Omaha daily bee., 1893-10-01

leads north from England through Carlisle
and grewsome Gretna Green passes through
IL, forming its principal and almost only
street. From the south this highway leads
through u pleasant country, well watered
and wooded and charmingly broken by
clumps of ancient trees or newer plantations
and small, well titled fields. Beyond the
hamlet the road winds upward for a mile or
more to as bleak, SUCCESSFULLY dreary aud
hopeless horizon as you will often come upon
in Normandy, or as are seen in the peasant
pictures of Brittany by the master hand of
Mlllet. To the northeast there are dim out
lines of the aartfell and other mountain
ranges. Away to the southwest are the
misty wales of lovely Annandale, and to the
northwest, but four miles distant, the le-
gend haunted hill of Brunswark, where the
boy Carlyle often wandered, lifts its Roman
camped head into the ficecy, vagrant clouds.
Old but Not Historical.
Ecclefechan has great age but little his
tory, aside from having produced this one
famous man. At about the center of the
village, where n highway leaves the old Car
Isle and Glasgow post road to wander
through the valley of Amman to the Solway
side town of that name, n little cross street,
formed by this road, runs a few rods with it
and stops short by an ancient grave yard.
In this lies Carlyle, his father and mother
and other member of the family. 1t also
has hundreds of unnamed graves; for half a
thousand years before the Carlyle line had
crossed the border into Scotland from Car
Isle with the adherents of returning King
David H., it was the site of a then ancient
church called Ecclesis S. Fechani, or the
Church of st. Fechan. Fechan was an Irish
abbot of the seventh century from Iona, who
was canonized his day being the Goth of
January. Hence the curious name of Ec-
clefechan.
Border war brought the ancient church to
ruin. The spirit of the covenanterS' time
effaced what remained. But The church
yard OF 1000 years ago is Ecclefechan's
graveyard of today, and all the stern de-
scendants OF those who swore to ''endeayour
the extirpation of popery, prelacy. supersti-
ton, heresy, schism, profaneuess, etc. - who
have departed life in little Ecclefechan, are
lying here in ''consecrated %groundU In
Carlyle's boyhood time there were MANY
hand-loom weayers here. Their stone cot
tages stood along the highway interspersed
with Il few shops and inns. The cottages
remain, housing folk of the sa me social order,
comfortable laborers among the surrounding
farms. AT least three of the inns are still
standing. Two have been TRANSFORMED into
humble habitations. One, the Bush hotel
u little, long, low, rambling structure jutting
out into the highway invitingly, ana presided
over by Il brisk, bonnie landlady, Mistress
kilgour, VINO is not afraid to tell YOU that
she has no love for 'Yonkee" pilgrims and
then sneerlng ways contains most of the
life OF the sleepy hamlet, ana, with minister
ing TO cyclerS on their northern tours, mod
ern coaching parties and occasional pilgrims
To Carlyle's birthplace and grave, is almost
as breezy and busting as in the times of the
packers and carriers, when the olden post
coaches changed their steaming horses, after
the dash from Gretna, before its hospitable
door.
Had u Brave and Loyal Mother.
So this was the spot and these the phvsi-
cal surroundings of Thomas CARLYLE from his
birth in l105 until his stonemason father
James Carlyle, who 'hammered ON at Eccle,,
fechan, making in his best year el00,n re-
moved 10 the bleak farmslead of Mainhill
near Lockerbie, about ten miles north of his
native hamlet, and still alongside the old
Carlisle and Glasgow post ROAD. This com
priscd the first fourteen years of his life.
During this time all the boyhood, boyhood
home and home surroundings he ever knew
were his for he had already felt the terrors
of sehoolboy life at Amman; aud just after
the family remoyal TO Mainhill he was sent
away 10 Edinburg TO the university, walking
the whole distance, through Moffat, in COM
pany with a senior student in the university
named Tom Small.
There are none living hers or hercabouts
now who knew Thomas Carlyle as q boy, bur