THE COURSE OF THE COQUET.
The “peat-hag” is a characteristic not only of the Scottish Border-land, but of wide tracks on the English side, and a very remarkable feature it makes in a wild landscape, being a sort of black precipice made in the green hills by some sudden sinking of the apparently bottomless peat. It is all ancient peat-land together where the river Coquet rises—“Coquet, still the stream of streams,” as one of the poets of “The Fisher’s Garland” has observed; “the king of the stream and the brae,” as has been remarked by another poetical brother of the angle. Other northern rivers the fisherman mentions with respect, and perhaps with joyful remembrance of pleasant and successful days; but of the Coquet he never speaks except with glowing enthusiasm. No tuneful fisher who was friendly with the muse ever failed to give the Coquet a preferential mention in his verse. Now it is—
“Nae mair we’ll fish the coaly Tyne,
Nae mair the oozy Team,
Nae mair we’ll try the sedgy Pont,
Or Derwent’s woody stream;
But we’ll awa’ to Coquet side,
For Coquet bangs them a’.”
And now it is—
“There’s mony a saumon lies in Tweed,