She searched his wounds all thorough;
She kissed them till her lips grew red
On the dowie howms of Yarrow.”
It is near Philiphaugh that Yarrow and Ettrick wed—Philiphaugh, famed for its memories of Outlaw Murray, and still more for the crushing defeat which Montrose here suffered at the hands of David Leslie. The most princely of apostates was taken completely by surprise, and the men who until now had carried all before them were fleeing for their lives before he could strike a blow. Leslie is said to have butchered many of his prisoners in cold blood, some being shot in the courtyard of Newark Castle, while others were precipitated from a high bridge over the Tweed. It would be pleasant to believe that the story is not true, or is at all events exaggerated. The latter part of it is certainly inaccurate, if not wholly false, for in those days there was no bridge over the Tweed in this region. Sir Walter, however, was at the trouble to point out that there is a bridge over the Ettrick only four miles from Philiphaugh, and another over the Yarrow, either of which might have been the scene of the massacre.
Above Clovenfords, celebrated for its vines, the Tweed has burrowed for itself deeper banks, while the valley broadens; and if the braes amid which it insinuates itself are less cultivated, and not so thickly wooded, the water itself moves more swiftly and sings more cheerily, and shines more lucidly than ever, displaying the tawniest of beds. Presently the emulous Cadon Water flows in, and then comes Ashestiel, an earlier residence of Sir Walter, where most of the cantos of the “Lay” and of “Marmion” were written. West of Thornilees stands a fragment of one of many ruined peels which line the stream on both sides, forming an unbroken line of communication, for they were sufficiently close together for the fire-bale’s warnings to be passed on from one to another. Beyond this the valley contracts, as the stream winds round a great hill fertile of little but screes, but before long it again opens out; and then comes the solitary bit of prosaic scenery of which the Tweed is guilty. The braes on either side, though not lofty, are nothing but uncomely sheep-walks; the banks themselves are utterly commonplace. The interval, however, is a brief one, and almost before the stranger has recovered from his surprise at finding the bonny water so demeaning itself, he is once more raised to the admiring mood. For he is now at Innerleithen, nicely placed on the lower slopes of an enormous brae, where Leithen Water comes down from the Moorfoot Hills to keep tryst with Tweed. Here are mineral springs, with properties not dissimilar from those of the Harrogate Wells; and to drink the waters of these “filthy puddles,” in a more or less serious spirit, many in summer come this way. The good people of the town will not need to be told that for the opprobrious expression here quoted no one but Mrs. Dods is responsible. For when one of the least pleasing, though not the least powerful, of the “Waverley” books saw the light, Innerleithen made haste to identify itself with the locus in quo; the St. Ronan’s Club was started; and the St. Ronan’s games are still kept up. The incident was not a bad thing for Innerleithen, and Sir Walter, being a good-natured man, did not protest; but the wayfarer must not be disappointed if he fail to see much correspondence between the scenery of the book and that of the place. Yet let him not scorn the pious faith. Would not he himself be glad to believe, if there were any shadow of reason, that the lines had fallen to him in the veritable place where Captain MacTurk swaggered, and took his Maker’s name in vain, and angrily resented imputations upon his piety; where Mr. Winterblossom appropriated the tit-bits of the table and made phrases; where the omniscient Mr. Peregrine Touchwood circumvented Mr. Valentine Bulmer; where, above all, the immortal Meg spurned “riders” from her door, and rated her “huzzies,” and railed at the “stinking well” and all who frequented it?
Over against Innerleithen lies the parish of Traquair, with its burn and its “bush.” A little to the south of the stream is Traquair House, a seventeenth-century residence tacked on to a much older tower. If the books could be believed, it would be the original of the Baron of Bradwardine’s house. “Waverley” himself, however, was of a different opinion. The ruins of Horsburgh Castle, the seat of the family of this name, now for more than a hundred years abandoned to owl and bat, are about a couple of miles or so below Peebles. The town itself has a lovely situation at the point where Eddlestone Water babbles into the Tweed, and at the foot of a glorious brae, broad and lofty, and covered with fir and larch, with rolling hills all around, making a mighty amphitheatre. No wonder that it should have risen to the dignity of a holiday resort with a “season;” or that in other days the Hays of Yester should have been glad to come in from Neidpath Castle to winter in their town-house, the quaint old building in the High Street now known as the “Chambers Institute.” In very early days Peebles was a dwelling-place of kings; and by the time of that James who was addicted to “the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making,” it was renowned for its games, which were sung either by the monarch himself or by some brother minstrel of not much later date. But about the middle of the sixteenth century the Earl of Hertford came here, and then the town had to make a fresh start. The castle has disappeared from the head of the High Street without leaving a wrack behind. Of the Cross Kirk, built in the thirteenth century by Alexander III., little beyond the shell of the tower and a gable remains, and even the pitiful ivy has not been able to make it a sightly relic. There used to be here also the still older church of St. Andrew; and William Chambers has received much praise for having “restored” it—an exceptionally brutal use of a much-suffering term. The only other building of any note is the “Cross-Keys Inn,” many-gabled and picturesque and comfortable. It has seen better days, for it was once upon a time the town-house of the Williamsons of Cardrona; but the crowning glory which it claims is that of being the “public” of Dame Dods, yclept the “Cleikum,” which had for sign a large picture of St. Ronan catching hold of the devil’s game leg with his episcopal crook. If you ask for evidence, you are pointed to the legend above the doorway, “The original Cleikum Inn, 1653”!
PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.
The stream has now been traced up for a distance of well-nigh seventy miles, yet Peebles is not much more than five hundred feet above the sea-level; herefrom the ascent is more obvious, though still quite gradual, for in the thirty miles or so yet to be traversed the rise is not more than a thousand feet. As they ripple by the town the waters sing a pretty song; but a stone’s-throw or two above the comely old bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent, as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen, winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. For here the braes on either side are steep, and of immense height, and smothered to their tops with firs and larches; and the stream winds more than ever, at one moment widening into still deep pools, at the next shrinking into a dancing rapid; and all around, wherever the eye turns, it rests upon large swelling hills, robed with verdure, and girdled with timber, and crowned with grey cairns. Surely the glen was not much more lovely in the days before the last Duke of Queensberry, to spite the next heir of entail, or to put money into his mistress’s purse, barbarously cut down the noble avenue by which the castle was approached, and provoked Wordsworth to gibbet him in an indignant sonnet. Burns, by the way, was aroused to an even finer show of wrath by the similar havoc which “Old Q.” had wrought at Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale.
