RUINS OF WARK CASTLE.
As the stream is traced upwards, the banks not seldom break into cliffs, the valley gains in breadth and richness, and away to the north the sky-line is broken by the round top of Dunse Law. Nearly midway between Coldstream and Kelso the Tweed ceases to be the Border river, and enters the shire of Roxburgh, and a little higher up it takes toll of the “troutful Eden,” which on its way down from the slopes of Boon Hill has watered the village of Ednam (Edenham), where “the sweet poet of the year” was born. A couple of miles or so away to the south is Hadden Rig, scene of the fight between the English and Scottish Marchwardens in 1542. Sir Robert Bowes, Governor of Norham, had, with three thousand horse, ravaged a large part of Teviotdale, and was marching on Jedburgh, when he encountered George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, and, with several of his colleagues and many of his men, was taken prisoner. Fighting on the English side was the exiled Earl of Angus, who only by a desperate exercise of strength and activity escaped capture and the traitor’s doom which would inevitably have followed.
THE TWEED.
CHAPTER II.
FROM KELSO TO TWEEDSWELL.
Kelso and its Abbey—Roxburghe Castle—Floors Castle—The Teviot—Ancrum—Carlenrig—The Ale—The Jed and Jedburgh—Mertoun—Smailholm Tower and Sandyknowe—Eildon and Sir Michael Scott—Dryburgh—The Leader and Thomas the Rhymer—Melrose—Skirmish Hill—Abbotsford—The Ettrick and the Yarrow—Ashestiel—Innerleithen—Horsburgh Castle—Peebles—Neidpath—Manor—Drummelzier—The Crook Inn—Tweedswell.
When Burns came to Kelso in the spring of 1787, and stood upon the bridge which preceded Rennie’s fine piece of work, he is said to have reverently uncovered his head and breathed a prayer to the Almighty. A less religious nature than his might well have been moved to the devotional mood, for there can be few scenes so charged with inspiring and exalting influences. If Leyden did not quite hit the mark in saying of the Tweed here that she “her silent way majestic holds,” it is only because she chants as she goes: august her course certainly is, for she rolls broad and brisk, and flows into queenly curves. On the one hand is Sir George Douglas’s place, Springwood Park, the entrance dignified by some glorious bronze beeches; on the other are the stately ruins of the Abbey; and beyond, the town, neat and clean, gleaming white in the sunshine. Up stream, full in front, stands the palatial Floors Castle, not far from where the Teviot pours its hurrying tide into the Tweed; below bridge the spacious current ripples between thickly wooded banks. The town itself has many interests, modern as well as ancient. For some months towards the end of last century a boy, slightly lame, and much given to poring over old romances, attended the old grammar-school adjacent to the abbey, and still carried on there, though in a new building; and here began that acquaintance with the Ballantynes which was to have such ruinous issues. With another true minstrel also, though one who sings in a lower key, the town has associations. The Free Church, one of the white spired edifices visible from the bridge, was built for Horatius Bonar, who during a long ministry here wrote some sacred songs which men will not soon let die. Against the Free Church nothing need be urged except its newness; but the parish church—octagonal, with a huge slated roof, divided into as many sections—is a building of simply audacious uncouthness, a sight to make “sair eyes.” It has been said to be the ugliest parish church in Scotland, and the statement might be amplified and still remain true. During the eighteenth century the parishioners were pleased to commend themselves to the divine mercy in the dismantled abbey, a low vault having been thrown over the transept; while right overhead, under a roof of thatch, certain of their fellows were all the while enduring the rigours of human justice. This felicitous arrangement survived until about 1771, when one Sunday the falling of a lump of plaster from the roof sent the congregation scampering out with the words of an oracular prophecy attributed to Thomas the Rhymer ringing in their ears. Then they set up this detestable building, fashioned in the style of an auction mart, within a stone’s-throw of the venerable walls in which they were too superstitious to longer assemble themselves together!
The remains of the Abbey are not considerable, consisting of a part of the central tower, about half of the west front, bits of the transept walls, and some fragments of the choir. The style is an interesting mixture of Romanesque and Early Pointed; thus there are round-headed doorways with zigzag mouldings, and series of those intersecting arches which mark the transition from the one style to the other; while the two surviving arches that support the central tower are Early Pointed. Less graceful than the remains of Melrose Abbey, which are much later, they have a massive dignity distinctly superior to those of Dryburgh, which come nearer to them in style. In Burton’s opinion, there was no other building in all Scotland which bore so close a resemblance to a Norman castle. It was of course its position in the Debateable Land which prompted its builders to invest it with such strength and solidity. And the days came when it needed all its power of resistance, and more besides, since it often had to bear the brunt of battering-ram, of cannon-shot, and of the still more deadly faggot. Its visitations culminated in 1545, the year when the Earl of Hertford, better known as the Protector Somerset, made his terrible descent upon the northern kingdom. On this occasion it was bravely held by about a hundred defenders, including a dozen of its monks; but it was breached and stormed, and “as many Scots slain as were within.” Thus it came about that there was only a remnant of the brotherhood left for the Reformers to expel fifteen years later; and the iconoclasts on principle must have found the wrecking of the building an easy enough task. When the vast possessions of the monastery came to be dealt with, the prudence, if not the generosity, of James VI. reminded him that he had favourites. In the previous reign the abbacy had been conferred upon James Stuart, one of the king’s natural sons, while others of his bastards battened upon the revenues of divers other abbeys. On its practical side, it is clear, the Reformation came none too soon.