On their return with their rescued comrade to the river, they saw that it 'flowed frae bank to brim,' but nothing daunted, they plunged into the flood and safely swam across. Their pursuers, however, gave up the chase at sight of the rushing torrent—
All sore astonish'd stood Lord Scroope
He stood as still as rock of stane;
He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,
When through the water they had gane.
'He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wadna hae ridden that wan water
For a' the gowd in Christentie.'
But even in the midst of the rough warfare of these olden days, there was often a thread of tender affection and romance woven by the ballad-singers into their tales. The vale of the river Yarrow has been more specially consecrated by these tragic songs, and the 'dowie howms o' Yarrow' have come to be identified with all that is most pathetic in the minstrelsy of the Border. From the time of the early ballads a succession of minor poets had sung of this vale, until the pathos of its history was fully revealed to the whole world by Scott and Wordsworth.
It may be readily granted that the fascination of Yarrow has mainly sprung from the recollection of the human incidents which have been transacted there, and which have been enshrined in so much touching verse. But these tragic associations will not, I think, of themselves wholly account for this fascination, nor for the sad tone of the poetry. There seems to me to be a source of peculiarly impressive power in the scenery
