“For shelter’d places, bosoms, nooks, and bays,
The Scottish Borderland is a poet’s land, a land of quiet and pensive beauty. Its variety is infinite; it woos you with the beauty of green solitude, of secluded lochs, of silver streams singing among the heather, of rolling moorland starred with golden whin, of winding sheep-tracks, of lonely peel-towers, and of douce grey towns, nestling at the foot of immemorial hills. The country has a thousand charms, but through them all runs a golden thread of romance that binds the land to days of long ago – days of forays and encounters, of sorrows and rejoicings, of old feuds and old friendships.
Every Border-lover has his own opinion of how best to enter this enchanted country. One may refer to approach from the “merrie” city of Carlisle, by way of Gretna Green, the goal of runaway lovers; past Ecclefechan, where, in “the house with the pend,” that craggy genius, Carlyle, was born, and so on through pleasant farming country, to old Dumfries where Robert Burns, ploughman, patriot and immortal singer, lived his last tragic days.
Another may choose to cross the Tweed at Coldstream, wandering along a road that plays hide-and seek with the dimpling silver river, past green fields and trim farmsteads, to grey-brown Kelso, with its ruined abbey-tower and cobbled square. A third may take the East Coast route from grim grey Berwick – a town that was always the battered shuttlecock in the fierce sport of Border warfare – past quaint Eyemouth and rocky St Abbs along a breezy coast of sandy links and blue seas.
Yet the most discerning seeker will eschew these pleasant routes and enter the Scottish Borderland by the road that runs from Otterburn high over Carter Bar, for this road, in its wild but lovely solitude, is the true gateway to the Borders. You may go for the miles and see no life but for the sheep, dotted against the purple heather; and hear no sound but the ripple of a burn or the piping of a curlew. This is the old rievers’ road, the way by which, under a misty moon the old moss-troopers, fierce, bearded men on shaggy horses, rode down over the Border to harry the hated English and drive off their cattle.
A solitary signpost tells you that you have crossed the Scottish Border and there, on the top of wild Carter Bar, you can look down on Scotland’s southern counties spread out below you, like a map, a rolling panorama of low hills and green valleys, dreaming under a summer sun or, maybe, lightly shrouded in a silken autumn mist. The road dips down. The moorland gives way to a gentler countryside of well-tilled fields, bounded by grey stone walls or trim beech hedges; and through the trees you catch glimpses of the gleaming waters of the river Jed. You are on the road to Jedburgh. The gaunt skeleton of its ruined abbey fronts you as you enter the town and you will pass on your right the old house where Mary Queen of Scots lay sick unto death after her wild ride to visit her wounded lover, Bothwell, at Hermitage Castle.
Wherever you go in the Border country you will find one name lovingly linked with its history, and inextricably woven with its beauty and romance. That name is Walter Scott. The landscape fo the Borders is the landscape that he loved and gave to the world with wizard pen.
You may see the farm of Sandy Knowe where under the shadow of Smailholm Tower, he played as a delicate boy. You may trace his footsteps in the bright, hilly town of Selkirk, where he laboured as a wise and kindly sheriff. Along the silvery reaches of the Tweed you may see the gleaming trout leap as they once leaped of his cast. You will visit the towered mansion of Abbotsford, his “romance in stone and lime,” whose grounds run down to the shelving banks of Tweed.
On the road between Melrose and Galashiels there is a spot where he drove during his last illness, and catching once more a glimpse of his loved Tweed, he “sprang up with a cry of delight.” There is another spot, high up on the ridge of Bemersyde, between Melrose and Dryburgh, that holds still more moving memories. The whin-covered slope falls steeply, while far below, the Tweed goes rippling over its stony bed in a glittering horseshoe loop and, away beyond, the three peaks of the Eildons melt into the sky. This is called “Scott’s View.” It is the loveliest picture in all the Lowland country and, perhaps, the saddest. Scott always reined up his horse there and paused to drink in the beauty of his own land. When he died and his funeral cortege wound slowly over the hill, the horses that drew the hearse stopped and paused for several minutes. They did not know that the master would never look upon that lovely view again . . .
The Scottish Border is a land of hills and rivers. Its hills are not high, as mountains go, nor have they the wild majesty of Highland peaks, yet they have a distinct character and charm of their own – green, sturdy and unchanging. A poet has called them “the kindly, hump-backed hills.” The most striking, though not the highest, is Eildon “of triple crown,” which dominates the landscape and forms a noble background to most pictures of the Scott country. It is said that Michael Scott, the medieval enchanter, split Eildon into its three peaks by a single word; it is said, too, that beneath its grassy slopes King Arthur and his knights lie sleeping, awaiting the fairy trumpet-call that shall wake them from their enchanted slumber.
You can climb the middle Eildon in half an hour from Melrose golf-links and, from its summit, gaze out over the broad Scottish Border country – a pageant of milting charm, dappled in sunshine and in dusky shadow. Here is Melrose, with its peaceful abbey walls. There, where Tweed and Gala meet, the chimney-stacks of Galashiels, dignified by distance, send curling plumes of thin grey smoke into the sky. Like a glittering girdle the Tweed encircles the picture, flowing by village and farm, by green meadow and thickly wooded spinney. Hills guard each far horizon, rising, spur on spur, like ramparts against the sky; the Peebles-shire hills and the romantic Lammermuirs sentinel the north, while to the south “the filmy Cheviots hang along the sky.” Everywhere you look is enchantment. To know the secret of the Border hills, you must give your heart to them, asking not for craggy grandeur, but for the serenity of green silences and the peace of un-trodden ways.
Between the hills the Scottish Border rivers bicker down their valleys. To the Tweed all pay homage. Poets have delighted in its silvery glitters and its chiming melody as it flows along. Never will it run straight, preferring its won sweet and wilful way; but from the point above Moffat, where it rises, down past Berwick to the sea, there is not a single mile that does not enshrine some spot where linger wistful beauty and romance, in rush-fringed pool or dappled shallow, where the heron wades and the blue kingfisher darts, between banks starred in springtime with primrose and wild hyacinth.
The Tweed has its worshippers in tens of thousands, but there are other streams, sung by poets and loved by Borderers: Ettrick and Yarrow, Leader and Leithen, Teviot and Till; on the western side, Annan, Esk, Liddel and Nith – the Nith on whose bank Burns wrote “Tam o’Shanter”:
“How lovely, Nith, thy fruitful vales,Each Border river, like each Border hill, has its own special appeal, whether it be the lure of tumbling waterfall or wooded bank.
If Tweed is queen, Ettrick and Yarrow are princesses. The vale of Ettrick is full of the charm of bird-song and fairy-lore; it is rich in memories of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd who re-told its old tales and sang of the skylark that lilts above the waters.
Yarrow is perhaps the most typical of all Border rivers; it has held the hearts of more poets than any other stream. Wordsworth and Scott, Hogg and Stevenson and many another bard have all fallen at times under its magic spell. They have felt the call of its wooded banks – rich in silver birch and scarlet-berried rowan, in the fairy slae and the gean-tree, that blossom white in spring-time with the radiance of an angel’s wing; more than all, they have been moved by that sweet sorrow that haunts the “dowie dens” of Yarrow, the fragrance of a hundred old tales of sad hearts and faithful lovers.
To follow the Vale of Yarrow from Selkirk to St Mary’s Loch – “lone St Mary’s silent lake” – is to glimpse the history of the Borderland in miniature, whether the river’s banks be richly wooded with fir, and birch and feathery larch or whether they be sad and bare beneath the quiet hills. Every step has its story: the battlefield of Philiphaugh, where Montrose, the gallant marquis, met defeat; the ruined ivied cottage at Foulshiels, where Mungo Park, the dauntless explorer of the Niger was born; the bold ruin of Newark Castle, where the minstrel who was “infirm and old” sang his lay; and then the “dowie dens,” sung in the old Border ballards as the haunts of heart-breaking tragedy, of old unhappy for-off things and battles long ago. One ballad tells of a bride who found her young groom slain:
“She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,Once there was heart-break, but now there is only peace and the ripple of quiet water.
The road glides on past many a landmark – a sombre wood, a heap of grey stones, a ruined tower – all famous in legend or ancient story – until it runs out along the quiet waters of St Mary’s Loch. On the strip of land between St Mary’s Loch and the darker, less friendly Loch of the Lowes still stands the old inn once kept by Tibbie Shiels, where the Ettrick Shepherd often made merry with his boon companions. After running alongside the Loch of the Lowes, the road rises toward Birkhill. You are in a dark gorge of frowning hills, White Coomb on the right and Bodesbeck on the left. In the heather and dark-green moss-hags of these hills the old Covenanters once hid from Claverhouse’s dragoons. It is a country wild but fascinating. The dark hills grow steeper, the gorge narrows, and, a little way after the summit of the pass you see the white flash of a tumbling torrent, the Grey Mare’s Tail, that comes rushing down from dark Loch Skene.
“Then issuing forth, one foaming wave,And now the road winds gently down past the cottage where Burns once spent a rollicking evening and wrote the world’s greatest drinking song – “Willie brewed a Peck o’ Maut” – and soon it brings you to the sedate little town of Moffat.
These Border rivers are famed throughout the world for their beauty and romance, but, in a certain sense, they are less characteristic than the innumerable little Border burns, which run down from countless hills, chattering, bickering, leaping among the stones, glistening in the sun and singing an unending song among the heather.
“Ah,Tam! gie me a Border burnThe melody of a nameless Border burn is the true song of the Borderland.
While Scotland is not rich in ancient abbeys as she might be, the four Border abbeys – Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose and Dryburgh – are treasures indeed. All are ruined, bearing the marks of time and of the destructive fury of marauding English armies. Of Kelso, so little remains except in parts of the east wall and of the noble tower, yet there is enough to show that it was build in massive strength, as much like a fortress as an abbey, for any building, however sacred, had to be strong in troubled times upon the Borders. Jedburgh Abbey too, though not so sad an extent, bears on its noble frame the scars of ruthless cruelty; the brutal Hertford battered and burnt it, as he marched through the Borders in 1545, ravaging and destroying. A splendid shell remains, bare but majestic, standing guardian to the town’s southern approach.
“If thou wouldst see fair Melrose aright,but Melrose is fair at any hour, whether you seek the peace of its ruined cloisters, or wonder at the intricate tracery of its fretted vaulting or the exquisite form of the east window, beneath which lies the brave heart of Robert Bruce lies buried.
The beauty of Dryburgh is the beauty of situation. Never has holy place more perfect setting than on this green and tranquil river-loop, lulled by the Tweed’s murmur and shaded by age-old yews and sacred cedars brought from Lebanon. Here, amid the grey ruins of St Mary’s Aisle, sleeps Sir Walter Scott, and here, too is another grave, the resting-place of the noble soldier, Earl Haig. It bears no monument, save the plain cross of the simple soldier, and no flower is seen upon it, save the Flanders poppy.
There are abbeys, too, upon the western side; fair Sweetheart Abbey that lies beneath the shadow of Criffel’s purple hill and Lincluden, near Dumfries, among whose ruins Burns would wander, humming the melodies of his immortal songs. Under the walls of Lincluden he found peace.
“Ye holy walls, that still sublimeIt has been said that a man can hardly throw a stone upon the Borderland without hitting the wall of some great ruined castle, relics of a time when every man’s hand was against his fellows and when massive thickness of keep and rampart was the best defence against the foe. The name of old Border castles is legion: Hermitage and Home, Norham and Newark, Lochmaben and Caerlaverock; and, on the eastern coast, Dunbar, which Black Agnes so gallantly defended against the English; and red Tantallon, home of the turbulent Douglases, dizzily perched like an eagle’s nest, above the stormy North sea. Yet again it may be said that the Border’s most typical landmarks are not the great stone castles, but the ancient peels – single towers that, standing on some lone eminence, kept sleepless watch and ward over the safety of the Borders. Grey, gaunt and grim, they lie mostly in ruins now, but one or two remain, almost unscathed. Smailholm is a nearly perfect specimen; another is Darnick Tower, near Melrose, lovingly preserved and filled with a wealth of relics, rich in historic interest. If any artist were to paint a composite picture of a typical Border scene, he would paint a green hillside, a burn, gleaming in the sunlight and a patch of heathery moorland. And he would also paint, dominating the scene, a tall, grey peel-tower, silent, protective, ever vigilant . . .
The Border towns are self-contained and strongly individual. They have none of the English prettiness that goes with thatched roofs and old oak timbering, yet each has a character and an attraction of its own. There is Kelso, with its abbey tower and open square, so strangely reminiscent of an old Norman place; Jedburgh, with its fierce tradition of “Jeddart justice,” whereby you hanged a man first and tried him afterwards; Hawick, with its bustling trade and romantic traditions; Selkirk, which sent the flower of manhood to die at Flodden; Galashiels, whose bronze figure of a Border Horseman is the noblest single War Memorial in Britain; Peebles with its ancient history and its quiet air of cosy comfort. On the other side are Langholm and Lockerbie and the fairy village of Moniaive and Dumfries, with its sturdy Mid-Steeple, where they will show you the taverns where Burns laughed and sang and the little house where his great heart broke. From all these towns it is but a step to beauty of hill and valley, of woodland and singing river.
So, whether you wander by the banks of Tweed or on the grassy hills, by the grey ruins of Melrose and Dryburgh, by the leafy woods of Lower Yarrow or the shores of St Mary’s quiet lake, you will find beauty everywhere. The spirit of elusive charm which haunts the hidden ways of hill and vale will sing its song to you.
“The spell – the dream is over,And those who hear that call will understand . . . .