THE GLEN AT COUPLAND.
The Till not only augments the waters, but adds to the beauties, of the Tweed. “The sullen Till,” Scott calls it in his poetry; but here he is tuning his harp to a minor key to sing the disaster at Flodden; and he can mean no more by the uncomplimentary expression than when in his prose he speaks of it as deep and slow. A very leisurely water it certainly is, and the country through which it flows—past Ewart Newtown, where it is joined by the Glen, which rises on the slopes of the Cheviots as Bowmont Water, and passes through scenery of which that at Coupland may be taken as typical—is not on the whole interesting. But the epithet is less than just if applied to its mouth and the reaches immediately below, for here it flows through a deep, winding, and gloriously wooded glen. On the peninsula where the streams meet and blend, stands a fragment of what was once “a chapel fair,” dedicated to St. Cuthbert; for when the roving saint had tired of Melrose and induced his custodians to launch him upon the Tweed in a stone coffin, this “ponderous bark for river-tides” glided “light as gossamer” until it landed here. The coffin used to be shown in two pieces beside the ruin (it was broken by the saint’s guardian spirits, to save it from being degraded to an ignoble use); and Sir Walter, who would appear to have seen it, says that it was finely shaped, and of such proportions that with very little assistance it might have floated. To “Tillmouth cell” it was that Clare was conveyed by the pious monk when some “base marauder’s lance” had at once rid her of her persecutor and avenged the betrayal of Constance; and here she spent the night in prayer. And to Tillmouth also it was that Friar John was attached, that “blithesome brother at the can” who in evil hour “crossed the Tweed to teach Dame Alison her creed,” and being interrupted in the exposition by her churl of a husband, and being on principle an enemy to strife, incontinently fled “sans frock and hood.” A boon companion the worthy John must have been, but not a safe guide for Marmion or another, since—
“When our John hath quaffed his ale,
As little as the wind that blows
And warms itself against his nose,
Kens he, or cares, which way he goes.”
The mere fragment which is all that is left of Twisell Castle stands high above the Till, near its mouth, overlooking Tillmouth House, embosomed in trees a little farther up the Till, and Twisell’s “Gothic arch,” the picturesque single-span bridge which the foolhardiness of James allowed the van of the English army to cross on the morning of Flodden. Begun in 1770 by Sir Francis Blake, the castle was in the builder’s hands off and on for the space of forty years; but it was never completed, and never occupied, although Sir Walter, whose conscience failed him in the matter of castle-building, was pleased to praise it as “a splendid pile of Gothic architecture.” William Heron, the castellan of Norham, was, as we have seen, “Baron of Twisell,” but his chief seat was Ford Castle, farther up the Till, on the eastern bank; and it was here, and not at Holyrood, that, according to the original legend, which did not quite suit the poet’s purpose, the Scottish king fell victim to Lady Heron’s charms. The story goes that, having taken Norham and Wark, he had stormed Ford, and was only deterred from demolishing it by its fair castellan’s blandishments; and the Scottish chroniclers represent Lady Heron as preening her feathers expressly that the susceptible monarch might lose his chance of striking an effective blow. The whole story is now known to be devoid of truth. The unromantic fact is that Lady Heron deceived neither her husband nor his captor. When the battle of Flodden was fought she was far enough away from Ford Castle, imploring Surrey to make terms with the King of Scotland for the safety of her husband. That James took the castle by storm is no doubt true, but when he departed for Flodden he set it on fire, which was about the worst he could do under the circumstances.
Although the castle which Lady Heron’s husband extended and strengthened was sorely knocked about by the Scots in 1549, portions of it remain to this day. From the windows a clump of firs which crowns the Hill of Flodden, known as the “King’s Chair,” on the west bank of the Till, is clearly visible, as it is from the Tweed, from which it is only about three miles distant, to the south; and the present proprietress of the castle, the Marchioness of Waterford, has had a ride cut through the woods straight up the famous height. The chamber occupied by the king may still be seen, and through its large window he must on the fateful morning have looked across the Till upon the gleaming tents of his forces. The position was one of considerable strength; but James recklessly threw away this and every other advantage. Against the remonstrances and appeals of his wisest counsellors he refused to permit Borthwick to open fire upon the English van as it was crossing Twisell Bridge, and so allowed the enemy to cut off his base. And now that the time was come for holding his hand, he resolved to strike; so, firing his tents, he amid profound silence marched down, and the fight began. When night came to enforce a truce, Surrey was in doubt whether the battle was at an end. But the Scots had lost their king, and with him his natural son the boy-Archbishop of St. Andrews, and the flower, and much more than the flower, of their nobility and gentry, and even of the clergy, and there was nothing for them but to draw off under cover of the darkness and carry to their homes the news of the most disastrous blow their nation had ever suffered. Many long refused to believe that their beloved king had fallen, and stories got abroad of his having gone on pilgrimage to win forgiveness for his sin against his father on the inglorious field of Sauchie, but they vainly waited for his reappearance, and there is no reason to doubt that the “King’s Stone” pretty accurately marks the spot where he fighting fell. When Sir Walter exclaims—
“Oh for one hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight,