Highways and Byways in the Border. Andrew Lang
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that stung Gala lads to fury.
Before quitting the subject of Roxburgh, it may be of interest to mention that in the churchyard of the present village of that name there is a gravestone to the memory of the original of Edie Ochiltree, the bluegown of Sir Walter's Antiquary. Andrew Gemmels was his name. He died in 1793 at Roxburgh Newtown, a farm on the banks of Tweed a few mi es from Roxburgh, at the great age of one hundred and six.
The first tributary received by Teviot on the right bank is the Kale Water, running through the parish of Linton, which was in King David's time an appanage of Kelso Abbey. The church has been restored, but the walls are, like those of Kelso, Norman work, and in the porch is an enigmatic piece of sculptors' work; apparently somebody is fighting a dragon—Sir Herbert Maxwell suggests St. George, but St. Michael was the more orthodox dragon slayer. About the object grew an aetiological myth; a Somerville of old times
"Slew the Worm of Worrnes glen
And wan all Lintoun parochine."
The dragon-slaying story is found in most parts of the world, from Troy to Dairy in the Glenkens. Here the Worm twisted himself round the Mote, or tumulus (apparently the basis of an old fort), and was killed by the local blacksmith. In 1522-1533, Linton tower was among the scores of such Border Keeps which the English destroyed. They could hold their own against a Border raid; not in face of a regular English army. Roxburghshire was not so deeply tainted by Covenanting principles as Galloway, Lanarkshire, and the south-west, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Covenanters needed wild hills and wild wastes. They are said to have held coil venticles in a deep glen of Kale; but, as a rule, they knew enough to preach in places of wide outlook, where they could detect the approach of parties of dragoons. In the bed of a burn they would be at great disadvantage.
A tower more interesting than that of Linton, namely Ormistoun, fell when Linton fell; but it must have been rebuilt, for here, in Mary Stuart's day, dwelt the Black Laird of Ormistoun, James, with Hob, his brother, two of Bothwell's most cruel and desperate "Lambs." The Black Laird was with Bothwell, Hay of Talla (on upper Tweed), and one of Bothwell's own clan, Hepburn of Bowton, when they placed the powder under Darnley's chamber in Kirk o'-Field (February 9-10, 1567), and so, in the feeling words of Bothwell, "sent him fleeing through the air." After doing another deed as treacherous as this murder, the Black Laird was taken, tried, and hanged in 1573. Bothwell was Warden of the Border, which he ruled from Hermitage Castle on the Liddel water, and all these loose Border lairds rode and slew at his bidding. They had probably, in that twilight of faith, no religion in particular; Catholicism lingered in the shape of oaths, Calvinism was not yet well settled in these regions. But, probably in prison, the Black Laird "got religion." He professed to be of the Elect, and confident of his salvation, while he drew a dark enough picture of life among lairds of his quality. On the day of his hanging he said, "With God I hope this night to sup.... Of all men on the earth I have been one of the proudest and most high-minded, and most filthy of my body. But specially, I have shed innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas, therefore, because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having a pitchfork in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it not, which of all things grieves me most in conscience. Within these seven years I never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kinds of wickedness."
This wretch, once on his feet, must have butchered some poor hind who had spared him. In reading Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, and the Register of Privy Council for the period of the Reformation, we find private war, murder, and rapine to have been almost weekly occurrences, from the Upper Tweed to the Esk. The new Gospel Light made the darkness visible, and we see robberies and vendettas among the dwellers in the peel towers, of which the empty shells stand beside every burn in the pleasant lands then clouded with smoke from blazing barn and tower and cottage. The later Ormistouns had "particularly deadly feud" with the Kers of Cessford; the Kers annexed their lands, and the last Ormistoun was a public hangman; the ancestral Orm was a flourishing and pious gentleman of the twelfth century, a benefactor of the early monks of Melrose. Meanwhile, the castle of Cessford, the ancestral hold of that line, is not far from a place called Morbattle in the Black Laird's day, and now, more pleasantly, Morebattle. The name has no connection either with festivity or feud, and "More" is not the Celtic mor, "great." "More" is "mere," a lake, and "botl" is Anglo-Saxon, "a dwelling." Cessford Castle had the name to be only second to Bothwell's castle of Dunbar, and Logan of Restalrig's eyrie on a jutting rock above the sea, Fastcastle. In the great English raid of 1523, "Dand Ker," Sir Andrew, the head of the clan, rather feebly surrendered the place, which was secure in walls fourteen feet thick.
An interesting find was made at Cessford in 1858. Whilst excavating, a few yards from the north wall of the castle, a workman unearthed a very fine old sword, and a dagger, both in fair preservation. The dagger measured about twenty-six inches, and bore on its blade the Scottish Thistle, surmounted by a crown. The sword was basket hilted, richly carved and embossed in silver. It measured forty inches in length; on one side of the blade was the Scottish Crown; on the other, the date 1511.
It was a Ker of Cessford, tradition tells, who in 1622 tried to carry off the goods and gear of Hobbie Hall of Haughhead, father of the famous Covenanter, Henry Hall. Hobbie, apparently, was quite able to take care of himself, as is testified by a large stone which stands on a knoll amid trees, near Kale water, on which is carved:
Here Hoby Hall boldly maintained his right
'Gainst reef plain force armed w. lawless might
For twenty pleughs harnessed in all their gear
Could not this valiant noble heart make fear
But w. his sword he cut the formost soam
In two: hence drove both pleughs and pleughmen home."
1622.
The stone was repaired and restored in 1854 by Lady John Scott.
Higher up than Kale comes Oxnam (locally, Ousenam) Water, which joins Teviot hard by Crailing. Once a nice trout stream, there is not left at this day much to tempt the angler whose dreams are of giant fish, though doubtless many a "basket" can be caught of fingerlings. In none of the Border streams, unhappily, is any restriction made as regards the size of the fish that may be taken. Everything goes into the creel of the fisher with worm in "drummly" waters, and of the holiday sportsman; moved by no compunctions, trammelled by no absurd qualms,—to them a fish is a fish; and as the latter, at least, probably never even sees a big trout, he attaches vast importance to the capture of a "Triton of the minnows." The writer, who had one day fished a Border river with all the little skill at his command, and had succeeded neither with dry fly nor with wet in capturing anything worthy to be kept, once came upon a sportsman of this holiday breed, rigged out with all the latest appliances which should inevitably lure the wiliest of trout from his native element. He "had had a splendid day," he said, in reply to enquiries. "What had he got them with? Oh-h, Fly." but what fly, he would not say. It was just "fly."
"Might he see the basket?" the baffled enquirer asked Proudly the lid was thrown back, and the contents displayed—a basket half filled with parr, and with trout, not one of which could have been six inches in length. Thus are the streams depleted.
It is a pleasant valley, that of the Oxnam. Across it runs the old Roman Road,—in days not very remote a favourite camping place of gipsies,—and up the valley to the south lies that noble sweep of blue hills, the Cheviots, smiling and friendly enough in summer, but dour and forbidding when the north east blast of winter strikes their blurred and gloomy faces.
Did those "muggers" and "tinklers," who of old frequented the Roman Road that runs south over Teviot and Jed and Oxnam, and away over the Cheviots down into Rede valley past Bremenium (High Rochester), did they ever come upon buried treasure or hoarded coins, one wonders. It is not many years since a well-known Professor, as he sat resting one day by the side of the old Road a little farther south than Oxnam valley, idly pushed his walking stick into a rabbit hole close to where he was seated. A few scrapes with the point of the stick, and something chinked and fell; then another, and another. But this buried treasure consisted only of copper coins, a vast number, none very rare; and no farther search revealed anything of value. Yet there must be plenty