Earlston, the Ercildoune of olden time—name much better suited to the quiet beauty of its charming situation—has no unimportant place both in Scottish history and romance. It has been honoured by many royal visits. Here David the Sair Sanct subscribed the Foundation Charter of Melrose Abbey in 1136, and his son the Confirmatory Charter in 1143. Other royal visitors followed; there James IV. encamped for a night on his way from Edinburgh to Flodden; Queen Mary made a brief stay at Cowdenknowes as she passed from Craigmillar to Jedburgh; and lastly came Prince Charlie (unwelcome) on his march to Berwick-on-Tweed. But above all it is renowned as having been the residence (and birthplace probably) of Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, or simply, as literary history prefers to call him, Thomas of Ercildoune. The Rhymer's Tower, associated with this remarkable personage, stands close to the Leader. Only a mere ivy-clad fragment remains (some 30 feet in height), but the memories of the place stretch back to more than six centuries, when Thomas was at the height of his fame as his country's great soothsayer and bard—the vates sacer of the people. His rhymes are still quoted, and many of them have been realised in a manner which Thomas himself could scarcely have anticipated. Scott makes him the author of the metrical romance "Sir Tristrem," published from the Auchinleck MS. in 1804, but the Rhymer is unlikely to have been the original compiler. With his Fairyland adventures and return to that mysterious region, everybody is familiar. A quaint stone in the church wall carries the inscription:
Auld Rymr's Race
Lyes in this place,
and the probability is that Thomas sleeps somewhere amidst its dark dust, unless, indeed, he be still spell-bound in some as yet undiscovered cavern underneath the Eildons, waiting with Arthur, and Merlin, the blast of that irresistible horn which is to "peal their proud march from Fairyland."
Mellerstain in Earlston Parish, is the burial-place of Grisell Baillie, the Polwarth heroine and songstress, and author of the plaintive "Werena My Heart Licht I wad Dee." Cowdenknowes, "where Homes had ance commanding," one of the really classical names in Border minstrelsy is the scene of that sweetest of love lyrics, the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes":—
"How blithe, ilk morn, was I to see
My swain come o'er the hill!
He skipt the burn and flew to me:
I met him with good-will."
Sandyknowe, Scott's cradling-ground in romance, and Bemersyde, one of the oldest inhabited houses in the Tweed Valley (partly peel), still evidencing the Rhymer's couplet:—
"Tyde what may betyde,
Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde,—"
are both in the near neighbourhood.
A charming bit of country road lies between Earlston and Dryburgh, passing Redpath, the Park, Gladswood, and round by Bemersyde Hill, from which Scott had his favourite view of the Tweed—the "beautiful bend" shrining the site of the original Melrose, and the graceful Eildons—and by which his funeral procession wended its mournful way just seventy-four years ago. Half-way between Earlston and Melrose (by road 4½ miles), and close to