HIGH STREET, DUMFRIES (p. [319]).
Annandale is the second division of Dumfries. ANNAN means in Celtic “quiet water”; perhaps that river was called so in fear, to propitiate the water-sprite, as malignant fairies were dubbed “the good people” to ward off their anger. Allan Cunningham lauds it as the “Silver Annan,” but none the less he has some hard words for it:—
“The cushat, hark, a tale of woe
Is to its true love telling;
And Annan stream in drowning wrath
Is through the greenwood swelling.”
And the old ballad of “Annan Water” calls it a “drumlie river,” and tells a most melancholious tale of a lover and his steed drowned whilst attempting to cross it to keep tryst with his love, Annie, who, we are assured, was “wondrous bonny.” The last verse warns the river that a bridge will presently be thrown over, that “ye nae mair true love may sever”: the prosaic purposes of transit to kirk or market being, of course, quite unworthy of a minstrel’s mention. Well! Annan has its moods—quiet and gentle in the pleasant summer days, given to violent outbursts in time of spate.
Annandale was the home of Bruce, and the great Robert is supposed to have been born at Lochmaben, which, situated on seven lochs, is a sort of Caledonian Venice. Bruce, not unmindful of the place of his nativity, is famed to have created it a royal burgh soon after his sword won him the crown. This did not prevent the citizens from treating through many generations his ancestral castle as a common quarry, and nothing is now left but a shapeless mass of stones. According to old Bellenden, in his translation of Boace (1536), the people of former times were a terrible lot; the women worst of all! “The wyvis usit to slay thair husbandis, quhen they wer found cowartis, or discomfit be thair ennymes, to give occasion to otheris to be more bald and hardy quhen danger occurrit.” “To learn them for their tricks,” as Burns might have remarked. Annandale’s most famous modern son was Thomas Carlyle, who, as everybody knows, was born at Ecclefechan in 1795, and was buried there at the end of his long career on a “cloudy, sleety day” early in 1881. Ecclefechan is on the Main Water, a tributary of the Annan; you will find it described in “Sartor Resartus” as Entepfuhl. Many spots around are connected with his life or works. Hoddam Kirk, his parish church, he pointed out to Emerson in a remarkable talk as an illustration of the connection of historical events. His once bosom friend, Edward Irving, was born in the town of Annan, of which Carlyle had his own memories, for here he went to school, first to learn, afterwards to teach. Craigenputtock, where he lived for six years, is in Nithsdale, the third division of Dumfries, to which we now turn.