FROM JOHN O’ GROAT’S TO LAND’S END (OR 1372 MILES ON FOOT) My Great Great Grandfather, John Naylor and his brother Robert where the first people to walk from From John O Groat’s to Lands End in 1871. Read the book in full for free here on http://www.nearlyuphill.co.uk in chapters or download their 660 page book here – FROM JOHN O’ GROAT’S TO LAND’S END (OR 1372 MILES ON FOOT) All words are written by them and all pictures are taken from the original book which was written in 1916 by John Naylor.
FOURTH WEEK’S JOURNEY
Oct. 9 to Oct. 15.
Craigmillar — Rosslyn — Glencorse — Penicuik — Edleston — Cringletie — Peebles ¶ River Tweed — Horsburgh — Innerleithen — Traquair — Elibank Castle — Galashiels — Abbotsford — Melrose — Lilliesleaf ¶ Teviot Dale — Hassendean — Minto — Hawick — Goldielands Tower — Branxholm Tower — Teviothead — Caerlanrig — Mosspaul Inn — Langholm — Gilnockie Tower — Canonbie Colliery ¶ River Esk — “Cross Keys Inn” — Scotch Dyke — Longtown ¶ Solway Moss — River Sark — Springfield — Gretna Green — Todhills — Kingstown — Carlisle — Wigton — Aspatria ¶ Maryport — Cockermouth — Bassenthwaite Lake — Portinscale — Keswick ¶¶
Monday, October 9th
There were some streets in Edinburgh called wynds, and it was in one of these, the College Wynd, that Sir Walter Scott was born in the year 1771. It seemed a strange coincidence that the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should have visited the city in the same year, and have been conducted by Boswell and Principal Robertson to inspect the college along that same wynd when the future Sir Walter Scott was only about two years old. We had not yet ventured to explore one of these ancient wynds, as they appeared to us like private passages between two rows of tall houses. As we could not see the other end, we looked upon them as traps for the unwary, but we mustered up our courage and decided to explore one of them before leaving the town. We therefore rose early and selected one of an antiquated appearance, but we must confess to a feeling of some apprehension in entering it, as the houses on each side were of six to eight storeys high, and so lofty that they appeared almost to touch each other at the top. To make matters worse for us, there were a number of poles projecting from the windows high above our track, for use on washing days, when clothes were hung upon them to dry. We had not gone very far, when my brother drew my attention to two women whose heads appeared through opposite windows in the upper storeys, and who were talking to each other across the wynd. On our approach we heard one of them call to the other in a mischievous tone of voice, “See! there’s twa mair comin’!” We were rather nervous already, so we beat an ignominious retreat, not knowing what might be coming on our devoted heads if we proceeded farther. In the event of hostilities the two ladies were so high up in the buildings, which were probably let in flats, that we should never have been able to find them, and, like the stray sheep in the Pass of St. Ninians, we might never have been found ourselves. We were probably taken for a pair of sporting young medical students instead of grave searchers after wisdom and truth. We therefore returned to our hotel for the early breakfast that was waiting for us, and left Edinburgh at 8.10 a.m. on our way towards Peebles.
We journeyed along an upward gradient with a view of Craigmillar Castle to our left, obtaining on our way a magnificent view of the fine city we had left behind us, with its castle, and the more lofty elevation known as Arthur’s Seat, from which portions of twelve counties might be seen. It was a curiously shaped hill with ribs and bones crossing in various directions, which geologists tell us are undoubted remains of an old volcano. It certainly was a very active one, if one can judge by the quantity of debris it threw out. There was an old saying, especially interesting to ladies, that if you washed your face at sunrise on May 1st, with dew collected off the top of Arthur’s Seat, you would be beautiful for ever. We were either too late or too soon, as it was now October 9th, and as we had a lot to see on that day, with not overmuch time to see it in, we left the dew to the ladies, feeling certain, however, that they would be more likely to find it there in October than on May Day. When we had walked about five miles, we turned off the main road to visit the pretty village of Rosslyn, or Roslin, with its three great attractions: the chapel, the castle, and the dell. We found it surrounded by woods and watered by a very pretty reach of the River Esk, and as full of history as almost any place in Scotland.
The unique chapel was the great object of interest. The guide informed us that it was founded in 1446 by William St. Clair, who also built the castle, in which he resided in princely splendour. He must have been a person of very great importance, for he had titles enough even to weary a Spaniard, being Prince of Orkney, Duke of Oldenburg, Earl of Caithness and Stratherne, Lord St. Clair, Lord Liddlesdale, Lord Admiral of the Scottish Seas, Lord Chief Justice of Scotland, Lord Warden of the three Marches, Baron of Roslin, Knight of the Cockle, and High Chancellor, Chamberlain, and Lieutenant of Scotland!
The lords of Rosslyn were buried in their complete armour beneath the chapel floor up to the year 1650, but afterwards in coffins. Sir Walter Scott refers to them in his “Lay of the Last Minstrel” thus:—
There are twenty of Rosslyn’s Barons bold
Lie buried within that proud Chapelle.
ROSSLYN CHAPEL—THE “MASTER AND ‘PRENTICE PILLARS”
There were more carvings in Rosslyn Chapel than in any place of equal size that we saw in all our wanderings, finely executed, and with every small detail beautifully finished and exquisitely carved. Foliage, flowers, and ferns abounded, and religious allegories, such as the Seven Acts of Mercy, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Dance of Death, and many scenes from the Scriptures; it was thought that the original idea had been to represent a Bible in stone. The great object of interest was the magnificently carved pillar known as the “‘Prentice Pillar,” and in the chapel were two carved heads, each of them showing a deep scar on the right temple. To these, as well as the pillar, a melancholy memory was attached, from which it appeared that the master mason received orders that this pillar should be of exquisite workmanship and design. Fearing his inability to carry out his instructions, he went abroad to Rome to see what designs he could find for its execution. While he was away his apprentice had a dream in which he saw a most beautiful column, and, setting to work at once to carry out the design of his dream, finished the pillar, a perfect marvel of workmanship. When his master returned and found the pillar completed, he was so envious and enraged at the success of his apprentice that he struck him on the head with his mallet with such force that he killed him on the spot, a crime for which he was afterwards executed.
We passed on to the castle across a very narrow bridge over a ravine, but we did not find much there except a modern-looking house built with some of the old stones, under which were four dungeons. Rosslyn was associated with scenes rendered famous by Bruce and Wallace, Queen Mary and Rizzio, Robert III and Queen Annabella Drummond, by Comyn and Fraser, and by the St. Clairs, as well as by legendary stories of the Laird of Gilmorton Grange, who set fire to the house in which were his beautiful daughter and her lover, the guilty abbot, so that both of them were burnt to death, and of the Lady of Woodhouselee, a white-robed, restless spectre, who appeared with her infant in her arms. Then there was the triple battle between the Scots and the English, in which the Scots were victorious:
Three triumphs in a day!
Three hosts subdued by one!
Three armies scattered like the spray,
Beneath one vernal sun.
Here, too, was the inn, now the caretaker’s house, visited by Dr. Johnson and Boswell in 1773, the poet Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in 1803, while some of the many other celebrities who called from time to time had left their signatures on the window-panes. Burns and his friend Nasmyth the artist breakfasted there on one occasion, and Burns was so pleased with the catering that he rewarded the landlady by scratching on a pewter plate the two following verses:
My blessings on you, sonsie wife,
I ne’er was here before;
You’ve gien us walth for horn and knife—
Nae heart could wish for more.
Heaven keep you free from care and strife.
Till far ayont four score;
And while I toddle on through life,
I’ll ne’er gang bye your door.
Rosslyn at one time was a quiet place and only thought of in Edinburgh when an explosion was heard at the Rosslyn gunpowder works. But many more visitors appeared after Sir Walter Scott raised it to eminence by his famous “Lay” and his ballad of “Rosabelle”:
Seem’d all on fire that chapel proud.
Where Rosslyn’s chiefs uncoffin’d lie.
Hawthornden was quite near where stood Ben Jonson’s sycamore, and Drummond’s Halls, and Cyprus Grove, but we had no time to see the caves where Sir Alexander Ramsay had such hairbreadth escapes. About the end of the year 1618 Ben Jonson, then Poet Laureate of England, walked from London to Edinburgh to visit his friend Taylor, the Thames waterman, commonly known as the Water Poet, who at that time was at Leith. In the January following he called to see the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, who was more frequently called by the name of the place where he lived than by his own. He found him sitting in front of his house, and as he approached Drummond welcomed him with the poetical salutation:
“Welcome! welcome! Royal Ben,”
to which Jonson responded,
“Thank ye, thank ye, Hawthornden.”
The poet Drummond was born in 1585, and died in 1649, his end being hastened by grief at the execution of Charles I. A relative erected a monument to his memory in 1784, to which the poet Young added the following lines:
O sacred solitude, divine retreat,
Choice of the prudent, envy of the great!
By the pure stream, or in the waving shade
I court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid;
Here from the ways of men, laid safe ashore,
I smile to hear the distant tempest roar;
Here, blest with health, with business unperplex’d,
This life I relish, and secure the next.
Rosslyn Glen was a lovely place, almost like a fairy scene, and we wondered if Burns had it in his mind when he wrote:
Their groves of sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon,
Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume;
Far dearer to me yon lone glen of green bracken,
Wi’ the burn stealing under the long yellow broom.
We walked very quietly and quickly past the gunpowder works, lest conversation might cause an explosion that would put an end to our walking expedition and ourselves at the same time, and regained the highway at a point about seven miles from Edinburgh. Presently we came to the Glencorse Barracks, some portions of which adjoined our road, and, judging from the dress and speech of the solitary sentinel who was pacing to and fro in front of the entrance, we concluded that a regiment of Highlanders must be stationed there. He informed us that in the time of the French Wars some of the prisoners were employed in making Scotch banknotes at a mill close by, and that portions of the barracks were still used for prisoners, deserters, and the like. Passing on to Pennicuick, we crossed a stream that flowed from the direction of the Pentland Hills, and were informed that no less than seven paper mills were worked by that stream within a distance of five miles. Here we saw a monument which commemorated the interment of 309 French prisoners who died during the years 1811 to 1814, a list of their names being still in existence. This apparently large death-rate could not have been due to the unhealthiness of the Glencorse Barracks, where they were confined, for it was by repute one of the healthiest in the kingdom, the road being 600 feet or more above sea-level, and the district generally, including Pennicuick, considered a desirable health-resort for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints. We stayed a short time here for refreshments, and outside the town we came in contact with two young men who were travelling a mile or two on our way, with whom we joined company. We were giving them an outline of our journey and they were relating to us their version of the massacre of Glencoe, when suddenly a pretty little squirrel crossed our path and ran into a wood opposite. This caused the massacre story to be ended abruptly and roused the bloodthirsty instinct of the two Scots, who at once began to throw stones at it with murderous intent. We watched the battle as the squirrel jumped from branch to branch and passed from one tree to another until it reached one of rather large dimensions. At this stage our friends’ ammunition, which they had gathered hastily from the road, became exhausted, and we saw the squirrel looking at them from behind the trunk of the tree as they went to gather another supply. Before they were again ready for action the squirrel disappeared. We were pleased that it escaped, for our companions were good shots. They explained to us that squirrels were difficult animals to kill with a stone, unless they were hit under the throat. Stone-throwing was quite a common practice for country boys in Scotland, and many of them became so expert that they could hit small objects at a considerable distance. We were fairly good hands at it ourselves. It was rather a cruel sport, but loose stones were always plentiful on the roads—for the surfaces were not rolled, as in later years—and small animals, such as dogs and cats and all kinds of birds, were tempting targets. Dogs were the greatest sufferers, as they were more aggressive on the roads, and as my brother had once been bitten by one it was woe to the dog that came within his reach. Such was the accuracy acquired in the art of stone-throwing at these animals, that even stooping down in the road and pretending to lift a stone often caused the most savage dog to retreat quickly. We parted from the two Scots without asking them to finish their story of Glencoe, as the details were already fixed in our memories. They told us our road skirted a moor which extended for forty-seven miles or nearly as far as Glasgow, but we did not see much of the moor as we travelled in a different direction.
“JOUGS” AT A CHURCH, PEEBLESSHIRE.
We passed through Edleston, where the church was dedicated to St. Mungo, reminding us of Mungo Park, the famous African traveller, and, strangely enough, it appeared we were not far away from where he was born. In the churchyard here was a tombstone to the memory of four ministers named Robertson, who followed each other in a direct line extending to 160 years. There was also to be seen the ancient “Jougs,” or iron rings in which the necks of criminals were enclosed and fastened to a wall or post or tree. About three miles before reaching Peebles we came to the Mansion of Cringletie, the residence of the Wolfe-Murray family. The name of Wolfe had been adopted because one of the Murrays greatly distinguished himself at the Battle of Quebec, and on the lawn in front of the house was a cannon on which the following words had been engraved:
His Majesty’s Ship Royal George of 108 guns, sunk at Spithead 29th August 1782. This gun, a 32 pounder, part of the armament of the Royal George, was fished up from the wreck of that ship by Mr. Deans, the zealous and enterprising Diver, on the 15th November 1836, and was presented by the Master-General and Board of Ordnance to General Durham of Largo, the elder Brother of Sir Philip Charles Henderson Durham, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, Knight Commander of the Most Ancient Military Order of Merit of France, Admiral of the White Squadron of Her Majesty’s Fleet, and Commander-in-Chief of the Port of Portsmouth, 1836.
Sir Philip was serving as a lieutenant in the Royal George, and was actually on duty as officer of the watch upon deck when the awful catastrophe took place. He was providentially and miraculously saved, but nearly 900 persons perished, amongst them the brave Admiral Kempenfelt, whose flag went down with the ship.
The wreck of the Royal George was the most awful disaster that had hitherto happened to the Royal Navy. William Cowper the poet, as soon as the sad news was brought to him, wrote a solemn poem entitled “The Loss of the Royal George,” from which it seems that Admiral Kempenfelt was in his cabin when the great ship suddenly foundered.
His sword was in its sheath,
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone:
His last sea-fight is fought,
His work of glory done.
Toll for the brave!
The brave that are no more.
All sunk beneath the wave.
Fast by their native shore!
It was nearly dark when we entered the town of Peebles, where we called at the post office for letters, and experienced some difficulty at first in obtaining lodgings, seeing that it was the night before the Hiring Fair. We went first to the Temperance Hotel, but all the beds had been taken down to make room for the great company they expected on the morrow; eventually we found good accommodation at the “Cross Keys Inn,” formerly the residence of a country laird.
We had seen notices posted about the town informing the public that, by order of the Magistrates, who saw the evil of intoxicating drinks, refreshments were to be provided the following day at the Town Hall. The Good Templars had also issued a notice that they were having a tea-party, for which of course we could not stay.
We found Peebles a most interesting place, and the neighbourhood immediately surrounding it was full of history. The site on which our hotel had been built was that of the hostelage belonging to the Abbey of Arbroath in 1317, the monks granting the hostelage to William Maceon, a burgess of Peebles, on condition that he would give to them, and their attorneys, honest lodging whenever business brought them to that town. He was to let them have the use of the hall, with tables and trestles, also the use of the spence (pantry) and buttery, sleeping chambers, a decent kitchen, and stables, and to provide them with the best candles of Paris, with rushes for the floor and salt for the table. In later times it was the town house of Williamson of Cardrona, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became one of the principal inns, especially for those who, like ourselves, were travelling from the north, and was conducted by a family named Ritchie. Sir Walter Scott, who at that time resided quite near, frequented the house, which in his day was called the “Yett,” and we were shown the room he sat in. Miss Ritchie, the landlady in Scott’s day, who died in 1841, was the prototype of “Meg Dobs,” the inn being the “Cleikum Inn” of his novel St. Ronan’s Well.
THE CHURCH AND MONASTERY OF THE HOLY CROSS, PEEBLES, AD 1261.
There was a St. Mungo’s Well in Peebles, and Mungo Park was intimately associated with the town. He was born at Foulshiels, Yarrow, in the same year as Sir Walter Scott, 1771, just one hundred years before our visit, and, after studying for the Church, adopted medicine as his profession. He served a short time with a doctor at Selkirk, before completing his course at the University of Edinburgh, and sailed in 1792 for the East Indies in the service of the East India Company. Later he joined an association for the promotion of discovery in Africa, and in 1795 he explored the basin of the Niger. In 1798 he was in London, and in 1801 began practice as a doctor in Peebles. He told Sir Walter Scott, after passing through one of the severe winters in Peebleshire, that he would rather return to the wilds of Africa than pass another winter there. He returned to London in December 1803 to sail with another expedition, but its departure was delayed for a short time, so he again visited Peebles, and astonished the people there by bringing with him a black man named “Sidi Omback Boubi,” who was to be his tutor in Arabic. Meantime, in 1779, he had published a book entitled Travels in the Interior of Africa, which caused a profound sensation at the time on account of the wonderful stories it contained of adventures in what was then an unknown part of the world. This book of “Adventures of Mungo Park” was highly popular and extensively read throughout the country, by ourselves amongst the rest.
It was not until January 29th, 1805, that the expedition left Spithead, and before Mungo Park left Peebles he rode over to Clovenfords, where Sir Walter Scott was then residing, to stay a night with him at Ashestiel. On the following morning Sir Walter accompanied him a short distance on the return journey, and when they were parting where a small ditch divided the moor from the road Park’s horse stumbled a little. Sir Walter said, “I am afraid, Mungo, that is a bad omen,” to which Park replied, smiling, “Friets (omens) follow those that look for them,” and so they parted for ever. In company with his friends Anderson and Scott he explored the rivers Gambia and Niger, but his friends died, and Dr. Park himself was murdered by hostile natives who attacked his canoe in the River Niger.
Quite near our lodgings was the house where this famous African traveller lived and practised blood-letting as a surgeon, and where dreams of the tent in which he was once a prisoner and of dark faces came to him at night, while the door at which his horse was tethered as he went to see Sir Walter Scott, and the window out of which he put his head when knocked up in the night, were all shown as objects of interest to visitors. Mungo had at least one strange patient, and that was the Black Dwarf, David Ritchie, who lies buried close to the gate in the old churchyard. This was a horrid-looking creature, who paraded the country as a privileged beggar. He affected to be a judge of female beauty, and there was a hole in the wall of his cottage through which the fair maidens had to look, a rose being passed through if his fantastic fancies were pleased; but if not, the tiny window was closed in their faces. He was known to Sir Walter Scott, who adopted his name in one of his novels, The Bowed Davie of the Windus. His cottage, which was practically in the same state as at the period of David Ritchie’s death, bore a tablet showing that it had been restored by the great Edinburgh publishers W. and R. Chambers, who were natives of Peebles, and worded: “In memory D.R., died 1811. W. and R. Chambers, 1845.”
Dr. Pennicuick, who flourished A.D. 1652-1722, had written:
Peebles, the Metropolis of the shire,
Six times three praises doth from me require;
Three streets, three ports, three bridges, it adorn,
And three old steeples by three churches borne,
Three mills to serve the town in time of need.
On Peebles water, and on River Tweed,
Their arms are proper, and point forth their meaning,
Three salmon fishes nimbly counter swimming;
but there were other “Threes” connected with Peebles both before and after the doctor’s time: “The Three Tales of the Three Priests of Peebles,” supposed to have been told about the year 1460 before a blazing fire at the “Virgin Inn.”
There were also the Three Hopes buried in the churchyard, whose tombstone records:
Here lie three Hopes enclosed within,
Death’s prisoners by Adam’s sin;
Yet rest in hope that they shall be
Set by the Second Adam free.
And there were probably other triplets, but when my brother suggested there were also three letter e’s in the name of Peebles, I reminded him that it was closing-time, and also bed-time, so we rested that night in an old inn such as Charles Dickens would have been delighted to patronise.
(Distance walked twenty-five miles.)
Tuesday, October 10th.
This was the day of the Great Peebles Fair, and everybody was awake early, including ourselves. We left the “Cross Keys” hotel at six o’clock in the morning, and a very cold one it was, for there had been a sharp frost during the night. The famous old Cross formerly stood near our inn, and the Cross Church close at hand, or rather all that remained of them after the wars. In spite of the somewhat modern appearance of the town, which was probably the result of the business element introduced by the establishment of the woollen factories, Peebles was in reality one of the ancient royal burghs, and formerly an ecclesiastical centre of considerable importance, for in the reign of Alexander III several very old relics were said to have been found, including what was supposed to be a fragment of the true Cross, and with it the calcined bones of St. Nicholas, who suffered in the Roman persecution, A.D. 294. On the strength of these discoveries the king ordered a magnificent church to be erected, which caused Peebles to be a Mecca for pilgrims, who came there from all parts to venerate the relics. The building was known as the Cross Church, where a monastery was founded at the desire of James III in 1473 and attached to the church, in truly Christian spirit, one-third of its revenues being devoted to the redemption of Christian captives who remained in the hands of the Turks after the Crusades.
ST. ANDREWS CHURCH, PEEBLES, A.D. 1195.
If we had visited the town in past ages, there would not have been any fair on October 10th, since the Great Fair, called the Beltane Festival, was then held on May Day; but after the finding of the relics it was made the occasion on which to celebrate the “Finding of the Cross,” pilgrims and merchants coming from all parts to join the festivities and attend the special celebrations at the Cross Church. On the occasion of a Beltane Fair it was the custom to light a fire on the hill, round which the young people danced and feasted on cakes made of milk and eggs. We thought Beltane was the name of a Sun-god, but it appeared that it was a Gaelic word meaning Bel, or Beal’s-fire, and probably originated from the Baal mentioned in Holy Writ.
As our next great object of interest was Abbotsford, the last house inhabited by Sir Walter Scott, our course lay alongside the River Tweed. We were fortunate in seeing the stream at Peebles, which stood at the entrance to one of the most beautiful stretches in the whole of its length of 103 miles, 41 of which lay in Peeblesshire. The twenty miles along which we walked was magnificent river scenery.
We passed many castles and towers and other ancient fortifications along its banks, the first being at Horsburgh, where the castle looked down upon a grass field called the Chapelyards, on which formerly stood the chapel and hospice of the two saints, Leonard and Lawrence. At this hospice pilgrims from England were lodged when on their way to Peebles to attend the feasts of the “Finding of the Cross” and the “Exaltation of the Cross,” which were celebrated at Beltane and Roodmass respectively, in the ancient church and monastery of the Holy Cross. It was said that King James I of England on his visits to Peebles was also lodged here, and it is almost certain the Beltane Sports suggested to him his famous poem, “Peebles to the Play,” one of its lines being:
Hope Kailzie, and Cardrona, gathered out thickfold,
Singing “Hey ho, rumbelow, the young folks were full bold.”
both of which places could be seen from Horsburgh Castle looking across the river.
We saw the Tower of Cardrona, just before entering the considerable village, or town, of Innerleithen at six miles from Peebles, and although the time was so early, we met many people on their way to the fair. Just before reaching Innerleithen we came to a sharp deep bend in the river, which we were informed was known as the “Dirt Pot” owing to its black appearance. At the bottom of this dark depth the silver bells of Peebles were supposed to be lying. We also saw Glennormiston House, the residence of William Chambers, who, with his brother, Robert, founded Chambers’s Journal of wide-world fame, and authors, singly and conjointly, of many other volumes. The two brothers were both benefactors to their native town of Peebles, and William became Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the restorer of its ancient Cathedral of St. Giles’s. His brother Robert died earlier in that very year in which we were walking. We reached Innerleithen just as the factory operatives were returning from breakfast to their work at the woollen factories, and they seemed quite a respectable class of people. Here we called at the principal inn for our own breakfast, for which we were quite ready, but we did not know then that Rabbie Burns had been to Innerleithen, where, as he wrote, he had from a jug “a dribble o’ drink,” or we should have done ourselves the honour of calling at the same place. At Innerleithen we came to another “Bell-tree Field,” where the bell hung on the branch of a tree to summon worshippers to church, and there were also some mineral springs which became famous after the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s novel, St. Ronan’s Well.
Soon after leaving Innerleithen we could see Traquair House towering above the trees by which it was surrounded. Traquair was said to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. Sir Walter Scott knew it well, it being quite near to Ashiestiel, where he wrote “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “Marmion,” and “The Lady of the Lake.” It was one of the prototypes of “Tully Veolan” in his Waverley. There was no abode in Scotland more quaint and curious than Traquair House, for it was turreted, walled, buttressed, windowed, and loopholed, all as in the days of old. Within were preserved many relics of the storied past and also of royalty. Here was the bed on which Queen Mary slept in 1566; here also the oaken cradle of the infant King James VI. The library was rich in valuable and rare books and MSS. and service books of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries in beautiful penmanship upon fine vellum. The magnificent avenue was grass-grown, the gates had not been opened for many years, while the pillars of the gateway were adorned with two huge bears standing erect and bearing the motto: “Judge Nocht.” Magnificent woods adorned the grounds, remains of the once-famous forest of Ettrick, said to be the old classical forest of Caledon of the days of King Arthur.
Here was also Flora Hill, with its beautiful woods, where Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, lays the scene of his exquisite poem “Kilmeny” in the Queen’s Wake, where—
Bonnie Kilmeny gae’d up the Glen,
But it wisna to meet Duneira’s men, etc.
Through beautiful scenery we continued alongside the Tweed, and noticed that even the rooks could not do without breakfast, for they were busy in a potato field. We were amused to see them fly away on our approach, some of them with potatoes in their mouths, and, like other thieves, looking quite guilty.
Presently we came to a solitary fisherman standing knee-deep in the river, with whom we had a short conversation. He said he was fishing for salmon, which ascended the river from Berwick about that time of the year and returned in May. We were rather amused at his mentioning the return journey, as from the frantic efforts he was making to catch the fish he was doing his best to prevent them from coming back again. He told us he had been fishing there since daylight that morning, and had caught nothing. By way of sympathy my brother told him a story of two young men who walked sixteen miles over the hills to fish in a stream. They stayed that night at the nearest inn, and started out very early the next morning. When they got back to the hotel at night they wrote the following verse in the visitors’ book:
Hickory dickory dock!
We began at six o’clock,
We fished till night without a bite.
Hickory dickory dock!
This was a description, he said, of real fishermen’s luck, but whether the absence of the “bite” referred to the fishermen or to the fish was not quite clear. It had been known to apply to both.
Proceeding further we met a gentleman walking along the road, of whom we made inquiries about the country we were passing through. He told us that the castle we could see across the river was named “Muckle Mouthed Meg.” A certain man in ancient times, having offended against the laws, was given a choice for a sentence by the King of Scotland—-either he must marry Muckle Mouthed Meg, a woman with a very large mouth, or suffer death. He chose the first, and the pair lived together in the old castle for some years. We told him we were walking from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End, but when he said he had passed John o’ Groat’s in the train, we had considerable doubts as to the accuracy of his statements, for there was no railway at all in the County of Caithness in which John o’ Groat’s was situated. We therefore made further inquiries about the old castle, and were informed that the proper name of it was Elibank Castle, and that it once belonged to Sir Gideon Murray, who one night caught young Willie Scott of Oakwood Tower trying to “lift the kye.” The lowing of the cattle roused him up, and with his retainers he drove off the marauders, while his lady watched the fight from the battlement of the Tower. Willie, or, to be more correct, Sir William Scott, Junr., was caught and put in the dungeon. Sir Gideon Murray decided to hang him, but his lady interposed: “Would ye hang the winsome Laird o’ Harden,” she said, “when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?” Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou’d Meg or of being hanged with a “hempen halter.” It was said that when he first saw Meg he said he preferred to be hanged, but he found she improved on closer acquaintance, and so in three days’ time a clergyman said, “Wilt thou take this woman here present to be thy lawful wife?” knowing full well what the answer must be. Short of other materials, the marriage contract was written with a goose quill on the parchment head of a drum. Sir William found that Meg made him a very good wife in spite of her wide mouth, and they lived happily together, the moral being, we supposed, that it is not always the prettiest girl that makes the best wife.
Shortly afterwards we left the River Tweed for a time while we walked across the hills to Galashiels, and on our way to that town we came to a railway station near which were some large vineries. A carriage was standing at the entrance to the gardens, where two gentlemen were buying some fine bunches of grapes which we could easily have disposed of, for we were getting rather hungry, but as they did not give us the chance, we walked on. Galashiels was formerly only a village, the “shiels” meaning shelters for sheep, but it had risen to importance owing to its woollen factories. It was now a burgh, boasting a coat-of-arms on which was represented a plum-tree with a fox on either side, and the motto, “Sour plums of Galashiels.” The origin of this was an incident that occurred in 1337, in the time of Edward III, when some Englishmen who were retreating stopped here to eat some wild plums. While they were so engaged they were attacked by a party of Scots with swords, who killed every one of them, throwing their bodies into a trench afterwards known as the “Englishman’s Syke.” We passed a road leading off to the left to Stow, where King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were said to have defeated the Heathens. We left Galashiels by the Melrose Road, and, after walking about a mile and a half, we turned aside to cross the River Tweed, not by a ferry, as that was against our rule, but by a railway bridge. No doubt this was against the railway company’s by-laws and regulations, but it served our purpose, and we soon reached Abbotsford, that fine mansion, once the residence of the great Sir Walter Scott, the king of novelists, on the building of which he had spent a great amount of money, and the place of his death September 21st, 1832.
Abbotsford, including the gardens, park, walks and woods, was all his own creation, and was so named by him because the River Tweed was crossed at that point by the monks on their way to and from Melrose Abbey in the olden times.
We found the house in splendid condition and the garden just as Sir Walter had left it. We were shown through the hall, study, library, and drawing-room, and even his last suit of clothes, with his white beaver hat, was carefully preserved under a glass case. We saw much armour, the largest suit belonging formerly to Sir John Cheney, the biggest man who fought at the battle of Bosworth Field. The collection of arms gathered out of all ages and countries was said to be the finest in the world, including Rob Roy Macgregor’s gun, sword, and dirk, the Marquis of Montrose’s sword, and the rifle of Andreas Hofer the Tyrolese patriot.
Amongst these great curios was the small pocket-knife used by Sir Walter when he was a boy. We were shown the presents given to him from all parts of the kingdom, and from abroad, including an ebony suite of furniture presented to him by King George IV. There were many portraits and busts of himself, and his wife and children, including a marble bust of himself by Chantrey, the great sculptor, carved in the year 1820. The other portraits included one of Queen Elizabeth, another of Rob Roy; a painting of Queen Mary’s head, after it had been cut off at Fotheringay, and a print of Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims. We also saw an iron box in which Queen Mary kept her money for the poor, and near this was her crucifix. In fact, the place reminded us of some great museum, for there were numberless relics of antiquity stored in every nook and corner, and in the most unlikely places. We were sorry we had not time to stay and take a longer survey, for the mansion and its surroundings form one of the great sights of Scotland, whose people revere the memory of the great man who lived there.
The declining days of Sir Walter were not without sickness and sorrow, for he had spent all the money obtained by the sale of his books on this palatial mansion. After a long illness, and as a last resource, he was taken to Italy; but while there he had another apoplectic attack, and was brought home again, only just in time to die. He expressed a wish that Lockhart, his son-in-law, should read to him, and when asked from what book, he answered, “Need you ask? There is but one.” He chose the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, and when it was ended, he said, “Well, this is a great comfort: I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself again.” In an interval of consciousness he said, “Lockhart! I may have but a minute to speak to you, my dear; be a good man, be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”
A friend who was present at the death of Sir Walter wrote: “It was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible—as we kneeled around his bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.” We could imagine the wish that would echo in more than one mind as Sir Walter’s soul departed, perhaps through one of the open windows, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.”
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there;
It is the loneliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath,
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
The hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression’s last receding ray;
A gilded halo hov’ring round decay.
We passed slowly through the garden and grounds, and when we reached the road along which Sir Walter Scott had so often walked, we hurried on to see the old abbey of Melrose, which was founded by King David I. On our way we passed a large hydropathic establishment and an asylum not quite completed, and on reaching Melrose we called at one of the inns for tea, where we read a description by Sir Walter of his “flitting” from Ashiestiel, his former residence, to his grand house at Abbotsford. The flitting took place at Whitsuntide in 1812, so, as he died in 1832, he must have lived at Abbotsford about twenty years. He was a great collector of curios, and wrote a letter describing the comical scene which took place on that occasion. “The neighbours,” he wrote, “have been very much delighted with the procession of furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and lances made a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some preux chevalier of ancient Border fame, and the very cows, for aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets. I assure you that this caravan, attended by a dozen ragged, rosy, peasant children carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil.”
Melrose Abbey was said to afford the finest specimen of Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture of which Scotland could boast, and the stone of which it had been built, though it had resisted the weather for many ages, retained perfect sharpness, so that even the most minute ornaments seemed as entire as when they had been newly wrought. In some of the cloisters there were representations of flowers, leaves, and vegetables carved in stone with “accuracy and precision so delicate that it almost made visitors distrust their senses when they considered the difficulty of subjecting so hard a substance to such intricate and exquisite modulation.” This superb convent was dedicated to St. Mary, and the monks were of the Cistercian Order, of whom the poet wrote:
Oh, the monks of Melrose made gude kail (broth)
On Fridays when they fasted;
Nor wanted they gude beef and ale,
So lang’s their neighbours’ lasted.
There were one hundred monks at Melrose in the year 1542, and it was supposed that in earlier times much of the carving had been done by monks under strong religious influences. The rose predominated amongst the carved flowers, as it was the abbot’s favourite flower, emblematic of the locality from which the abbey took its name. The curly green, or kale, which grew in nearly every garden in Scotland, was a very difficult plant to sculpture, but was so delicately executed here as to resemble exactly the natural leaf; and there was a curious gargoyle representing a pig playing on the bagpipes, so this instrument must have been of far more ancient origin than we had supposed when we noticed its absence from the instruments recorded as having been played when Mary Queen of Scots was serenaded in Edinburgh on her arrival in Scotland.
Under the high altar were buried the remains of Alexander II, the dust of Douglas the hero of Otterburn, and others of his illustrious and heroic race, as well as the remains of Sir Michael Scott. Here too was buried the heart of King Robert the Bruce. It appeared that Bruce told his son that he wished to have his heart buried at Melrose; but when he was ready to die and his friends were assembled round his bedside, he confessed to them that in his passion he had killed Comyn with his own hand, before the altar, and had intended, had he lived, to make war on the Saracens, who held the Holy Land, for the evil deeds he had done. He requested his dearest friend, Lord James Douglas, to carry his heart to Jerusalem and bury it there. Douglas wept bitterly, but as soon as the king was dead he had his heart taken from his body, embalmed, and enclosed in a silver case which he had made for it, and wore it suspended from his neck by a string of silk and gold. With some of the bravest men in Scotland he set out for Jerusalem, but, landing in Spain, they were persuaded to take part in a battle there against the Saracens. Douglas, seeing one of his friends being hard pressed by the enemy, went to his assistance and became surrounded by the Moors himself. Seeing no chance of escape, he took from his neck the heart of Bruce, and speaking to it as he would have done to Bruce if alive, said, “Pass first in the fight as thou wert wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee or die.” With these words he threw the king’s heart among the enemy, and rushing forward to the place where it fell, was there slain, and his body was found lying on the silver case. Most of the Scots were slain in this battle with the Moors, and they that remained alive returned to Scotland, the charge of Bruce’s heart being entrusted to Sir Simon Lockhard of Lee, who afterwards for his device bore on his shield a man’s heart with a padlock upon it, in memory of Bruce’s heart which was padlocked in the silver case. For this reason, also, Sir Simon’s name was changed from Lockhard to Lockheart, and Bruce’s heart was buried in accordance with his original desire at Melrose.
Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, who also lies buried in the abbey, flourished in the thirteenth century. His great learning, chiefly acquired in foreign countries, together with an identity in name, had given rise to a certain confusion, among the earlier historians, between him and Michael Scott the “wondrous wizard and magician” referred to by Dante in Canto xxmo of the “Inferno.” Michael Scott studied such abstruse subjects as judicial astrology, alchemy, physiognomy, and chiromancy, and his commentary on Aristotle was considered to be of such a high order that it was printed in Venice in 1496. Sir Walter Scott referred to Michael Scott:
The wondrous Michael Scott
A wizard, of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca’s Cave
Him listed his magic wand to wave
The bells would ring in Notre Dame,
and he explained the origin of this by relating the story that Michael on one occasion when in Spain was sent as an Ambassador to the King of France to obtain some concessions, but instead of going in great state, as usual on those occasions, he evoked the services of a demon in the shape of a huge black horse, forcing it to fly through the air to Paris. The king was rather offended at his coming in such an unceremonious manner, and was about to give him a contemptuous refusal when Scott asked him to defer his decision until his horse had stamped its foot three times. The first stamp shook every church in Paris, causing all the bells to ring; the second threw down three of the towers of the palace; and when the infernal steed had lifted up his hoof for the third time, the king stopped him by promising Michael the most ample concessions.
A modern writer, commenting upon this story, says, “There is something uncanny about the Celts which makes them love a Trinity of ideas, and the old stories of the Welsh collected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries include a story very similar about Kilhwch, cousin to Arthur, who threatens if he cannot have what he wants that he will set up three shouts than which none were ever heard more deadly and which will be heard from Pengwaed in Cornwall to Dinsol in the North and Ergair Oerful in Ireland. The Triads show the method best and furnish many examples, quoting the following:
Three things are best when hung—salt fish, a wet hat, and an Englishman.
Three things are difficult to get—gold from the miser, love from the devil, and courtesy from the Englishman.
The three hardest things—a granite block, a miser’s barley loaf, and an Englishman’s heart.
But perhaps the best known is one translated long ago from the Welsh:
A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more they are beaten, the better they be.
But to return to Michael Scott. Another strange story about Michael was his adventure with the witch of Falschope. To avenge himself upon her for striking him suddenly with his own wand whereby he was transformed for a time and assumed the appearance of a hare, Michael sent his man with two greyhounds to the house where the witch lived, to ask the old lady to give him a bit of bread for the greyhounds; if she refused he was to place a piece of paper, which he handed to him, over the top of the house door. The witch gave the man a curt refusal, and so he fastened the paper, on which were some words, including, “Michael Scott’s man sought meat and gat nane,” as directed. This acted as a spell, and the old witch, who was making cakes for the reapers then at work in the corn, now began to dance round the fire (which, as usual in those days, was burning in the middle of the room) and to sing the words:
“Maister Michael Scott’s man
Sought meat and gat nane.”
and she had to continue thus until the spell was broken. Meantime, her husband and the reapers who were with him were wondering why the cakes had not reached them, so the old man sent one of the reapers to inquire the reason. As soon as he went through the door he was caught by the spell and so had to perform the same antics as his mistress. As he did not return, the husband sent man after man until he was alone, and then went himself. But, knowing all about the quarrel between Michael and his wife, and having seen the wizard on the hill, he was rather more cautious than his men, so, instead of going through the door, he looked through the window. There he saw the reapers dragging his wife, who had become quite exhausted, sometimes round, and sometimes through the fire, singing the chorus as they did so. He at once saddled his horse and rode as fast as he could to find Michael, who good-naturedly granted his request, and directed him to enter his house backwards, removing the paper from above the door with his left hand as he went in. The old man lost no time in returning home, where he found them all still dancing furiously and singing the same rhyme; but immediately he entered, the supernatural performance ended, very much, we imagine, to the relief of all concerned.
Michael Scott was at one time, it was said, much embarrassed by a spirit for whom he had to find constant employment, and amongst other work he commanded him to build a dam or other weir across the River Tweed at Kelso. He completed that in a single night. Michael next ordered him to divide the summit of the Eildon Hill in three parts; but as this stupendous work was also completed in one night, he was at his wits’ end what work to find him to do next. At last he bethought himself of a job that would find him constant employment. He sent him to the seashore and employed him at the hopeless and endless task of making ropes of sand there, which as fast as he made them were washed away by the tides. The three peaks of Eildon Hill, of nearly equal height, are still to be seen. Magnificent views are to be obtained from their tops, which Sir Walter Scott often frequented and of which he wrote, “I can stand on the Eildon and point out forty-three places famous in war and in verse.”
Another legend connected with these hills was that in the “Eildon caverns vast” a cave existed where the British King Arthur and his famous Knights of the Round Table lie asleep waiting the blast of the bugle which will recall them from Fairyland to lead the British on to a victory that will ensure a united and glorious Empire. King Arthur has a number of burial-places of the same character, according to local stories both in England and Wales, and even one in Cheshire at Alderley Edge, close By the “Wizard Inn,” which title refers to the story.
Melrose and district has been hallowed by the influence and memory of Sir Walter Scott, who was to Melrose what Shakespeare was to Stratford-on-Avon, and he has invested the old abbey with an additional halo of interest by his “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” a copy of which we saw for the first time at the inn where we called for tea. We were greatly interested, as it related to the neighbourhood we were about to pass through in particular, and we were quite captivated with its opening lines, which appealed so strongly to wayfarers like ourselves:
The way was long, the wind was cold.
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither’d cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem’d to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the Bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry.
We were now nearing the Borders of Scotland and England, where this Border warfare formerly raged for centuries. The desperadoes engaged in it on the Scottish side were known as Moss-troopers, any of whom when caught by the English were taken to Carlisle and hanged near there at a place called Hairibee. Those who claimed the “benefit of clergy” were allowed to repeat in Latin the “Miserere mei,” at the beginning of the 51st Psalm, before they were executed, this becoming known as the “neck-verse.”
William of Deloraine was one of the most desperate Moss-troopers ever engaged in Border warfare, but he, according to Sir Walter Scott:
By wily turns, by desperate bounds,
Had baffled Percy’s best blood-hounds;
In Eske or Liddel, fords were none,
But he would ride them, one by one;
Steady of heart, and stout of hand.
As ever drove prey from Cumberland;
Five times outlawed had he been,
By England’s King, and Scotland’s Queen.
When Sir Michael Scott was buried in Melrose Abbey his Mystic Book—which no one was ever to see except the Chief of Branxholm, and then only in the time of need—was buried with him. Branxholm Tower was about eighteen miles from Melrose and situated in the vale of Cheviot. After the death of Lord Walter (who had been killed in the Border warfare), a gathering of the kinsmen of the great Buccleuch was held there, and the “Ladye Margaret” left the company, retiring laden with sorrow and her impending troubles to her bower. It was a fine moonlight night when—
From amid the arméd train
She called to her, William of Deloraine.
and sent him for the mighty book to Melrose Abbey which was to relieve her of all her troubles.
“Sir William of Deloraine, good at need,
Mount thee on the wightest steed;
Spare not to spur, nor stint to ride.
Until thou come to fair Tweedside;
And in Melrose’s holy pile
Seek thou the Monk of St. Mary’s aisle.
Greet the Father well from me;
Say that the fated hour is come,
And to-night he shall watch with thee,
To win the treasure of the tomb:
For this will be St. Michael’s night,
And, though stars be dim, the moon is bright;
And the Cross, of bloody red,
Will point to the grave of the mighty dead.
“What he gives thee, see thou keep;
Stay not thou for food or sleep:
Be it scroll, or be it book,
Into it, Knight, thou must not look;
If thou readest, thou art lorn!
Better had’st thou ne’er been born.”—
“O swiftly can speed my dapple-grey steed,
Which drinks of the Teviot clear;
Ere break of day,” the Warrior ‘gan say,
“Again will I be here:
And safer by none may thy errand be done,
Than, noble dame, by me;
Letter nor line know I never a one,
Wer’t my neck-verse at Hairibee.”
Deloraine lost no time in carrying out his Ladye’s wishes, and rode furiously on his horse to Melrose Abbey in order to be there by midnight, and as described in Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel”:
Short halt did Deloraine make there;
Little reck’d he of the scene so fair
With dagger’s hilt, on the wicket strong,
He struck full loud, and struck full long.
The porter hurried to the gate—
“Who knocks so loud, and knocks so late?”
“From Branksome I,” the warrior cried;
And straight the wicket open’d wide
For Branksome’s Chiefs had in battle stood,
To fence the rights of fair Melrose;
And lands and livings, many a rood,
Had gifted the Shrine for their souls’ repose.
Bold Deloraine his errand said;
The porter bent his humble head;
With torch in hand, and feet unshod.
And noiseless step, the path he trod.
The archèd cloister, far and wide,
Rang to the warrior’s clanking stride,
Till, stooping low his lofty crest,
He enter’d the cell of the ancient priest,
And lifted his barred aventayle,
To hail the Monk of St. Mary’s aisle.
“The Ladye of Branksome greets thee by me,
Says, that the fated hour is come,
And that to-night I shall watch with thee,
To win the treasure of the tomb.”
From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,
With toil his stiffen’d limbs he rear’d;
A hundred years had flung their snows
On his thin locks and floating beard.
And strangely on the Knight look’d he,
And his blue eyes gleam’d wild and wide;
“And, darest thou, Warrior! seek to see
What heaven and hell alike would hide?
My breast, in belt of iron pent,
With shirt of hair and scourge of thorn;
For threescore years, in penance spent.
My knees those flinty stones have worn;
Yet all too little to atone
For knowing what should ne’er be known.
Would’st thou thy every future year
In ceaseless prayer and penance drie,
Yet wait thy latter end with fear
Then, daring Warrior, follow me!”
“Penance, father, will I none;
Prayer know I hardly one;
For mass or prayer can I rarely tarry,
Save to patter an Ave Mary,
When I ride on a Border foray.
Other prayer can I none;
So speed me my errand, and let me be gone.”
Again on the Knight look’d the Churchman old,
And again he sighed heavily;
For he had himself been a warrior bold.
And fought in Spain and Italy.
And he thought on the days that were long since by,
When his limbs were strong, and his courage was high—
Now, slow and faint, he led the way,
Where, cloister’d round, the garden lay;
The pillar’d arches were over their head,
And beneath their feet were the bones of the dead.
The moon on the east oriel shone
Through slender shafts of shapely stone,
The silver light, so pale and faint,
Shew’d many a prophet, and many a saint,
Whose image on the glass was dyed;
Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Triumphal Michael brandished,
And trampled the Apostate’s pride.
The moon beam kiss’d the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.
They sate them down on a marble stone,—
(A Scottish monarch slept below;)
Thus spoke the Monk, in solemn tone—
“I was not always a man of woe;
For Paynim countries I have trod,
And fought beneath the Cross of God:
Now, strange to my eyes thine arms appear.
And their iron clang sounds strange to my ear.
“In these far climes it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;
Some of his skill he taught to me;
And, Warrior, I could say to thee
The words that cleft Eildon hills in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone:
But to speak them were a deadly sin;
And for having but thought them my heart within,
A treble penance must be done.
“When Michael lay on his dying bed,
His conscience was awakened
He bethought him of his sinful deed,
And he gave me a sign to come with speed.
I was in Spain when the morning rose,
But I stood by his bed ere evening close.
The words may not again be said
That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid;
They would rend this Abbaye’s massy nave,
And pile it in heaps above his grave.
“I swore to bury his Mighty Book,
That never mortal might therein look;
And never to tell where it was hid,
Save at his Chief of Branksome’s need:
And when that need was past and o’er,
Again the volume to restore.
I buried him on St. Michael’s night,
When the bell toll’d one, and the moon was bright,
And I dug his chamber among the dead,
When the floor of the chancel was stained red,
That his patron’s cross might over him wave,
And scare the fiends from the Wizard’s grave.
“It was a night of woe and dread,
When Michael in the tomb I laid!
Strange sounds along the chancel pass’d,
The banners waved without a blast”—
Still spoke the Monk, when the bell toll’d one!—
I tell you, that a braver man
Than William of Deloraine, good at need,
Against a foe ne’er spurr’d a steed;
Yet somewhat was he chill’d with dread,
And his hair did bristle upon his head.
“Lo, Warrior! now, the Cross of Red
Points to the grave of the mighty dead;
Within it burns a wondrous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night:
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,
Until the eternal doom shall be.”—
Slow moved the Monk to the broad flag-stone,
Which the bloody Cross was traced upon:
He pointed to a secret nook;
An iron bar the Warrior took;
And the Monk made a sign with his wither’d hand,
The grave’s huge portal to expand.
With beating heart to the task he went;
His sinewy frame o’er the grave-stone bent;
With bar of iron heaved amain,
Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain.
It was by dint of passing strength,
That he moved the massy stone at length.
I would you had been there, to see
How the light broke forth so gloriously,
Stream’d upward to the chancel roof,
And through the galleries far aloof!
No earthly flame blazed e’er so bright:
It shone like heaven’s own blessed light,
And, issuing from the tomb,
Show’d the Monk’s cowl, and visage pale,
Danced on the dark-brow’d Warrior’s mail,
And kiss’d his waving plume.
Before their eyes the Wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day.
His hoary beard in silver roll’d.
He seem’d some seventy winters old;
A palmer’s amice wrapp’d him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea:
His left hand held his Book of Might;
A silver cross was in his right;
The lamp was placed beside his knee:
High and majestic was his look,
At which the fellest fiends had shook.
And all unruffled was his face:
They trusted his soul had gotten grace.
Often had William of Deloraine
Rode through the battle’s bloody plain,
And trampled down the warriors slain,
And neither known remorse nor awe;
Yet now remorse and awe he own’d;
His breath came thick, his head swam round.
When this strange scene of death he saw.
Bewilder’d and unnerved he stood.
And the priest pray’d fervently and loud:
With eyes averted prayed he;
He might not endure the sight to see.
Of the man he had loved so brotherly.
And when the priest his death-prayer had pray’d,
Thus unto Deloraine he said:—
“Now, speed thee what thou hast to do,
Or, Warrior, we may dearly rue;
For those, thou may’st not look upon,
Are gathering fast round the yawning stone!”—
Then Deloraine, in terror, took
From the cold hand the Mighty Book,
With iron clasp’d, and with iron bound:
He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown’d;
But the glare of the sepulchral light,
Perchance, had dazzled the Warrior’s sight.
When the huge stone sunk o’er the tomb.
The night return’d in double gloom;
For the moon had gone down, and the stars were few;
And, as the Knight and Priest withdrew.
With wavering steps and dizzy brain,
They hardly might the postern gain.
‘Tis said, as through the aisles they pass’d,
They heard strange noises on the blast;
And through the cloister-galleries small,
Which at mid-height thread the chancel wall,
Loud sobs, and laughter louder, ran,
And voices unlike the voices of man;
As if the fiends kept holiday,
Because these spells were brought to day.
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.
“Now, hie thee hence,” the Father said,
“And when we are on death-bed laid,
O may our dear Ladye, and sweet St. John,
Forgive our souls for the deed we have done!”—
The Monk return’d him to his cell,
And many a prayer and penance sped;
When the convent met at the noontide bell—
The Monk of St. Mary’s aisle was dead!
Before the cross was the body laid,
With hands clasp’d fast, as if still he pray’d.
What became of Sir William Deloraine and the wonderful book on his return journey we had no time to read that evening, but we afterwards learned he fell into the hands of the terrible Black Dwarf. We had decided to walk to Hawick if possible, although we were rather reluctant to leave Melrose. We had had one good tea on entering the town, and my brother suggested having another before leaving it, so after visiting the graveyard of the abbey, where the following curious epitaph appeared on one of the stones, we returned to the inn, where the people were highly amused at seeing us return so soon and for such a purpose:
The earth goeth to the earth
Glist’ring like gold;
The earth goeth to the earth
Sooner than it wold;
The earth builds on the earth
Castles and Towers;
The earth says to the earth,
All shall be ours.
Still, we were quite ready for our second tea, and wondered whether there was any exercise that gave people a better appetite and a greater joy in appeasing it than walking, especially in the clear and sharp air of Scotland, for we were nearly always extremely hungry after an hour or two’s walk. When the tea was served, I noticed that my brother lingered over it longer than usual, and when I reminded him that the night would soon be on us, he said he did not want to leave before dark, as he wanted to see how the old abbey appeared at night, quoting Sir Walter Scott as the reason why:
If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light’s uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin’d central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery.
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o’er the dead man’s grave,
Then go—but go alone the while—
Then view St. David’s ruin’d pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear.
Was ever scene so sad and fair?
I reminded my brother that there would be no moon visible that night, and that it would therefore be impossible to see the old abbey “by the pale moonlight”; but he said the starlight would do just as well for him, so we had to wait until one or two stars made their appearance, and then departed, calling at a shop to make a few small purchases as we passed on our way. The path alongside the abbey was entirely deserted. Though so near the town there was scarcely a sound to be heard, not even “the owlet to hoot o’er the dead man’s grave.” Although we had no moonlight, the stars were shining brightly through the ruined arches which had once been filled with stained glass, representing the figures “of many a prophet and many a saint.” It was a beautiful sight that remained in our memories long after other scenes had been forgotten.
According to the Koran there were four archangels: Azrael, the angel of death; Azrafil, who was to sound the trumpet at the resurrection; Gabriel, the angel of revelations, who wrote down the divine decrees; and Michael, the champion, who fought the battles of faith,—and it was this Michael whose figure Sir Walter Scott described as appearing full in the midst of the east oriel window “with his Cross of bloody red,” which in the light of the moon shone on the floor of the abbey and “pointed to the grave of the mighty dead” into which the Monk and William of Deloraine had to descend to secure possession of the “Mighty Book.”
After passing the old abbey and the shade of the walls and trees to find our way to the narrow and rough road along which we had to travel towards Hawick, we halted for a few moments at the side of the road to arrange the contents of our bags, in order to make room for the small purchases we had made in the town. We had almost completed the readjustment when we heard the heavy footsteps of a man approaching, who passed us walking along the road we were about to follow. My brother asked him if he was going far that way, to which he replied, “A goodish bit,” so we said we should be glad of his company; but he walked on without speaking to us further. We pushed the remaining things in our bags as quickly as possible, and hurried on after him. As we did not overtake him, we stood still and listened attentively, though fruitlessly, for not a footstep could we hear. We then accelerated our pace to what was known as the “Irishman’s Trig”—a peculiar step, quicker than a walk, but slower than a run—and after going some distance we stopped again to listen; but the only sound we could hear was the barking of a solitary dog a long distance away. This was very provoking, as we wanted to get some information about our road, which, besides being rough, was both hilly and very lonely, and more in the nature of a track than a road. Where the man could have disappeared to was a mystery on a road apparently without any offshoots, so we concluded he must have thought we contemplated doing him some bodily harm, and had either “bolted” or “clapp’d,” as my brother described it, behind some rock or bush, in which case he must have felt relieved and perhaps amused when he heard us “trigging” past him on the road.
LILLIESLEAF AND THE EILDON HILLS.
We continued along the lonely road without his company, with the ghostly Eildon Hills on one side and the moors on the other, until after walking steadily onwards for a few miles, we heard the roar of a mountain stream in the distance. When we reached it we were horrified to find it running right across our road. It looked awful in the dark, as it was quite deep, and although we could just see where our road emerged from the stream on the other side, it was quite impossible for us to cross in the dark. We could see a few lights some distance beyond the stream, but it was useless to attempt to call for help, since our voices could not be heard above the noise of the torrent. Our position seemed almost hopeless, until my brother said he thought he had seen a shed or a small house behind a gate some distance before coming to the stream. We resolved to turn back, and luckily we discovered it to be a small lodge guarding the entrance to a private road. We knocked at the door of the house, which was in darkness, the people having evidently gone to bed. Presently a woman asked what was wanted, and when we told her we could not get across the stream, she said there was a footbridge near by, which we had not seen in the dark, and told us how to find it a little higher up the stream. Needless to relate, we were very pleased when we got across the bridge, and we measured the distance across that turbulent stream in fifteen long strides.
We soon reached the lights we had seen, and found a small village, where at the inn we got some strange lodgings, and slept that night in a bed of a most curious construction, as it was in a dark place under the stairs, entered by a door from the parlour. But it was clean and comfortable, and we were delighted to make use of it after our long walk.
(Distance walked thirty miles.)
Wednesday, October 11th.
We had been warned when we retired to rest that it was most likely we should be wakened early in the morning by people coming down the stairs, and advised to take no notice of them, as no one would interfere with us or our belongings. We were not surprised, therefore, when we were aroused early by heavy footsteps immediately over our heads, which we supposed were those of the landlord as he came down the stairs. We had slept soundly, and, since there was little chance of any further slumber, we decided to get up and look round, the village before breakfast. We had to use the parlour as a dressing-room, and not knowing who might be coming down the stairs next, we dressed ourselves as quickly as possible. We found that the village was called Lilliesleaf, which we thought a pretty name, though we were informed it had been spelt in twenty-seven different ways, while the stream we came to in the night was known by the incongruous name of Ale Water. The lodge we had gone back to for information as to the means of crossing was the East Gate guarding one of the entrances to Riddell, a very ancient place where Sir Walter Scott had recorded the unearthing of two graves of special interest, one containing an earthen pot filled with ashes and arms, and bearing the legible date of 729, and the other dated 936, filled with the bones of a man of gigantic size.
A local historian wrote of the Ale Water that “it is one thing to see it on a summer day when it can be crossed by the stepping-stones, and another when heavy rains have fallen in the autumn—then it is a strong, deep current and carries branches and even trees on its surface, the ford at Riddell East Gate being impassable, and it is only then that we can appreciate the scene.” It seemed a strange coincidence that we should be travelling on the same track but in the opposite direction as that pursued by William Deloraine, and that we should have crossed the Ale Water about a fortnight later in the year, as Sir Walter described him in his “Lay” as riding along the wooded path when “green hazels o’er his basnet nod,” which indicated the month of September.
Unchallenged, thence pass’d Deloraine,
To ancient Riddell’s fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountain freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed.
In vain! no torrent, deep or broad.
Might bar the bold moss-trooper’s road.
At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
And the water broke o’er the saddlebow;
Above the foaming tide, I ween,
Scarce half the charger’s neck was seen;
For he was barded from counter to tail,
And the rider was armed complete in mail;
Never heavier man and horse
Stemm’d a midnight torrent’s force.
The warrior’s very plume, I say
Was daggled by the dashing spray;
Yet, through good heart, and Our Ladye’s grace,
At length he gain’d the landing place.
What would have become of ourselves if we had attempted to cross the treacherous stream in the dark of the previous night we did not know, but we were sure we should have risked our lives had we made the attempt.
We were only able to explore the churchyard at Lilliesleaf, as the church was not open at that early hour in the morning. We copied a curious inscription from one of the old stones there:
Near this stone we lifeless lie
No more the things of earth to spy,
But we shall leave this dusty bed
When Christ appears to judge the dead.
For He shall come in glory great
And in the air shall have His seat
And call all men before His throne.
Rewarding all as they have done.
We were served with a prodigious breakfast at the inn to match, as we supposed, the big appetites prevailing in the North, and then we resumed our walk towards Hawick, meeting on our way the children coming to the school at Lilliesleaf, some indeed quite a long way from their destination. In about four miles we reached Hassendean and the River Teviot, for we were now in Teviot Dale, along which we were to walk, following the river nearly to its source in the hills above. The old kirk of Hassendean had been dismantled in 1693, but its burial-ground continued to be used until 1795, when an ice-flood swept away all vestiges both of the old kirk and the churchyard. It was of this disaster that Leyden, the poet and orientalist, who was born in 1775 at the pretty village of Denholm close by, wrote the following lines:
By fancy wrapt, where tombs are crusted grey,
I seem by moon-illumined graves to stray,
Where now a mouldering pile is faintly seen—
The old deserted church of Hassendean,
Where slept my fathers in their natal clay
Till Teviot waters rolled their bones away.
Leyden was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott, whom he helped to gather materials for his “Border Minstrelsie,” and was referred to in his novel of St. Ronan’s Well as “a lamp too early quenched.” In 1811 he went to India with Lord Minto, who was at that time Governor-General, as his interpreter, for Leyden was a great linguist. He died of fever caused by looking through some old infected manuscripts at Batavia on the coast of Java. Sir Walter had written a long letter to him which was returned owing to his death. He also referred to him in his Lord of the Isles:
His bright and brief career is o’er,
And mute his tuneful strains;
Quench’d is his lamp of varied lore,
That loved the light of song to pour;
A distant and a deadly shore
Has Leyden’s cold remains.
The Minto estate adjoined Hassenden, and the country around it was very beautiful, embracing the Minto Hills or Crags, Minto House, and a castle rejoicing, as we thought, in the queer name of “Fatlips.”
The walk to the top of Minto Crags was very pleasant, but in olden times no stranger dared venture there, as the Outlaw Brownhills was in possession, and had hewn himself out of the rock an almost inaccessible platform on one of the crags still known as “Brownhills’ Bed” from which he could see all the roads below. Woe betide the unsuspecting traveller who happened to fall into his hands!
But we must not forget Deloraine, for after receiving instructions from the “Ladye of Branksome”—
Soon in the saddle sate he fast,
And soon the steep descent he past,
Soon cross’d the sounding barbican.
And soon the Teviot side he won.
Eastward the wooded path he rode.
Green hazels o’er his basnet nod;
He passed the Peel of Goldieland,
And crossed old Borthwick’s roaring strand;
Dimly he view’d the Moat-hill’s mound.
Where Druid shades still flitted round;
In Hawick twinkled many a light;
Behind him soon they set in night;
And soon he spurr’d his courser keen
Beneath the tower of Hazeldean.
The clattering hoofs the watchmen mark;—
“Stand, ho! thou courier of the dark.”—
“For Branksome, ho!” the knight rejoin’d.
And left the friendly tower behind.
He turn’d him now from Tiviotside,
And, guided by the tinkling rill,
Northward the dark ascent did ride.
And gained the moor at Horsliehill;
Broad on the left before him lay,
For many a mile, the Roman Way.
A moment now he slacked his speed,
A moment breathed his panting steed;
Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band,
And loosen’d in the sheath his brand.
On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint,
Where Barnhills hew’d his bed of flint;
Who flung his outlaw’d limbs to rest,
Where falcons hang their giddy nest
Mid cliffs, from whence his eagle eye
For many a league his prey could spy;
Cliffs, doubling, on their echoes borne,
The terrors of the robber’s horn!
We passed through a cultivated country on the verge of the moors, where we saw some good farms, one farmer telling us he had 900 acres of arable land with some moorland in addition. He was superintending the gathering of a good crop of fine potatoes, which he told us were “Protestant Rocks.” He was highly amused when one of us suggested to the other that they might just have suited a country parson we knew in England who would not have the best variety of potatoes, called “Radicals,” planted in his garden because he did not like the name. He was further amused when we innocently asked him the best way to reach Hawick, pronouncing the name in two syllables which sounded like Hay-wick, while the local pronunciation was “Hoike.” However, we soon reached that town and had a twelve-o’clock lunch at one of the inns, where we heard something of the principal annual event of the town, the “Common Riding,” the occasion on which the officials rode round the boundaries. There was an artificial mound in the town called the “Mote-Hill,” formerly used by the Druids. It was to the top of this hill the cornet and his followers ascended at sunrise on the day of the festival, after which they adjourned to a platform specially erected in the town, to sing the Common Riding Song. We could not obtain a copy of this, but we were fortunate in obtaining one for the next town we were to visit—Langholm—which proved to be the last on our walk through Scotland. From what we could learn, the ceremony at Hawick seemed very like the walking of the parish boundaries in England, a custom which was there slowly becoming obsolete. We could only remember attending one of these ceremonies, and that was in Cheshire. The people of the adjoining parish walked their boundaries on the same day, so we were bound to meet them at some point en route, and a free fight, fanned by calling at sundry public-houses, was generally the result. The greatest danger-zone lay where a stream formed the boundary between the two parishes, at a point traversed by a culvert or small tunnel through a lofty embankment supporting a canal which crossed a small valley. This boundary was, of course, common to both parishes, and representatives of each were expected to pass through it to maintain their rights, so that it became a matter of some anxiety as to which of the boundary walkers would reach it first, or whether that would be the point where both parties would meet. We remembered coming to a full stop when we reached one entrance to the small tunnel, while the scouts ascended the embankment to see if the enemy were in sight on the other side; but as they reported favourably, we decided that two of our party should walk through the culvert, while the others went round by the roads to the other end. There was a fair amount of water passing through at that time, so they were very wet on emerging from the opposite end, and it was impossible for the men to walk upright, the contracted position in which they were compelled to walk making the passage very difficult. What would have happened if the opposition had come up while our boundary walkers were in the tunnel we could only surmise.
Hawick is in Roxburghshire and was joined on to Wilton at a house called the Salt Hall, or the “Saut Ha’,” as it is pronounced in Scotch, where a tragedy took place in the year 1758. The tenant of the Hall at that time was a man named Rea, whose wife had committed suicide by cutting her throat. In those days it was the custom to bury suicides at the dead of night where the laird’s lands met, usually a very lonely corner, and a stake was driven through the body of the corpse; but from some cause or other the authorities allowed “Jenny Saut Ha’,” as she was commonly called, to be buried in the churchyard. This was considered by many people to be an outrage, and the body was disinterred at night, and the coffin placed against the Saut Ha’ door, where Rea was confronted with it next morning. There was a sharp contest between the Church authorities and the public, and the body was once more interred in the churchyard, but only to fall on Rea when he opened his door the next morning. The authorities were then compelled to yield to the popular clamour, and the corpse found a temporary resting-place in a remote corner of Wilton Common; but the minister ultimately triumphed, and Jenny was again buried in the churchyard, there to rest for all time in peace.
We had now joined the old coach road from London to Edinburgh, a stone on the bridge informing us that that city was fifty miles distant. We turned towards London, and as we were leaving the town we asked three men, who had evidently tramped a long distance, what sort of a road it was to Langholm, our next stage. They informed us that it was twenty-three miles to that town, that the road was a good one, but we should not be able to get a drink the whole way, for “there wasn’t a single public-house on the road.”
Presently, however, we reached a turnpike gate across our road, and as there was some fruit exhibited for sale in the window of the toll-house we went inside, and found the mistress working at her spinning-wheel, making a kind of worsted out of which she made stockings. We bought as much fruit from her as the limited space in our bags allowed, and had a chat with her about the stocking trade, which was the staple industry of Hawick. She told us there were about 800 people employed in that business, and that they went out on strike on the Monday previous, but with an advance in their wages had gone in again that morning.
The stockings were now made by machines, but were formerly all made by hand. The inventor of the first machine was a young man who had fallen deeply in love with a young woman, who, like most others living thereabouts at that time, got her living by making stockings. When he proposed to her, she would not have him, because she knew another young man she liked better. He then told her if she would not marry him he would make a machine that would make stockings and throw her out of work and ruin them all. But the girl decided to remain true to the young man she loved best, and was presently married to him.
The disappointed lover then set to work, and, after much thought and labour, succeeded in making a stocking machine; and although it created a great stir in Hawick, where all three were well known, it did not throw any one out of work, but was so improved upon with the result that more stockings were made and sold at Hawick than ever before!
We thanked the old lady for her story, and, bidding her good-bye, went on our way. Presently we came to the ruins of a castle standing near the road which a clergyman informed us was Goldielands Tower, mentioned with Harden by Sir Walter Scott in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” He told us that a little farther on our way we should also see Branxholm, another place referred to by Scott. Although we were on the look out for Branxholm, we passed without recognising it, as it resembled a large family mansion more than the old tower we had expected it to be.
It was astonishing what a number of miles we walked in Scotland without finding anything of any value on the roads. A gentleman told us he once found a threepenny bit on the road near a village where he happened to be staying at the inn. When his find became known in the village, it created quite a sensation amongst the inhabitants, owing to the “siller” having fallen into the hands of a “Saxon,” and he gravely added to the information that one-half of the people went in mourning and that it was even mentioned in the kirk as the “awfu’” waste that had occurred in the parish!
We were not so lucky as to find a silver coin, but had the good fortune to find something of more importance in the shape of a love-letter which some one had lost on the road, and which supplied us with food for thought and words for expression, quite cheering us up as we marched along our lonely road. As Kate and John now belong to a past generation, we consider ourselves absolved from any breach of confidence and give a facsimile of the letter. The envelope was not addressed, so possibly John might have intended sending it by messenger, or Kate might have received it and lost it on the road, which would perhaps be the more likely thing to happen. We wondered whether the meeting ever came off.
Shortly after passing Branxholm, and near the point where the Allan Water joined the River Teviot, we turned to visit what we had been informed was in the time of King Charles I a hiding place for the people known as Covenanters. These were Scottish Presbyterians, who in 1638, to resist that king’s encroachments on their religious liberty, formed a “Solemn League,” followed in 1643 by an international Solemn League and Covenant “between England and Scotland to secure both civil and religious liberty.” These early Covenanters were subjected to great persecution, consequently their meetings were held in the most lonely places—on the moors, in the glens, and on the wild mountain sides. We climbed up through a wood and found the meeting-place in the ruins of a tower—commonly said to have been built by the Romans, though we doubted it—the remains of which consisted of an archway a few yard longs and a few yards square, surrounded by three trenches. It occupied a very strong position, and standing upon it we could see a hill a short distance away on the top of which was a heap of stones marking the spot where a bon-fire was lit and a flag reared when Queen Victoria drove along the road below, a few years before our visit.
In former times in this part of Scotland there seemed to have been a bard, poet, or minstrel in every village, and they appeared to have been numerous enough to settle their differences, and sometimes themselves, by fighting for supremacy, for it was at Bradhaugh near here that a deadly combat took place in 1627 between William Henderson, known as “Rattling Roaring Willie,” and Robert Rule, another Border minstrel, in which, according to an old ballad, Willie slew his opponent, for—
Rob Roole, he handled rude.
And Willie left Newmill’s banks
Red-wat wi’ Robin’s blude.
At Teviothead our road parted company with the River Teviot, which forked away to the right, its source being only about six miles farther up the hills from that point. In the churchyard at Teviothead, Henry Scott Riddell, the author of Scotland Yet, had only recently been buried. Near here also was Caerlanrig, where the murder of Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, a very powerful chief who levied blackmail along the Border from Esk to Tyne, or practically the whole length of Hadrian’s Wall, took place in 1530. Johnnie was a notorious freebooter and Border raider, no one daring to go his way for fear of Johnnie or his followers. But of him more anon.
The distance from Caerlanrig, where Armstrong was executed, to Gilnockie Tower, where he resided, was about seventeen miles, and we had to follow, though in the opposite direction and a better surfaced road, the same lonely and romantic track that he traversed on that occasion. It formed a pass between the hills, and for the first seven miles the elevations in feet above sea-level on each side of the road were:
To our right:—1193. 1286. 1687. 1950. 1714. 1317. 1446.
To our left:—1156. 1595. 1620. 1761. 1741. 1242. 1209.
The distance between the summits as the crow flies was only about a mile, while the road maintained an altitude above the sea of from five to eight hundred feet, so that we had a most lonely walk of about thirteen miles before we reached Langholm. The road was a good one, and we were in no danger of missing our way, hemmed in as it was on either side by the hills, which, although treeless, were covered with grass apparently right away to their tops, a novelty to us after the bare and rocky hills we had passed elsewhere. We quite enjoyed our walk, and as we watched the daylight gradually fade away before the approaching shadows of the night, we realised that we were passing through the wildest solitudes. We did not meet one human being until we reached Langholm, and the only habitation we noted before reaching a small village just outside that town was the “Halfway House” between Hawick and Langholm, known in stage-coach days as the “Mosspaul Inn.” It was a large house near the entrance to a small glen, but apparently now closed, for we could not see a solitary light nor hear the sound of a human voice.
How different it must have appeared when the stage-coaches were passing up and down that valley, now deserted, for even the railway, which supplanted them, had passed it by on the other side! In imagination we could hear the sound of the horn, echoing in the mountains, heralding the approach of the stage-coach, with its great lamp in front, and could see a light in almost every window in the hotel. We could picture mine host and his wife standing at the open door ready to receive their visitors, expectant guests assembled behind them in the hall and expectant servants both indoors and out; then staying for the night, refreshing ourselves with the good things provided for supper, and afterwards relating our adventures to a friendly and appreciative audience, finally sinking our weary limbs in the good old-fashioned feather-beds!
But these visions passed away almost as quickly as they appeared, so we left the dark and dreary mansion whose glory had departed, and marched on our way, expecting to find at Langholm that which we so badly needed—food and rest.
The old inn at Mosspaul, where the stage-coaches stopped to change horses, was built at the junction of the counties of Dumfries and Roxburgh, and was very extensive with accommodation for many horses, but fell to ruin after the stage-coaches ceased running. Many notable visitors had patronised it, among others Dorothy Wordsworth, who visited it with her brother the poet in September 1803, and described it in the following graphic terms:
The scene, with this 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.
A good story is told of one of the Armstrongs and the inn:
Once when Lord Kames went for the first time on the Circuit as Advocate-depute, Armstrong of Sorbie inquired of Lord Minto in a whisper “What long black, dour-looking Chiel” that was that they had broc’ht with them?
“That,” said his lordship, “is a man come to hang a’ the Armstrongs.”
“Then,” was the dry retort, “it’s time the Elliots were ridin’.”[Footnote: Elliot was the family name of Lord Minto.]
The effusions of one of the local poets whose district we had passed through had raised our expectations in the following lines:
There’s a wee toon on the Borders
That my heart sair langs to see,
Where in youthful days I wander’d,
Knowing every bank and brae;
O’er the hills and through the valleys,
Thro’ the woodlands wild and free,
Thro’ the narrow straits and loanings,
There my heart sair langs to be.
There was also an old saying, “Out of the world and into Langholm,” which seemed very applicable to ourselves, for after a walk of thirty-two and a half miles through a lonely and hilly country, without a solitary house of call for twenty-three, our hungry and weary condition may be imagined when we entered Langholm just on the stroke of eleven o’clock at night.
We went to the Temperance Hotel, but were informed they were full. We called at the other four inns with the same result. Next we appealed to the solitary police officer, who told us curtly that the inns closed at eleven and the lodgings at ten, and marched away without another word. The disappointment and feeling of agony at having to walk farther cannot be described, but there was no help for it, so we shook the dust, or mud, off our feet and turned dejectedly along the Carlisle road.
Just at the end of the town we met a gentleman wearing a top-hat and a frock-coat, so we appealed to him. The hour was too late to find us lodgings, but he said, if we wished to do so, we could shelter in his distillery, which we should come to a little farther on our way. His men would all be in bed, but there was one door that was unlocked and we should find some of the rooms very warm. We thanked him for his kindness and found the door, as he had described, opening into a dark room. We had never been in a distillery before, so we were naturally rather nervous, and as we could not see a yard before us, we lighted one of our candles. We were about to go in search of one of the warmer rooms when the thought occurred to us that our light might attract the attention of some outsider, and in the absence of any written authority from the owner might cause us temporary trouble, while to explore the distillery without a light was out of the question, for we might fall through some trap-door or into a vat, besides which, we could hear a great rush of water in the rear of the premises, so we decided to stay where we were.
The book we had obtained at Hawick contained the following description of the Langholm “Common Riding,” which was held each year on July 17th when the people gathered together to feast on barley bannock and red herring, of course washed down with plenteous supplies of the indispensable whisky. The Riding began with the following proclamation in the marketplace, given by a man standing upright on horseback, in the presence of thousands of people:
Gentlemen,—The first thing that I am going to acquaint you with are the names of the Portioners’ Grounds of Langholm:—
Now, Gentlemen, we’re gan’ frae the Toun,
An’ first of a’ the Kil Green we gang roun’,
It is an ancient place where Clay is got,
And it belangs to us by Right and Lot,
And then frae here the Lang-Wood we gang throu’
Where every ane may breckons out an’ pu’,
An’ last of a’ oor Marches they be clear,
An’ when unto the Castle Craigs we come,
I’ll cry the Langholm Fair and then we’ll beat the drum.
Now, Gentlemen. What you have heard this day concerning going round our Marches, it is expected that every one who has occasion for Peats, Breckons, Flacks, Stanes, or Clay, will go out in defence of their Property, and they shall hear the Proclamation of the Langholm Fair upon the Castle Craigs.
Now, Gentlemen, we have gane roun our hill,
So now I think it’s right we had oor fill
Of guid strang punch—’twould make us a’ to sing.
Because this day we have dune a guid thing;
For gangin’ roun’ oor hill we think nae shame,
Because frae it oor peats and flacks come hame;
So now I will conclude and say nae mair.
An’ if ye’re pleased I’ll cry the Langholm Fair.
Hoys, yes! that’s ae time! Hoys, yes! that’s twae times!!
Hoys, yes! that’s the third and the last time!!!
This is to Give Notice,
That there is a muckle Fair to be hadden in the muckle Toun o’ the Langholm, on the 15th day of July, auld style, upon his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch’s Merk Land, for the space of eight days and upwards; and a’ land-loupers, and dub-scoupers, and gae-by-the-gate-swingers, that come here to breed hurdums or durdums, huliments or buliments, haggle-ments or braggle-ments, or to molest this public Fair, they shall be ta’en by order of the Bailie and Toun Council, and their lugs be nailed to the Tron wi’ a twal-penny nail, and they shall sit doun on their bare knees and pray seven times for the King, and thrice for the Mickle Laird o’ Ralton, and pay a groat to me, Jemmy Ferguson, Bailie o’ the aforesaid Manor, and I’ll awa’ hame and ha’e a bannock and a saut herrin’.
HUZZA! HUZZAH!! HUZZAH!!!
The monument on the top of Whita Hill was erected in memory of one of the famous four Knights of Langholm, the sons of Malcolm of Burn Foot, whose Christian names were James, Pulteney, John, and Charles, all of whom became distinguished men. Sir James was made a K.C.B, and a Colonel in the Royal Marines. He served on board the Canopus at the Battle of San Domingo, taking a prominent part in the American War of 1812. He died at Milnholm, near Langholm, at the age of eighty-two. Pulteney Malcolm rose to the rank of Admiral and served under Lord Nelson, but as his ship was refitting at Gibraltar he missed taking part in the Battle of Trafalgar, though he arrived just in time to capture the Spanish 120-gun ship El Kago. He became intimately acquainted with Napoleon Bonaparte, as he had the command of the British worships that guarded him during his captivity at St. Helena. Sir John Malcolm was a distinguished Indian statesman, and it was to him that the monument on Whita Hill had been erected. The monument, which was visible for many miles, was 100 feet high, and the hill itself 1,162 feet above sea-level. Sir Charles Malcolm, the youngest of the four brothers, after seeing much active service, rose to be Vice-Admiral of the Fleet.
If the great fair-day had been on when we reached Langholm we should not have been surprised at being unable to find lodgings, but as it was we could only attribute our failure to arriving at that town so late in the evening, nearly an hour after the authorised closing time of the inns. We found we could not stay very long in the distillery without a fire, for a sharp frost had now developed, and we began to feel the effect of the lower temperature; we therefore decided, after a short rest, to continue our walk on the Carlisle road. Turning over the bridge that crossed the rapidly running stream of the River Esk—the cause of the rush of water we heard in the distillery—we followed the river on its downward course for some miles. It was a splendid starlight, frosty night, but, as we were very tired and hungry, we could only proceed slowly—in fact scarcely quickly enough to maintain our circulation. Being also very sleepy, we had to do something desperate to keep ourselves awake, so we amused ourselves by knocking with our heavy oaken sticks at the doors or window-shutters of the houses we passed on our way. It was a mild revenge we took for the town’s inhospitality, and we pictured to ourselves how the story of two highwaymen being about the roads during the midnight hours would be circulated along the countryside during the following day, but we could not get any one to come beyond the keyhole of the door or the panes of the shuttered windows. We were, however, becoming quite desperate, as we were now nearly famished, and, when we came to a small shop, the sounds from our sticks on the door quickly aroused the mistress, who asked us what we wanted. My brother entered into his usual explanation that we were pedestrian tourists on a walking expedition, and offered her a substantial sum for some bread or something to eat; but it was of no use, as the only answer we got was, “I ha’ not a bit till th’ baker coomes ith’ morn’.”
This reply, and the tone of voice in which it was spoken, for the woman “snaffled,” was too much for us, and, tired as we were, we both roared with laughter; absurd though it may seem, it was astonishing how this little incident cheered us on our way.
It was a lovely country through which we were travelling, and our road, as well as the river alongside, was in many places overhung by the foliage of the fine trees, through which the brilliant lustre of the stars appeared overhead; in fact we heard afterwards that this length of road was said to include the finest landscapes along the whole of the stage-coach road between London and Edinburgh. The bridge by which we recrossed the river had been partially built with stones from the ruins of Gilnockie Tower, once the stronghold of the famous freebooter Johnnie Armstrong, of whom we had heard higher up the country.
Sir Walter Scott tells us that King James V resolved to take very serious measures against the Border Warriors, and under pretence of coming to hunt the deer in those desolate regions he assembled an army, and suddenly appeared at the Castle of Piers Cockburn of Henderland, near where we had been further north. He ordered that baron to be seized and executed in spite of the fact that he was preparing a great feast of welcome. Adam Scott of Tushielaw, known as the King of the Border, met with the same fate, but an event of greater importance was the fate of John Armstrong. This free-booting chief had risen to such consequence, that the whole neighbouring district of England paid him “black-mail,” a sort of regular tribute in consideration of which he forbore to plunder them. He had a high idea of his own importance, and seems to have been unconscious of having merited any severe usage at the king’s hands. On the contrary, he went to meet his sovereign at Carlingrigg Chapel, richly dressed, and having twenty-four gentlemen, his constant retinue, as well attired as himself. The king, incensed to see a freebooter so gentlemanly equipped, commanded him instantly to be led to execution, saying, “What wants this knave save a crown to be as magnificent as a king?” John Armstrong made great offers for his life, offering to maintain himself, with forty men, to serve the king at a moment’s notice, at his own expense, engaging never to hurt or injure any Scottish subject, as indeed had never been his practice, and undertaking that there was not a man in England, of whatever degree, duke, earl, lord, or baron, but he would engage, within a short time, to present him to the king, dead or alive. But when the king would listen to none of his oilers, the robber chief said very proudly, “I am but a fool to ask grace at a graceless face; but had I guessed you would have used me thus, I would have kept the Border-side in spite of the King of England and you, both, for I well know that the King Henry would give the weight of my best horse in gold to know that I am sentenced to die this day.”
John Armstrong was led to execution, with all his men, and hanged without mercy. The people of the inland countries were glad to get rid of him; but on the Borders he was both missed and mourned, as a brave warrior, and a stout man-of-arms against England.
But to return to Gilnockie Bridge! After crossing it we struggled on for another mile or two, and when about six miles from Langholm we reached another bridge where our road again crossed the river. Here we stopped in mute despair, leaning against the battlements, and listening to the water in the river as it rushed under the bridge. We must have been half asleep, when we were suddenly aroused by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching in the distance. Whoever could it be? I suggested one of the Border freebooters; but my brother, who could laugh when everybody else cried, said it sounded more like a free-clogger. We listened again, and sure enough it was the clattering of a heavy pair of clogs on the partly frozen surface of the road. We could not be mistaken, for we were too well accustomed to the sound of clogs in Lancashire; but who could be the wearer! We had not long to wait before a man appeared, as much surprised to see us as we were to see him. We told him of our long walk the day before, how we had been disappointed in not getting lodgings, and asked him how far we were away from an inn. He told us we were quite near one, but it was no use going there, as “they wouldn’t get up for the Queen of England.” He further told us he was going to the two o’clock “shift” at the colliery. “Colliery!” my brother ejaculated; “but surely there isn’t a coal-pit in a pretty place like this?” He assured us that there was, and, seeing we were both shivering with cold, kindly invited us to go with him and he would put us near to a good fire that was burning there. “How far is it?” we asked anxiously. “Oh, only about half a mile,” said the collier. So we went with him, and walked what seemed to be the longest half-mile we ever walked in all our lives, as we followed him along a fearfully rough road, partly on the tramlines of the Canonbie Collieries belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, where two or three hundred men were employed.
We each handed him a silver coin as he landed us in front of a large open fire which was blazing furiously near the mouth of the pit, and, bidding us “good morning,” he placed a lighted lamp in front of his cap and disappeared down the shaft to the regions below. He was rather late owing to his having slackened his pace to our own, which was naturally slower than his, since walking along colliery sidings at night was difficult for strangers. We had taken of our boots to warm and ease our feet, when a man emerged from the darkness and asked us to put them on again, saying we should be more comfortable in the engine-house. If we stayed there we should be sure to catch a cold, as a result of being roasted on one side and frozen on the other. He kindly volunteered to accompany us there, so we thankfully accepted his invitation. We had some difficulty in following him owing to the darkness and obstructions in the way, but we reached the engine-room in safety, round the inside of which was a wooden seat, or bench, and acting upon his instructions we lay down on this to sleep, with a promise that he would waken us when he went off duty at six o’clock in the morning. We found it more comfortable here than on the windy pit bank, for there was an even and sleepy temperature. We were soon embosomed in the arms of nature’s great refresher, notwithstanding the occasional working of the winding engines, sleeping as soundly on those wooden benches as ever we did on the best feather-bed we patronised on our journey.
(Distance walked thirty-nine miles.)
Thursday, October 12th.
We were roused at six o’clock a.m. by the engine-driver, who had taken good care of us while we slept, and as we had had nothing to eat since our lunch at Hawick the day before, except the fruit purchased from the toll-keeper there, which we had consumed long before reaching Langholm, we were frightfully hungry. The engine-man told us there was a shop close by the colliery gate kept by a young man, where, if he happened to be in, we should be able to get some refreshments. He accompanied us to the place, and, after knocking loudly at the shop door, we were delighted to see the head of the shopkeeper appear through the window above. He was evidently well known to the engineer, who told him what we wanted, and he promised to “be down directly.”
It seemed a long time to us before the shop door was opened, and every minute appeared more like five than one; but we were soon comfortably seated in the shop, in the midst of all sorts of good things fit to eat. We should have liked to begin to eat them immediately, but the fire had to be lit and the kettle boiled, so we assisted with these operations while the young man cut into a fresh loaf of bread, broke open a pot of plum jam, opened a tin of biscuits, and, with the addition of a large slice of cheese and four fresh eggs, we had a really good breakfast, which we thoroughly enjoyed. He said it was a wonder we found him there, for it was very seldom he slept at the shop. His mother lived at a farm about a mile and a half away, where he nearly always slept; that night, however, he had been sleeping with his dog, which was to run in a race that day, and he spent the night with it lest it should be tampered with. He called the dog downstairs, and, though we knew very little about dogs, we could see it was a very fine-looking animal. Our friend said he would not take £50 for it, a price we thought exorbitant for any dog. When we had finished our enormous breakfast, we assisted the shopkeeper to clear the table, and as it was now his turn, we helped him to get his own breakfast ready, waiting upon him as he had waited upon us, while we conversed chiefly about colliers and dogs and our approaching visit to Gretna Green, which, as neither of us was married, was naturally our next great object of interest.
After our long walk the previous day, with very little sleep at the end of it, and the heavy breakfast we had just eaten, we felt uncommonly lazy and disinclined to walk very far that day. So, after wishing our friend good luck at the races, we bade him good-bye, and idly retraced our steps along the colliery road until we reached the bridge where we had met the collier so early in the morning. We had now time to admire the scenery, and regretted having passed through that beautiful part of the country during our weary tramp in the dark, and that we had missed so much of it, including the Border Towers on the River Esk.
Riddel Water, with its fine scenery, was on our left as we came from the colliery, where it formed the boundary between Scotland and England, emptying itself into the River Esk about two miles from Canonbie Bridge, which we now crossed, and soon arrived at the “Cross Keys Inn,” of which we had heard but failed to reach the previous night. The landlord of the inn, who was standing at the door, was formerly the driver of the Royal Mail Stagecoach “Engineer” which ran daily between Hawick and Carlisle on the Edinburgh to London main road. A good-looking and healthy man of over fifty years of age, his real name was Elder, but he was popularly known as Mr. Sandy or Sandy Elder. The coach, the last stage-coach that ever ran on that road, was drawn in ordinary weather by three horses, which were changed every seven or eight miles, the “Cross Keys” at Canonbie being one of the stopping-places.
Mr. Elder had many tales to tell of stage-coach days; one adventure, however, seemed more prominent in his thoughts than the others. It happened many years ago, when on one cold day the passengers had, with the solitary exception of one woman, who was sitting on the back seat of the coach, gone into the “Cross Keys Inn” for refreshments while the horses were being changed. The fresh set of horses had been put in, and the stablemen had gone to the hotel to say all was ready, when, without a minute’s warning, the fresh horses started off at full gallop along the turnpike road towards Carlisle. Great was the consternation at the inn, and Sandy immediately saddled a horse and rode after them at full speed. Meantime the woman, who Mr. Sandy said must have been as brave a woman as ever lived, crawled over the luggage on the top of the coach and on to the footboard in front. Kneeling down while holding on with one hand, she stretched the other to the horses’ backs and secured the reins, which had slipped down and were urging the horses forward. By this time the runaway horses had nearly covered the two miles between the inn and the tollgates, which were standing open, as the mail coach was expected, whose progress nothing must delay. Fortunately the keeper of the first gate was on the look-out, and he was horrified when he saw the horses coming at their usual great speed without Sandy the driver; he immediately closed the gate, and, with the aid of the brave woman, who had recovered the reins, the horses were brought to a dead stop at the gate, Mr. Sandy arriving a few minutes afterwards. The last run of this coach was in 1862, about nine years before our visit, and there was rather a pathetic scene on that occasion. We afterwards obtained from one of Mr. Elder’s ten children a cutting from an old newspaper she had carefully preserved, a copy of which is as follows:
Mr. Elder, the Landlord of the “Cross Keys Hotel,” was the last of the Border Royal Mail Coach Drivers and was familiarly known as “Sandy,” and for ten years was known as the driver of the coach between Hawick and Carlisle. When the railway started and gave the death-blow to his calling, he left the seat of the stage coach, and invested his savings in the cosy hostelry of the road-side type immortalised by Scott in his “Young Lochinvar.” He told of the time when he did duty on the stage coach for Dukes, Earls, and Lords, and aided run-a-way couples to reach the “blacksmith” at Gretna Green. He told of the days when he manipulated the ribbons from the box of the famous coach “Engineer” when he dashed along with foaming horses as if the fate of a nation depended upon his reaching his stage at a given time. He could remember Mosspaul Inn at the zenith of its fame under the reigning sovereign Mr. Gownlock—whose tact and management made his Hotel famous. He had frequently to carry large sums of money from the Border banks and although these were the days of footpads and highwaymen, and coaches were “held up” in other parts, Sandy’s Coach was never molested, although he had been blocked with his four-in-hand in the snow. He gave a graphic description of the running of the last mail coach from Hawick to Merrie Carlisle in 1862. Willie Crozier the noted driver was mounted on the box, and the horses were all decked out for the occasion. Jemmie Ferguson the old strapper, whose occupation like that of Othello’s was all gone, saw it start with a heavy heart, and crowds turned out to bid it good-bye. When the valleys rang with the cheery notes of the well-blown horn, and the rumbling sound of the wheels and the clattering hoofs of the horses echoed along the way, rich and poor everywhere came to view the end of a system which had so long kept them in touch with civilisation. The “Engineer” guards and drivers with scarlet coats, white hats, and overflowing boots, and all the coaching paraphernalia so minutely described by Dickens, then passed away, and the solitary remnant of these good old times was “Sandy” Elder the old Landlord of the “Cross Keys” on Canonbie Lea.
Soon after leaving the “Cross Keys” we came to a wood where we saw a “Warning to Trespassers” headed “Dangerous,” followed by the words “Beware of fox-traps and spears in these plantations.” This, we supposed, was intended for the colliers, for in some districts they were noted as expert poachers. Soon afterwards we reached what was called the Scotch Dyke, the name given to a mound of earth, or “dyke,” as it was called locally, some four miles long and erected in the year 1552 between the rivers Esk and Sark to mark the boundary between England and Scotland. We expected to find a range of hills or some substantial monument or noble ruin to mark the boundary between the two countries, and were rather disappointed to find only an ordinary dry dyke and a plantation, while a solitary milestone informed us that it was eighty-one and a half miles to Edinburgh. We were now between the two tollbars, one in Scotland and the other in England, with a space of only about fifty yards between them, and as we crossed the centre we gave three tremendous cheers which brought out the whole population of the two tollhouses to see what was the matter. We felt very silly, and wondered why we had done so, since we had spent five weeks in Scotland and had nothing but praise both for the inhabitants and the scenery. It was exactly 9.50 a.m. when we crossed the boundary, and my brother on reflection recovered his self-respect and said he was sure we could have got absolution from Sir Walter Scott for making all that noise, for had he not written:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d.
As the morning was beautifully fine, we soon forsook the highway and walked along the grassy banks of the Esk, a charming river whose waters appeared at this point as if they were running up hill. We were very idle, and stayed to wash our feet in its crystal waters, dressing them with common soap, which we had always found very beneficial as a salve. We sauntered past Kirkandrew’s Tower; across the river was the mansion of Netherby, the home of the Graham family, with its beautiful surroundings, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in his “Young Lochinvar,” who came out of the West, and—
One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he spran!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting ‘mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
We were far more inclined to think and talk than to walk, and as we sat on the peaceful banks of the river we thought what a blessing it was that those Border wars were banished for ever, for they appeared to have been practically continuous from the time of the Romans down to the end of the sixteenth century, when the two countries were united under one king, and we thought of that verse so often quoted:
The Nations in the present day
Preserve the good old plan,
That all shall take who have the power
And all shall keep who can.
We were not far from the narrowest point of the kingdom from east to west, or from one sea to the other, where the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, built his boundary wall; but since that time, if we may credit the words of another poet who described the warriors and their origin, other nationalities have waged war on the Borders—
From the worst scoundrel race that ever lived
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,
Who ransacked Kingdoms and dispeopled towns,
The Pict, the painted Briton, treacherous Scot
By hunger, theft, and rapine, hither brought
Norwegian Pirates—buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains;
Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed,
From whence you time-born Bordermen proceed.
How long we should have loitered on the bank of the river if the pangs of hunger had not again made themselves felt we could not say, but we resolved at last to walk to Longtown for some refreshments, and arrived there by noon, determined to make amends for our shortcomings after lunch, for, incredible though it seemed, we had only walked six miles! But we landed in a little cosy temperance house, one of those places where comfort prevailed to a much greater extent than in many more brilliant establishments. It was kept by one Forster, a gentleman of distinction, possessing a remarkable temperament and following numerous avocations. He informed us he was the parish clerk, and that the Lord Bishop was holding a Confirmation Service in the church at 3 p.m. We had intended only to stay for lunch and then resume our journey, but the mention of a much less important person than the Lord Bishop would have made us stay until tea-time, and travel on afterwards, so we decided to remain for the service. Punctually at three o’clock, escorted by the son of our landlord, we entered the Arthuret Church, the Parish Church of Longtown, about half a mile away from the town. It was built in 1609 and dedicated to St. Michael, but had recently been restored and a handsome stained-glass window placed at the east end in memory of the late Sir James Graham, whose burial-place we observed marked by a plain stone slab as we entered the churchyard. In consequence of a domestic bereavement the organist was absent, and as he had forgotten to leave the key the harmonium was useless. Our friend the parish clerk, however, was quite equal to the occasion, for as the Psalm commencing “All people that on earth do dwell” was given out, he stepped out into the aisle and led off with the good old tune the “Old Hundredth,” so admirably adapted for congregational use, and afterwards followed with the hymn beginning “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” completing the choral part of the service to the tune of “Duke Street”; we often wondered where that street was, and who the duke was that it was named after. Our admiration of the parish clerk increased when we found he could start the singing of Psalms and on the correct note in the presence of a Lord Bishop, and we contemplated what might have been the result had he started the singing in a higher or a lower key. We rejoiced that the responsibility rested upon him and not on ourselves. The Candidates for Confirmation were now requested to stand while the remainder of the congregation remained seated. The Bishop, Dr. Goodwin, delivered a homely, solemn, and impressive address. His lordship did not take any text, but spoke extempore, and we were well pleased with his address, so appropriate was it to the occasion; the language was easy and suited to the capacities of those for whom the service was specially held. As sympathisers with the temperance movement we thoroughly coincided with the Bishop’s observations when he affectionately warned his hearers against evil habits, amongst which he catalogued that of indulgence in intoxicating drinks, and warned the young men not to frequent public-houses, however much they might be ridiculed or thought mean for not doing so. The candidates came from three parishes, the girls dressed very plainly and as usual outnumbering the boys. The general congregation was numerically small, and we were surprised that there was no collection! Service over, we returned to our lodgings for tea, intending to resume our walk immediately afterwards. We were so comfortable, however, and the experiences of the previous day and night so fresh in our minds, and bodies, that we decided to rest our still weary limbs here for the night, even though we had that day only walked six miles, the shortest walk in all our journey.
Our host, Mr. Forster, was moreover a very entertaining and remarkable man. He had been parish clerk for many years, a Freemason for upwards of thirty years, letter-carrier or postman for fourteen years, and recently he and his wife had joined the Good Templars! He had many interesting stories of the runaway marriages at Gretna Green, a piece of Borderland neither in Scotland nor England, and he claimed to have suggested the Act of Parliament brought in by Lord Brougham to abolish these so-called “Scotch” marriages by a clause which required twenty-one days’ residence before the marriage could be solemnised, so that although the Act was called Lord Brougham’s Act, he said it was really his. Its effects were clearly demonstrated in a letter he had written, which appeared in the Registrar-General’s Report, of which he showed us a copy, stating that while in the year 1856, the year of the passing of Lord Brougham’s Act, there were 757 marriages celebrated in the district of Gretna Green, thirty-nine entered as taking place in one day, November 8th, in the following year there were only thirty and in the next forty-one, showing conclusively that the Act had been effectual. We could have listened longer to our host’s stories, but we had to rise early next morning to make up for our loss of mileage, and retired early to make up for our loss of sleep on the previous night.
(Distance walked six miles.)
Friday, October 13th.
We left Longtown at 7.30 a.m. by the long and wide thoroughfare which gives rise to its name, and followed the Carlisle road until we turned to the right for Gretna Green. Our road lay between Solway Moss and the River Esk, to both of which some historic events were attached. Solway Moss is about seven miles in circumference, and is covered with grass and rushes, but it shakes under the least pressure, and will swallow up nearly anything. In 1776, after heavy rains, it burst, and, as in Ireland, streams of black peaty mud began to creep over the plain and to overwhelm the houses. It was the scene of a battle fought on November 24th, 1542, when the English Army under Sir Thomas Wharton defeated a Scottish Army of 10,000 men, who were either killed, drowned, or taken prisoners. One of the unfortunates was unearthed in later times by peat-diggers, a man on his horse, who had sunk in the bog. The skeletons were well preserved, and the different parts of the armour easily recognisable. The disastrous result of this battle so affected James V, King of Scotland, that he is said to have died of a broken heart. Personally, we thought he deserved a greater punishment for the murder of Johnnie Armstrong and his followers twelve years before this event, for Armstrong was just the man who could and would have protected the Borders.
The River Esk was associated with Prince Charlie, who, with his soldiers, had to cross it when retreating before the army of the Duke of Cumberland. It was a difficult operation to carry out, as the usually shallow ford had been converted by the melting snow into a swift-flowing current four feet deep. The cavalry were drawn up in two lines across the stream, one to break the current and the other to prevent any of the foot-soldiers being washed away as they crossed the river between the two lines of cavalry. Lower down the river still were Prince Charlie and his officers, who were better mounted than the others. The foot-soldiers walked arm-in-arm, with their heads barely above the water, making the space between the cavalry lines to look as if it were set with paving-stones. One poor soldier lost his hold on his comrade and was washed down the river, and would certainly have been drowned had not the Prince seized him by the hair, and, shouting in Gaelic for help, held on until both of them were rescued. After being hunted in the Highland glens for months with a ransom of £30,000 placed on his head—not a Celt betraying his whereabouts—by the help of Flora Macdonald Prince Charlie escaped to Brittany, and finally died at Rome in the arms of the Master of Nairn in 1788. In 1794 the Beds of Esk, a large sandbank where the tide meets the stream, presented an unusual spectacle, and a striking tribute to the dangerous character of the river especially when in flood. Collected together on the beach were a varied assortment of animals and human beings, consisting of no less than 9 black cattle, 3 horses, 1,040 sheep, 45 dogs, 180 hares, many smaller animals, and 3 human beings, all of whom had been cut off by the rapidly advancing tide.
Many other events have happened in this neighbourhood, one of the most sensational perhaps being the death of King Edward I, “The Hammer of the Scots,” also nicknamed “Longshanks,” from the length of his lower limbs, who died in 1307 on these marshes, requesting his effeminate son, the Prince of Wales, as he bade him farewell, not to bury his body until the Scots were utterly subdued, but this wish was prevented by the defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn.
We passed by some large peat-fields, and, crossing the River Sark, were once more in Scotland, notwithstanding the fact that we had so recently given three cheers as we passed out of it. We traversed the length of Springfield, a stone-built village of whitewashed, one-storied cottages, in which we could see handloom weavers at work, nearly fifty of them being employed in that industry. Formerly, we were told, the villagers carried on an illicit commerce in whisky and salt, on which there were heavy duties in England, but none on whisky in Scotland. The position here being so close to the borders, it was a very favourable one for smuggling both these articles into England, and we heard various exciting stories of the means they devised for eluding the vigilance of the excise officers. As we passed through the neighbourhood at a quick rate, the villagers turned out to have a look at us, evidently thinking something important was going on.
We saw many workers in the fields, who called out to us hinting about the nature of our journey, as we travelled towards Gretna Green. Some of the women went so far as to ask us if we wanted any company. The most conspicuous objects in the village were the church and the remarkably high gravestones standing like sentinels in the churchyard. Bonnie Prince Charlie arrived here on the afternoon of his birthday in 1745, stabling his horse in the church, while the vicar fled from what he described in the church book as “the Rebels.” A small cottage—said to be the oldest in Gretna—is shown in which Prince Charlie slept. The village green appeared to us as if it had been fenced in and made into a garden, and a lady pointed out an ancient-looking building, which she said was the hall where the original “Blacksmith” who married the runaway couples resided, but which was now occupied by a gentleman from Edinburgh. She explained the ceremony as being a very simple one, and performed expeditiously: often in the road, almost in sight of the pursuers of the runaway pair. All sorts and conditions of men and women were united there, some of them from far-off lands, black people amongst the rest, and she added with a sigh, “There’s been many an unhappy job here,” which we quite believed. There were other people beside the gentleman at the hall who made great profit by marrying people, both at Springfield and Gretna, and a list of operators, dated from the year 1720, included a soldier, shoemaker, weaver, poacher, innkeeper, toll-keeper, fisherman, pedlar, and other tradesmen. But the only blacksmith who acted in that capacity was a man named Joe Paisley, who died in 1811 aged seventy-nine years. His motto was, “Strike while the iron’s hot,” and he boasted that he could weld the parties together as firmly as he could one piece of iron to another.
Joe was a man of prodigious strength; he could bend a strong iron poker over his arm, and had frequently straightened an ordinary horse-shoe in its cold state with his hands. He could also squeeze the blood from the finger ends of any one who incurred his anger. He was an habitual drunkard, his greatest boast being that he had once been “teetotal” for a whole forenoon. When he died he was an overgrown mass of superfluous fat, weighing at least twenty-five stone. He was said to have earned quite a thousand pounds per year by his encroachments into the province of the cleric, and when on his deathbed he heard three carriages arrive, he consented to marry the three wealthy couples they contained, and found himself two or three hundred pounds richer than before. He also boasted that the marriage business had been in his family for quite one hundred years, and that his uncle, the old soldier Gordon, used to marry couples in the full uniform of his regiment, the British Grenadiers. He gave a form of certificate that the persons had declared themselves to be single, that they were married by the form of the Kirk of Scotland, and agreeably to that of the Church of England.
One of the most celebrated elopements to Gretna was that of the Earl of Westmorland and Miss Child, the daughter of the great London banker. The earl had asked for the hand of Sarah, and had been refused, the banker remarking, “Your blood is good enough, but my money is better,” so the two young people made it up to elope and get married at Gretna Green. The earl made arrangements beforehand at the different stages where they had to change horses, but the banker, finding that his daughter had gone, pursued them in hot haste. All went well with the runaway couple until they arrived at Shap, in Westmorland, where they became aware they were being pursued. Here the earl hired all the available horses, so as to delay the irate banker’s progress. The banker’s “money was good,” however, and the runaways were overtaken between Penrith and Carlisle. Hero the earl’s “blood was good,” for, taking deliberate aim at the little star of white on the forehead of the banker’s leading horse, he fired successfully, and so delayed the pursuit that the fugitives arrived at Gretna first; and when the bride’s father drove up, purple with rage and almost choking from sheer exasperation, he found them safely locked in what was called the bridal chamber! The affair created a great sensation in London, where the parties were well known, heavy bets being made as to which party would win the race. At the close of the market it stood at two to one on the earl and the girl.
In those days “postboys” were employed to drive the runaways from the hotels at Carlisle to Gretna, one of the most noted of whom was Jock Ainslie, on the staff of the “Bush Inn” at Carlisle. On one occasion he was commissioned to drive a runaway couple, who had just arrived by the coach from London, to Gretna, but when they got as far as Longtown they insisted they were tired and must stay for dinner before going forward, so they sent Jock back. He returned to Carlisle rather reluctantly, advising the runaways to lose no time. But when he got back to the “Bush Inn” he saw the mother of the lady whom he had left at Longtown drive up to the hotel door accompanied by a Bow Street officer. While they were changing horses, Jock went to the stable, saddled a horse, rode off to Longtown, and told his patrons what he had seen. They immediately hurried into a chaise, but had not gone far before they heard the carriage wheels of their pursuers. Jock Ainslie was quite equal to the occasion, and drove the chaise behind a thick bush, whence the pair had the satisfaction of seeing “Mamma” hurry past at full speed in pursuit. While she was continuing her search on the Annan Road, Jock quietly drove into Springfield and had his patrons “hitched up” without further delay, and doubtless was well rewarded for his services.
WILLIE LANG
The last of the “Lang” line of priests.
It seemed a strange thing that Lord Brougham, who brought in the famous Act, should himself have taken advantage of a “Scotch” marriage, and that two other Lord Chancellors, both celebrated men, should have acted in the same manner; Lord Eldon, the originator of the proverb—
New brooms sweep clean,
was married at Gretna, and Lord Erskine at Springfield. Marriage in this part of Scotland had not the same religious significance as elsewhere, being looked upon as more in the nature of a civil contract than a religious ceremony. The form of marriage was almost entirely a secular matter, and if a man and woman made a declaration before two witnesses that they were single persons and had resided twenty-one days in Scotland, they were considered as being man and wife. At the point where the Black Esk and White Esk Rivers join, a remarkable custom called “Handfasting” prevailed hundreds of years ago. Here, at a place known as Handfasting Hough, young men and women assembled in great numbers and made matrimonial engagements by joining hands. The marriage was only binding for one year, but if both parties were then satisfied, the “handfasting” was continued for life. King Robert II of Scotland, it was said, was one of those who was “hand-fasted” there.
(Facsimile of Lord Erskine’s signature.)
We now left Gretna, still single, for Carlisle, nine and a half miles away, the distance to Glasgow in the opposite direction being eighty-five miles. We recrossed the River Sark, the boundary here between Scotland and England, the famous tollbar through which eloping couples had to hurry before they could reach Gretna Green. In those days gangs of men were ever on the watch to levy blackmail both on the pursued and their pursuers, and the heaviest purse generally won when the race was a close one. We saw a new hotel on the English side of the river which had been built by a Mr. Murray specially for the accommodation of the runaways while the “Blacksmith” was sent for to join them together on the other side of the boundary, but it had only just been finished when Lord Brougham’s Act rendered it practically useless, and made it a bad speculation for Mr. Murray. Passing through the tollgate we overtook a man with half a dozen fine greyhounds, in which, after our conversation with the owner of the racing dog at Canonbie Collieries, we had become quite interested; and we listened to his description of each as if we were the most ardent dog-fanciers on the road. One of the dogs had taken a first prize at Lytham and another a second at Stranraer. We passed through a country where there were immense beds of peat, hurrying through Todhilis without even calling at the “Highland Laddie” or the “Jovial Butcher” at Kingstown, and we crossed the River Eden as we entered the Border city of Carlisle, sometimes called “Merrie Carlisle,” or, as the Romans had it, Lugovalum.
An elderly gentleman whom we overtook, and of whom we inquired concerning the objects of interest to be seen, appeared to take more interest in business matters than in those of an antiquarian nature, for he told us that “Carr’s Biscuit Manufactory” with its machinery was a far finer sight than either the cathedral or the castle. Perhaps he was right, but our thoughts were more in the direction of bygone ages, with the exception of the letters that were waiting for us at the post office, and for which we did not forget to call. Merrie Carlisle, we were informed, was the chief residence of King Arthur, whose supposed ghostly abode and that of his famous knights, or one of them, we had passed earlier in the week. We were now told that near Penrith, a town to the south of Carlisle, there was still to be seen a large circle surrounded by a mound of earth called “Arthur’s Round Table,” and that in the churchyard were the giants’ graves.
In the very old ballad on the “Lothely Lady” King Arthur was described as returning after a long journey to his Queen Guenevere, in a very sad mood:
And there came to him his cozen, Sir Gawain,
Y’ was a courteous Knight;
Why sigh you soe sore, Unkle Arthur, he said,
Or who hath done thee unright?
Arthur told him he had been taken prisoner by a fierce, gigantic chief, who had only released him and spared his life on condition that he would return and pay his ransom on New Year’s Day, the ransom being that he must tell the giant “that which all women most desire.” When the morning of the day arrived, Arthur was in great despair, for nearly all the women he had asked had given him different answers, but he was in honour bound to give himself up; and as he rode over the moors he saw a lady dressed in scarlet, sitting between an oak and a green holly. Glancing at her, Arthur saw the most hideous woman he had ever seen.
Then there as shold have stood her mouth,
Then there was sett her e’e,
The other was in her forhead fast,
The way that she might see.
Her nose was crooked, and turned outward,
Her mouth stood foul awry;
A worse formed lady than she was,
Never man saw with his eye.
King Arthur rode on and pretended not to see her, but she called him back and said she could help him with his ransom. The King answered, “If you can release me from my bond, lady, I shall be grateful, and you shall marry my nephew Gawain, with a gold ring.” Then the lothely lady told Arthur that the thing all women desired was “to have their own way.” The answer proved to be correct, and Arthur was released; but the “gentle Gawain” was now bound by his uncle’s promise, and the “lothely lady” came to Carlisle and was wedded in the church to Gawain. When they were alone after the ceremony she told him she could be ugly by day and lovely by night, or vice versa, as he pleased, and for her sake, as she had to appear amongst all the fine ladies at the Court, he begged her to appear lovely by day. Then she begged him to kiss her, which with a shudder he did, and immediately the spell cast over her by a witch-step mother was broken, and Gawain beheld a young and lovely maiden. She was presented to Arthur and Guenevere, and was no longer a “lothely” lady. Then the ballad goes on:
King Arthur beheld the lady faire,
That was soe faire and bright;
He thanked Christ in Trinity,
For Sir Gawain, that gentle Knight.
King Arthur’s table was supposed to have been made round for the same reason that John o’ Groat’s was made octagonal—to avoid jealousy amongst his followers.
We visited the cathedral, which had suffered much in the wars, but in the fine east window some very old stained glass remained, while parts of the building exhibit the massive columns and circular arches typical of the Norman architect. Here, in the presence of King Edward I and his Parliament, Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, was excommunicated by the Papal Legate for the murder of the Red Comyn in the Church of the Minorite Friars in Dumfries. Here, too, Sir Walter Scott was married to Charlotte Carpenter in the presence of Jane Nicholson and John Bird on December 29th, 1797. Sir Walter was touring in the Lake District in July of that year, and while staying at Gilsland Wells he first saw a fascinating and elegant young lady, the daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyons, then under the charge of the Rev. John Bird, a Minor Canon of Carlisle Cathedral. She was described, possibly by Sir Walter himself, as being rich in personal attractions, with a form fashioned as light as a fairy’s, a complexion of the clearest and finest Italian brown, and a profusion of silken tresses as black as the raven’s wing. A humorous savant wrote the following critique on this description of the beauty of Sir Walter’s fiancée:
It is just possible the rascal had been reading some of the old Welsh stories collected in the twelfth century and known as the Mabinogion stories. In one Oliven is described so—
“More yellow was her head than the yellow of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the sprays of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewed falcon was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowed than the heart of the white swan; her cheek was redder than the reddest roses.”
THE “POPPING STONE,” GILSLAND.
Or again, both of the love-stricken swains may have dipped, into the Arabian Nights, where imagination and picture painting runs riot.
There was no doubt that Scott fell deeply in love with her, so much so that a friend whom he visited in 1797 wrote that “Scott was ‘sair’ beside himself about Miss Carpenter and that they toasted her twenty times over and raved about her until one o’clock in the morning.” Sir Walter seemed to have acted in his courtship on the old north-country adage, “Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing,” for he was married to her three months afterwards. The whole details are carefully preserved in local tradition. The River Irthing runs through Gilsland, and at the foot of the cliffs, which rise go feet above the river, were the Sulphur Wells. Near these, on the bank of the river, was a large stone named the “Popping Stone,” where it was said that Sir Walter Scott “popped the question,” and all who can get a piece of this stone, which, by the way, is of a very hard nature, and place it under the pillow at night, will dream of their future partners. The hotel people tell a good story of a gentleman, an entire stranger to the district, who went in company with a lady who knew the neighbourhood to see the famous stone. After walking for some distance they were passing a stone, when the gentleman asked, “Is this the popping stone?” “No,” answered his fair companion, “but any large stone will do.”
Near the stone there was a bush called the “Kissing Bush,” where Sir Walter was said to have sealed the sweet compact when the temperature was only “two in the shade.”
Oh happy love! where Love like this is found!
Oh heartfelt raptures! Bliss beyond compare!
I’ve paced much this weary mortal round,
If Heaven a draught of Heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
‘Tis when a youthful loving modest pair
In other’s arms breathe out the tender tale
Beneath the “Kissing Bush” that scents the evening gale.
John Wesley visited Carlisle and preached there on several occasions. Rabbie Burns, too, after the publication of the first edition of his poems, visited it in 1786, patronising the “Malt Shovel Inn,” where, as he wrote, “he made a night of it.”
We paid a hurried visit to the castle on the summit of a sharp aclivity overlooking the River Eden, in whose dungeons many brave men have been incarcerated, where we saw a dripping-or dropping-stone worn smooth, it was said, by the tongues of thirsty prisoners to whom water was denied. The dropping was incessant, and we were told a story which seems the refinement of cruelty, in which the water was allowed to drop on a prisoner’s head until it killed him. From the castle mound we could see the country for a long distance, and there must have been a good view of the Roman wall in ancient times, as the little church of Stanwix we had passed before crossing the River Eden was built on the site of a Roman station on Hadrian’s Wall, which there crossed the river on low arches. The wall was intended to form the boundary between England and Scotland, and extended for seventy miles, from Bowness-on-the-Solway to Wallsend-on-the-Tyne, thus crossing the kingdom at its narrowest part.
We left Carlisle at a speed of four miles per hour, and within the hour we had our first near view of the Cumberland Hills, Scawfell being the most conspicuous. We decided to go to Maryport, however, as we heard that a great number of Roman altars had recently been discovered there. We were now once more in England, with its old-fashioned villages, and at eleven miles from Carlisle we reached Wigton, whose streets and footpaths were paved with boulders and cobble-stones; here we stayed for refreshments. A further eight-miles’ walk, some portion of it in the dark, brought us to Aspatria, but in the interval we had passed Brayton Hall, the residence of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., M.P., the leader of the Legislative Temperance Movement for the abolition of the Liquor Traffic, and who, at a later date, was said to be the wittiest member of the House of Commons. As Chairman of the United Kingdom Alliance, that held its annual gatherings in the great Free Trade Hall in Manchester, a building capable of seating 5,000 persons, so great was his popularity that the immense building, including the large platform, was packed with people long before the proceedings were timed to begin, there being left only sufficient space for the chairman and the speakers. The interval before the arrival of these gentlemen was whiled away by the audience in singing well-known hymns and songs, and on one occasion, when Sankey and Moody’s hymns had become popular, just as the people were singing vociferously the second line of the verse—
See the mighty host advancing,
Satan leading on!
Sir Wilfrid appeared on the platform followed by the speakers. His ready wit seized the humour of the situation, and it is said that he was so deeply affected by this amusing incident that it took him a whole week to recover! As a speaker he never failed to secure the attention and respect of his audience, and even of those in it who did not altogether agree with his principles. As an advocate of the total suppression of the Liquor Traffic, on every occasion his peroration was listened to with almost breathless attention, and concluded in an earnest and impressive manner which left a never-to-be-forgotten impression upon those who heard it, the almost magic spell by which he had held the vast audience being suddenly broken, as if by an electric shock, into thunders of applause when he recited his favourite verse. We can hear his voice still repeating the lines:
Slowly moves the march of ages,
Slowly grows the forest king,
Slowly to perfection cometh
Every great and glorious thing!
It was 8 p.m. as we entered Aspatria, where we found lodgings for the night at Isaac Tomlinson’s. We expected Aspatria, from its name, to have had some connection with the Romans, but it appeared to have been so called after Aspatrick, or Gospatrick, the first Lord of Allerdale, and the church was dedicated to St. Kentigern. The Beacon Hill near the town was explored in 1799, and a vault discovered containing the skeleton of a gigantic warrior seven feet long, who had been buried with his sword, dagger, gold bracelet, horse’s bit, and other accoutrements dating from the sixth century.
We had passed a small village near our road named Bromfield, which was said to possess strong claims to have been the site of the Battle of Brunanburch, fought in the year 937, when Anlaf, King of Dublin, formed a huge confederacy with the King of the Scots, the King of Strathclyde, and Owen, King of Cumbria, against Athelstan, King of England, by whom, however, they were signally defeated; but we afterwards came to a place a long way further south which also claimed to have been the site of that famous battle.
According to the following record, however, our native county of Chester appeared to have the strongest claim to that distinction:
It is not actually certain where the Battle of Brunanburch was fought, but it is by all historians said to have taken place in the Wirral Peninsula about the site where Bromborough is now situated. The Battle took place in 937 A.D., and it was here that Athelstan defeated the united forces of Scotland, Cumberland, and the British and Danish Chiefs, which is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle in a great war song. The name given in the Chronicle is Brunesburgh, but at the time of the Conquest it was called Brunburgh.
The fleet set sail from Dublin under the command of the Danish King Anlaf or Olaf to invade England. He had as his father-in-law, Constantine, King of the Scots, and many Welsh Chieftains supported him. They made good their landing but were completely routed by King Athelstan, Grandson of Alfred, as stated above.
It is more than probable that Anlaf sailing from Dublin would come over to England by the usual route to the havens opposite, near the great roadstead of the Dee estuary.
One must not forget that the sea has made great ravages upon this coast, destroying much ground between Wallasey and West Kirby, though compensating for it in some measure by depositing the material in the estuary itself in the shape of banks of mud and sand. Nor must one overlook the existence of the old forest of Wirral, which stretched, as the old saying ran—
From Blacon Point to Hilbre
Squirrels in search of food
Might then jump straight from tree to tree.
So thick the forest stood!
Chester was held by the king, for the warlike daughter of Alfred, Ethelfleda, had rebuilt it as a fort after it had been lying in waste for generations, and had established another at Runcofan, or Runcorn. It was natural, therefore, for Anlaf to avoid the waters protected by Athelstan’s fleet and seek a landing perhaps at the old Roman landing-place of Dove Point, near Hoylake, or in the inlet now carved into the Timber Float at Birkenhead. Norse pirates had made a settlement here beforehand, as the place names, Kirby, Calby, Greasby, and Thorstaston, seem to indicate.
Bromborough would be just the spot for a strategist like Athelstan to meet the invader, trying to force a way between the forest and the marshes about Port Sunlight. This old port at Dove Point has been washed away, though many wonderful relics of Roman and earlier times have been found there, and are safely housed in the Chester Museum. Once again it was used for the embarking of the army under William III, when he sailed for Ireland to meet the late king, James II, in battle.
When Chester began to lose its trade through the silting up of its harbour, about the reigns of the Lancastrian kings, it became necessary to sail from lower down the estuary, Parkgate being in the best position and possessing a quay, while Dawpool was also frequently used. But a good port was necessary, because Ireland was frequently in rebellion, and troops were usually passed over the channel from this region.
Parkgate was most prosperous in the eighteenth century, but the construction of the great Irish road through Llangollen to Holyhead, and of a good coach road from Warrington to Liverpool, and the later development of railways caused its decline, until in our time it was only known for its shrimps and as the headquarters of a small coast fleet of fishing-boats.
It was to Dawport, or Darport, that Dean Swift usually sailed from Dublin at the beginning of the eighteenth century for his frequent visits to his brother wits, Addison and Steele. It was strange how many common sayings of to-day were his in origin such as, “There is none so blind as they that won’t see,” and, “A penny for your thoughts.” Like many witty people, he must needs have his little joke. He was made Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1713, and was accustomed to preach there each Sunday afternoon, and was said to have preached on the same subject on sixteen consecutive occasions. On making his seventeenth appearance he asked the congregation if they knew what he was going to preach about. Most of them answered “Yes,” while others replied “No.” “Some of you say Yes,” said the Dean, “and some of you say No. Those who know, tell those who don’t know,” and he immediately pronounced the benediction and left the pulpit!
At Chester he was accustomed to stay at the “Yacht Inn” in Watergate Street, the old street of Roman origin, which led westwards to the river beneath the River Gate. A dean is a dean, and his dignity must be preserved in a Cathedral city. Of a Dean of Chester of the early nineteenth century it is recounted that he would never go to service at the Cathedral except in stately dignity, within his stage coach with postillions and outriders, and would never even take his wife with him inside. Dean Swift probably announced his arrival to his brother of Chester as one king announces his approach to another king. But the story goes that a great cathedral function was on and no one came to welcome the great man. Perhaps there was a little excuse, for most likely they had suffered from his tongue. But, however much they might have suffered, they would have hurried to see him had they foreseen his revenge. And perhaps a poor dinner had contributed to the acidity of his mind when he scratched on one of the windows the following verse:
Rotten without and mouldering within.
This place and its clergy are all near akin!
It is a far cry from the battle of Brunanburch to Dean Swift, but the thought of Anlaf took us back to Ireland, and Ireland and Chester were closely connected in trade for many centuries.
So it was with thoughts of our homeland that we retired for the night after adding another long day’s walk to our tour.
(Distance walked thirty-two and a half miles.)
Saturday, October 14th.
The long, straggling street of Aspatria was lit up with gas as we passed along it in the early morning on the road towards Maryport, and we marched through a level and rather uninteresting country, staying for slight boot repairs at a village on our way. We found Maryport to be quite a modern looking seaport town, with some collieries in the neighbourhood. We were told that the place had taken its name from Mary Queen of Scots; but we found this was not correct, as the name was given to it about the year 1756, after Mary the wife of Humphrey Senhouse, the Lord of the Manor at that period, the first house there apart from the old posting-house, having been built in the year 1748. For centuries there had been a small fishing-village at the mouth of the river, which in the time of Edward I was named Ellenfoot, while the river itself was named the Alne, now corrupted into Ellen. Maryport was of some importance in the time of the Romans, and their camp, about five acres in extent, still overlooked the sea. It was probably founded by Agricola about A.D. 79, and in A.D. 120 was the station of the Roman Fleet under Marcus Menaeius Agrippa, Admiral of the Roman Fleet in British Waters, and a personal friend of Hadrian. The Roman name of the station was probably Glanoventa, though other names have been suggested. The North-east Gateway was more distinct than other portions of the camp, the ruts made by the chariot wheels of the Romans being still visible inside the threshold. The Roman village in those days covered the four fields on the north-east side of the camp, and since the seventeenth century about forty Roman altars had been found, seventeen of them having been discovered in 1870, the year before our visit. They had been carefully buried about 300 yards east of the camp, and were discovered through a plough striking against one of them. Among them were altars to Jupiter, Mars, Virtue, Vulcan, Neptune, Belatucadrus, Eternal Rome, Gods and Goddesses, Victory, and to the Genius of the Place Fortune, Rome. In addition there were twelve small or household altars, querns, Roman millstones, cup and ring stones, a large, so-called, serpent stone, and several sepulchral slabs, sculptures, etc. There were also large quantities of Samian and other pottery, and articles in glass, bronze, lead, and iron, with about 140 coins, many of these remains being unique. This wonderful discovery proved that the Romans were resident here right up to the end of their occupation of Britain, as the coins bore the names of thirty-two Roman Emperors. The altars themselves were buried where they were found probably before A.D. 200. It is well known that their soldiers were drafted from many other nations, and there is distinct evidence that amongst others the first cohort of Spaniards appeared to have been prominent, while the Legionary Stones were of the Second and Twentieth Legions, the latter being stationed for a long time at Chester and moved to the north of England in the latter half of the fourth century.
ALTAR STONES.
“Roman remains found at Maryport, and dating probably about or before A.D. 200.”
The Roman ships carried stores here from Deva, their station on the Dee, now known as Chester, for the use of the builders of Hadrian’s Wall, so that Maryport ought to be a happy hunting-ground for antiquaries. After the departure of the Romans, Maryport must have been left to decay for over a thousand years, and it seemed even now to be a place that very few tourists visited. Netherhall, where most of the antiquities were carefully stored, was originally a Peel Tower, and up to the year 1528 was the home of the Eaglesfields and the reputed birthplace of Robert Eaglesfield, the founder of Queen’s College, Oxford; it was now in possession of the Senhouse family. There was also the Mote Hill, overlooking the river and surrounded by a deep ditch, under the protection of which the Roman galleys anchored.
A romantic legend of the period of the Roman occupation still clings to the neighbourhood, called the Legend of the Golden Coffin:
The daughter of one of the Roman officers was loved by a young warrior from the other side of the Solway. Their trysting-place was discovered by the girl’s father, who had a number of soldiers with him, and in spite of the entreaties of the girl, her lover was killed. With his death the maiden had no desire to live; night after night she made her way to the fatal spot, where she was eventually found, having died of a broken heart. The father prepared a wonderful funeral for her. Her body was arranged in silken garments, and then placed in a golden coffin and buried in a deep grave just outside the camp, where her spirit was still supposed to haunt the place at midnight.
On the sea coast a sunken forest existed, while the shore was covered with granite boulders of many sizes and shapes, and large numbers of similar stones were ploughed up in the fields, all apparently ice-borne, and having been carried mostly from Criffel on the Scottish coast, and the following legend was told here to explain their presence on the English side of the Solway.
There once lived a giant on Criffel which was on the opposite coast of the Solway Firth, while another giant lived on Skiddaw, one of the highest mountains in Cumberland. For a time they lived in peace and quietness, but an occasion came when they quarrelled. Then they took up stones and hurled them at each other; but many of them fell short, and hence they are now widely scattered.
WORDSWORTH’S BIRTHPLACE, COCKERMOUTH.
We now returned towards the hills and followed what was once a Roman road through a level country to Cockermouth, passing on our way through the colliery village of Dearham, a name meaning the “home of wild animals”; but we saw nothing wilder than a few colliers. The church here was built in 1130, while the tower was built in the fourteenth century for defence against the Scotch marauders. There were many old stones and crosses in the churchyard. Cockermouth, as its name implies, is situated at the mouth of the River Cocker, which here joins its larger neighbour the River Derwent, and has been called the Western Gate of the Lake District. Here also were Roman, Saxon, and Norman remains. The castle, standing in a strong position between the two rivers, was rebuilt in the reign of Edward I, and in Edward II’s time his haughty favourite, Piers Gaveston, resided in it for a short period. It was held for the king during the Civil War, but was left in ruins after an attack by the Parliamentarians in 1648. The Gateway Tower displayed many coats of arms, and there was the usual dungeon, or subterranean chamber, while the habitable portion of the castle formed the residence of Lord Leconfield. The poet, William Wordsworth, was born at Cockermouth on April 7th, 1770, about a hundred years before we visited it, and one of his itinerary poems of 1833 was an address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle:
Thou look’st upon me, and dost fondly think,
Poet! that, stricken as both are by years,
We, differing once so much, are now compeers,
Prepared, when each has stood his time, to sink
Into the dust. Erewhile a sterner link
United us; when thou in boyish play,
Entered my dungeon, did’st become a prey
To soul-appalling darkness. Not a blink
Of light was there; and thus did I, thy Tutor,
Make thy young thoughts acquainted with the grave;
While thou wert chasing the winged butterfly
Through my green courts; or climbing, a bold suitor,
Up to the flowers whose golden progeny
Still round my shattered brow in beauty wave.
Mary Queen of Scots stayed at Cockermouth on the night of May 17th, 1568—after the defeat of her army at Langside—at the house of Henry Fletcher, a merchant, who gave her thirteen ells of rich crimson velvet to make a robe she badly needed.
The weather turned out wet in the afternoon, so we stayed for tea at one of the inns in the town, and noted with curiosity that the number of the inhabitants in Cockermouth was 7,700 at one census, and exactly the same number at the next, which followed ten years afterwards. The new moon was now due, and had brought with it a change in the weather, our long spell of fine weather having given place to rain. We did not altogether agree with our agricultural friends in Cheshire that it was the moon that changed the weather, but it would be difficult to persuade the farmers there to the contrary, since the changes in the weather almost invariably came with the phases in the moon; so, without venturing to say that the moon changed the weather or that the weather changed the moon, we will hazard the opinion that the same influences might simultaneously affect both, and the knowledge that we were approaching the most rainy district in all England warned us to prepare for the worst. The scenery improved as we journeyed towards Keswick, the “City of the Lakes,” but not the weather, which continued dull and rainy, until by the time we reached the British stronghold known as Peel Wyke it was nearly dark. Here we reached Bassenthwaite Lake, four miles long and one mile broad, and had it not been for the rain and the darkness we might have had a good view across the lake of Skiddaw Mountain, 3,054 feet above sea-level and towards the right, and of Helvellyn, a still higher mountain, rising above Derwent Water, immediately in front of us. We had seen both of these peaks in the distance, but as the rain came on their summits became enveloped in the clouds. We walked about three miles along the edge of Bassenthwaite Lake, passing the villages of Thornthwaite and Braithwaite, where lead and zinc were mined. On arriving at Portinscale we crossed the bridge over the River Derwent which connects that lake (Derwent Water) with Bassenthwaite Lake through which it flows, and thence, past Cockermouth, to the sea at Workington. Soon after leaving Portinscale we arrived at Keswick, where we were comfortably housed until Monday morning at the Skiddaw Hotel, formerly a licensed house, but since converted into a first-class temperance house by Miss Lawson, the sister of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., M.P.
(Distance walked twenty-eight miles.)
Sunday, October 15th.
Rain had fallen heavily during the night, but the weather cleared up a little as we wended our way to morning service at Crosthwaite Church, dedicated to St. Kentigern, a Bishop of Glasgow, in the sixth century, and doing duty, we supposed, as the parish church of Keswick. The font there dated from the year 1390, and bore the arms of Edward III, with inscriptions on each of its eight sides which we could not decipher. In the chancel stood an alabaster tomb and effigy of Sir John Radcliffe and his wife, ancestors of the Earl of Derwentwater. The church also contained a monument to Southey the poet, erected at a cost of £1,100, and bearing the following epitaph written by the poet Wordsworth:
The vales and hills whose beauty hither drew
The poet’s steps, and fixed him here, on you
His eyes have closed! And ye, lov’d books, no more
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,
To works that ne’er shall forfeit their renown.
Adding immortal labours of his own—
Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal
For the State’s guidance, and the Church’s weal
Or fancy, disciplined by studious art,
Inform’d his pen, or wisdom of the heart.
Or judgements sanctioned in the Patriot’s mind
By reverence for the rights of all mankind.
Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast
Could private feelings meet for holier rest.
His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud
From Skiddaw’s top; but he to heaven was vowed.
Through his industrious life, and Christian faith
Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.
We attended the same church in the afternoon, and both the sermons were preached by the curate, his texts being Deut. vi. 5 in the morning and Hebrews iv. 3 in the afternoon. We were surprised to see such large congregations on a wet day, but concluded that the people were so accustomed to rain in that part of the country that they looked upon it as a matter of course. The people of Keswick evidently had other views as regards church-going than is expressed in the following lines by an author whose name we do not remember:
No pelting rain can make us stay
When we have tickets for the play;
But let one drop the side-walk smirch.
And it’s too wet to go to church.
At the morning service we sat in a pew in the rear of the church, and at one point in the service when it was usual in that part of the country for the congregation to sit down, one gentleman only remained standing. We could scarcely believe our own eyes when we recognised in this solitary figure the commanding form of Colonel Greenall of the Warrington Volunteers, a gentleman whom we know full well, for his brother was the rector of Grappenhall, our native village, where the Colonel himself formerly resided.
He was a great stickler for a due recognition of that pleasing but old-fashioned custom now fallen out of use, of the boys giving the rector, the squire, or any other prominent member of their families a respectful recognition when meeting them in the village or on their walks abroad. On one occasion the boys had forgotten their usual obeisance when meeting some relatives of the Colonel. He was highly indignant at this sin of omission, and took the earliest opportunity to bring the matter forcibly before his Sunday-school class, of which my brother was a member. The Colonel spoke long and feelingly to the boys on the subject of ordering themselves lowly and reverently before all their “betters,” including governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters, and to all those who were put in authority over them, and wound up his peroration with these words, which my brother never forgot, “And now, boys, whenever you meet ME, or any of MY FAMILY, mind you always touch your HATS!”
We did not stop to speak to the Colonel, as he was at the other end of the church and passed out through another door, but we were recognised by one of his men, who told us the Colonel had only just removed to that neighbourhood. He had liked his summer’s experiences there, but did not know how he would go on in the winter. The Colonel and his man were the only persons we saw on the whole of our journey that we knew.
To return to our boyish experiences and to the Colonel, the subject of his Sunday-school lesson was taken from the Summary of the Ten Commandments in the Church of England Prayer Book, where they were divided into two parts, the first four relating to our duty to God, and the remaining six to our duty towards our neighbour. It was surprising how these questions and answers learned in the days of our youth dwelt in our memories, and being Sunday, we each wrote them down from memory with the same result, and we again record them for the benefit of any of our friends who wish to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”
“Question.—What is thy duty towards God?
“Answer.—My duty towards God, is to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy Name and His Word, and to serve Him truly all the days of my life.
“Question.—What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour?
“Answer.—My duty towards my Neighbour, is to love him as myself, and to do unto all men, as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother: To honour and obey the Queen, and all that are put in authority under her: To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters: To hurt no body by word nor deed: To be true and just in all my dealing: To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering: To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity: Not to covet nor desire other men’s goods; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.”
The word “duty” in the last paragraph of the explanation of one’s duty to one’s neighbour must have been in the thoughts of both Nelson and his men at the Battle of Trafalgar when he signalled, “England expects that every man this day will do his duty.” Although objections may be raised to clauses in the summary, we always thought that our country could be none the worse, but all the better, if every one learned and tried to act up to the principles contained in these summaries of the Ten Commandments.
In the evening we attended St. John’s Church, where the Vicar officiated and preached from Isaiah lxvii. 7 to a large congregation, and after the service we returned to our hotel.
Keswick was a great resort of tourists and holiday people, and we were not without company at the hotel, from whom we obtained plenty of advice concerning our route on the morrow. We were strongly recommended to see the Druidical Circle and to climb Skiddaw, whose summit was over 3,000 feet above sea-level, from which we should have a view scarcely surpassed in the whole of Europe, and a scene that would baffle the attempts of ordinary men to describe, having taxed even the powers of Southey and Wordsworth. These recommendations and others were all qualified with the words “if fine.” But, oh that little word “if”—so small that we scarcely notice it, yet how much does it portend! At any rate we could not arrive at a satisfactory decision
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