# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Yarrow and St. Mary's

YARROW AND ST. MARY’S.
Late in last autumn we journeyed up Yarrow to St. Mary’s Loch, for the purpose of spending a few days in that pleasant locality. The season was mild, and the soft dreamy autumn sunlight added beauty to the yellowing wood-banks along the romantic valley and every day brightened the green uplands in the vicinity of St. Mary’s. Neither hill nor valley scenery could have been prettier at any season; but tourists and visitors had all disappeared, so that our wanderings in the district of the lake were of a solitary nature, unless when accompanied by the gentleman under whose hospitable roof we stayed during our sojourn.
Leaving Selkirk, where its late illustrious “Shira,” Sir Walter Scott, is still well remembered by many of the inhabitants, and where a graceful monument to his memory has been erected, we crossed the Ettrick on a fine autumn morning on our way to the braes of Yarrow; not, however, before arranging with the Yarrow postman, who drives an easy-going vehicle, to have a ride during the forenoon from a certain point in Yarrow.
Shortly after crossing the bridge that spans the Ettrick, within a mile of Selkirk, we entered the battle-ground of Philliphaugh. Remembering that these grounds were once possessed by the “Outlaw Murray” of the Border ballad, we were struck with the elegance and seeming capaciousness of a homestead, which, we were informed, the present proprietor, a lineal descendant, and bearing the family name of the celebrated outlaw, erected, and which is well known as a fine model ​homestead over the south of Scotland. The high lands over which Leslie conducted his men on the morning on which he defeated Montrose, in 1645, were to within a few years ago a rough uncultivated moorland; now finely cultivated fields stretch out to the very hill-tops, and plantation strips of young firs gracefully wind along the boldest ridges.
At the most southern point of the grounds of Philliphaugh the Yarrow is reached; but in place of the melancholy murmurs which the thousand-and-one ballads might lead any one to expect, we were greeted by a brawling, dancing trout- stream; and, as the silvery spoil were busy all over the shallows, taking down the surface-flies, for a time we thought of nothing but fine tackle and trout-slaughter.
Lovers of the angle delight in the Yarrow. Its trout are large and fine; and, one day last spring, no less than two fine grilses, after an exciting run of half-an-hour each, were brought ashore by the hand of Lady Victoria Scott, the fair daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch. A number of ladies wield the trout-rod, but very few on Tweedside try the salmon. “Where Ettrick twines with Yarrow,” the rich woodland scenery of Bowhill, belonging to the nobleman above-named, begins, and the finely grown trees of all the varieties commonly grown in Scotland—the dark Scotch pine being often placed so as to produce a fine effect among the hardwoods—are set off to great advantage by the steep banks and undulations along the Yarrow, and the background of heath or grass-covered hills.
On the peninsula formed by the two rivers is Carterhaugh, the scene of the weird and romantic ballad of “Tamlane.” Of all the Border ballads this is perhaps the most wild and strange.
Carterhaugh was also the place where the great match at foot-ball was played by the men of Ettrick and Yarrow at which Scott and the Ettrick Shepherd were present, both of whom, if we remember correctly, wrote verses in praise of the men whose side they took in the match.
At Fasteneven, both foot and hand ball are still played at most of the towns on the Scottish border; and to a person who has not been accustomed from youth to seeing ball-playing, the game seems barbarous in the extreme. The ball is tossed up midway between two goals, perhaps a mile apart; and, if hand-ball, any means by the opposing parties of getting the ball to a goal may be used—throwing it, running with it, or concealing it, and thereby getting quietly to the goal with it. And the rule of play is, that any person holding the ball, or lifting it, or attempting to lift it, is liable to be floored by any means short of striking; so that broken heads and broken bones are by no means uncommon: and a ball is seldom played for a day without being carried into the river in the vicinity of the town or village where the game is annually held; and it is there where a Londoner would open eyes and mouth in astonishment. Although the season for ball playing is winter, and although keen frosty weather may prevail, a large number of the players dash into the river after the ball; and there they souse and plunge each other as freely, and apparently with as much relish, as if it were midsummer.
Ball-playing in the river affords great amusement to a large number of on-lookers, who crowd the bridges and the banks of the river in order to see the sport. The on-lookers are of both sexes, the females being all of the poorest class. Men and boys, however, of all grades and ages, eagerly watch the game.
From the mouth of the Yarrow upwards, for somewhere about five miles, the visitor passes through as beautiful and romantic a valley as Scotland can reveal; and within that compass, among other places of note, stand Foulshiels, the birth-place of Mungo Park, and Newark Castle, the scene of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel.”
Foulshiels is a humble cottage on the left bank of the river; and, until within a few years ago, it was inhabited by John, or, as the Selkirk folk called him, Johnnie Park—a brother of the traveller—a man of little learning and a small amount of knowledge, who knew little of either his brother or his travels.
Park served an apprenticeship in a doctor’s drug-shop in Selkirk, and during his study of physic-compounds, the following little episode, which we had from a venerable doctor of medicine, occurred:—
An old well-known burgher stepped into the shop one day, and, looking in an excited manner at the boy, said:
“Mungo, is the doctor in?”
“No, sir.”
“O lord! and I’m nearly dead wi’ the tooth-ache.”
“But I’ll draw the tooth for you, if you wish it drawn.”
“You, callant? Did ye ever draw ony teeth afore?”
“Yes, I have, sir.”
“Faith, I’ll rather come back again and see the doctor than lippen ye!”
The old gentleman went off, and, ere long, he returned with the old question:
“Mungo, my man, is the doctor in now?”
“No, sir; he’s not come yet.”
“What am I to do? I’m nearly daft wi’ the pain. Mungo, are ye perfectly downright sure ye’ve drawn teeth before this?”
“I really have, sir,” said the boy.
“Then get the nippers, and take out mine. Now mind!—take care—be canny.”
The youth extracted the tooth, and after the old gentleman got over the shock it caused, and found himself relieved, he complimented him on the skill he had shown,—and then asked him how many teeth he had drawn before operating on himself.
“Only thirty-two,” said Mungo.
“Thirty-twae! Faith, I think it’s a guid only. Where in the world did a’ the folk come frae?”
“O, I took them all out of one man’s mouth.”
“That was dreadfu’! I wonder the man let ye pull them.”
“He couldn’t prevent me.”
“How?”
“Because he was dead.”
​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,” ​said the manager, “I’ve seen him come quietly out, about five or six o’clock in the morning, leaving a’ his friends in their beds, and gang up the burn wi’ the liester or the fishing-rod for a few hours’ sport by himsel’. Seeing him alane in this way, he seemed to me at times perfectly sick o’ the trouble o’ company, and glad to get away into the glen. But when friends cam’, what could he do? He had to act like a friend. And alang wi’ that he was naturally an easy man concernin’ farm matters; so that ye may say baith ends o’ the meal-bag were open at ance.”
The letters he received daily also caused him much expense. He sometimes received twenty in a day, and these would cost him eightpence or tenpence each. How could an “easy man” keep free of debt under such circumstances? He himself told a gentleman, still living, that the postages he had to pay for letters received were almost ruinous in amount. After the publishing of any new work, congratulatory epistles showered upon him from all quarters, most of them written by people he never saw or heard of, and the postages were, of course, all unpaid.
Although the sun was shining softly on the hills when we reached St. Mary’s Loch, it had a dull, black appearance we were scarcely prepared for; and we concluded that the double swan and shadow, and the rhythmical remark as to not a feature of the hills being in the mirror slighted, must have been pictures of the imagination; but next morning we found the poet—to use a favourite sentence of the Parisian garçons—all right.
Roused from sleep about seven o’clock, by the shouting of two or three voices and the yelping of dogs, we hurriedly drew up our blind, and, with some ,exitement witnessed a spanking chase up the hill-side before our window, by two sheep-dogs after a hare. But puss, after one or two turns, left her loud-voiced assailants nonplussed. The morning was bright, and, in a few minutes, we were out into the sunlight, with the lake little more than a hundred paces in front of us.
Arcadia, and all our dreams of Arcadia, could never present a scene more peaceful, fresh, and beautiful than the one before us. All the hills were bathed in sunlight, their soft outlines blending with the semi-transparent and snowy cloud-spots that here and there lay as if resting on their summits; the rills were like crystal; the verdure was smooth and green, and spotted on slopes and angles with snowy sheep; and, clear and distinct as the scene itself, the lake, as if revealing fairyland, reflected all the hills and sunlight before us, but causing everything to look more rich and soft than it did in the upper element. It was a sight never to be forgotten:
The morn rays lit the lake, the hills, The fleecy dew wreaths skyward bore, And silvered up the thousand rills That seek St. Mary’s lonely shore: It was the faery land I loved To picture once with fancy wild, But fairer ’neath the unchequered beams Of rosy sunlight, than the dreams, My boyhood’s wayward thoughts beguiled.
Our friend proposed a row across the lake in his boat, which we readily agreed to. In crossing we learned that a retired officer of the navy had, a few years previously, taken soundings all over the lake; and his report brought out an average depth of one hundred and fifty feet all along the lake’s centre. This seems a great depth for a sheet of water scarcely a mile in width, and only seven miles in circumference; and especially so when we remember that the general average depth of the Baltic reaches only one hundred and ten feet.
Scotch lakes are, however, mostly all very deep in contrast with their surface measurement,—a natural result where the shores are flanked by large hills. In the Highlands some of the lakes are much deeper than St. Mary’s, the deepest part of Loch Lomond, for instance, being six hundred feet.
The lake is well stocked with fine large trout, perch, eels, and pike; and salmon are occasionally plentiful in its waters, which they enter from the Yarrow. The burns that enter it are also numerously stocked with small trout. From these circumstances the place has for many years been a retreat for a large number of anglers, who, along with enjoying fine sport, find cosy up-putting at Tibbie Shiel’s. In Tibbie’s snug cottage, more “runs,” imaginary and real—for “anglers’ lies,” form a proverbial term in all river-side cottages,—are talked over, than under any roof in Scotland.
In the departed days of salmon-spearing, fine sport was often had in the small waters in the neighbourhood of the lake, and of this sport almost every shepherd and farmer was fond, and none more so than Hogg himself. Pike-spearing, in the shallow or breeding-places in St. Mary’s Loch, was also a sport occasionally indulged in; and our friend, who has resided from infancy in the district, gave us an account of a ludicrous onslaught he made upon a large pike he was anxious to secure. He knew the haunt of the giant; and, on a day when the water of the lake was very clear, and well adapted for the sport, he got a shepherd to row the boat, and he was instructed to cause as light a ripple on the water as possible. The fish was lying in the place expected—by the side of a weed-bed, in pretty deep water. The spear was fourteen feet in length; and, certain that he could easily reach the fish with it, he struck. But he had reckoned without his host, for he himself followed the spear head-foremost, and entirely disappeared for some seconds. When he came to the surface he wildly caught hold of the boat, but found it impossible to enter without causing it to upset. On seeing this the dull-brained oarsman cried out in a wild accent:
“Lord, maister, ye’ll hae to drown!”
It never occurred to him, until told, to give a stroke or two with the oars by which to bring the boat to the shore. The clearness of the water had caused the mishap; and when a spear-stroke is made and the bottom not reached, the sportsman, of course, follows his instrument in a great hurry.
Our first morning’s visit was to St. Mary’s Kirk, on the hill flanking the north side of the lake:
But St. Mary’s Kirk bell’s lang done ringing! There’s naething now but the grave-stane hill To tell o’ a’ their loud psalm-singing.
​The church has disappeared; and the little lonely churchyard bears a number of old tombstones, partly covered here and there with tangled bushes, doubtless planted by affectionate hands, but long ago grown wild. Only one pillared, showy tombstone is in the place, in remembrance of an Edinburgh hatter. Erecting such a tombstone in such a place was an act as much out of keeping, so to speak, as it would be to whitewash an abbey.
In this burial-ground lie the remains of many a famous outlaw; and among Border warriors and rievers the church was held in high esteem. It holds a place in many traditions and many ballads. The Lord William and Lady Margaret of the Douglas tragedy are buried here; and the scene of the tragedy, where Lady Margaret’s brothers fell before the sword of her lover, is on Douglas Burn, within a few miles of the church- yard. We did not notice the intertwined bonny red rose and brier, reported to have grown on their graves, a floral phenomenon which modern minstrels of the Cowel school take much delight in.
Here also lie the remains of Percy Cockburn of Henderland, whose ruined tower still stands in the adjoining vale of Meggat. When, in 1529, James V. made his memorable raid among the rievers, and hanged, among others, Johnnie Armstrong, and Adam Scott the King of the Border, he surprised Cockburn while at dinner, and hanged him over his own gate, amid the exultation of his followers. His body was left with his weeping wife, who had not a living creature near her. Alone she sewed his shroud, and afterwards bore his corpse to St. Mary’s Kirk:
I took his body on my back, And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sat;
I digged a grave and laid him in,
And happed him with the sod so green.
But think na ye my heart was sair,
When I laid the mouls on his yellow hair?
And think na ye my heart was wae,
When I turned about awa to gae?
Dryhope Tower, a fine old Border peel, in which “Mary Scott, the flower of Yarrow,” was born, stands within view of St. Mary’s Kirk, near the foot of the lake; and Bowerhope stands opposite, on the far side of the lake, nestling among trees at the foot of a rugged glen, and the high background of hills, pile on pile, seems to terminate among the clouds. Away to the right, nearly hid by trees, and standing on a narrow neck of land, dividing St. Mary’s and the Loch o’ the Lowes, is the house of Tibbie Shiel—St. Mary’s Cot. Within a very short space of the cottage stands the monument recently erected to the Ettrick Shepherd. It is a graceful pedestal, crowned by a sitting figure of the Shepherd overlooking his favourite lakes and hills. St. Mary’s Loch, perhaps, looks better from the lonely churchyard than anywhere.
Long ago these lakes were regularly visited in the winter season by wild swans,—now, however, they never appear. Falconidæ of different kinds frequent, and some nest in, the district. Both the golden eagle and the osprey were frequent visitors long ago; and many of the older people say that, in their younger days, eagles were seen every year in the district. For a number of years, however, no eagle has been seen. The last that our friend saw he had cause to remember. Some twelve years ago, riding along a hill-side facing the lake, he saw above him, perched on a large stone, what he thought was an eagle, but, from its being within fifty or sixty yards of him, he could scarcely think his conjecture correct, eagles being, as he knew, so wild. He accordingly turned his horse’s head up hill towards the bird, for the purpose of ascertaining what it was. He was soon certain it was an eagle, and, thinking that it must be lame, he got his whip ready to strike it down. But, just as he was about to lift his hand, it suddenly spread its great wings and flew off with a scream. From that moment he remembered the bird no more for many weeks; for his pony suddenly wheeled as the eagle flew off, and in trying to gallop down the steep hill, fell, heels over head, and crushed and bruised his rider to such an extent that he remained insensible for a considerable time, and unfit, for upwards of a year, to attend to his ordinary duties.
We thought it strange to see the venerable Tibbie Shiels in the flesh; for in the racy writings of the late Professor Wilson, written upwards of thirty years ago, in which we first became acquainted with her name, we looked upon her merely as a “character,” a sort of “Meg Dodds.” We had a long crack with the old lady, however, and found her very communicative and agreeable, and with an intellect apparently unimpaired, though she is nearly eighty years of age.
She asked us if we had read the Noctes Ambrosianæ enacted at her house, and was pleased when informed that we had.
“That was the greatest day,” said she, “we ever had i’ the house, for the Professor, ye see, invited maist o’ the gentry round, and brought some frae Edinburgh wi’ him. Ye’ll hae seen the thing Mr. Chambers (it was Robert) wrote in his ‘Journal’ too. Little did I ken, when he was gettin’ me to tell about sae many things, that he was gaun to prent it a’. And, mind ye, he’s a droll ane, for he put a hantle things in the book that I never said. But he’s a frank, nice man.”
Of Professor Wilson and Hogg she spoke with the greatest respect and esteem.
“How was it, do you think, Tibbie,” we said, “that so many farmers and others in Yarrow thought so lightly of Mr. Hogg?”
“Weel, sir, I think that this was ane o’ the things that made the aulder folk no like him: He was a guid fiddler, ye ken, and he was pleasant, nice company, and wi’ his fiddle at night, when he was a young chield, he could get a’ the lassies he asked after him to dancings here and there, whilk keepet them late often; and sair the auld folk ca’d him for’t. A kinder hearted man ye couldna find than Mr. Hogg. Him and the Professor were guid, kind friens o’ mine.”
We saw several people who knew Hogg intimately, a number of them shepherds, and all spoke of his kindly, genial nature. One old man had neighboured him for many years, and although ​he had never read a line of his writings—he thinking the Bible the only book worth reading—of Hogg he spoke in a most friendly manner:
“He was an obligin’ neebor; and I’m sure that at smearin’ times, when we helped ane anither, we never kenn’d how the time flew away, for he keepet us aye a’ laughin’ wi’ queer stories and sangs.”
Among a class of saving, industrious people, the poor Shepherd’s improvidence—caused by ways and means they could not understand—his late hours, and hilarious meetings with friends, were certain to bring discredit upon him to a considerable extent; and spleen at his success as a writer, and the manner in which he was taken out by his “betters,” doubtless made many of his Yarrowdale fellows speak contemptuously of him at times.
The trip to the Grey Mare’s Tail from St. Mary’s is through a wild mountainous region. Here and there on every side small but high waterfalls strike the eye, as they dash down the rocky sides of high hills; and there, at the head of Moffatdale, the hills are steeper—almost perpendicular, some of them—than anywhere in the south of Scotland.
Newark Castle, see p. 612.
Birkhill, a shepherd’s house where refreshments can be had, stands on the water-shed of Little Yarrow, whose waters finally reach the German Ocean, and Moffat Water, whose final outlet is the Solway Firth. Opposite the house, four Covenanters were shot by Claverhouse. All round this place the Covenanters used to take up hiding- places, the deep and extremely rugged glens affording comparative security. The shepherd’s wife, who attends to the wants of travellers at Birkhill, is a character worth knowing. She is strong-minded and strong-nerved; and a number of authentic anecdotes are told of her prowess. The following is one of the best.
Her house is solitary, no other dwelling being within miles of it, and during the day, when her husband and son are on the hills, she has sometimes strange visitors, for the road passing the door connects the east with the west of Scotland in that district. When the Hawick branch of the North British Railway was making, navvies often passed this way from the Caledonian line towards Hawick, and of these she generally had a call. A solitary Irish navvy came in one day when she was alone, saving a little girl, a grandchild. After lighting his pipe, and staring round him for a time, the following dialogue ensued:
“Well, missus,” said he; “you’ve some mighty nice hams there.”
​“Nice hams,” was the dry response.
“Faix, I think I’ll have one, missus!”
“But ye’ll no get ane, my man.”
Pat, nothing daunted, put his foot upon a stool for the purpose of taking one down from the ceiling, where they hung, and he did so boldly, for he saw no one was in the house but the woman and child. With a stern face, however, she suddenly stepped before him, and said:
“Did ony body see ye come in here?”
“The devil a one,” was answered, defiantly.
“And the devil a ane ’ll see ye gang out again! Bring me the axe, lassie!”
In a moment the blackguard was out at the door and off, leaving her to enjoy a hearty laugh at the success of her ruse.
She, poor woman, has had her sorrows. A number of years ago, a son grown to manhood left the house one morning, to look after his flock on the neighbouring fells. A snowstorm had lain for some time, and on that morning a slight thaw had set in. He did not return at his usual hour, and his father, fearing the avalanches that occasionally occur on these hills when a thaw sets in and the snow is deep, went out in search of him. He did not go far, until he, with trembling heart, observed a snow-cleared line down the side of a steep hill which he knew his son had to traverse. With eager steps he made for the glen, and there, in the burn, he found his corpse. The young man had, it was thought, stepped from the ridge of the hill on to the slope, whereby the snow had lost its hold and hurled him down with it.
Nor was this the whole of her misfortunes. Many years ago the father of our respected host was buried by an avalanche in the same locality. He was under the snow sixteen hours. His dog, immediately after he was immersed, came home, and by its restlessness showed something was wrong; but, being near nightfall, friends could make little search. Next day the dog led the way to the place where his master lay, and after some digging he was found,—alive, too,—and in a short time he quite recovered.
When sheep happen to die on these hill-sides, their death-struggles send them nearly all dashing down the slopes into the burns; and when a sheep is wanting, the burns are the first places searched for it, or rather its remains. It is astonishing how rich and green the grass grows on the steepest slopes here, and on these the sheep, from custom, feed and move about with perfect ease.
The Grey Mare’s Tail is a waterfall which, from its shape, is not inappropriately named. When the water which forms the fall is fullish, it would have weight sufficient, with an ordinary fall, to turn a country mill. From this the size of the water may be guessed. The fall is three hundred feet in height, and seems, when approached from below, to tumble from the top of a pretty high hill. The water that supplies the fall comes from Loch Skene, which is one of the wildest, most solitary, and gloomy tarns in the country, two miles or so distant from the Grey Mare’s Tail.
The precipice over which the water dashes is dark and rugged, and in the dark caldron below the loose stones are, from a sort of perpetual motion caused by the action of the water, churned into a round ball shape.
Many years ago, two rash young shepherds thought they could climb the precipice on the left side of the fall. They made the attempt; but when little more than half-way up, the lowermost of the two became giddy, and, with a cry of despair, fell to the bottom, and was killed. A portion of his plaid—a shepherd without his plaid in Scotland is a phenomenon—which a point of rock caught in the descent, hung on the precipice for a number of years after the accident. The other young man got to the top without accident; but he had no heart to remain in the district afterwards, and emigrated. The ascent has been several times made since. A gentleman, now in Keswick, made the ascent one day in presence of a party of friends, including the Ettrick Shepherd. This gentleman’s modus operandi was unique. He first took a shower-bath under the fall, and then, in nature’s apparel, made for the precipice, up which he scrambled monkey fashion.
During the ascent some of the on-lookers were terrified, some of them amused. The gentleman who told us the anecdote was an eyewitness, and his sensations during the ascent, he said, were, according to the place and position of the climber, sometimes those of horror, but oftener of hearty laughter.
The solitude and beauty of all this upland district, both in Yarrow and Upper Moffatdale, are striking; and the charms they seemed to possess for most of the best writers of the early part of the century—drawn partly toward the scene, doubtless, from the genuine ballads and stirring traditions connected with it—may, through their writings and otherwise, have been the means of drawing thousands to the locality. And of these we are certain a large portion will bear away remembrances of wild corries, and fine solitary glens and nooks, green sunny hills and gleaming waterfalls, that will not for many a long day pass into forgetfulness; for, without either tradition or ballad, the district of Yarrow and St. Mary’s
“With beauty all its own is blest.”