Stories of the Scottish Border

STORIES OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER

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Title: Stories of the Scottish Border

Author: Mr and Mrs William Platt

Release Date: July 17, 2013 [EBook #38845]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER ***

Produced by Al Haines.

The Rookhope Ride

STORIES OF THE

SCOTTISH BORDER

BY

Mr and Mrs WILLIAM PLATT

WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY

M. MEREDITH WILLIAMS

GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO. LTD.

LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY

First published December 1910

by GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY

39-41 Parker Street, Kingsway, London, W.C.2

Reprinted: December 1916; March 1919;

April 1929

Printed in Great Britain by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE CHARACTER OF THE BORDERS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BORDER

WHAT THE BORDER NAMES TELL US

CHAP.

Bamburgh and its Coast

Athelstan at Vinheath

Monks and Minstrels

Sir Patrick Spens

Auld Maitland

The Mystery of the Eildons

Black Agnes of Dunbar

The Young Tamlane

The Gay Goss-Hawk

The Corbies

Otterbourne and Chevy Chase

The Douglas Clan

Alnwick Castle and the Percies

Hexham and Queen Margaret

Fair Helen of Kirkconnell

Johnie of Breadislee

Katharine Janfarie

By Lauder Bridge

The Battle of Flodden Field

After Flodden

Graeme and Bewick

The Song of the Outlaw Murray

Johnie Armstrong

The Lament of the Border Widow

The Raid of the Kers

Merrie Carlisle

Kinmont Willie

Dick o' the Cow

The Lochmaben Harper

The Rookhope Ride

Barthram's Dirge

Queen Mary and the Borders

The Raid of the Reidswire

Jock o' the Side

Hobbie Noble

The Laird o' Logie

Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead

Muckle-Mou'd Meg

The Dowie Dens of Yarrow

Belted Will and the Baronry of Gilsland

Gilderoy

Archie Armstrong's Oath

Christie's Will

Northumberland at the Time of the Civil War

Montrose and Lesly

The Death of Montrose

The Borderers and the Jacobites

The Nine Nicks o' Thirlwall

In Wild Northumberland To-Day

Illustrations

The Rookhope Ride. . . . . . . Frontispiece

Egil at Vinheath

The Siege of Maitland Castle

Black Agnes

The Twa Corbies

The Final Battle in the Streets of Hexham

Johnie of Breadislee.

Flodden Field

Tell Us All—Oh, Tell Us True!

The Border Widow

The Escape of Kinmont Willie

Queen Mary crossing the Solway

A Boon, a Boon, my Noble Liege!

She Kissed his Cheek, She Kaim'd his Hair

The Storming of Newcastle

'Tis I, 'Tis thy Winifred!

In liquid murmurs Yarrow sings

Her reminiscent tune

Of bygone Autumn, bygone Springs,

And many a leafy June.

No more the morning beacons gleam

Upon the silent hills;

The far back years are years of dream—

Now peace the valley fills.

No more the reivers down the vale

On raid and foray ride;

No more is heard the widow's wail

O'er those who fighting died.

When morning damns with all its joys

Then from the meadows rise

A hundred throbbing hearts to voice

Their anthems to the skies.

When noontide sleeps where brackens wave,

Ere shadows yet grow long,

No sound awakes the echoes save

The Yarrow's pensive song.

And when the eve, with calm delight,

Betokens night is nigh,

Beneath the first star's tender light

Is heard the owlet's cry.

While Yarrow's liquid cadence swells

By meadow, moor, and hill,

At morn or noon or eve there dwells

A mournful memory still.

W. CUTHBERTSON.

Stories of The Scottish Border

Introduction

I.—THE CHARACTER OF THE BORDERS

The district called the Border is one of the most interesting in Great Britain. It consists of that part of England that is nearest Scotland, and that part of Scotland that is nearest England, mainly the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, and Dumfriesshire.

The country is very picturesque and highly romantic. It abounds in great rolling, breezy hills, with swift streamlets or burns running down their sides to swell the rushing rivers. No part of our island has more beautiful valleys than those of the Border.

This bold, rough district, well adapted to defence, and situated also just where the island of Great Britain is almost at its narrowest, became, after many a struggle, the boundary between England and Scotland. The character of the country was suited to the rearing of hardy Moorland sheep and cattle; its inhabitants therefore were a tough, open-air race of men, strong, strapping fellows, fearless riders, always ready for an adventure, especially if it meant a fight.

In those days of Border strife there was hardly such a thing as international justice, that is to say, the people of one nation were not very particular as to what they did to people of another nation; therefore these bold, hardy Border men, Englishmen and Scot alike, were fond of creeping across the boundary to steal the cattle of their neighbours. Men devoted to such raids were called Freebooters or Mosstroopers, the name Moss being given in the North Country to boggy tracts that lie about the hill-sides.

So it happened that the Border was in a perpetual state of petty warfare, conducted, it is true, with a certain amount of good-will and a rough approach to chivalry, and with the concurrence of the powerful Border nobles of both nations, who often played an important part therein. At times these raids developed into important warlike expeditions, when a fierce noble, or even a king, had some reckless game to play. Hence, among the ballads which give us so vivid an account of Border strife, we find descriptions not only of the minor doings of picturesque sheep-stealers, but also of pitched battles such as Chevy Chase and Homildon Hill.

The union of England and Scotland in 1603 naturally put an end to all the former excuses for raiding, and therefore terminated the true Freebooter period. After this, despite one or two belated attempts, such as Elliot's big raid in 1611, sheep-stealing ceased to be looked upon as an honourable calling, and became mere thieving. The men who would have raided one another's farms in 1602 became friendly neighbours after the Border Commission of 1605. There had been little malice in their former freebooting. Both sides were of one race; and they had the pleasure of finding that their lands went up greatly in value in consequence of the Border peace.

To-day, the Border presents scenes of peaceful cattle-farming. But Romance is still in the air, hangs about the fine, breezy moorlands and beautiful dales, and is seen clearly in the faces of the healthy Border-folk. A holiday at any Border farm would prove a most enjoyable one. There are wonderful Roman remains, for here it was that the Romans built their wall; there are castles of the Border barons; the views are wide and grand; the river-valleys are unmatched for beauty, and delightful wild flowers are plentiful, chief among which are fox-gloves, the giant wild Canterbury Bells, the handsome North Country wild geranium, several interesting kinds of wild orchids, and a variety of others too numerous to mention. Last, but not least, it is often possible in the evenings to see the farmers' sons engaged in friendly wrestling in the meadows, when we can realise that these great manly fellows are of the same vigorous race that kept the Borders lively a few centuries ago.

II.—A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BORDER

Before dealing in detail with the stirring stories of Border history and legend, to retell which is the purpose of this book, we will first inquire—What is it that settles exactly the position of the border-line between two countries? To find the answer we must think what happens when a country is invaded.

If the invaders are stronger than the people whom they attack, they go on thrusting back their foes till these reach some strong position where, by the aid of mountain, river, or marsh, they are able, at any rate for a time, to hold their own. Thus, a border-line is always determined by some natural feature of the country which gives the defenders an advantage.

The attackers will not always operate from the same locality, and the defenders will not always fall back in the same direction; the two sides, also, will vary in power from time to time. For these reasons a border-line, especially in the old fighting days, was often altered.

When the Romans invaded Britain they gradually conquered the southern part of it, but they could not subdue the wilder north; one of their boundary lines was drawn from the Solway to the Tyne; then they fought their way further north and their next definite boundary was a line running from the Forth to the Clyde. Along each of these boundaries they built a great wall, and to this day parts of these Roman walls remain. But it is worth noting that neither of these wall border-lines stands upon the present border, one being all in England and the other all in Scotland.

When the Romans left Britain, called back to defend their own native land from invasion, there followed a brief period for which we have no definite record of events in this island. This is the period of King Arthur, and none can say how much is true in the Arthurian legends.

But history begins to become clear again about the time that the Angles came in their ships across the North Sea, bent on conquest. They landed on all the natural harbours of the east coast, driving the Britons back and taking the land for themselves. The fact that they landed on the East and drove the Britons westward, leads us to think that sooner or later a boundary would have been formed dividing the island into the east side (for the Angles) and the west side (for the Britons).

Now that is exactly what did happen. The border-lines were nowhere like the present ones. The northern kingdom of the Angles reached to the Forth, where these people founded Edinburgh (Edwin's burgh). On the west the Britons had sway in Cornwall (Corn-Walles), Wales, Cumbria (which stretched from the Mersey to the Solway), and Strathclyde (from the Solway to the Clyde). North of the Forth was the country of the Picts; while the Scots were a race recently come from Ireland, and they only owned what we now call Argyleshire, and the islands lying near to it. Not one inch of the present Border was at that day in the border-line!

Of the various races that lay round about where the Border now is, the Northumbrians seemed at first to be the strongest. The capital of their kingdom was Bamburgh, a place still famous for its castle, though to-day it is not important enough to have a railway station! But it still looks very picturesque on the wild coast, with the Farne Islands, the first seat of Northumbrian Christianity, in the near distance.

Ambition had much to do with the downfall of Northumbria. The famous King Eadbert would not rest content till he had scaled Dumbarton, the capital of Strathclyde. This was to his career what the march to Moscow was to Napoleon's, for, though Eadbert got safely to Dumbarton (756) his army was cut to pieces in getting back again. The Northumbrians seem to have lost some of their northern lands, for they moved their capital further south, to the old Roman city of Corbridge which stood on the Tyne just where the delightful country town of that name stands to-day.

In 844 a king of the Scots, named Kenneth MacAlpin, became (we don't quite know how) king of the Picts also, joining two strong races under one ruler, and thus was powerful enough to give great trouble to the weakened kingdom of Northumbria. He several times led his army through Lothian, the district belonging to the Angles between the Forth and the Tweed, but was never quite able to conquer it. It is important to remember that up to that date Lothian had never belonged to Scotland. The appearance of the Danes added to the confusion of those restless days. For some few years it was doubtful whether Scot, Dane, or Angle would get the best of it in Northumbria. But at last the genius of Athelstan of Wessex revived the power of the Angles over the whole of that large part of the island which they had settled, right up to the Forth itself. Edinburgh was still English in 957, and the border-line was still very far from the present one. But there was no longer a king of Northumbria; only an earl, who was subject to the will of the West-Saxon kings.

This fact of the dominance of the West Saxons, whose capital was far to the south at Winchester, must have added to the weakness of the Northumbrian border. By the year 963 the Scots had conquered Edinburgh, and it was now never again to return to English rule. Before very long the whole of Lothian had passed under Scottish control; but it was not yet held to be part of Scotland. Nor must it be thought that this conquest of Lothian fixed the border-line in its present position, for the king of the Scots was at that time ruler over Cumberland, which had never yet been English and was all that was left of the old British kingdom of Cumbria.

Frontier wars with varying successes between Scot, Angle, and Dane mark the stormy history of this time. The power of Cnut held back the Scotch attempts upon Nothumberland; but during a lull in the wars the grand-son of the Scottish king married the sister of Earl Siward, and received as her dowry twelve towns in the valley of the Tyne, an astonishingly imprudent arrangement.

At the time of the battle of Hastings, the earldom of Northumberland was so far distant from Winchester as to be somewhat out of the control of the King of England; the power of the Scottish kings threatened it; they held twelve towns in Tynedale, and Cumberland was a part of Scotland. The Northumbrians refused to accept William the Conqueror as their king; and had they been able to make good their refusal, they must sooner or later have been conquered by the Scots, and the border-line between England and Scotland would then most probably have been formed by the Tees, the mountain boundary of Westmoreland, and Morecambe Bay.

But William was not a king to be played with. He reduced Northumberland to subjection and carried his army into Scotland as far as the river Tay, where he forced the King of Scotland to admit that he, William, was his overlord.

Notwithstanding this humiliation, when King William returned to Winchester, the Scots several times went back to their favourite amusement of raiding unhappy Northumberland.

One of these invasions took place in the reign of William Rufus (1093), who went north in person. He doubtless recognised the fact that owing to the Scots possessing Cumberland they were in the strong position of being able to attack Northumberland on two sides. He took Cumberland by force of arms, and thus for the first time it became a part of England (the word Cumberland means the land of the Cumbrians or Welsh, a Saxon form of the Welsh word Cymry).

Rufus rebuilt the strong fortress of Carlisle to defend his new border at its weakest corner. For the most part this border is excellently protected by the natural rampart of the wild Cheviot Hills, and is in every way as good a border as could be devised. It runs in a fairly straight line from south-west to north-east, across a narrow part of the island.

But although this border-line proved to be a permanent one, it must not be thought that it remained undisputed. The times were rough, and hardy fighting folk lived on the Border. They had many grounds for quarrel, and took advantage of them all. For one thing, the exact boundary of North Cumberland was never quite defined till 1552; up to which year there was a tract of land between the rivers Esk and Sark, which was claimed by both countries, and therefore called the Debateable Land. Then the Scots maintained that they were overlords of Northumberland, while the English kings cherished the notion that they were overlords of the whole island of Britain, and the wild spirits on both sides were always ready to fight.

Out of this fighting spirit sprung the stirring history of the Border, which forms the theme of the deathless Ballads, the stories of which it is now our purpose to retell.

III.—WHAT THE BORDER NAMES TELL US

Many a name holds a meaning wrapt up within itself like a nut in its shell. For instance, Edinburgh is a Saxon name—Edwin's burgh—and the word tells us that this noble city, though now the capital of Scotland, was originally founded by and belonged to a Saxon king of Northumbria. The Highlanders, in their own Gaelic language, called it Dunedin. This has the same signification as Edinburgh, but, like most Gaelic names, it is arranged in the reverse order to that in which an English name is generally put together. Dun means burgh, Edin is Edwin. This is the same Dun that we have in Dundee, which means the burgh on the Tay, and might be translated as Tayburgh. Dumbarton means the burgh of the Britons, and teaches us another notable lesson, namely, how far north in the old times the British influence extended. For British in this case means Welsh. Nowadays we associate the Welsh with Wales only. Formerly there must have been a numerous colony of Welsh in Scotland, as the name Dumbarton testifies, as also many Scottish family names. The great name of Wallace itself, for instance, suggests such an origin, for Wallace is merely a corrupt form of the word Welsh, and proves that the great national hero was of Welsh extraction. Then Cumberland—Cymry land—means the land of the Welsh, or Cymry, as they call themselves. The county of Cumberland did not really belong to the English till the time of William Rufus. The first syllable of Carlisle denotes a Celtic fortified town, and must be compared with the first syllable of Carnarvon.

The presence of the Roman wall is shown in many names in Northumberland, such as Wallsend, Walltown, Wallridge, Heddon-on-the-Wall, Wallhouses, and Thirlwall.

For a very interesting instance of what a name tells us we may leave the Border for a moment and consider why the northernmost part of Scotland is called Sutherland. It must have been so named by people living in the Orkney and Shetland isles, of a different race from the Scotch—that is, Norse settlers in those islands.

With regard to surnames, how many stop to think that Oliphant is merely a form of elephant, and was originally an allusion to a big, burly ancestor? Grant, which is the same as grand, must also have been once applied to one who was a giant in size. The Frazers somehow got their name from the French word for a strawberry, fraise. The odd-looking Scrymgeour means simply a scrimmager or skirmisher. Turnbull recalls one who turned the bull at a bull-baiting. The well-known Gladstains or Gladstone has nothing to do with glad, but is from glede, an old word for the kite, and commemorates