Highways and Byways in the Border

CHAPTER XV BROUGHTON, TWEEDSMUIR, TALLA, GAMESHOPE, TWEED'S WELL

Returning to the neighbourhood of Tweed, on the bank of a little burn tributary to Biggar Water stands the village of Broughton, reminiscent of Mr. "Evidence" Murray, the Prince's Secretary, who saved his own life after the '45 by turning King's Evidence. Broughton House, his old home, was burned to the ground about 1775, (a couple of years prior to Murray's death on the Continent,) and the estate was afterwards sold to the famous Lord Braxfield, the original of Stevenson's "Weir of Hermiston." Higher up Tweed, on the farther bank, is Stanhope, in the eighteenth century the property of Murray of Broughton's nephew, Sir David Murray, who lost his all in the '45; and not many miles farther up the river is Polmood, where the dishonoured uncle lay hid, and was taken, in June 1746, losing thereafter more than the life he saved – honour and the respect of his fellow men. "Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's!" cried Sir Walter Scott's father as he threw out of window the cup from which the apostate had but then drunk tea. And: – "Do you know this witness?" was asked of Sir John Douglas of Kelhead, a prisoner after the '45, before the Privy Council at St. James's, when Murray was giving evidence. "Not I," said Douglas, "I once knew a person who bore the designation of Murray of Broughton, – but that was a gentleman and a man of honour, and one that could hold up his head!" Of old, Polmood – the name, I believe, means the "wolf's burn," or stream – was a hunting seat of Scottish kings; In times more modern it was chiefly remarkable for an interminable law plea which dragged its weary length along for forty years and more, probably in the end with ruin to both parties to the suit. Before coming to Polmood, however, we pass Mossfennan, sung of in two ballads, one of the seventeenth century, the other (of which but a fragment remains) of much more ancient date. On the roadside a little further up is a sign-post that points dejectedly towards a dilapidated-looking tree which stands solitary on the haugh below. Here, says the legend on the post, was the site of Linkumdoddie, whereof Burns wrote a song. But to find any point of interest in the scene, or in the identity of Linkumdoddie or of the lady celebrated, t requires, I think, that the gazer should be possessed of a most perfervid admiration of the poet.

And now we begin to open up the wilder part of Tweed's valley, where not so many years ago you might go a long way, and for miles see no human being but a passing shepherd. It is different now, in these days when motor-cars, leaving behind them a trail of dust as ugly as the smudge of a steamer's smoke low down on the horizon, rush along what used to be the finest of old grass-grown coach-roads, smooth as a billiard-table and free from any loose metal – swept bare now to the very roots of the stones by the constant air-suction of passing cars. But even now, in the winter-time, when the rush of the tourist troubles no more, if one trusts oneself in these wilds, there is a reward to be gleaned in the fresh, inexpressibly clean air, and in the sense of absolute freedom that one gains. You have-left civilisation and its cares behind; here is peace. And in the great hills lying there so solemn and still, black as blackest ink where the heather stands out against the wintry grey sky, or deep-slashed on their sides with heavy drifts of snow from the latest storm, there is rest to the wearied soul and the tired mind. And if the day be windless, what sweeter sound can anywhere be heard than the tinkling melody of innumerable burns blending with the deeper note of Tweed? Nowhere in the world, as it seems to me, is there any scene where Nature lays on man a hand so gentle as here in Tweedsmuir. It is all one, the season; no matter if the air is still, or the west wind bellows down the valley, life is better worth living for the being here. And the glory of it, when snow lies deep over the wide expanse, and the sun shines frostily, and Tweed, black by contrast with the stainless snow, goes roaring his hoarse song seaward!

All burns up this part of the valley used to teem with nice, fat, lusty yellow trout – Stanhope Burn, Polmood, Hearthstane, Talla and Gameshope, Menzion, Fruid, Kingledores (with its memories of St. Cuthbert), and the rest. Doubtless the trout are there still, but most of the burns are now in the hands of shooting tenants, and the fishing, probably, is not open to all as of old. Talla and Gameshope (of which more anon) are now the property of the Edinburgh Water Trust Commissioners, and a permit from them is necessary if one would fish in these two streams or in Talla Reservoir.

Before reaching Talla, almost equidistant between the Polmood and Hearthstane burns, but on the opposite side of Tweed, we come to what used to be the cheery, clean little Crook Inn, standing in its clump of trees. But its history of two hundred years and more as an inn is ended; modern legislation has seen to that. And there is now on this highroad between Peebles and Moffat – a distance of something like thirty miles – not a single house where man and beast may find accommodation and reasonable refreshment. It is not the so-called "idle rich" who are thus handicapped; fifteen or sixteen miles are of small account to the man who owns a motor-car. It is they who cannot afford the luxury of a car, but who yet desire to be alone here with nature, or to fish in Tweed and in such burns as may yet be fished, it is they who find themselves thus left out in the cold. 13

Of old, when the mail-coaches running between Dumfries and Edinburgh came jingling cheerily along this smooth Tweed-side road, it was at the Crook Inn that they changed horses. But I doubt it was not then a spot so inviting as it certainly became in the 'seventies of last century. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder speaks of it as it was in 1807 as "one of the coldest-looking, cheerless places of reception for travellers that we had ever chanced to behold… It stood isolated and staring in the midst of the great glen of the Tweed, closed in by high green sloping hills on all sides… No one could look at it without thinking of winter, snow-storms, and associations filled with pity for those whose hard fate it might be to be storm-stayed there." But Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's visit in 1807 was paid in the month of November, when snow hung heavy in the air, threatening the traveller with wearisome and indefinite delay. And the hind wheels of his chaise collapsed like the walls of Jericho as the postillion, having changed horses here, started with too sudden a dash from the door of the inn; and Sir Thomas was bumped most grievously along the road for some hundreds of yards ere the post-boy (who perhaps had made use at the Crook of some far-seeing device to keep out the cold) discovered that anything was amiss. Not unnaturally the nerves of the occupants of the chaise were a trifle rallied; no doubt the place then looked less cheerful than it might otherwise have appeared. Forty years later, he writes that it had, "comparatively speaking, an inviting air of comfort about it… The road, as you go along, now wears altogether an inhabited look, and little portions of plantations here and there give an air of shelter and civilisation to it." It was a cheerless place enough, no doubt, in the Covenanting days of the seventeenth century, when the dour hill-men were flying from Claverhouse's dragoons, lurking in the black, oozing "peat-hags," hiding by the foaming burns, sheltering on the wild moors, amongst the heather and the wet moss. It was the landlady of this same Crook Inn who found for one fugitive a novel hiding hole; she built him safely into her stack of peats. There has been many a less comfortable and less secure hitting place than that; and where could one drier be found?

It was at the Crook that William Black makes his travellers in the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton" spend a night, and the fare to which in the evening he sets his party down was certainly of the frugalest. But when this present writer knew the inn in the 'seventies, it was far from being only on "whisky and ham and eggs" that he was obliged to subsist. It was then an ideal angler's haunt; and no more gentle lullaby can be imagined than the low murmur of Tweed, and the quiet hus-s-s sh of many waters breathing down the valley on the still night air.

A mile or more beyond the Crook, there is the Bield, also once an inn "From Berwick to the Bield," is the Tweedside equivalent of the Scriptural "From Dan even to Beer-sheba." It was here at the Bield that the Covenanters thought once to trap Claverhouse; but that "proud Assyrian" rode not easily into snares. On the hill above is the site of Oliver Castle, home of the Fraser family, once so powerful in this part of the Border – the site, I think, but nothing more.

And now, to reach that part of Tweedsmuir which more than any other casts over one a spell, it is necessary to branch off here to the left and follow the road shown in Mr. Thomson's charming sketch. Straight ahead of you, as you stand by the little Tweedsmuir post-office, you look up the beautiful valley of the Talla, where the steep hills lie at first open and green and smiling on either hand, but gradually changing their character, close in, gloomy and scarred, and frowning, as the distant Talla Linn is neared.

But before you leave the little hamlet of Tweedsmuir – it can scarcely be called a village – by the old single-arched bridge that is thrown here across Tweed, where he roars and chafes among his rocks ere plunging down into the deep, black pool below, you will see on your left a spire peering out over the tree-tops.

That is the church of Tweedsmuir, on its strange, tumulus-like mound by the river's brink. And here you will find: n the green grass, under the clustering trees, the graves of some who fell for "The Covenant," one headstone, at least, relettered by "Old Mortality" himself. This is the grave of one John Hunter; but doubless there are others, less noticeable, who rest with him in this quiet spot, far from the world's clash and turmoil, where no sound harsher than the Sabbath bell that calls to prayer or the sighing of the wind in the trees, can ever break the silence. Here is Hunter's epitaph:

And on a stone in another part of the churchyard – perhaps the grave of a grandfather and grandchild – are the quaint words:

The old Session Records of this church are full of references to the trembled times of the Covenant. Here are one or two entries, which I quote from the Rev. W. S. Crockett's "Scott Country."' Mr. Crockett is Minister of the Parish. – "No session kept by reason of the elders being all at conventicles."

"No public sermon, soldiers being sent to apprehend the minister, but he, receiving notification of their design, went away and retired."

"No meeting this day for fear of the enemy."

HERE LYES JOHN HUNTER MARTYR WHO WAS CRUELY MURDERED AT COREHEAD BY COL. JAMES DOUGLAS AND HIS PARTY FOR HIS ADHERANCE TO THE WORD OF GOD AND SCOTLAND'S COVENANTED WORK OF REFORMATION 1688 Erected in the year 1726.

"The collection this day to be given to a man for acting as watch during the time of sermon." And so on. —

Sometimes it strikes one as strange, that passion for listening to a sermon which is inherent in one's countrymen. It is but a sombre pleasure, as a rule.

Talla, up to a recent period, flowed through a deep valley, whose bottom for some distance was of a treacherous and swampy nature; its trout, therefore, (in marked contrast to those of the tributary Gameshope,) were dark-coloured and "ill-faured." I do not know that they are anything else now, but there is not much of Talla left. A mile above the church you come to a great barrier thrown across the valley, and beyond that for three miles stretches a Reservoir which supplies distant Edinburgh with water. Picturesque enough in its way is this Reservoir, especially when all trace of man and his work is left behind, and nothing meets the eye but the brown, foam-flecked water, and the hills plunging headlong deep into its bosom. Even more picturesque is the scene when storms gather on the far heights, and come raging down the wild glen of Gameshope, swathing in mist and scourging rain-squall the deep-scarred brows of those eerie hills by Talla Linn-foot. What a spot it must be on a wild December day, when blind ing snow drives down the gullies before the icy blast!

This Reservoir has been stocked with Loch Leven trout. But the fishing is not, and never will be, good. There is insufficient food; the water is too deep, and except at the extreme head of the loch there are no shallows where insect life might hatch out. The trout are long and lank, and seldom fight well. Nor are they even very eager to rise to the fly. Yet, it is true, some large fish have been taken. But they have a suspiciously cannibal look, and I think an insurance company would be apt to charge a very high premium on the chances of long life of troutlings now put in.

I do not know where Young Hay of Talla lived. If his peel tower was here, no doubt the site is now sixty or seventy feet under water, but I cannot remember any traces of a building, or site of a building, in pre-Reservoir days. Men born and brought up lang syne on the gloomy slopes of Talla, might well be such as he, fierce and cruel, ready for treason and murder, or any crime of violence.

Hay was one of two executed on 3rd January 1568 for the murder of Darnley.

If you would gain a good idea of this part of Tweedsmuir, climb by the steep, crumbling sheep-path that scales the Linn-side, till you reach the spot where Mr. Thomson has made his sketch of the Reservoir. There, lying on the heather by the sounding waters, or beneath the rowan trees where blaeberries cluster thick among the rocks, you may picture to yourself a meeting that took place by this very spot two hundred and thirty-one years ago. On commanding heights, solitary men keeping jealous watch lest Claver'se's hated dragoons should have smelled out the place of meeting; below, where the Linn's roar muffles the volume of other sounds, a company of blue-bonneted, stern-faced men, singing with intense fervour some militant old Scottish Psalm, followed by long and earnest extempore prayer, and renewed Psalms; and presently then falling into dispute as vehement as before had been their prayer and praise.

This was that celebrated meeting of Covenanters in 1682, of which Sir Walter Scott, writing in "The Heart of Midlothian," says: "Here [at Talla] the leaders among the scattered adherents, to the Covenant, men who, in their banishment from human society, and in the recollection of the severities to which they had been exposed, had become at once sullen in their tempers, and fantastic in their religious opinions, met with arms in their hands, and by the side of the torrent discussed, with a turbulence which the noise of the stream could not drown, points of controversy as empty and unsubstantial as its foam." Dour men they were, and intolerant, our old Covenanting forebears, ready at any moment to

Yet who can withhold from them his respect, or, in many points, deny them his admiration?

If, as Sydney Smith has said, "it is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself"; if "it is well to be in places where man is little and God is great"; then assuredly it is well to be alone, or with a friend "who knows when silence is more sociable than talk," up in the great solitude by Gameshope Burn. Nowhere in Scotland can one find a glen wilder or more impressive, nowhere chance on a scene which more readily helps the harassed mind to slip from under the burden of worldly cares. For half a mile or more from its mouth hut a commonplace, open, boulder-strewn mountain burn, above that point the broken, craggy hills fall swiftly to the lip of a brawling torrent, which drops foaming by linn after linn deep into the seething black cauldrons below, lingers there a minute, then hurries swiftly onward by cliff and fern-clad mossy bank. Above each pool cling rowan trees, rock rooted, a blaze of scarlet and orange if the month be September, but beautiful always at whatever season you may visit them. Everywhere the air is filled with the deep murmur and crash of falling waters; yet, clamber to that lonely old track which leads to the solitary cottage of a shepherd, and around you is a silence almost oppressive, emphasised rather than broken by the ill-omened croak of a raven, or by the thin anxious bleat of a ewe calling to its lamb from far up the mountain side.

A mile past the shepherd's substantially built little house – it had need be strong of frame to stand intact up here against the winter storms – on your left is Donald's Cleuch, reminiscent of the Reverend Donald Cargill, a hero of the Covenant, Minister of the Barony Church in Glasgow in 1655, who was afterwards deprived of his benefice for denouncing the Restoration. The legend is, I presume, that Cargill hid somewhere in the wild moorland hereabout, up the Donald's Cleuch burn perhaps, or a long mile further on, by Gameshope Loch. A man might have lain long, in the summer time, amongst these rugged hills, safe hidden from any number of prying dragoons; but Heaven help him if he lay out there in the winter season. All is wild, broken country, peat-hags, mosses, and deep cleuchs, over which one goes best a-foot – and, of necessity, best with youth on one's side if the journey be of any great length.

From the height at the head of Donald's Cleuch burn, one looks down on that gloomy tarn, Loch Skene, lying but a few short miles on the Yarrow side of the watershed. Mr. Skene of Rubislaw tells – it is in Lockhart's life – how when Sir Walter Scott and he visited this loch, a thick fog came down over the hills, completely bewildering them, and "as we were groping through the maze of bogs, the ground gave way, and down went horse and horsemen pell-mell into a slough of peaty mud and black water, out of which, entangled as we were with our plaids and floundering nags, it was no easy matter to get extricated." Savage and desolate are perhaps the words that best describe Loch Skene; yet, in fine summer weather, how beautiful it may be! How beautiful, indeed, all this wild waste of hills where those dour old Covenanters were wont to lurk, never quite free from dread of the dragoons quartered but a few miles away over the hills at Moffat. Tales of the Covenanting times, such, for instance, as "The Brownie of Bodesbeck," used to possess an intense fascination for Scottish boys; every Covenanter was then an immaculate hero, and, I suppose, few boys took any but the worst view of Claverhouse, or refused credence to any of the countless legends of him. and of his diabolical black charger, of which we firmly believed the story that it could course a hare along the side of a precipice. A point in some of those tales that used to interest and puzzle at least one boy, was the mysterious fashion in which a fugitive would at times disappear from ken when hard pressed on the open moor, and when apparently cut off from all chance of escape. A possible explanation presented itself to me one day, a summer or two back, when making my way across the bleak upland that lies between Gameshope Loch and Gameshope Burn. As I walked over the broken peaty surface of the plateau, but not yet arrived where the land begins to drop abruptly into the Gameshope Glen, a covey of grouse got up almost at my feet. The day was windless and very still, and as I stood watching the flight of the birds, the faint melodious tinkle of underground water somewhere very near to me fell on my ear. Glancing around, I saw on the flat ground in front of me within a yard of my feet, what appeared to be a hole, almost entirely concealed by heather. It was from this direction that the sound of the drip, drip of falling water seemed to come. Kneeling down, I pulled the heather aside, and found a hole two or three feet in diameter, and beneath it a roomy kind of chamber hollowed out of the peaty soil. It was a place perhaps five feet deep, big enough at a pinch to conceal half a dozen men; a place from which – unless there was a way out from below – a man might never find exit, if inadvertently he fell in and in his fall chanced to break a limb. In that wild region the prospect of his ever being discovered by searchers would be very small. Unseen of man, he might lie in that peaty grave till his bones bleached, rest in that lonely spot till the last dread trump called him forth to judgment.