In the village of Denholm, on Teviot, opposite to Hassendean, was born John Leyden, the great friend of Scott, a poet in his way, but much more remarkable as a man of amazing energy of character, an Orientalist, and a collector of ballads. But few now know what "distant and deadly shore Holds Leyden's cold remains," His memory is twined with that of Sir Walter, and he is one of {180}the most living figures in Lockhart's Life of Scott. Leyden had the poetic quality, not judiciously cultivated, of the old Border minstrels, while the energy which the clans expended in war was given by him to omnivorous studies. Below Denholm, but on the other side of the river, nearly opposite the junction of Rule Water with Teviot, is Minto, in the fourteenth century a property owned by one of that unruly clan, the Turnbulls. Later, it passed to the family of Stewart, and finally, somewhere about the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was bought by Sir Gilbert Elliot, ancestor of the Minto branch of that family. The present house dates only from 1814, but it has a curious legend attached to it, which is mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's diary, under date 23rd December, 1825. He says: "It is very odd that the common people about Minto and the neighbourhood will not believe at this hour that the first Earl is dead." [He died in June, 1814.] "They think he had done something in India which he could not answer for--that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap and long white beard. The circumstances of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the public are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble. I have seen people who could read, write, and cipher, shrug their shoulders and look mysterious when this subject was mentioned. One very absurd addition was made on occasion of a great ball at Minto House, which it was said was given to draw all people away from the grounds, that the concealed Earl might have leisure for his exercise." To the east of Minto House are Minto Crags, towering precipitous to a height of over seven hundred feet. On the summit is the ruin called Fatlips Castle, which is said to have been the stronghold of the fourteenth-century owner of Minto, {181}Turnbull of Barnhill, a notorious Border freebooter. A small grassy platform, or level space, a little below the ruin, is called Barnhill's Bed, "Where Barnhill hew'd his bed of flint,"--a convenient spot, no doubt, in old days on which to station a sentry or look-out.