The old gentleman sprang from his seat, ejaculated “Mercy on us!” and hurriedly left the shop.
Newark Castle, we consider, is more beautifully placed than any of the Border keeps, and we have seen many of them. The building is a large square tower of great strength, adorned with a few flanking turrets, and much the same in style as the Border towers, still so common in the upland pastoral districts of Roxburghshire. All of these towers are ruinous. Newark, however, possesses a charm of its own which all lovers of out-door nature must feel. It stands on a prominent elevation, and its time-worn walls and turrets are softened by a background of fine trees and lofty green hills; and the stirring waters of the Yarrow make a perpetual murmur round its walls. Peace, or, as Wordsworth has it, “pastoral melancholy” pervades the scene.
Newark was the occasional residence of the Outlaw Murray, whose ancestors held it for some generations, and received a yearly allowance from the crown for keeping it in repair. It afterwards passed into the Buccleuch family. Here the Last Minstrel sang his lay, and a finer scene for such a subject could not easily be conceived—less easily formed. The castle stands within the policy of Bowhill, but free access is had to it by the public; and the pleasant winding footpaths leading along the banks of the river are, every summer, trod and enjoyed by a large number of visitors.
We had little more than crossed the bridge leading from the ducal domain, when up came our postman with a hearty—
“Weel, sir, I hope ye’ve enjoyed yersel’; am sure ye’ll hae found it a bonny place.”
We mounted the vehicle, and, during our five or six miles’ ride, had many stoppages at farm-houses, noteworthy localities, and humble cottages. At the latter the flowers of Yarrow were good-humouredly bantered about “the lads” by the postman. His vehicle, by the way, seemed to contain all kinds of merchandise and his memory seemed excellent, for all his morning’s orders were fulfilled; and, when receiving them, he informed us, he made no notes.
We had the benefit of his oral catalogue of houses, places, and families of the olden time. And although unfamiliar with his writings, he spoke of the Ettrick Shepherd with some enthusiasm. He remembered him well: and the Shepherd was at his wedding, where he, as usual, was the soul of the party.
“Man,” said he, “he was bright! And he did keep them laughin’. He was a hearty fallow; and he never was ony ways proud. But, eh, man, it is lang sin’ the weddin’ now, and what changes hae taen place since then!”
The scene of the Dowie Dens of Yarrow is near Yarrow Kirk, where the scenery is pastoral, and where two massive stones are supposed to mark the spot of the tragedy; but further down the valley, where it is graced with wide-spreading woodlands, the gloominess of the river at a certain spot is striking, and this place is often pointed out by the people in Yarrow as the Dowie Dens. We stood upon the edge of the high bank overlooking the scene, and far down, in an almost perpendicular direction from where we stood, the foaming, brawling river rolled from our sight away under the gloomy shade of tangled elms and birches that overhang and clothe the banks from top to bottom. The scene is in harmony with the dule and sorrow so often repeated in the ballads commemorating the love and death of Yarrow’s Romeo and Juliet, some of the traditional scenes of which have of late, through the aid of Mr. Noel Paton’s brush, been forcibly brought before the public, and appreciated by many who perhaps never read or cared for the ballads.
No stream in these isles is so interwoven with our literature as Yarrow. The ballads connected with it would fill a goodly-sized volume; and, what is strange, they almost without exception bear the stamp of the vision and the faculty divine. Many of the best are anonymous, but we have the names of the authors of some of the more modern pieces which take rank among the best. Greatest among these stand Hamilton and Wordsworth. “The Braes of Yarrow,” by the former, published in 1748, is a ballad of great power and tenderness. After gazing down on the Dowie Dens, these lines from Hamilton’s ballad lingered for some hours about our memory, and at times forced the tongue into utterance:
Why runs thy stream, O Yarrow, Yarrow, red?
Why on thy braes heard the voice of sorrow?
And why yon melancholious weeds
Hung on the bonny birks of Yarrow?
What’s yonder floats on the ruefu’, ruefu’ flude?
What’s yonder floats? O dule and sorrow!
’Tis he, the comely swain I slew
Upon the duleful braes of Yarrow.
Mount Benger and Altrive Lake, farms occupied by the Ettrick Shepherd, are seen on the right and left, respectively, of the river. The fun and frolic enjoyed by men of parts in the houses belonging to these farms during the poet’s occupancy were of too racy a nature to be easily forgotten. Many pleasant allusions thereto have been made in the writings of the literati who at times enjoyed the Shepherd’s upland retreat. Hogg had his share of the world’s sorrows, but he was ever manly enough to keep even the shadow of such from his guests.
His guests, however, were often too numerous for his means; but, from the hospitality in his nature, they would have been welcome to feast on the best he could provide, had famine loomed in the distance. In this he was doubtless as much open to blame as praise. The manager he had on Mount Benger farm said to a friend of the writer, that no moderately-rented farm of such dimensions could possibly stand the drain upon it for household expenses, caused, as he said, by the visits of so many friends—friends from all quarters of the country. And sheep after sheep had to be brought from the hill to fill the larder at a ruinous rate for the farmer. The manager’s belief was, that his master was brought to poverty through the thoughtlessness of his friends, who thus caused him great expense. In the summer months his house was seldom without guests.
“Often after the merry nights in the house,”