It is, however, in its situation and in its happy blending with its immediate surroundings that Dryburgh is chiefly distinguished from its compeers. It is secluded from the world, on the margin of the wide stream; hidden among woods and overlooked by hills. To reach it you have to circumvent rivers and climb up and down steep braes. The easiest way of approach is by crossing Lessudden Bridge, from the south bank of the Tweed above the tower of Littledean. This was the road followed by the “bold Baron” of Smailholm, whose tower and Beacon Hill, and the standing stones on the moor of Brotherstone, look down from the eastern and northern skyline on the scene
“Over Tweed’s fair flood, and Mertoun’s wood,
And all down Teviotdale”.
By Mertoun’s wood, the screen of Dryburgh from gales blowing from the sea, and now the property of Lord Polwarth, a Scott of the Harden blood, the way winds to the Abbey precincts, overshadowed by the great trees that surround Dryburgh House. Naturally the feet first seek the tomb of Sir Walter in St. Mary’s Aisle. The story of how the best beloved of the sons of the Border came to be laid under this fragment of the north transept and choir – a well-preserved piece of elegant First Pointed work – is itself a romance. His grandmother on the father’s side, Barbara Haliburton, was the daughter of a Merse laird, who was owner of part of the lands of Dryburgh, including the Abbey ruins. She became his inheritor; but before then Robert Haliburton had lost his lands through unwise speculation. David Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan – brother of Lord Chancellor Erskine and of Harry Erskine, the brilliant wit and pleader – who has left the impress of his eccentric mind on the colossal statue of Wallace which stands, “frowning towards England”, above his suspension bridge for foot passengers crossing the Tweed from St. Boswells, became possessor of the ground; and, through Lady Scott, obtained a promise from the author of Waverley that he should be buried in this kindred earth. Lady Scott died in 1826, and Buchan in 1829, while Sir Walter himself was not laid here until 26th September, 1832. In his fragment of “Autobiography”, Scott records how he had come to his own again in this twice-hallowed spot; and, with a touch of prophecy as well as pathos, he wrote: “And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father’s maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own glances over these pages.” Nowhere – not even in Melrose – could the Wizard rest more tranquilly than in this scene where nature and art, the present and the past, and life and death seem to be brought into perfect accord.
The funeral cortège, coming from Abbotsford, crossed the Tweed and Leader at Leaderfoot, and climbing, past Gladswood, by a road with which Scott was familiar, halted where he had often halted, and where multitudes have halted since, at a bold and sharp elbow of the path, raised three hundred feet above the river, whence an unrivalled view can be had into the heart of the Scott Country. Immediately below, across the stream, on a peninsula of land washed on three sides by the Tweed, is Old Melrose, a spot which had gathered sanctity many centuries before the mediæval abbeys rose in the valley. Here a mission station of the Christian faith was planted from distant Iona; and hence, probably, travelled Aidan to convert heathen Northumbria and to found Lindisfarne and Hexham; here dwelt, as first abbot, his companion Eata, and also Boisel, who gave his name to St. Boswell’s opposite, and to whom came for instruction Cuthbert, a shepherd lad who had been reared at Wrangham, near Brotherstone, and had tended his flock and seen visions in the Lammermoors. From “Mailros”, the bald promontory – its very name attests the tongue in which the Celtic founders spoke – St. Cuthbert’s body in its stone coffin floated downstream on its many wanderings by water and land; and, as related by Bede, the hermit Drithelm was wont in winter to break the ice on the river, and, standing up to the neck in the water, recite his prayers. Although it was abandoned before the “Sair Saint” brought to the neighbourhood and to Scotland the first monks of the Cistercian Order, some of the prestige of Old Melrose must have clung to the name and been transferred to the Religious House on the new site, the ruddy walls of which can be descried, sheltering at the foot of the Eildons, across the fields on which, long before the coming of the Columban missionaries, the Romans planted the expeditionary camp and permanent station of Trimontium, that have only lately yielded their secrets to the spade.
This Bemerside Hill is a “Mount of Vision” from which all the chief shrines and high places of the Scott Country can be surveyed, at least with the mind’s eye. Abbotsford itself, if not in actual view, can be mapped into the scene by direction and position. Out of sight, directly under the brow of the hill, is the ancient square fortalice, with later buildings attached, and grounds stretching down towards the Tweed, where Haigs have been resident for seven centuries. They were benefactors of Melrose when Alexander III was king, and when Thomas the Rhymer was their neighbour and wellwisher, and uttered the prophecy that has so mightily helped its own fulfilment:
“Betyde, betyde, whate’er betyde,
Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde.”
Sir Walter Scott was a later friend of the family, and was often a guest in the beautiful rose-garden below the mansion. A grateful nation bestowed the house and manor on the late Field-Marshal Earl Haig, who now lies at rest close by Sir Walter at Dryburgh. The whole scene and surroundings seem to be touched by the spirit of prophecy and of poetry. On the hills opposite stood the “Eildon Tree” and the “Eildon Stone”; and beyond these, on Abbotsford property, the reputed “Rhymer’s Glen”, where “True Thomas” encountered the Queen of Faëry, although the tryst may well have been at Huntlywood, behind Brotherstone, on the Eden Water, and near Corsbie Tower, the ruined “Castle of Avenel”. As has been said, Drithelm and Cuthbert were visionaries, so were Boisel, the second Abbot of the old, and Waldave, the first Abbot of the new foundation; and centuries before the time of the Seer of Ercildoune they dreamed dreams and saw things not of this world and far into the future. According to popular belief, of like gifts was “Auld Michael”, whose words “cleft Eildon Hills in three”. The last and the greatest of these “Wizard Scotts” is he who sleeps with his fathers in St. Mary’s Aisle.
When descent is made into the valley of the Leader, one is still in the land of enchantment. The ivy-covered “Rhymer’s Tower” is a few miles up the glen, and on the way, under the Black Hill of Earlston, are Drygrange and the “Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes”. Near by, at Mellerstain, lived and sang Grizel Baillie, who was Grizel Hume; and in the Kirk of Legerwood is the monument of that other Grizel, who, in the dress of a highwayman, saved her father’s life by holding up the King’s officer carrying the writ for his execution. Higher up Leader are Carolside, and, in a side glen, Auld Thirlstane, the seat of “Auld Maitland”, and Spottiswoode, the home of Alicia Spottiswoode – Lady John Scott – writer and composer of “Bonnie Annie Laurie” and other thrilling Scots lyrics. The new Thirlstane – it is hundreds of years old – is in the centre of Lauderdale, beside the venerable Royal Burgh of Lauder, the last of the municipalities in the land to retain its old burghal rights and customs. Many are the hill-forts and camps that look down on the now peaceful scenes through which the road – a favourite tourist coach route – passes on its way from the crossing of the Lammermoors to the Tweed; and among them are Channelkirk where Cuthbert heard the summons of the Heavenly Host, and Edgarshope, by which the message of fire that told of the crossing of the border by the English bands, was wont to be passed on to Soutra Edge, near by the Hospice of the Red Friars, to which, and not to Faeryland, Thomas retired from the world, when he followed the mysterious Hart and Hind up Leaderside.
Not less richly furnished with the relics of eld and with the charms of modern cultivation is the parallel vale of the Gala, the nursery of the “Braw Lads”. The “Shirra” often traversed it on his way by Midleton Moor to his home and sphere of jurisdiction on Ettrick and Tweed, upon which the stream, road, and railway debouch a little below the mill lades and chimney stalks of the town of Galashiels, and almost opposite to Abbotsford. On the links and bends of the Gala, and its side glens of the Heriot, the Armit, and the Luggate, are many places of historic note – Crookston, of the Borthwicks, for example; Stow – the “Stowe of Wedale”, of Arthurian and mediæval fame; Bowland, like Eildon Hall, on the farther side of the Eildons, a possession of the House of Buccleuch; the ruined “broch” on the Bow Hill, facing, across the valley, a similar structure which, with the termination of that ancient and mysterious line of earthworks, the “Catrail”, occupies the crown of Torwoodlee, of the Pringles; finally, Buckholm Hill and Tower, looking over the roofs of the busy seat of tweed manufactures to Gala Hill and Gala House of the Scotts. “Gala Water, Buckholm, Torwoodlee”, were among the last audible words murmured by the dying “Border Minstrel”.
Between “Leader howms” and Gala Water runs the little stream of the Allan or Alwyne through the “Fairy Dean”. Lovers of Scott will not pass it by, because, apart from the loveliness of its succession of wood-embowered haughs, it leads to a spot where three ruined peel towers – Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw – stand not many bowshots apart, memorials of the time when the smaller lairds had to bind themselves together by a “bond of manrent”, for protection against their more powerful neighbours; and the first of these has been identified, with some sanction from Scott himself, as the “Glendearg” of the Glendinnings in The Monastery and The Abbot. Near the bridge which crosses the Tweed at the “Pavilion of Alwyn”, and the “groves of noble Somerville”, was the scene of the misadventure of Philip, the Sacristan, at the hands of the spirits, and of Mysie Happer, the daughter of the miller of the Halidome. The dairy farm of the “monks of St. Mary’s” was on Allan Water; up it led the “girth-gait” which they often followed on the way to Soutra Hospice. True Thomas’s rhymed sayings cling to this countryside like – in Father Philip’s phrase – “burrs to a beggar’s rags”. The region between Leaderfoot and Galashiels was part of the original patrimony of the Cistercian Abbey; all the way, but especially where Gattonside, set on its hillside and surrounded by its famous orchards, “beiks in the sun”, one sees, in glimpses or in full view,
“Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose
And Eildon slopes to the plain”.
In drawing near to Melrose, especially if one crosses at Leaderfoot, and approaches by the village of Newstead and over the site of the Roman camp, one feels there is something to be said for Dorothy Wordsworth’s disappointment on coming first into near view of the Abbey. It stands back from the river – perhaps because the river has left it – and apart from the hills. It is in the fields outside of the village, the streets of which come to its gate and stop there; and it is surrounded by walls, which interrupt and deform proportions seriously injured by the loss of its central tower. Melrose – “the light of the land, the abode of saints, the grave of monarchs” – is a glorious fragment, more beautiful, perhaps, in detail than in general effect, in ornament than in design; and memorable even more for its legendary and literary associations than for its actual history. The monastery dates from the same abbey-building reign as its rivals on Tweedside; but architecturally the church belongs to another horizon. Of the original Norman fabric that stood on the site scarcely a trace remains. It was swept away during the descent upon it of Edward II in 1322, and what remained must have perished under the equally destructive assault of Richard II in 1385. Between these two dates, a building arose, represented by the eastern end of the nave with its flying buttresses and by adjoining parts of the choir and transepts, that may be regarded as a monument of the piety and the gratitude of Robert the Bruce, whose heart, brought back from the Paynim lands to which the “good Sir James” of Douglas had carried it, is buried in the Abbey. The work of rebuilding was continued for nearly a couple of centuries longer; and it is evident that the highest art and craftsmanship the age could produce were employed in construction and in ornament, which, owing to the fineness of grain of the red sandstone employed, remains in wonderful preservation. It is doubtful whether it was completed before the tempests of the Tudor invasions and of the Reformation fell upon it, and the monks were put to flight. It has not been definitely ascertained how far the long nave extended to the westward, or what was the plan of the monastic buildings, of which and of the cloister only a few fragments are left on the northern side of the church. The presbytery, with its much extolled “east oriel” window, was probably among the later additions, and is one of the finest examples of Perpendicular Gothic extant. Scott would have us view it when the moon is shining “through slender shafts of shapely stone, by foliaged tracery combined”, and to imagine that
“Some fairy’s hand
’Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,
In many a freakish knot, had twined”.
But even more wonderful and beautiful to many eyes is the great Decorated window of the south transept that lightens the aisle in which, as is fabled, the Wizard Michael sleeps with his magic books beside him. Familiar are the lines in which Sir Walter, a constant pilgrim to this shrine, chants its praises – of its cloister garth:
“Nor herb, nor floweret, glistened there,
But was carved in the cloister-arches fair”;
of the vaulted roof, where
“The key-stone that locked each ribbéd aisle
Was a fleur-de-lys or a quatrefeuille”;
and of the pillars, with their clustered shafts, that
“With base and with capital flourished around
Seem’d bundles of lances which garlands had bound”.
It must have been a labour of love to frame this marvellously carved casket, in which are laid the ashes of kings and prelates. Here rest the chiefs of the once mighty House of Douglas, and, not far away, of the English Warden who desecrated their tombs and was overtaken and slain at Ancrum Moor; among minor clans “Ye race of ye House of Zair” – Kerrs and Pringles; and, later in date but of the same stubborn and trusty Border stuff, Tom Purdie, the reclaimed poacher and faithful watchdog and factotum of the Laird of Abbotsford. The prayer of John Morvo, inscribed on the wall of the south transept,
“I pray to God and Marie baith
And sweet St. John keep this haly Kirk frae skaith”,
has not been fulfilled. To other bludgeonings of fate was added its conversion into the parish church in the seventeenth century. Walter Scott helped to rescue it from vandalism and neglect; and he continues to be the guardian spirit of the “dark Abbaye”.
Not less than in the days of the monks is the adjacent town of Melrose – “Kennaquair” the residence of the antiquarian Captain Cuthbert Clutterbuck – an appanage of the Abbey, out of which indeed it has partly been built. One looks in vain for the “Druid Oak”, which existed only in Scott’s fancy. But Melrose has its market cross and market place, and does a modest business with the country round. Its chief source of prosperity, however, is in its situation and its associations; it may be called the capital of the “Scott Country”. Abbotsford is little more than a couple of miles away. The road to it passes Darnick Tower, a red keep festooned with greenery, the stronghold of one of the lay vassals of the Abbey; and skirts, in the grounds of the Hydropathic Establishment, the “skirmish field” on which was fought in 1526 the fray between the Scotts and the Kerrs of the Douglas faction that gave rise to a long feud between the clans. Scott, it may be noted, speaks of the scene, when