness of a nation is founded. In this sense, every Scotsman is an antiquary—embracing his subject with enthusiasm, and inspiring his contemporaries with the patriotism he himself feels. He cannot see an old ruin, be it of a castle or a peel tower, but he must know what its possessors did in the days of the red Flodden or the desperate Drumclog—a good old grandam, but he must hear of a legend of foray, or tournay, or love:
"A story old
Of baron bold,
Or trollëd lay
Of lady gaye;"
and laugh or weep over the details, as they come from lips trembling as if with inspiration.
Nor does time ever end legend, or the love of it, in the true legendary lands. Time's embalming yields the incense, which, like the sweetness of the vestal lamp, is fragrant for ever. Every recital, and every listening, is a triumph of the genius of tradition; but, as if the past were a thing of endless development, we are continually meeting with new instances, to add to the treasury of the old, and increase the stock for those who are to come after us, and live our feelings, and our throbbings, and our sighs, over again, even as did those of the dearly-beloved ones who have gone before, and now know the traditions of eternity. Though every nook and corner has been searched, there is something always left for such gleaners as we; and even now we are discoverers at the very side and within the verge of the wand of a magician. Notwithstanding that the old tower or peel of Darnick is described in the "Monastery," it was practically known to Sir Walter Scott principally as an ancient pile, which he wanted to possess, to impart some dignity of antiquity to the domains of Abbotsford. If he knew that it had been for ages the residence of the good old family of the Heitons, with the sturdy bull for their crest, the sooner their representative was engulfed in the Abbotsford swirl the better; for the new edifice was not only to be composed of old armorial stones, but to represent an old family just brought into being by the modern Libitina, Genius.[13]
Now it was left for us to know something more of the old peel tower in addition to what history tells. The traveller by the Tweed cannot fail to observe the old peel, as it raises its grey head over the houses of the village of Darnick, a little to the west of Melrose. The real antiquary will turn from Abbotsford to examine it, and to admire its wonderful preservation, after so many years' exposure to the devastations of time and war. It is many a long day since a gallant member of the house fell, as "one of the Flowers of the Forest," in the battle of Flodden; or since another fought against the bold Buccleugh in the fight with Angus, in the very precincts of the tower; or since another Heiton, or De Heyton, as he was called, got the charter to the lands from Queen Mary and Darnley; yet, dating from the last of these periods, and we know for certain the strength then existed, we are left to admire the old representative of defence against foray, as a kind of contrast to the modern effort of the Great Unknown, so like an old-new worm-eaten charter written in vellum, worm-eaten while on the sheep's back—at least not so ancient as the skin of the goat which suckled Jove!
But to proceed with our legend of Darnick:
It happened some time about the year 1526 that Andrew Heiton was sitting in his tower of Darnick, thinking of the strange things doing in Scotland at that time, which was the Augustan Era of the Borderers. Scott of Buccleugh had risen from the condition of a riever, and would have been a right poor clan, as the ballad says, if every honest man on the Borders had had his own cow. The Homes and the Kers had also risen into great power, and the Elliots, through the greatness of the Scotts, stood second in the ranks of these sturdy champions of might against right. All was tumult south of the Tweed, but it was not of the old foraying kind simply, when cattle made hatred, and hatred made war, when a Cockburn was against a Tushielaw, an Elibank against a Harden, an Elliot against a Ker, only because, some twenty years before that, a heifer or a sheep had chanced to change its ownership. When the king was strong, the Borderers sometimes made a virtue of necessity, and leagued together to save their necks; but, strange enough, this brotherhood never stopped their depredations upon one another's property. These were a necessity, a kind of birthright, and being inevitable, and born with them, and ingrained to the very marrow, they were looked upon in a jolly kind of way, even by the losers, because they knew they would have better luck next time. The only difference was, that, when the king was weak, or the crown in minority, their depredations got a wider scope. The quiet proprietors then came in for their contribution, and in reward for this, the greater rievers were grateful enough to do a good act for their sovereign in their own way, but only if he kept out of their province, and did not interfere with their feuds. In truth, the Borderers never hated their king, when he did not shorten their swords, or lengthen their necks. Amidst all their fighting and stealing, there was lurking in their hearts that spirit of chivalry which, surviving in their descendants, evolved, in the changes of time, into justice and order, adorned by sagacity and good manners. So it was that, when King James V. was a minor in the clutches of Angus, and Lennox could do nothing to get him at liberty, a number of the greater chieftains were on the side of the young prince, and among these the Scotts of Buccleugh and the Elliots of Stobs; but others, such as the Homes, and Kers, and Cockburns, were creatures of the Douglas; all the Borderland was divided into king's parties and Douglas' parties, and these again were partitioned into lesser rivalships, resulting from their personal feuds; so that it often happened that the lesser proprietors knew not what side to take, seeing their loyalty interfered with their revenge, or their revenge with their loyalty. In this way, as was said by a writer of the times, "a cow was greater than a king."
Now the Laird of Darnick was, as we have said, thinking of these things in his tower of Darnick. "My father fell at the red Flodden," he said, meditatively, "and our house has ever been a loyal one. If we joined in a foray among the green fields of Wells or Harden, or took one upon our own account, it was only what we had a right to do, by the laws of the Borders, older, I ween, than those of Edinburgh or Scone. For what other purpose has the bull upon our crest his horns, if not to show that we had a courage to maintain, and which, thank God, has never been disgraced by an inhabitant of this old peel. By my crest! I love this young James Stewart as well as I love a Scott, or hate a Douglas, and I will away to meet him on his journey from Jedburgh to Melrose."