GALASHIELS.GALASHIELS.
GALASHIELS.
The Ettrick, which joins the Tweed not a great way above Abbotsford, no longer flows through a “feir foreste;” where once there was “grete plentie” of hart and hind, of doe and roe, mighty flocks of sheep now graze. Of Ettrick House, where the pastoral poet was born; of Thirlestane Castle, the strength of “Ready, aye ready” John Scott; of Tushielaw, where another of the Scotts, Adam of that ilk, was hanged by the king who had no mercy for Johnnie Armstrang; of Carterhaugh, where the “fair Janet” met “young Tamlane,” and by strength of love won him from the thraldom of the Fairy Queen; of Selkirk, whose burly “souters” (sutors) gave so good an account of themselves at Flodden Field—of all this there is no space to speak. Nor can there be anything but barest mention of the Yarrow, whose bonnie holms and dowie dens were dear to Wordsworth and other modern poets, as they were to the old folk-singers of the Border. St. Mary’s lone and silent lake, with its swans that “float double;” Henderland, where Cockburne’s widow mourned her knight “sae dear;” Dryhope, where the “Flower of Yarrow” was wooed and won by Walter Scott of Harden; Newark’s stately tower, where the last minstrel’s trembling fingers tuned his harp and swept its strings—these and other scenes must all be left unnoticed. But the Yarrow is perhaps the most benign of Border streams, and it has inspired the sweetest and saddest of Border songs, not excepting even the “Flowers of the Forest,” or “Annan Water.” And of them all, none is more sad or sweet than that which tells the story of the Baron of Oakwood, who was slain on its “dowie banks,” and there found by his “ladye gaye.”
“She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,She searched his wounds all thorough;She kissed them till her lips grew redOn the dowie howms of Yarrow.”
“She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,She searched his wounds all thorough;She kissed them till her lips grew redOn the dowie howms of Yarrow.”
“She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,
She searched his wounds all thorough;
She kissed them till her lips grew red
On the dowie howms of Yarrow.”
It is near Philiphaugh that Yarrow and Ettrick wed—Philiphaugh, famed for its memories of Outlaw Murray, and still more for the crushing defeat which Montrose here suffered at the hands of David Leslie. The most princely of apostates was taken completely by surprise, and the men who until now had carried all before them were fleeing for their lives before he could strike a blow. Leslie is said to have butchered many of his prisoners in cold blood, some being shot in the courtyard of Newark Castle, while others were precipitated from a high bridge over the Tweed. It would be pleasant to believe that the story is not true, or is at all events exaggerated. The latter part of it is certainly inaccurate, if not wholly false, for in those days there was no bridge over the Tweed in this region. Sir Walter, however, was at the trouble to point out that there is a bridge over the Ettrick only four miles from Philiphaugh, and another over the Yarrow, either of which might have been the scene of the massacre.
Above Clovenfords, celebrated for its vines, the Tweed has burrowed for itself deeper banks, while the valley broadens; and if the braes amid which it insinuates itself are less cultivated, and not so thickly wooded, the water itself moves more swiftly and sings more cheerily, and shines more lucidly than ever, displaying the tawniest of beds. Presently the emulous Cadon Water flows in, and then comes Ashestiel, an earlier residence of Sir Walter, where most of the cantos of the “Lay” and of “Marmion” were written. West of Thornilees stands a fragment of one of many ruined peels which line the stream on both sides, forming an unbroken line of communication, for they were sufficiently close together for thefire-bale’s warnings to be passed on from one to another. Beyond this the valley contracts, as the stream winds round a great hill fertile of little but screes, but before long it again opens out; and then comes the solitary bit of prosaic scenery of which the Tweed is guilty. The braes on either side, though not lofty, are nothing but uncomely sheep-walks; the banks themselves are utterly commonplace. The interval, however, is a brief one, and almost before the stranger has recovered from his surprise at finding the bonny water so demeaning itself, he is once more raised to the admiring mood. For he is now at Innerleithen, nicely placed on the lower slopes of an enormous brae, where Leithen Water comes down from the Moorfoot Hills to keep tryst with Tweed. Here are mineral springs, with properties not dissimilar from those of the Harrogate Wells; and to drink the waters of these “filthy puddles,” in a more or less serious spirit, many in summer come this way. The good people of the town will not need to be told that for the opprobrious expression here quoted no one but Mrs. Dods is responsible. For when one of the least pleasing, though not the least powerful, of the “Waverley” books saw the light, Innerleithen made haste to identify itself with thelocus in quo; the St. Ronan’s Club was started; and the St. Ronan’s games are still kept up. The incident was not a bad thing for Innerleithen, and Sir Walter, being a good-natured man, did not protest; but the wayfarer must not be disappointed if he fail to see much correspondence between the scenery of the book and that of the place. Yet let him not scorn the pious faith. Would not he himself be glad to believe, if there were any shadow of reason, that the lines had fallen to him in the veritable place where Captain MacTurk swaggered, and took his Maker’s name in vain, and angrily resented imputations upon his piety; where Mr. Winterblossom appropriated the tit-bits of the table and made phrases; where the omniscient Mr. Peregrine Touchwood circumvented Mr. Valentine Bulmer; where, above all, the immortal Meg spurned “riders” from her door, and rated her “huzzies,” and railed at the “stinking well” and all who frequented it?
Over against Innerleithen lies the parish of Traquair, with its burn and its “bush.” A little to the south of the stream is Traquair House, a seventeenth-century residence tacked on to a much older tower. If the books could be believed, it would be the original of the Baron of Bradwardine’s house. “Waverley” himself, however, was of a different opinion. The ruins of Horsburgh Castle, the seat of the family of this name, now for more than a hundred years abandoned to owl and bat, are about a couple of miles or so below Peebles. The town itself has a lovely situation at the point where Eddlestone Water babbles into the Tweed, and at the foot of a glorious brae, broad and lofty, and covered with fir and larch, with rolling hills all around, making a mighty amphitheatre. No wonder that it should have risen to the dignity of a holiday resort with a “season;” or that in other days the Hays of Yester should have been glad to come in from Neidpath Castle to winter in their town-house, the quaint old building in the High Street now known as the “Chambers Institute.” In very early days Peebles was a dwelling-placeof kings; and by the time of that James who was addicted to “the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making,” it was renowned for its games, which were sung either by the monarch himself or by some brother minstrel of not much later date. But about the middle of the sixteenth century the Earl of Hertford came here, and then the town had to make a fresh start. The castle has disappeared from the head of the High Street without leaving a wrack behind. Of the Cross Kirk, built in the thirteenth century by Alexander III., little beyond the shell of the tower and a gable remains, and even the pitiful ivy has not been able to make it a sightly relic. There used to be here also the still older church of St. Andrew; and William Chambers has received much praise for having “restored” it—an exceptionally brutal use of a much-suffering term. The only other building of any note is the “Cross-Keys Inn,” many-gabled and picturesque and comfortable. It has seen better days, for it was once upon a time the town-house of the Williamsons of Cardrona; but the crowning glory which it claims is that of being the “public” of Dame Dods, yclept the “Cleikum,” which had for sign a large picture of St. Ronan catching hold of the devil’s game leg with his episcopal crook. If you ask for evidence, you are pointed to the legend above the doorway, “The original Cleikum Inn, 1653”!
PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.
PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.
The stream has now been traced up for a distance of well-nigh seventy miles,yet Peebles is not much more than five hundred feet above the sea-level; herefrom the ascent is more obvious, though still quite gradual, for in the thirty miles or so yet to be traversed the rise is not more than a thousand feet. As they ripple by the town the waters sing a pretty song; but a stone’s-throw or two above the comely old bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent, as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen, winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. For here the braes on either side are steep, and of immense height, and smothered to their tops with firs and larches; and the stream winds more than ever, at one moment widening into still deep pools, at the next shrinking into a dancing rapid; and all around, wherever the eye turns, it rests upon large swelling hills, robed with verdure, and girdled with timber, and crowned with grey cairns. Surely the glen was not much more lovely in the days before the last Duke of Queensberry, to spite the next heir of entail, or to put money into his mistress’s purse, barbarously cut down the noble avenue by which the castle was approached, and provoked Wordsworth to gibbet him in an indignant sonnet. Burns, by the way, was aroused to an even finer show of wrath by the similar havoc which “Old Q.” had wrought at Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale.
NEIDPATH CASTLE.NEIDPATH CASTLE.
NEIDPATH CASTLE.
Neidpath Castle, however, has pleasanter associations with the bards. Fromthe southern branch of the Frasers it passed to the Hays of Yester; and to the ninth lord of Yester, first Marquis of Tweeddale, is credited the earliest surviving lyric inspired by the Tweed. Here are two of the verses:—
“When Maggie and me were acquaintI carried my noddle fu’ high;Nae lint-white in a’ the grey plain,Nae gowdspink sae bonny as she.“I whistled, I piped, and I sang,I woo’d, but I came nae great speed;Therefore I maun wander abroad,And lay my banes far frae the Tweed.”
“When Maggie and me were acquaintI carried my noddle fu’ high;Nae lint-white in a’ the grey plain,Nae gowdspink sae bonny as she.“I whistled, I piped, and I sang,I woo’d, but I came nae great speed;Therefore I maun wander abroad,And lay my banes far frae the Tweed.”
“When Maggie and me were acquaint
I carried my noddle fu’ high;
Nae lint-white in a’ the grey plain,
Nae gowdspink sae bonny as she.
“I whistled, I piped, and I sang,
I woo’d, but I came nae great speed;
Therefore I maun wander abroad,
And lay my banes far frae the Tweed.”
The man who wrote this pretty piece held his castle for Charles II., but it was unable to stand the brunt of Cromwell’s cannon, and was not merely captured, but ruined. It was long untenanted, but has now by repair and addition been made habitable, though not more picturesque.
Where the Manor Water joins the Tweed they show the grave of the “Black Dwarf,” and the cottage which he built with his own hands—with some help from compassionate neighbours—on land which he appropriated without asking any one’s leave. The portrait is not very highly coloured: Elshender of Mucklestane Moor had scarcely a sourer or more splenetic humour than David Ritchie, though he may have been a trifle more comprehensive in his misanthropy. Yet David had great sensitiveness to natural influences, and, though he had a reputation in the parish for heresy, would speak of a future state with intense feeling, “and even with tears.” Poor “bow’d Davie!” There was little in common betwixt him and his kind, and it seemed to him that his tale of mercies was not a long one; yet there have been many who would be willing enough to part with some of their advantages in exchange for his firm grasp of “the mighty hopes that make us men.”
As the bridge at Stobo is approached the stream broadens out again, and strolling along the pleasant, shady road cut in the hill there is much to delight the eye, and something as well to please the ear—on the right splendid plantations, climbing up the brae; on the left the water, gleaming through the fluttering leaves, and beyond it a grassy level—where the patient kine make music with their bells—rising into fine slopes of sward, while above these are broad belts of timber. Close beside the stream, above Drummelzier, is the ruined castle of this name, and hard by, but high up the brae, where it must have been almost inaccessible, are some fragments of Thanes or Tinnis Castle, used as a citadel or redoubt by the garrison. Of an early laird of Drummelzier historians relate that when after long absence he came home from the East, where he had crusading been, he was surprised to find his faithful spouse nursing a strapping boy. The lady, however, was able to explain: while she was walking along the banks one day, the spirit of the Tweed had issued forth; and how could a weak woman prevail against a spirit? So the boy was called Tweedie, and founded the great family of thatname, whose legend was, “Thole[1]and think.” This, however, one supposes, is to be taken as a considerate exhortation to their victims rather than as a motto for their own guidance. So interpreted, it is not less frank than the device of the Cranstouns, “Ye shall want ere I want,” or that of the Scotts of Harden, “Reparabit cornua Phœbe.” Moonlighting is no invention of the nineteenth century.
But Drummelzier’s most famous association is with Merlin the seer, Merlin Wylt, the Wild, as he is called, to distinguish him from Merlin Ambrosius, who is believed to have uttered his oracles and succumbed to Vivien’s enchantments in the preceding century. The story goes that after the battle of Arderydd, in or about the year 573, he fled to the wilds of Tweeddale, and here passed the remainder of his life with a reputation for insanity; that he prophesied that he should die from earth, water, and wood, and accordingly, being pursued by a band of unappreciative rustics, he leapt into the Tweed here and was impaled upon a stake; and that they buried him where the Pausayl brook flows into the river, the spot being marked by the scraggy thorn which is visible from the churchyard. For anyone not blessed with a mighty intuition it is not easy to be sure of anything about Merlin except that he was, and was not. Mr. Veitch, however, paints an impressive picture of Merlin as no wild man of the woods, but as “a heart-broken and despairing representative of the old Druidic nature-worship, at once poet and priest of the fading faith, yet torn and distracted by secret doubt as to its truth.” In the same volume—that on the history and poetry of the Border—the eloquent professor remarks that we are “apt to interject into ancient actors and thinkers modern ideas, at which probably they would have stood amazed.”
Beyond Merlindale, “hearsed about” with black firs, the stream expands until it becomes broader than it is at many points within a dozen miles of its mouth. The Edinburgh road bears it company nearly from Broughton to its source; but instead of crossing to the western bank some way above Drummelzier, it is pleasanter, if you have no “machine”—that is, are not driving—to keep along the eastern bank for some two or three miles farther, when a delightful saunter across a magnificent haugh, besprinkled with the yellow tormentilla and many another timid wild flower, brings you to Stanhope Bridge, and so again to the highway. A few years ago, when the Tweed had one of its spasms of turbulence, this bridge was swung bodily round to the bank, while several others higher up were swept clean away. As the Crook Inn is approached the stream has again become attenuated; the valley, too, has straitened, the hills are less abrupt and barren than those seen in the distance a few miles below, and occasionally a small plantation is espied, where the mavis and the merle may be heard flooding the air with their amorous minstrelsy. The Crook, beloved of anglers, who have tender memories of its luscious mutton, as well as of the good sport which can almost always be had in this part of the stream, is still the comfortable place it used to be before it classed itself as a hotel and acquired fashionable habits.
For the remaining ten or twelve miles the course is one of utter solitude and of growing wildness—not even a shepherd’s hut in sight, and no tree, except here and there a stunted hawthorn or a lonely rowan; the braes less verdant, and more given to yielding screes; no sound to be heard but the irritating squeal of the stone-chipper, the low, long-drawn whistle of the “whaup,” or the pleading cry of the peewit. Of animated nature no other sign meets the eye save little groups of sheep clinging to the braes—the fierce-looking black-faced variety it may be, or the half-breeds with their still more ferocious-looking streaked visages, or the meeker “cheeviots.” So the slow ascent continues until at last Tweedshaws, the solitary farmhouse, is reached, and then, leaving the road a little way up Flocker Hill, you stand at last at Tweedswell, the putative source of the stream. Looking around, you see on every hand huge hills rising in the distance, and making between them a vast circle—Black Dod, and Clyde Law, near which the great western stream rises, and Moll’s Cleuch Dod, and Lochraig, and many another, while just behind Flocker Hill, Hart Fell rears its giant form. When Merlin Wylt roamed the wilds of Tweeddale a mighty forest waved over them; now the evidence of their former glory of rowan and birch and hazel must be looked for in the peaty soil which stains the head-streams as they furrow their way down the braes. Later in the year these hills, at present so swart and void, will be brightened with scatterings of purple; and then, under a sunnier sky, their plight will seem less blank and savage. But now they show an aspect stark and grim; for the time of the broom is not yet, and to-day the sun is sulking behind the murk, and their gusty tops are all asmoke.
W. W. Hutchings.
HART FELL.HART FELL.
HART FELL.
AMONG THE FELLS.AMONG THE FELLS.
AMONG THE FELLS.
The Fisherman’s River—“Awa’ to the Border”—Peat-Hags—Eel-Fishing—Alwinton and Harbottle—The Village of Rothbury—Brinkburn Priory—Weldon Bridge and Felton—Warkworth Hermitage and Castle—The Town of Amble—Coquet Isle.
T
“There’sa gentleman that will tell ye that just when I had ga’en up to Lourie Lowther’s, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily awa’ hame, twa land-loupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me or I was thinking, and got me down, and knevelled me sair eneuch, or I could gar my whip walk about their lugs; and troth, Gudewife, if this honest gentleman hadna come up, I would have gotten mair licks than I like, and lost mair siller than I could weel spare; so ye maun be thankful to him for it under God.”
So, with all the generations of Pepper and Mustard frisking about him, did honest Dandie Dinmont explain to his wife how he came by a battered face and a wounded head.
THE COURSE OF THE COQUET.THE COURSE OF THE COQUET.
THE COURSE OF THE COQUET.
The “peat-hag” is a characteristic not only of the Scottish Border-land, but of wide tracks on the English side, and a very remarkable feature it makes in a wild landscape, being a sort of black precipice made in the green hills by some sudden sinking of the apparently bottomless peat. It is all ancient peat-land togetherwhere the river Coquet rises—“Coquet, still the stream of streams,” as one of the poets of “The Fisher’s Garland” has observed; “the king of the stream and the brae,” as has been remarked by another poetical brother of the angle. Other northern rivers the fisherman mentions with respect, and perhaps with joyful remembrance of pleasant and successful days; but of the Coquet he never speaks except with glowing enthusiasm. No tuneful fisher who was friendly with the muse ever failed to give the Coquet a preferential mention in his verse. Now it is—
“Nae mair we’ll fish the coaly Tyne,Nae mair the oozy Team,Nae mair we’ll try the sedgy Pont,Or Derwent’s woody stream;But we’ll awa’ to Coquet side,For Coquet bangs them a’.”
“Nae mair we’ll fish the coaly Tyne,Nae mair the oozy Team,Nae mair we’ll try the sedgy Pont,Or Derwent’s woody stream;But we’ll awa’ to Coquet side,For Coquet bangs them a’.”
“Nae mair we’ll fish the coaly Tyne,
Nae mair the oozy Team,
Nae mair we’ll try the sedgy Pont,
Or Derwent’s woody stream;
But we’ll awa’ to Coquet side,
For Coquet bangs them a’.”
And now it is—
“There’s mony a saumon lies in Tweed,And many a trout in Till,But Coquet—Coquet aye for me,If I may have my will.”
“There’s mony a saumon lies in Tweed,And many a trout in Till,But Coquet—Coquet aye for me,If I may have my will.”
“There’s mony a saumon lies in Tweed,
And many a trout in Till,
But Coquet—Coquet aye for me,
If I may have my will.”
A much beloved stream, indeed, is the Coquet, rising in an acre or two of marshy land, losing itself for a while among the peat, then winding into the sunlight round the feet of the green hills, and—after many a mile of joyous wandering—plunging into deep embowered woods and mossy thickets, where, to all but its familiars, it is unsuspected and unseen.
All around Coquet Head lies the Debatable Land. Mounting the dark hill of Thirlmoor one may look far away over Roxburghshire, whence, in former rough times, there was many a raid into the rich Northumbrian lands. The district known as Kidland lies along Coquetside, from the Cheviots eastward, and here in the stormy moss-trooping days no soul could be induced to live, even if he were tempted by the offer of free lands. The hills are now covered with sheep; there is a shelter for the shepherds on the top of Thirlmoor; yet to this day Kidland is a country bare of habitations, shrouded for great part of the year in mists; dank, rainy, treeless;swept by fierce winds, treacherous by reason of its numerous bogs. The wild duck may be shot at Coquet Head, but for the most part it lives and breeds here in great safety, too remote from men, too fortunate in its wild surroundings, to be much or frequently incommoded by the English enthusiasm for sport. It is possible, perhaps, to be in as deep a solitude on Dartmoor, but scarcely possible to be so far from the musical church bell and the cheerful cottage smoke.
But even in this wild region there are remains of our old civilisation, and numerous relics of “the grandeur that was Rome.” What are known as the Ad Fines Camps are situated close to Coquet Head; the Watling Street crosses the young stream not far from its source on Thirlmoor; the Outer and the Middle Golden Pot, Roman milestones of an unusual design, are within easy reach of where the river encloses the ancient camps in one of its forks. These stations were of considerable extent when they were made, and were serviceable in after ages as the meeting-place of the Wardens of the Middle Marches of England and Scotland when they assembled to punish offences against the Border laws. Wild stories of lawless times are told by the shepherds on the hills. There was a “Thieves’ Road” over Kidland, along which, doubtless, many a herd of stolen sheep or kine has been driven. Many fights there were in these parts, and much pursuing of raiders from the other side of the Border. The Northumbrians, it must be admitted, were no better than their neighbours, and not the least less inclined to thieving. Even a judge was stolen on one occasion, as he was going the rounds of the King’s Justiciaries, and was kept in prison until his captors could exact from him their own terms.
The country below Coquet Head is veined by little streams, which pour into the river at brief intervals, so that what was but lately a thread of water hidden among the moss soon becomes a laughing, sparkling river, though even so low down as Blindburn, four or five miles from the source, it may, in very dry seasons, be bridged by a lady’s foot.
The first house is at Makingdon, rather more than a mile from Ad Fines Camps, and fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. There are occasional houses at intervals of a mile or two along the far-winding course of the river to Alwinton. Of one of these a Mrs. Malaprop of the hills remarked that “it was in a very digested state,” meaning thereby that it stood grievously in need of repair. A descendant of the true Dandie Dinmont lived at Blindburn farmhouse until a few years ago, and kept up the famous breed of terriers, giving to each pair the immortal names of Pepper and Mustard. The traveller into these regions is dependent upon the kindly hospitality of the sparse inhabitants, for there is no house of entertainment within many miles, and a weary distance must the shepherd trudge over the moors before he can forgather with his kind.
The Coquet flows through wild and exceedingly rocky scenery between Blindburn and the next house, which is Carl Croft, and anglers, even with long waders, find no inconsiderable difficulty in fishing the stream. Those of the more discerning sort make their way up one of the tributaries, the Carl Croft or the PhilipBurn, or, by preference, the Usway—the largest and wildest and most beautiful of the feeders of the Coquet—which joins the river at Shillmoor, distant from the small village of Alwinton only about five miles or so. Near the point of junction the Coquet falls, in leap after leap, among rugged and dangerous rocks. Good eel-spearing may be had here in due season. It is usual to make up a party of ten or a dozen, chiefly composed of the shepherds of the district, and to set out on moonless nights, each man with a torch and four-pronged fork, or “cleek.” Those who have tasted its joys say there is no sport in these islands equal to that of spearing eels in the Coquet, with Border shepherds for company. Sometimes, indeed, eels are not the only prey. The river swarms with bull trout, and how is it possible to resist the temptation of cleeking a fine plump fish if it comes within reach of one’s spear? Such sport is dangerous, however, being against the laws, and numerous have been the conflicts, in times not long past, between the hillmen and the watchers, their hereditary foes. On some occasions the poachers have played sly tricks on those who have intended their capture. They have sent out rumours of their intention to have “a gey night;” then they have sat in some lonely place drinking whisky and telling stories the night through, issuing thence in the morning, when the watchers had convinced themselves of a hoax, to sweep the Coquet and all the neighbouring streams.
HARBOTTLE. / ALWINTON BRIDGE.HARBOTTLE. / ALWINTON BRIDGE.
HARBOTTLE. / ALWINTON BRIDGE.
The chief resorts alike of shepherds and of anglers are the villages of Alwinton and Harbottle, distant about two miles from each other, and near to where the Coquet winds out of the hills and flows between rich meadow-lands, that slope away to the distant Cheviots on the one hand, and to the nearer Simonside Hillson the other. Alwinton has the large allowance of two inns to about eleven houses. It is one of the most ancient of the Border villages, and had a church in 1293, to which fled one Thomas de Holm, escaped from the prison of the neighbouring town, but taken by Simon Smart and Benedict Grey, who “beheaded him at Simonsett, and hung his head up on the gallows at Harbottle,” as a warning to all like evil-doers. Alwinton has its peel-tower, at about half a mile from the present village; but at Harbottle there are far more striking memorials of a stirring past. There is Harbottle Castle, for example, a ruined mass of masonry on the summit of a steep hill between the village and the river. It must anciently have been almost the strongest place on the Borders, when what is now a small village was doubtless a fairly considerable town. “Here Botl,” the place of the army—such is the name which it is said to have borne before the Conquest, when it contained a stronghold held by Milred, the son of Ackman. “Robert with the Beard,” the lord of Prudhoe, founder of the family of De Umfraville,came into possession of all the surrounding lands in 1076, on condition of defending the countryside against wolves and the enemies of the king. The castle, of which there are portions still remaining, was built in the reign of Henry II., and was the prison and place of execution of all offenders taken in the liberty of Redesdale. Sitting by the castle of Harbottle in these days, and listening to the joyous music of the Coquet stream, the imagination vainly endeavours to piece together the meagre fragments of the past into some consistent whole; for the quiet aspect of things, the sweet rural peace, and this
“Place of slumber and of dreamsRemote among the hills,”
“Place of slumber and of dreamsRemote among the hills,”
“Place of slumber and of dreams
Remote among the hills,”
make it seem incredible that a great Scottish army can ever have sat down before it, and that the place can have been strong enough to resist a determined siege.
THE COQUET AT FARNHAM.THE COQUET AT FARNHAM.
THE COQUET AT FARNHAM.
When Harbottle has been left behind, the river no longer strains through narrow passes or hurries by great ramparts of riven cliff. It broadens out, indeed, into a quiet, smiling stream, with a brown shingly bed, and with occasional large masses of reeds, in which an otter may hide. There are now frequent small villages along its course, the most interesting of these being Holystone, where there is a well in which, as Alexander Smith has related—
“The king and all his nobles and his priests,Were by Paulinus in Christ’s name baptised,And solemnly unto his service sealed.And then Paulinus lifted up his hands,And blessed them and the people.”
“The king and all his nobles and his priests,Were by Paulinus in Christ’s name baptised,And solemnly unto his service sealed.And then Paulinus lifted up his hands,And blessed them and the people.”
“The king and all his nobles and his priests,
Were by Paulinus in Christ’s name baptised,
And solemnly unto his service sealed.
And then Paulinus lifted up his hands,
And blessed them and the people.”
No less than three thousand Northumbrians are said to have received the sacrament of baptism at this place, a statement which will seem the less incredible if we consider that Northumbria was then the most powerful and populous of the Saxon kingdoms. The famous well lies by the junction of two Roman ways, in a little grove of fir-trees, where the water still bubbles up actively through the sand and gravel. There is above it a stone cross with this inscription: “In this place Paulinus the Bishop baptised 3,000 Northumbrians, Easter, DCXXVII.”
Under the brow of Simonside, which is a huge shoulder of mountain thrusting itself up suddenly from the ascending land, there are a few cottages, and one great house, and a mill where are manufactured the Cheviot tweeds. This is the village of Tosson. Hence one looks away across the Coquet to the long range of the Cheviot hills, which seem surprisingly near, and yet are separated from Coquetside by many a mile of rich and pleasant pasture land. The ancient village of Rothbury is close at hand, with its one long street dipping down from the moorside to the Coquet banks, with its picturesque “Thrum Mill,” its ancient church tower, and its great expanse of furze-bestrewn moors, amid the nearest of which Cragside, the residence of Lord Armstrong, is set. “An Act of Parliament is out of breathbefore it reaches Rothbury,” say the people of the place. It is a saying which has survived from the pre-railroad days, when this portion of the wild Border land seemed as much cut off from the rest of England as if it had been islanded by the sea. Nor, indeed, is the sea so far away. On clear days one may behold it from the top of Simonside, a thin grey streak, scarcely distinguishable from the greyness of the sky.
A turbulent little town was Rothbury in its earlier days. It was here that Bernard Gilpin took down from the church door a glove which had been hung up as a challenge to all and sundry, and then preached a powerful sermon on the wickedness of private war. In the same church many years ago an old man who was listening to a condemnation of robbery rose up and said, “Then the de’il I give my sall to, bot we are all thieves.” Happily that broad statement no longer applies. The people of Rothbury and the region beyond are honest, stalwart, hard-working, prosperous folk, given to no pursuit more lawless than the occasional poaching of bull trout.
And of bull trout, which easily passes for salmon with the unwary, it is well that a word should be said. Thesalmo erioxhas long established its title to the Coquet as its own exclusive stream. “On the Coquet it goes by the name of salmon,” says a writer on angling, “there being no true salmon in that river. Bull trout very rarely takes fly or bait of any kind, except when it is in the kelt state, when it is ravenous. It reaches fifteen and twenty pounds in weight.” A noble fish, it will be remarked; but why should it have laid exclusive claim to the Coquet, with that river lying, as it does, between such salmon-haunted streams as the Tyne and the Tweed? This is a puzzle which the scientific mind finds itself incapable of solving to this day. A generation since it was maintained that the bull trout devoured the young of salmon, and it was decided, therefore, that thesalmo erioxshould itself be destroyed. By the connivance of the local landowner every specimen of the bull trout was killed as it entered the river from the sea. Breeding ponds for salmon were then established at Rothbury, and 17,000 young fish were turned into the Coquet in a single year. Many of these were branded for future identification, but, so far as was known, not a single fish of the whole 17,000 ever came back to the stream in which it was bred. Some were caught in the Tyne, and some in the Tweed, and some in more distant rivers, but never did the bite of a true salmon reward the patient angler by Coquetside. Worse than all, too, the common trout deteriorated, for they had fed on the spawn of thesalmo eriox. These things becoming apparent, as much anxiety was shown to get the bull trout back to the river as there had been eagerness for its destruction. The bull trout is now, in fact, strictly preserved under the salmon laws. There is a Coquet Fish Conservancy Board; and the catching of bull trout in Coquet, alike by nets and by more artificial expedients, is now a considerable industry, much of the so-called salmon exported to France and Spain being no more than thesalmo erioxof the English Border. There arethose who will not even yet believe that the Coquet cannot be made a salmon river. Now and then some angler confidently announces that he has caught a true salmon in this delightful and prolific stream. Such tales are listened to with interest, but are not believed. Even experienced fishermen are capable of confounding the bull trout with its nobler brother of the streams.
ON THE COQUET, BRINKBURN.ON THE COQUET, BRINKBURN.
ON THE COQUET, BRINKBURN.
At the foot of the long street of Rothbury, and just on the lower outskirt of the village, is the Thrum Mill, the name of which is explained by the fact that the river here strains through a narrow chasm, or thrum, in a piled-up bed of freestone rock. The mill is an object of the conventionally picturesque description, with a moss-grown waterwheel, and with a tumbling torrent for foreground. A bridge here crosses the Coquet, and to the left, half-way up the steep side of a heathery hill, rises the mixed Gothic and Elizabethan mansion of Lord Armstrong.The site has clearly been chosen for the wildness of its surroundings, for whatever changes may be wrought by cultivation, and however the growth of plantations may soften the harsh brown and softer purple of the heather, untamed Nature will still assert itself here, like Hereward’s wife at Ely, as “captive but unconquered.” At Cragside there is one of the noblest of English picture galleries, the contents of which have been brought together by an exceedingly catholic taste, and by a liberality of expenditure only possible to “wealthy men who care not how they give.” Here are Linnell’s “Thunderstorm in Autumn,” Millais’ “Chill October,” David Cox’s “Ulverstone Sands,” Leslie’s “Cowslip Gatherers,” Wilkie’s “Rabbit on the Wall,” Rossetti’s “Margaret and her Jewels,” and some of the finest works of Turner, Landseer, Phillip, Müller, and, coming down to living artists, Sir Frederick Leighton.
AT FELTON.AT FELTON.
AT FELTON.
From Rothbury the Coquet takes a long sweep through the fields and then plunges into the woods of Brinkburn. There are here, one reads, great and dangerous holes in the river bed; but so there are at many places on the Coquet, and not at Brinkburn more remarkably or permanently than elsewhere. Such holesare made by the swirling water of the floods, and may change their situation with every spate. Their more particular association with Brinkburn may arise from the fact that the bells of the priory are believed to have been cast into a hole in the river, from which whosoever recovers them, says the tradition, will come into possession of treasures galore. Brinkburn was one of the earliest religious settlements on the disturbed and lawless English side of the Border. Exceedingly courageous must have been those monks who decided to accept the rough chances of life at Brinkburn Priory. They had the protection of the deep woods, indeed. Even now one may pass by Brinkburn without suspecting what rich memorials of a past age and a venerable faith are hid within its leafy coverts. It is not merely embosomed, but buried, in trees. So, too, it must have been when the monks were here, for the story goes that a party of marauding Scots had already passed the priory, and was well on its way toward places under less saintly protection, when the monks too soon set the bells a-ringing for joy at its departure, with the evil result of revealing their hiding-place, so that the Scots, returning, fell upon the black canons of Brinkburn while they were assembled to offer up prayers of gratitude for their deliverance from danger.
This priory of Brinkburn was founded in the reign of Henry I. by a certain Sir William de Bertram, Baron of Mitford, by Morpeth, who endowed it liberally from his extensive lands. Its monks were of the order of St. Augustine. Of their history little is known, but it must have been troublous enough, and there is reason to think that they were more than once under the necessity of flight. Having resolved to build a church, the Lord of Mitford determined that it should be such a one as would do honour to his name. The present extensive remains still speak eloquently of the original beauty of the edifice. Of the church, partially restored in 1858 by the present owners of the estate, the Cadogan family, it has been remarked that, “the richest Norman work is here inextricably blended with the purest Early English, and the fabric must be regarded as one of the most fascinating specimens of the transition from one to the other that there is in the country.” Out of the ruins of the monastery, and above the cellars in which the monks may have hidden themselves in times of trouble, the present manor house of Brinkburn has been built. It stands not far from the banks of the Coquet, which are here somewhat narrow and steep, with rocky projections, and with no route for the angler except in the bed of the stream, or amid an almost impenetrable confusion of shrubs and brambles and trees. At one point the piers of a Roman bridge may be discerned when the water is low; there is a quaint old watermill by the side of the stream; at a spot but a short distance away, it is averred by a pleasant tradition, the Northumbrian fairies were buried, and there they sleep, like King Arthur under the castle of Sewingshields, until faith shall return to the earth.
The most widely known of all the villages below Rothbury is Weldon Bridge, at which one arrives when the Coquet has left Brinkburn Woods. It is themain resort of those anglers who love quiet fishing, and are not adventurous enough to make their way into the hills. Much has it been besung by the poets of the craft. “At Weldon Bridge,” says one—
“... there’s wale o’ wine,If ye hae coin in pocket;If ye can throw a heckle fine,There’s wale o’ trout in Coquet.”
“... there’s wale o’ wine,If ye hae coin in pocket;If ye can throw a heckle fine,There’s wale o’ trout in Coquet.”
“... there’s wale o’ wine,
If ye hae coin in pocket;
If ye can throw a heckle fine,
There’s wale o’ trout in Coquet.”
It is but a little place, this Weldon Bridge, with a large inn, before whose doors the river flows in gentle music. For the last two or three miles the stream has been characterised by the most capricious bendings, and henceforth, but with rather larger sweeps, it preserves the same wilful habit until it reaches the sea. There are pleasant walks along its banks down to Felton, sometimes diverging into low-lying woods, sometimes climbing the hillsides among farms, and occasionally leading to some ancient ford. At Felton itself the hills close in more narrowly, and the pleasant little village stands on a declivity amongst trees, whilst the river streams through a rocky pass. There is a dam at Felton which furnished material for rather a feeble joke to the late Frank Buckland. He found the fish falling back exhausted from vain attempts to leap the weir, and he posted up a “notice to salmon and bull trout,” telling them to go down the river and take the first turn to the right, when they would find good travelling water up stream, and assuring them of the good will of the Duke of Northumberland, who meant to make a ladder for them by-and-bye. The fact that an inspector of fisheries, like Buckland, should have believed that salmon went up the Coquet with the bull trout is a curious illustration of the indeterminate ideas which have until lately prevailed on the subject of the varieties of fish by which this river is frequented.
Felton is one of those villages at which it is pleasant to spend a night. Its bridge is almost as beautifully situated as that of Bettws-y-Coed. One stands upon it in the evening, and leans one’s arms on the parapet, and looks towards the hills which environ it, and the comfortable village inn, and the quiet cottages, and feels how glorious a land is this England in which we live. There is nothing else to do or to enjoy, unless the river is low, as Frank Buckland saw it, and the fish are crowding up the stream; and then the sight is one that is for the existing moment very exciting and is afterwards difficult to forget.
Felton is an ancient place. The old religion lingers there. The Protestant Reformation scarcely penetrated to north Northumberland, and many of the chief families of the district are still attached to the more ancient forms of faith. Attached to Felton Park is the Roman Catholic chapel of St. Mary. There are remains of a more antique edifice of the same faith about two miles away, the Church of St. Wilfred of Gysnes, given to the canons of Alnwick in the twelfth century. Felton is on the old Northern Coach Road, and is not now far away from the rail. Whosoever desires to make acquaintance with the whole of theCoquet should alight at the neighbouring station of Acklington. He may then go downward to Warkworth, to Amble, and the sea; or he may go upward to Brinkburn, to Rothbury, and the moors.
MORWICK MILL, ACKLINGTON.MORWICK MILL, ACKLINGTON.
MORWICK MILL, ACKLINGTON.
WARKWORTH CASTLE. / THE VILLAGE OF WARKWORTH.WARKWORTH CASTLE. / THE VILLAGE OF WARKWORTH.
WARKWORTH CASTLE. / THE VILLAGE OF WARKWORTH.
From Felton until Warkworth is in sight there is little over which one need linger. The country is level more or less, and the river seems to flow in a deep trench, with a fringe of trees on either side of it. At one place it comes through a deep break in the solid rock, which seems as if it must originally have been quarried. One speculates in vain as to the mighty force of the water by which such passages must have been hewn. These clefts for rivers are not uncommon, but they are incomprehensible. The water, one is compelled to feel, was but a minor element in their formation. A mile and a half from Warkworth there is another weir, a great straight wall of cement, with a passage for fish on either side. Yet though the fish may go up to left or right, as they may choose, there is what persons addicted to sport might call “an even chance” in connection with their coming down. If they take the ladder to the right they will get off to sea, but if they come down to the left they will fall into a trap, and will, in all probability, be eaten on French dinner tables as salmon. For, at Warkworth, or within a shortdistance of it, is the great fishery of Mr. Pape, who has not only the weir to assist his operations, but has the right—acquired by paying a rent to the Duke of Northumberland—to stop up one of the fish passes at the extremities of the weir, which privilege he exercises so ingeniously that every fish that chooses the left side of the river for its downward passage gets into his trap, from which it may be lifted out at will.
Can Edmund Spenser ever have been at Warkworth? If not, how does he come by this description?—