The Spell of Scotland

e

bird but has its history, but serves to recall what once was; and because the countryside is so teeming seems to make yesterday one with to-day. The distances are very short, even between the places the well-read

, and a Scott-land, it is decidedly Abbots-land, even before Abbotsford came into being with its new ch

scape, and while even on this highway the cottages are not frequent, and one eyes the journeymen with as close inspection as one is eyed, still it is a friendly land. The southern burr-we deliberately made excuse of drinking wa

ild these abbeys of the Middle Marches, of which the chief four are Melr

when one party was stronger than the other; usually the destruction was by the English b

ulture. Or, as William of Malmesbury put it, with that serene assurance of the Englishman over the Scot, he "had been freed from the rust of Scottish barbarity, and polished from a boy from his intercourse and familiarity with us." Ah, welladay! if residence at the

of his gentleness. But also he had married Matilda of Northumberland, wealthy and a widow, and he

terested in a great Flemish gun that James II was killed by the explosion-and the sie

merican there is something of passing interest in the present seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, Floors castle across the Teviot. For the house, like many another Scottish house, still c

ood of Tweed, and a five-arched bridge ambitiously and successfully like the Waterloo bridge of London, one wonders if after all perhaps Wordsworth wrote his Bridge sonnet here-"Earth hath not anything to show more fair." Surely this bridge, these spires and the great

oldly in spite of the havoc wrought by men and time, and Hertford and Henry VIII; cal

iastic of Scotland, a spiritual lord, receiving his miter f

o nights before she rode on to Berwick. Here in the ancient market-place, looking like the square of a continental town, the Old Chevalier was proclaimed King James VIII on an October Monday in 1715, and the day preceding the English chaplain had preached to the

he throne for his father, he established his headquarters at Sunilaw just outside Kelso; the house is in ruins, but a white rose that he planted still bears flowers. To the citizens of Kelso who drank to him,

l here, and it was in out of the Kelso library-where they wi

ummer day had sped onward so fast that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the dinner hour. The first time I could scrape together

Sir Philip Sidney, who said, "I never read the old song of Percie an

y the word, Platanus, lest it should not be ide

e, and of his honeymoon. Here flowered into maturity that l

r thirty years-I wondered if he wr

s," but also "Rule, Britannia"-if he was a

annia, rule

ver will b

, back in the low hills of Tweed, i

db

nay, not lingers, but is; there is no present in Jedburgh. It is but ten miles to the Border; more I think that at any other point

han the Tweed, more tortuous, swifter, rushing through wilder scenery, tumultuous, vocative, before Border times began

a half dozen miles, where remnants of old forest, or its descendants, still stand, where the bracken is thick enough to conceal an army crouching in ambush, where the hills move swiftly up from the river, and break sharply into preci

gle much attracted us; but because every one who had come before us

were being held, Jethart justice was being administered, or, juster justice, since these were more parlous times, and parley went before sentence. Scott as a sheriff and the other officials of the country were filling the hostelry. But Sir Walter, then the Sheriff of Selkirk, sheriff being

an hour or two hours, with Scott r

y called herself, by the royal name of Scottish Romany, was descended from Meg Merrilies. Mrs. Faa had dark flashing eyes in a thin dark face, and they flashed like a two-edged dagger. She was a small woman, scarce taller than a Jethart ax as we had seen them in the museum at Kelso. I should never have dared to ask her about anything, not even the time of day, and, in truth, like many of

RGH A

a part of its landscape; smooth-shaven English lawns lie all about, a veritable ecclesiastical close. It is simpler than Melrose, if the detail is not so marvelous, and there is subs

nd Scotch have felt a kinship, and often expressed it in royal marriage. The gray abbey walls, then a century and a half old, must have looked curiousl

gers. It may have been a pageant trick, it may have been a too thoughtful monk; but the thirteenth century was rich with superstition. S

this Border town. For the Border had been over-lively and was disputing the authority of the Scottish queen as though it had no loyalty. Bothwell had been sent down as Warden of

le is ay

d it never

n fa' ere

aur meddl

in the rib

ngin' doun

I am nev

aur meddl

r meddl

r meddl

is little

aur meddl

gude naig

ay's in the

gs as he tug

s the sout

ng and spurr

d boils up l

ons gang doon

aur meddl

trike through the long centuries. Bothwell took Elliott in custody, Elliott not suspecting that a Scot could prove treac

TAGE

e, he was hertlie contentit, but he

nded Jock, overtook him, and Jock managed to give Bothwell three vicious thrusts of his skene

ath, so word went up to Edinburg

et down that "when news thereof was brought to Borthwick to the Queen, she flingeth away in haste like a

of Moray, the Earl of Huntley, Mr. Secretary Lethington, and more men of less note. For six days the girl queen (Mary was only twenty-four in this year of the birth of James, year before the death of Darnley, the marriage with Bothwell, the imprisonme

asing wet and darkness. Once, riding ahead and alone and rapidly, the Queen strayed from the

, and bells were rung, and prayers offered in St. Giles. On the ninth day she lay unconscious, in this lit

edburgh, perhaps the happiest house of all those where the legend of Mary persists. Even to-day it has its charm. The windowed turret looks out on the large fruit garden tha

of Jedburgh, the herald was roughly handled by the Provost who received his orders from England, and Buccl

vereign, a well-known Jacobite came by. They insisted on his joining in the toast. And he pledged-"

lk

it would seem like leaving out the fragrance of the region to omit Yarrow. And yet-. One has read "Yarrow Unvisited," one of the loveliest of Wordsworth's poems. And one has read "Y

in our he

h a place a

e there altho

e anothe

lity, in lifting the mists from the horizon of imagination. Should one hear an English

ong in bird-throat, or even of nature in trees and sky and hills, there is a disappointment. But after the reality these all slip away in

will down

far off things, but very silent now, too silent; almost one longs for a burst of Border warfare that the quiet may be filled with fitting clamour. The coache

ecomes entirely "redeemed" and modern, and exists for itself instead of for the tourist. Selkirk is indifferent to tourists, as indeed is every Scottish town; Scotland and Scotsmen are capable of existing for themselves. Selkirk hangs against the hillside above th

r is there trace of Davis's pile, ruined or unruined, in this near, modern, whirring city. It is the sound of the looms one remembers in S

Flodden it was the "souters of Selk

e Souters

i' the Ear

acted to furnish two thousand pair of shoes to his army; but one does not inquire too

Mary's. Although Yarrow has always sung in my ears, I think it was ra

n still St.

le, swan a

a sentimental lure would I follow. But then, if that seems wasteful and ridiculous excess of sentim

ing, glimmering, in the morning light as I

d ye, ma

gowd in

gae by Ca

Tamlane

and there only gnarled and deformed, out of the centuries, out of perhaps that "derke forest" of James IV. His son, the Fifth James, thought to subdue the Border and increase his revenue by placing thousands of sheep in this forest; an

-Yarrow? Thi

my fancy

ully a wa

that has

minstrel's h

notes of

his silence

my heart wi

rk shadows in the fair morning, as the historically minded traveler would fain have it. For it was there that Montrose met defeat, his

RK C

to wander. Here he let the

ere Newark's

om Yarrow's b

poet came with Wordsworth, as

by Newark's

without

ed, listened,

trel of th

rthplace of Mungo Park, who traveled about the world even as you an

g, on the height to the North; and here will come into the Border memories of

ch was a reformed date, set among pleasant gardens and thick verdure. Scott and Wordsworth and Hogg ha

swiftly, unbelievingly, o

dream'd a do

ere will

pu'd the h

ue love o

glen striv

ught me dol

e comeliest knig

ng lies o

s cheek, she k

his wounds

em till her l

ie houms o

a shepherd and a poet, which means a wanderer and a dreamer. And soon to the Gordon Arms, a plain

rk-"Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless"-in that far blue

the shattered keep of the good Lord James Douglass, the friend of Bruce. Here fell t

e on and on

the light

came to yon

they lig

Ma

water. The hills about are all barren, rising clear and round against the sky. They fold and infold as though they would shield the lake bereft of trees, as though they would shut out the world. Here and there, but very infrequent, is a

EW, TIBBIE

er sung than this which lies about St. Mary's, and no inn, certainly not anywhere a country inn, where more famous men have foregathered to be themselves. Perhaps the place has changed since the most famous, the little famed days, when Scott stopped here after a day's hun

he world

ic at St

ed its doors, but the closed beds are still there-it was curious enough to see them the very summer that the Gra

live. Then her husband died, and quite accidentally Tibbie became hostess to travelers, nearly a hundred years ago. For f

miliar, and here he wished to have a "bit monument to his memory in some quiet spot forninst Tibbie's dwelling." He sits there, in free stone, somewhat hea

rgh, in his student days, caught his first glimpse of Yarrow from here-and slept, may it be, in one of these closed beds? Gladstone was here in the early '

te simply and abundantly, after the day's work; in this "parlour"

e the gentleman and his wife whom we took for journalistic folk, they were so worldly and so intelligent and discussed the world and the possibilities of world-war-that was several years ago-until at the Kirk of

ut none so well as the minister. It was he who recited f

t. Mary's

it well-nor

clear lake's

sheer the m

pon the l

trace of si

the water me

mirror, bri

huge outline

heath, but l

bush nor br

of land, yo

the lake the

is nakednes

e feelings

dell nor co

thing conceal

retiring, h

or woodman lo

ing left to

at all is

ids-though th

lake a tho

ime, so sof

ut lulls th

hoof-tread so

is the s

ARY'S

ed St. Mary's kirk. And it was the low-voiced m

to lie, a

n silver

Lake, as

ween those hi

churchyard

e green grave

eet, so lone a

e blue sky

ill silent afternoon, consciou

och lies shim

kirkbell's lang

, and another. And I knew well that were I but nearer, as imagination knew was unnecessa