The man who wrote this pretty piece held his castle for Charles II., but it was unable to stand the brunt of Cromwell’s cannon, and was not merely captured, but ruined. It was long untenanted, but has now by repair and addition been made habitable, though not more picturesque.
Where the Manor Water joins the Tweed they show the grave of the “Black Dwarf,” and the cottage which he built with his own hands—with some help from compassionate neighbours—on land which he appropriated without asking any one’s leave. The portrait is not very highly coloured: Elshender of Mucklestane Moor had scarcely a sourer or more splenetic humour than David Ritchie, though he may have been a trifle more comprehensive in his misanthropy. Yet David had great sensitiveness to natural influences, and, though he had a reputation in the parish for heresy, would speak of a future state with intense feeling, “and even with tears.” Poor “bow’d Davie!” There was little in common betwixt him and his kind, and it seemed to him that his tale of mercies was not a long one; yet there have been many who would be willing enough to part with some of their advantages in exchange for his firm grasp of “the mighty hopes that make us men.”
As the bridge at Stobo is approached the stream broadens out again, and strolling along the pleasant, shady road cut in the hill there is much to delight the eye, and something as well to please the ear—on the right splendid plantations, climbing up the brae; on the left the water, gleaming through the fluttering leaves, and beyond it a grassy level—where the patient kine make music with their bells—rising into fine slopes of sward, while above these are broad belts of timber. Close beside the stream, above Drummelzier, is the ruined castle of this name, and hard by, but high up the brae, where it must have been almost inaccessible, are some fragments of Thanes or Tinnis Castle, used as a citadel or redoubt by the garrison. Of an early laird of Drummelzier historians relate that when after long absence he came home from the East, where he had crusading been, he was surprised to find his faithful spouse nursing a strapping boy. The lady, however, was able to explain: while she was walking along the banks one day, the spirit of the Tweed had issued forth; and how could a weak woman prevail against a spirit? So the boy was called Tweedie, and founded the great family of that name, whose legend was, “Thole[1] and think.” This, however, one supposes, is to be taken as a considerate exhortation to their victims rather than as a motto for their own guidance. So interpreted, it is not less frank than the device of the Cranstouns, “Ye shall want ere I want,” or that of the Scotts of Harden, “Reparabit cornua Phœbe.” Moonlighting is no invention of the nineteenth century.
But Drummelzier’s most famous association is with Merlin the seer, Merlin Wylt, the Wild, as he is called, to distinguish him from Merlin Ambrosius, who is believed to have uttered his oracles and succumbed to Vivien’s enchantments in the preceding century. The story goes that after the battle of Arderydd, in or about the year 573, he fled to the wilds of Tweeddale, and here passed the remainder of his life with a reputation for insanity; that he prophesied that he should die from earth, water, and wood, and accordingly, being pursued by a band of unappreciative rustics, he leapt into the Tweed here and was impaled upon a stake; and that they buried him where the Pausayl brook flows into the river, the spot being marked by the scraggy thorn which is visible from the churchyard. For anyone not blessed with a mighty intuition it is not easy to be sure of anything about Merlin except that he was, and was not. Mr. Veitch, however, paints an impressive picture of Merlin as no wild man of the woods, but as “a heart-broken and despairing representative of the old Druidic nature-worship, at once poet and priest of the fading faith, yet torn and distracted by secret doubt as to its truth.” In the same volume—that on the history and poetry of the Border—the eloquent professor remarks that we are “apt to interject into ancient actors and thinkers modern ideas, at which probably they would have stood amazed.”
Beyond Merlindale, “hearsed about” with black firs, the stream expands until it becomes broader than it is at many points within a dozen miles of its mouth. The Edinburgh road bears it company nearly from Broughton to its source; but instead of crossing to the western bank some way above Drummelzier, it is pleasanter, if you have no “machine”—that is, are not driving—to keep along the eastern bank for some two or three miles farther, when a delightful saunter across a magnificent haugh, besprinkled with the yellow tormentilla and many another timid wild flower, brings you to Stanhope Bridge, and so again to the highway. A few years ago, when the Tweed had one of its spasms of turbulence, this bridge was swung bodily round to the bank, while several others higher up were swept clean away. As the Crook Inn is approached the stream has again become attenuated; the valley, too, has straitened, the hills are less abrupt and barren than those seen in the distance a few miles below, and occasionally a small plantation is espied, where the mavis and the merle may be heard flooding the air with their amorous minstrelsy. The Crook, beloved of anglers, who have tender memories of its luscious mutton, as well as of the good sport which can almost always be had in this part of the stream, is still the comfortable place it used to be before it classed itself as a hotel and acquired fashionable habits.
For the remaining ten or twelve miles the course is one of utter solitude and of growing wildness—not even a shepherd’s hut in sight, and no tree, except here and there a stunted hawthorn or a lonely rowan; the braes less verdant, and more given to yielding screes; no sound to be heard but the irritating squeal of the stone-chipper, the low, long-drawn whistle of the “whaup,” or the pleading cry of the peewit. Of animated nature no other sign meets the eye save little groups of sheep clinging to the braes—the fierce-looking black-faced variety it may be, or the half-breeds with their still more ferocious-looking streaked visages, or the meeker “cheeviots.” So the slow ascent continues until at last Tweedshaws, the solitary farmhouse, is reached, and then, leaving the road a little way up Flocker Hill, you stand at last at Tweedswell, the putative source of the stream. Looking around, you see on every hand huge hills rising in the distance, and making between them a vast circle—Black Dod, and Clyde Law, near which the great western stream rises, and Moll’s Cleuch Dod, and Lochraig, and many another, while just behind Flocker Hill, Hart Fell rears its giant form. When Merlin Wylt roamed the wilds of Tweeddale a mighty forest waved over them; now the evidence of their former glory of rowan and birch and hazel must be looked for in the peaty soil which stains the head-streams as they furrow their way down the braes. Later in the year these hills, at present so swart and void, will be brightened with scatterings of purple; and then, under a sunnier sky, their plight will seem less blank and savage. But now they show an aspect stark and grim; for the time of the broom is not yet, and to-day the sun is sulking behind the murk, and their gusty tops are all asmoke.
W. W. Hutchings.
HART FELL.