The record-union., 1893-09-30

Z
in stern and tiny Ecclefechan.
Indeed the changelessness of all these
ancient border towns and hamlets is one
of their most impressive characteristics.
From Yetholm to Dumfries along the
Scottish border, and from Berwick TO
Carlisle along the English border it is
just the same. They are all as they were,
only little more asleep. The railway
stations are about all the structures in
them that have large windows or smell Of
paint. They remain chiefly as they stood
when the border raids were ended. They
are gray, battle-scarred, ancient. They
were built in fighting times and have
their records in their old faces. To wan
DER among them is like being whisked
pack two or three centuries and set down
face to face with the grimness and cruel
ties OF feudal times, and [ sometimes
think that the nature Of the lOWly folk,
beaten TO savage hardness in those sorry
times, Is Ia this bOrderland of both king
domS long time taking on the gentler
touch Of our time. Scotland is richest in
these weird old border relics Of a sorry
age. The Scotch crowded close to the
border, built more and stronger places of
sally, even the tiniest of hamlets having
likeness in sturdiness and strength to the
larger towns. and then, being the liYiest
on their legs, married" the English in
such brisk and occupying way, that
they had little time on their hands, after
chasing the raiders home, for building
important towns.
The quaint hamlet stands in a little
hollow of the champaign land of south
eastern Annandale. The same old post
road which leads north from England
through Carlisle and grewsome Gretna
Green passes through it, forming its prin-
cipal and almost its only street. From
the south this highway leads through
pleasant country, well Watered and
wooded and charmingly broken by
clumps of ancient trees or newer planta-
tions and small, well-tilled fields. Be-
yond the hamlet the road winds upward
for mile or more to as bleak, suggest
lively dreary and hopeless horizon as you
will often come upon in Normandy, or
as are seen in the peasant pictures of Brit
tany by the master hand Of Millet. To the
northeast there are dim outlines of the
Hartfel and other mountain ranges.
Away TO the southwest are the misty
wales Of lovely Annaudale and to the
northwest, but four miles distant, the
legend d-haunted hill Of Brunswark, where
the boy Carlyle often wandered, lifts its
Roman-camped head into the tleecy,
vagrant clouds.
Ecclefechan has great age but little his
tory. aside from having produced this one
famous man. At about the center of the
village, where a highway leaves the old
Carlisle and Glasgow postroad to wander
through the valley OF Amman to the Sol
way-side town of that name, a little cross
street, formed by this road, runs a few
rods with it and stops short by an an
cient graveyard. In this lies Carlyle, his
father and mother and other members Of
the family. 1t has also hundreds of un-
named graves, for, half thousand years
before the Carlyle line had crossed the
border into Scotland from Carlisle with
the adherentS Of King David H., it was
the site Of a then ancient church called
Ecclesie 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 10th Of Jan
uary. Hence the curious name of Eccle-
fechan.
Border war brought the ancient church
to ruin. The spirit of the covenanters'
time ehaced what remained. But the
churchyard Of thousand years ago is
Ecclefechan's graveyard of to-day, and
all the stern descendants Of those who
swore to ''endeavor the extirpation OF
popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy,
schism, profaneness, etc.," who have de-
parted lille in little Ecclefechan, are lying
here in ''consecrated ground" In Car
lyle's boyhoOd time there were many
handlOom WeaVerS here. Their stone
cottages stood along the highway inter-
spersed with few shops and inns. The
cottages remain, housing folk of the same
social order, comfortable laborers among
the surrounding farms. At least three
of the inns are still standing. Two have
been transformed into humble habita-
tions. one, the Bush Hotel-a little,
long, low, rambling structure jutting out
into the highway inYitiDgly, and pre-
sided over by brisk, bonnie landlady,
Mistress Kilgour, who is not afraid to
tell you that she has no love for "Y on
kee'' pilgrims and their sneering ways
contains most of the life of the sleepy
hamlet, and, with ministering to cyclers
on their northern tours, modern coaching
parties and occasional pilgrims to Car
lyle's birthplace and grave, is almost as
breezy and bustling as in the times of the
packers and carriers, when the oiden post
coaches changed their steaming horses,
after the dash from Gretna, before its hos
pitable door.
So this was the spot and these the phys
ical surroundings of Thomas Carlyle from
his birth in 1875, until his stone-mas
father, James Carlyle, who hammered
on at Ecclefechan. making in his best
year el00,'i removed to the bleak farm
stead of Mainhill, near Lockerbie, about
ten miles north of his native hamlet, and
still alongside the old Carlisle and Glas-
Cow postroad. This comprised 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
schoolboy life at Amman, and just after
the family removal to Mainhill he was
sent away to Edinburgh to the Univer-
sty, walking the whole distance, through
Moffat, in company with senior student
in the University named Tom Small.
about now, who knew Thomas Carlyle
as a boy, but | found very many old, old
folk whose parents were his youthful
companions, or his parents 'neebors,"
and who, on account of Carlyle's subse-
quent fame, left clear testimony with
their children, from their standpoint Of
view, of his home surroundings and boy
hood life. 1t is ali grim, gray picture
set in forbidding shadows, with but one
bright, clear ray streaming through it
brave, loyal mothers endless care and
love: Of home so little and mean that no
room in it permitted the family meals to
be eaten by all its members at once,
which forced young Carlyle to carry his
food OF bread crumbs boiled in milk TO be
eaten on the coping of the wall" while
the lad gaZed at the distant mountains; of
a father iraScible as honest, unreasonable
as sturdy, miserly as pious in the dim
old steely way; or mother, with all her
great virtue, pestilence of fire and sword
against all intellectual unfolding not IN
accord with her own almost savagely ex-
acting creed, and of social ana intellect
ual environment in which there were
more melancholy, hopeless seriousness,
petty eaviling, downright hatred and far
less brightness and sentiment than about
the older camptires OF the American Chip
pewaS or Sioux.
1t is plain that the Carlyles were not
only not beloved, but that they were dis
liked with that brutal sort OF rancor COM
mon in ignorant neighbOrhoods. The