Preparing to set forward, what was my astonishment to see a cart and horse coming over the mountain with a load of people. It was a farmer with his wife and child; and they were about to descend the rugged, rocky, boggy, steep hillside, with scarcely a track! They descended from the cart; the man led the horse; the woman walked behind, carrying the child; and they went bumping and banging over the projecting crags, as if the cart was made of some unsmashable timber, the horse a Pegasus, and the people without necks to break. 'Tis to be hoped that they reached the bottom somehow.
I had supposed by my map that from Moffat to Ettrick kirk would be about six miles. Imagine, then, my consternation at the tidings these adventurous people gave me, that I had still eight miles to go! That, instead of six, it was sixteen from Moffat to Ettrick kirk! There was a new road made all down this side of the mountain; very fair to look at in the distance, but infamous for foot travelers, being all loose, sharp cubes of new broken whinstone. My feet were actually strained with coming up the mountain; and were now so knocked to pieces and blistered in going down it, that I suppose I crawled on at about two miles an hour. In fact, I was seven hours and a half, between Moffat and Ettrick kirk, on foot. Down, down, down I went for eight weary miles, one long descent, with nothing on either hand but those monotonous green mountains which extend all over the south of Scotland. Soft they can look as the very hills of heaven under the evening light, with their white flocks dotting them all over, and the shepherds shouting, and their dogs barking from afar. And dark, beautifully dark, they can look beneath the shadow of the storm, or the thunder-cloud. Wild, drearily wild, they can look when the winds come sweeping and roaring like some broken-loose ocean, fierce and strong as ocean waters, and with this mighty volume fill the scowling valleys, and rush, without the obstacle of house or tree, over the smooth, round heights; and men at ease, especially if in want of a stroll, and in good company, may, and no doubt do, find them very attractive. But to me they were an endless green monotony of swelling heaps; and Ettrick dale, with its stream growing continually larger in its bottom, an endless vale of bare greenness, with but here and there a solitary white house, and a cluster of fir-trees, with scarcely a cultured field even of oats or potatoes for eight miles. It was one eternal sheep-walk; and, for me, eight miles too much of it. Yet the truth is, that every one of these hills, and every portion of this vale, and every house with its hope, or its cleugh, or its plantation, and every part of the river where the torrent has boiled and raged for a thousand years, till it has worn the iron-like whinstone into the most hideous channels and fantastic shapes, has its history and its tradition. There is Phaup, and Upper Phaup, and Gamelshope, and Ettrick-house, and all have their interest; but to me they were then only white houses with black plantations, many of them on the other side of the water, without bridge, or any visible means of access; and with huge flocks of sheep collected and collecting in their yards and pens, with the most amazing and melancholy clamor. It was the time when they prepare for the great lamb fairs, and were separating those they meant to sell; and there was one loud lamentation all through these hills. It is amazing what a sentiment of attachment and distress can exist in mutton!
But no sentimental piece of mutton was ever more in distress than I was. I was quite famished and knocked up; and when at length I saw the few gray houses at Ettrick kirk, I actually gave a shout of exultation. I shouted, however, before I was out of the wood; for Ettrick kirk was not, as I had fancied, a Kirk Ettrick—that is, a village,—it was Ettrick kirk, and nothing more. I knew that Hogg was born and buried here, and that here I must stop; but unluckily I saw no village, no stopping-place. To my left hand stood the kirk, a little elevated on the side of the valley, and what was clearly the manse near it, in a garden. A little farther on was a farmhouse, and then a cottage or two, and that was all. I saw a large, queer sign over a door, and flattered myself that that at least must be a public-house; but a Gipsy with his stockings off in a little stream tickling trout, while his basket and his set of tea-trays stood on the road, soon told me my fortune. "Is that an inn?" "No, sir, the inn is three miles farther down!"
Three miles farther down! It was enough to have finished all Job's miseries! "What! is it not a public-house even?" "No, it is a shop."
And a shop it was; and when I hoped at least to find a shop that sold bread, it turned out to be a tailor's shop!
Just as I was driven to despair, I fancied that the next building looked like a school; in I went, and a school it was. I had hopes of a Scotch schoolmaster. He is generally a scholar and a gentleman. The master was just hearing his last class of boys: I advanced to him, and told him that I must take the liberty to rest, for that I was outrageously tired and hungry, and was told that it was three miles to the next inn. He said it was true, but that it was not three hundred yards to his house, and he would have much pleasure in my accompanying him to tea. Never, of all the invitations to tea which I have received in the course of this tea-drinking life, did I ever receive so welcome a one as that! I flung off my knapsack, laid up my legs quite at my ease on a bench, and heard out the class with great satisfaction. Anon, the urchins were dismissed, and Mr. Tait, the master, a tall and somewhat thin young man, with a very intelligent and thoughtful face, declared himself ready to accompany me. I told him I wanted to visit the birthplace and grave of Hogg, and presented my card. "Ha!" exclaimed he, on reading the name, "why, we are not strangers, I find—we are old friends. A hearty welcome, Mr. Howitt, to Ettrick!" Mr. Tait was an old friend of Hogg's, too—the very man of all others that I should have sought out for my purpose. We were soon at a very handsome new cottage, with a capital garden, the upper end full of flowers, and the lower of most flourishing kitchen-garden produce. Tired as I was, I could not avoid staying to admire this garden, which was the master's own work; and was then introduced to his mother and sister. The old lady was in a consternation that, by one of those accidents that sometimes in mountainous districts afflict a whole country, the baker had upset his cart, broken his leg, and by his absence deprived all the vales from Moffat to the very top of Ettrick, namely, Upper Phaup, of wheaten bread. It was a circumstance that did not in the least trouble me, except on account of the lady's housewifery anxiety. An old friend of mine once said that he never knew the want of bread but once in his life, and then he made a good shift with pie-crust, and I made an actual feast on barley cake and tea.
The schoolmaster and I were now soon abroad, and on our way up the valley to Hogg's birthplace. Ettrick-house, where Hogg saw the light, according to the people, though according to his tombstone it was Ettrick-hall, on the opposite side of the valley, is now a new-built farm-house, standing within a square embankment, which is well grown with a row of fine trees. This marks the site of an old house, and no doubt was the site of Ettrick old house. But the house in which Hogg was born, or, if not born, where he lived as a child, was only a sort of hind's house, belonging to the old house. That, too, is now pulled clean down. Hogg, during his lifetime, never liked to hear its demolition proposed. Here he had lived as a child, and here he lived when grown up, and rented the farm, before going to Altrive. He used always to inquire of people from Ettrick, if the house really were yet destroyed. I believe it stood till after his death, but it is now quite gone. The bricklayers? There is no such thing here; all is built of the iron-like, hard whinstone of the hills;—the builders, then, with a sentiment which does honor to them, were reluctant to pull down the birthplace and home of the shepherd-poet; and, when obliged to do so, to mark and commemorate the exact spot, when they built the wall along the front of the ground which they cleared by the highway, built a large blue sort of stone upright in it. The stone is very conspicuous, by its singular hue and position, and on it they have subscribed the poet's initials, J. H. Ettrick-hall, as already said, lying on the opposite side of the valley, was in Hogg's father's hands. Afterward, in Mr. Brydon's, of Crosslee, with whom Hogg was shepherd. This Mr. Brydon, who, Hogg says, was the best friend their family had in the world, died worth £15,000; and, indeed, these sheep-farmers generally do well. There was a Mr. Grieve here, who used to live up the valley, at a house where I saw a vast flock of sheep collected, who was also a most excellent friend of Hogg's. Hogg had lived as a herd-boy at most of the houses in this valley, and from that association he laid the scene of most of his poems and tales here.
Hogg's birthplace and his grave are but a few hundred yards asunder. The kirk-yard of Ettrick is old, but the kirk is recent; 1824 is inscribed over the door. Like most of the country churches of Scotland, it is a plain fabric, plainly fitted up within with seats, and a plain pulpit. Such a thing as "a kist full of o' whitles" the Scotch can not endure. It is a curious fact, that neither in Scotland nor Ireland do you find those richly finished old parish churches that you do in England. This is significant of the ancient state of these countries. Catholic though they all were, neither Scotland nor Ireland could at any age pretend to any thing like the wealth of England. Hence, in those countries, the fine abbeys and cathedrals are rare, the parish churches are very plain; while, in England, spite of all the ravages of Puritanism, the country abounds with the noblest specimens of cathedral and convent architecture, and the very parish churches in obscure villages are often perfect gems of architecture and carving, even of the old Saxon period.
Ettrick kirk lifts its head in this quiet vale with a friendly air. It is built of the native adamantine rock, the whinstone; has a square battlemented tower; and, what looks singular, has, instead of Gothic ones, square doorways, and square, very tall sash windows. Hogg's grave lies in the middle of the kirk-yard. At its head stands a rather handsome headstone, with a harp sculptured on a border at the top, and this inscription beneath it:—"James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who was born at Ettrick Hall, 1770, and died at Altrive Lake, the 21st day of November, 1835."
After a wide space, left for other inscriptions, as of the widow and children, this is added:—"This stone is erected, as a tribute of affection, by his widow, Margaret Hogg."