Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-09-27
GLORIOUS OLD RUINS.
Fascinating Beauty of Those Stately
Crumbling Edifces,
DRYBURGH AND MELROSE ABBEYS.
Sketches of Marvellous Scenes in the Valley
of the Tweed.
TRADITIONS OF A BORDER TOWN

temples of the past, whether those temple:
were the outgrowth of hero-worship, of pure
patriotism or of religious alteration and
zeal, your entire consciousness is swept by
overwhelming though almost lndeinable
emotion. From the harmonies or discords
of these effects there is sometimes caught
and crystallized from a thrill OF feeling an
emphatic perception and conviction. Mel
rose Abbey, roohess to the sky, and Dry
burgh Abbey, so nearly leveled that great
trees spread strong arms from its crumbling
walls, above all else tell you this: That
which art tears from natures arms with
which to vainlY typify endlessness, nature
inexorablv demands again. The ideal, the
spiritual, in art and all else, alone survives.
You will have this flashed upen you al
Melrose the moment you see the old clock
in Its tower and hear its sadly-solemn bell
measuring off the hours of irrevocable de-
cadence; and you will know it at Dry
burg when you contemplate the fact that
so little remains of the vast and magniti-
cent pile that the very tomb of Scott must
soon be obliterated through the march of
surrounding decay. Both of these once tre-
mendouS structures are at the threshold OF
humiliation. Only the spiritual aspira-
ton, in kind, that created them, remains.
ScOtt's dust mingles with Dryburg's Yer-
dure-eovered heap ps of crumbled sandstone.
But the intellectual the spiritual, legacy
he left TO the world, is immortal. And
this is not preaching, unless you wish to
call by that name that which flashes in
upon you from out the very shadows of
these glorious old abbey ruins.
BEAUTIFUL MELRoSE.
There is no doubt that Melrose Abbey is
yearly visited by more strangers and pill
grims from foreign lands than any other
great abbey, castle or palace in Scotland,
not except Hollywood Palace, in Edinburgh;
and briefly recalling its environment and
history will have interest to many. The
vale of Melrose lying in the very heart OF
the valley of the Tweed just below the
confluence of Gala Water, the Yarrow,
Etrick Water and the River Tweed is
perhaps seven miles long. The Tweed
gently curves around it from Abbotsiord
on the west, TO the vicinity OF Drygrange on
the east, bordering and intersecting central
spaces of about a mile in breadth, surpass-
lngly rich in pastures, groves, orchards,
hamlets and mansions. These are protected
by heights picturesquely diversified with
tender receSses and wooded braes; while
Immediately behind the town, to the south,
Romans, the Eildon Hills. Tradition has
it that they once formed single cone, which
was clet in three, during an ecstacy of rage
on the part OF Scotland's once famous
wizard-a real character of flesh and blood
and authenticated black-art power-Sir Mi
chaeI Scott They are noble heights,
around and between which banners OF mist
are forever floating, as if still signaling the
olden Roman hosts, the wizards, the Picts
and the Druids they once knew. Sixteen
grand terraces rib their lofty Sides recalling
those marvellous nature-riddles of the North,
the weird and wondrous parallel roads of
lone and far Glenrov.
The village of Melrose itself is a compact
little mass of curious old houses on the
ancient highway between Edinburgh and
Jedburgh. The latter is the waspish old
border town once called Jedhart, where, in
Border days, they hung all grade of
strangers falling into their hands before
they tried them; from which genial custom
the expression "Jedhart," or Scotch JUS
tice," had its origin. Here and there an
occasional modern edifce contrasts strange
ly with the bald, blaekened and crazy struc-
lures about them; and the latter squat in
shrinking groups patched with glorious
carvings stolen from the old abbey, like a
lot OF bedraggled mendicants clad in the
fnery OF a ruined patron.
ANCIENT SURROUNDINGS.
One quaint, pretty street runs away from
the hamlet toward the manufacturing town
of Galashiels, to the west, as il ashamed of
the squalOr of its company; blank, drear,
deserted triangular open space in the center
of the village renders it impossible for YOU
to get into or out of it without suffering
espionage and levies; market cross as old
as the abbey itself rears its gray and grizzled
column in dreary corner OF the town: three
or four thoroughfares shut in by ramshackle
houses merge into one which leads across the
Tweed into near Gattonside, the oldest and
sleepiest housing of odd and sleepy folk in
all Scotland; and perehed above all, not u
thousand feet from the abbey itself is a
smart railway station looking contemptuous-
ly down upon the huddled dreariness and
decay below. From this, or better from the
Eiluon Hills, Melrose sets in Melrose Vale
by the Tweed like a brown and ragged
Elnd-whipped GipSy tent, embosomed in
meadow grasses where quivers like a silver
thread a hesitant, vagrant stream.
. But this surprising ruin to wich YOU have
come was not the first Melrose Abbey.
Three miles below the Melrose of to-day the
Tweed almost forms an island in the valley
This peninsula is a gentle emInence. Its
Gaelic appellation was Meali-rois "the
finally Melrose. The locality is now known
as Old Melrose. The strong natural de-
fenses with the seclusion and luxuriousness
of the vale, attracted a colony OF mission
ary ecclesiasticS from the Culdee Monastery
of Iona, in the Hebrides, who here founded
a rude chapter house in the seventh century
Its first abbot Was Eata. Old Merose be-
came renowned, but its brethren were
banished in 1915 on their re-
fusal to acknowledge Malcolm III. as
their sovereign. A chapel, dedicated to St.
Cuthbert alone survived the destruction
which followed. Nearly a century later, in
1136, magnificent monastery o. abbey was
founded by the Scottish King, David l., for
Clsterclan monks at the then hamlet of For
del, now Melrose, the precise site of the Mel
rose Abbey OF to-day 1t was consecrated
in 1146 and about two centuries later, in
1922, was nearly destroyed by Edward IL,
of England, during one OF his last forays
north of the border. The restoration, or
rather reconstruction, of the Melrose Abbey
fouudedin 1l36 gave Scotland
THIS SURPRISING RUIN
of to-day. Its original completion was the
most ardent desire of Scotland's greatest
hero-patriot, King Robert Bruce, who, in
1896. granted 10 its abbot "all the feudal
casualties and crown issues of Teviotdale;"
and on the death of Bruce at Cardross, in
1929, his heart, which was embalmed to be
carried by Sir James Douglas to Palestine,
was rescued from the Moors, who slaugh-
tered the chivalrous Douglas, and brought
to and sepultured in the noble abbey
which Bruce so loved. 1t is authen-
ticated that while the structure itself,
covering the outlines of area exist
ing and traceable at the present time,