In the Border Country Part 7

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 72 and 96_)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The Jed, joining the Teviot close to Jedfoot Station, reminds us that the county town of Roxburgh--Jedburgh--is within easy access, and the fascinating valley of the Jed which Burns so vigorously extolled. The Jed takes its rise between Needslaw and Carlintooth on the Liddesdale Border. Its general course is east and north, and its length about seventeen miles. The places of chief interest on its banks are Southdean, where the Scottish chiefs a.s.sembled previous to Otterburn, and where the poet Thomson spent his boyhood; Old Jedworth, the original towns.h.i.+p, a few gra.s.sy mounds marking the spot; Ferniherst Castle, a Ker stronghold; Lintalee, the site of a Douglas camp described in Barbour's "Bruce;" the Capon Tree, a thousand years old, one of the last survivors of "Jedworth's forest wild and free;" and the Hundalee hiding caves. The charm of Jedburgh consists in its old-world character and its semi-Continental touches. Its fine situation early attracted the notice of the Scottish Kings, though Bishop Ecfred of Lindisfarne is believed to have been its true founder. He could not have chosen a more sweet or appropriate nook for his little settlement. Nestling in the quiet valley, and creeping up the ridge of the Dunion, the song of the river ever in its ears, freshened by the scent of garden and orchard, and surrounded by finely-wooded heights, Nature has been lavish in filling with new adornments, as years sped by, a spot always bright and fair.

"O softly Jed! thy sylvan current lead Round every hazel copse and smiling mead, Where lines of firs the glowing landscape screen, And crown the heights with tufts of deeper green."

The modern beauty of the place notwithstanding, Jedburgh's history has been a singularly troubled one. As a frontier town and the first place of importance north of the Cheviots, it was naturally a scene of strife and bloodshed. Around it lay the famous Jed Forest, rivalling that of Ettrick. The inhabitants were brave warriors, and noted for the skill with which they wielded the Jeddart staff or Jedwood axe. Their presence at the Reidswire decided that skirmish in favour of the Scottish Borderers:

"Then rose the slogan wi' ane shout, Fye, Tynedale, to it! Jeddart's here."

And at Flodden the men from the glens of the Jed were conspicuous for their heroism. Jedburgh Abbey is the chief "lion" of the locality.

Completer than Kelso and Dryburgh, and simpler and more harmonious than Melrose, it stands in the most delightful of situations, girt about with well-kept gardens, overlooking the bosky banks of the Jed--a veritable poem in Nature and Art. Queen Mary's House (restored) the scene of her all but mortal illness in 1566 is still existing, and well worth a visit. The literary a.s.sociations of the burgh are more than local. James Thomson was a pupil at its Grammar School. Burns was made a burgess during his Border tour in 1787. Scott made his first appearance as a criminal counsel at Jedburgh, pleading successfully for his poacher client. The Wordsworths visited Jedburgh in 1803. Sir David Brewster and Mary Somerville were natives, and here the "Scottish Probationer" lived and died. Samuel Rutherford was born at Crailing, the next parish, where also David Calderwood, the Kirk historian, was minister. Cessford Castle, in Eckford parish, was the residence of the redoubtable "Habbie Ker," ancestor of the Dukes of Roxburghe. Marlefield, "where Kale wimples clear 'neath the white-blossomed slaes," is a supposed scene (erroneous) of the "Gentle Shepherd." Yetholm, on the Bowmont, near the Great Cheviot, has been the headquarters of Scottish gypsydom since the 17th century. Opposite Floors Castle, at the confluence of the Tweed and Teviot is the green tree-clad mound with a few crumbling walls, all that remains of the ill.u.s.trious Castle of Roxburgh, one of the strongest on the Borders, the birthplace and abode of kings, and parliaments, and mints, and so often a bone of bitter contention between Scots and English. The town itself, the most important on the Middle Marches, has entirely disappeared, its site and environs forming now some of the most fertile fields in the county:

"Roxburgh! how fallen, since first, in Gothic pride, Thy frowning battlements the war defied, Called the bold chief to grace thy blazoned halls, And bade the rivers gird thy solid walls!

Fallen are thy towers; and where the palace stood, In gloomy grandeur waves yon hanging wood.

Crushed are thy halls, save where the peasant sees One moss-clad ruin rise between the trees; The still green trees, whose mournful branches wave In solemn cadence o'er the hapless grave.

Proud castle! fancy still beholds thee stand, The curb, the guardian, of this Border land; As when the signal flame that blazed afar, And b.l.o.o.d.y flag, proclaimed impending war, While in the lion's place the leopard frowned, And marshalled armies hemmed thy bulwarks round."

PLATE 21

GOLDILANDS NEAR HAWICK

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 98, 99_)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

V. IN THE BALLAD COUNTRY

To a shepherd in Canada Dr. Norman Macleod is said to have remarked, "What a glorious country this is!" "Ay," said the man, "it is a very good country." "And such majestic rivers!" "Oh, ay," was all the reply.

"And such good forests!" "Ay, but there are nae linties in the woods, and nae braes like Yarrow!" Of course, the answer was from a purely exile point of view, but even to those of the Old Country the name of Yarrow wields the most wondrous fascination. Like Tweed, Yarrow is known everywhere, for who has not heard of its "Dowie Dens," or of its lovers'

tragedies? Certainly no stream has been more besung. The name is redolent of all that is most pathetic in Border poetry. This is the centre of the Border ballad country--the birthplace, or, at all events, the nursing-ground of a romance than which there is none richer or more extensive on either side of the Border. The Yarrow is the Scottish Rhine-land on a small scale, even more so than the Tweed. Tweedside, indeed, has not a t.i.the of Yarrow's ballad wealth, and the Tweed ballads and folk-lore are absolutely different in respect both of subject-matter and of manner. The curious feature about Yarrow is the wonderful sameness which characterises the whole of its minstrelsy. For hundreds of years that has been so. Sadness is the uppermost note that is sounded. All through we are face to face with a feeling of dejection as remarkable as it is common. One could have understood a stray effusion or so couched in this strain, but for an entire minstrelsy to breathe such a spirit is extraordinary. Why should Yarrow be the personification, as it were, of a grief and a melancholy that nothing seems able to a.s.suage? Is there anything in the scenery to account for it--anything in the physical conditions of the glen itself that solves the secret? There is, and there isn't. To a mere outsider--a mere summer tripper hurrying through--Yarrow is little different from others of the southland valleys. Its main features are identical with those of the Ettrick, and the Tweed uplands, or with the Ewes and the Teviot. All of them exhibit the same pastoral stillness. The same play of light and shade are on their hills. The same soothing spirit broods over them. But of Yarrow alone it is the element of sadness that prevails. To understand this, one has to _live_ in Yarrow--to come under the influence of its environment. And whether it be fancy or not, whether it be the result of one's reading, and of one's pre-conceived notions of the place, the Yarrow landscape does lend itself to the realisation of that feeling which the ballads so well portray. The configuration of the glen as seen especially from a little above Yarrow Manse--the "Dowie Dens" of popular tradition--together with its climatic conditions, may very easily interpret for us the spirit of those old singers. Here, if anywhere in the valley, the answer to the Yarrow enigma will be found.

Professor Veitch thinks that the whole district affords such an answer: "Nor will anyone," he says, "who is familiar with the Vale of Yarrow have had much difficulty in understanding how it is suited to pathetic verse. The rough and broken, yet clear, beautiful, and wide-spreading stream has no grand cliffs to show; and it is not surrounded by high and overshadowing hills. Here and there it flows placidly, reflectively, in large liquid lapses, through an open valley of the deepest summer green; still, let us be thankful, in its upper reaches at least, mantled by nature and untouched by plough and harrow. There is a placid monotone about its bare treeless scenery--an unbroken pastoral stillness on the sloping braes and hillsides, as they rise, fall, and bend in a uniformly deep colouring. The silence of the place is forced upon the attention, deepened even by the occasional break in the flow of the stream, or by the bleating of the sheep that, white and motionless amid the pasture, dot the knowes. We are attracted by the silence, and we are also depressed. There is the pleasure of hushed enjoyment. The spirit of the scene is in those immortal lines:--

"Meek loveliness is round thee spread A softness still and holy; The grace of Forest charms decayed And pastoral melancholy."

Those deep green gra.s.sy knowes of the valley are peculiarly susceptible of change. In the morning with a blue sky, or with breaks of sunlight through the fleeting clouds, the green hillsides and the stream smile and gleam in sympathy with the cheerfulness of heaven. But under a grey sky, or at the gloaming, the Yarrow wears a peculiarly wan aspect--a look of sadness. And no valley I know is more susceptible of sudden change. The spirit of the air can speedily weave out of the mists that gather upon the ma.s.sive hills at the heads of the Megget and the Talla, a wide-spreading web of greyish cloud--the 'skaum' of the sky--that casts a gloom over the under green of the hills; and dims the face of loch and stream in a pensive shadow. The saddened heart would readily find there fit a.n.a.logue and nourishment for its sorrow. Which is all very true. But, as has been said, Tweed and Teviot show exactly these conditions, and what of their minstrelsy remains is not touched with this strangely morose sense. May not the solution lie in the very legend of the "Dowie Dens" itself, and in the remarkable cup-like configuration of the valley as seen from the point already indicated and under the wan aspects which are admittedly a distinctive feature of the Yarrow at all seasons of the year? Out of this have emerged very probably the spirit of the balladists and their ballads. One after another have simply followed suit, and the likelihood is that had gladness and not gloom been the burden of some far back strain, we should not have had the Yarrow we possess to-day. Men of the most diverse temperaments have come under the sad spell of the Yarrow. The most lighthearted sons of song have succ.u.mbed to the general feeling. Wordsworth himself would have preferred to strike another note, but the enchantment of the spot held him fast:

"O that some Minstrel's harp were near To utter notes of gladness, And chase this silence from the air, That fills my heart with sadness!"

All the verse writers of the last century were mere continuators of their fellow-bards centuries before. There are, to be sure, some flippant spirits who would dare to alter the very atmosphere of Yarrow, but what a poor attempt at the impossible! Yarrow must ever abide the embodiment of the most heart-piercing, and at the same time, the most winsome melody the world has listened to.

Popularly speaking, the best of the Yarrow ballads concerns itself with the famous "Dowie Dens" tragedy, of which there seems to be some authentic reference in the Selkirk Presbytery Record for 1616. It is there narrated how Walter Scott of Tus.h.i.+elaw made "an informal and inordinate marriage with Grizell Scott of Thirlestane without consent of her father." Just three months later, the same Record contains entry of a summons to Simeon Scott, of Bonytoun, an adherent of Thirlestane, and three other Scotts "to compear at Melrose to hear themselves excommunicated for the horrible slaughter of Walter Scott." We have here probably the precise incident on which the unknown "makar" founded his crude but intensely picturesque and dramatic lay. How much of womanly winsomeness and heroism, of knightly dignity and daring, and the unconquerable strength of love are portrayed in the following stanzas!

There are, indeed, few ballads in any language that match its strains:

"She kiss'd his cheek, she kaim'd his hair, As oft she had done before, O; She belted him with his n.o.ble brand, And he's away to Yarrow.

"'If I see all, ye're nine to ane; And that's an unequal marrow; Yet will I fight, while lasts my brand, On the bonnie banks of Yarrow.'

"Four has he hurt, and five has slain; On the b.l.o.o.d.y braes of Yarrow, Till that stubborn knight came him behind, And ran his body thorough.

"Yestreen I dream'd a dolefu' dream; I fear there will be sorrow!

I dream'd I pu'd the heather green Wi' my true love on Yarrow.

"She kiss'd his cheek, she kaimed his hair; She search'd his wounds all thorough; She kiss'd them till her lips grew red, On the dowie houms of Yarrow."

A fragment of rare beauty, believed to be based on the same incident (unlikely however) was one of Scott's special favourites. Rather does it shrine a similar tragedy, one of many such which must have been common enough in those troubled and lawless times. How melting is the pathos of the following verses, for instance!

"Willie's rare and Willie's fair, And Willie's wondrous bonny, And Willie's hecht to marry me, Gin e'er he married ony.

"Yestreen I made my bed fu' braid, This night I'll make it narrow, For a' the livelong winter night, I'll lie twin'd of my marrow.

She sought him east, she sought him west, She sought him braid and narrow; Syne, in the cleaving of a craig She found him drown'd in Yarrow.

Somewhat akin is the "Lament of the Border Widow," located at Henderland, in Meggetdale, not far from St. Mary's Loch. In the preface to this ballad in the "Minstrelsy," Scott states that it was "obtained from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, and is said to relate to the execution of c.o.c.kburn of Henderland, a Border freebooter, hanged over the gate of his own tower by James V. in the course of that memorable expedition in 1529 which was fatal to Johnie Armstrong, Adam Scott of Tus.h.i.+elaw, and many other marauders." The grave of "Perys of c.o.c.kburne and hys wyfe Marjory" on a wooded knoll at Henderland, is still pointed out. But the historicity of the ballad has been questioned from the statement (which seems to be correct) that c.o.c.kburn was actually executed at Edinburgh, instead of at his own home. There is no evidence, however, to a.s.sume that the ballad commemorates this particular occurrence or that it has any connection with the grave referred to. For genuine balladic merit it will be difficult to match:

My love he built me a bonny bower, And clad it a' wi' lilye flower, A brawer bower ye ne'er did see Than my true love he built for me.

There came a man, by middle day He spied his sport, and went away, And brought the King that very night, Who brake my bower and slew my knight.

He slew my knight, to me sae dear; He slew my knight, and poin'd his gear; My servants all for life did flee, And left me in extremitie.

I sewed his sheet, making my mane; I watched the corpse myself alane; I watch'd his body night and day; No living creature came that way.