IV. "PLEASANT TEVIOTDALE"
Ettrick and Yarrow between them comprise most of Selkirkshire. The Teviot and Jed are the main arteries running through Roxburghshire, or Teviotdale, as was the ancient designation, colloquially Tividale and Tibbiedale. On the source-to-mouth principle—the most natural and the most instructive—the best approach into Teviotdale is by way of Langholm, locally the Langholm, pleasantly situated on the Dumfriesshire Esk, at the junction of the Ewes and Wauchope Waters. In the fine pastoral valley of the Ewes—the Yarrow of Dumfriesshire—we pass several places of note before striking Teviothead and the main course of the Teviot. At Wrae, William Knox, author of "The Lonely Hearth," and writer of the stanzas on "Mortality," so constantly quoted by Abraham Lincoln, had his home for a time. George Gilfillan, no mean judge, characterises him as the best sacred poet in Scotland. Further on is the birth-spot of another well-known singer, Henry Scott Riddell, whose patriotic "Scotland Yet" has won its way to the ends of the earth, wherever Scotsmen gather. At Unthank Kirkyard—none more lonely save St. Mary's on Yarrow, perhaps—we examine the graves of the hospitable and kindly Elliots of "Dandie Dinmont" immortality. Mosspaul Inn, lately restored, is close to the boundary between the two counties. From the Wisp Hill (1950 feet) the view on a clear day from Carlisle in the south to the distant north, is one to be remembered. The Wordsworths were at Mosspaul in 1803, and Dorothy's description is still fairly correct: "The scene with its single dwelling, was melancholy and wild, but not dreary, though there was no tree nor shrub; the small streamlet glittered, the hills were populous with sheep; but the gentle bending of the valley and the correspondent softness in the forms of the hills were of themselves enough to delight the eye. The whole of the Teviot and the pastoral steeps about Mosspaul pleased us exceedingly."