BERWICK-ON-TWEED.
THE TWEED.
CHAPTER I.
FROM BERWICK TO KELSO.
Leading Characteristics—The View from Berwick—Lindisfarne—The History and Present State of Berwick—Norham Castle and Marmion—Ladykirk—Tillmouth—Twisell Castle and Bridge—Ford Castle and Flodden—Coldstream—Wark Castle—Hadden Rig.
“A bonny water” was the phrase used of the Tweed by a peasant-woman whom Dorothy Wordsworth met when she came to spy out the Border river. Homely as the expression is, it would not be easy to find another quite so meet. To grandeur, to magnificence, the stream can make no claim, either in itself or in its surroundings. Of screaming eagles, of awful cliffs, of leaping linns, of foaming waves, it knows nothing. No more horrid sound is heard in its neighbourhood than the cry of the pale sea-maw; its banks are rarely precipitous, never frightful; it has not a single waterfall to its name; and, save where its surface is gently ruffled by glistening pebbles, it flows smooth as (pace the poet) the course of true love usually is. Yet of charms more gracious how profuse it is! In its careless windings, its silvery clearness, its sweet haughs and holms, its affluence of leaf and blade, its frequent breadth of valley, it is dowered with all the amenities of a large and generous landscape, distributed into combinations of incessant variety. Nor does it owe much less to art and association than to Nature. It glides or ripples by some of the most impressive ruins, ecclesiastical and secular, in all Scotland. At point after point it shines, for the inner eye, with “the light that never was on sea or land.” If over other Scottish streams as well the magician’s wand has waved, the Tweed is twice blessed, since it can speak not only of “Norham’s castled steep” and “St. David’s ruined pile,” but of Ashestiel, and Smailholm, and Abbotsford. And then its course takes it through the very heart of the Debateable Land—birthplace of myth and legend, of fairy tale and folk-song—battlefield where hostile races and envious factions and rival clans have met in mortal strife. For centuries it was the wont of its waters to reflect the fire-bale’s ruddy glare, of its banks to resound with the strident Border-slogan; and until long after the coalition of the Crowns its fords continued to be crossed by reiving marchmen in jack and helmet, driving before them their “prey,” or scurrying before the avenging “hot trod,” led on by blaring bugle-horn and mouthing bloodhound.
HIGH STREET, BERWICK, WITH THE TOWN HALL.
THE ROYAL BORDER BRIDGE, BERWICK.