Hawick, to the best of my knowledge, contains no objects of interest to the tourist who "picturesques it everywhere." A {186}hotel is called the Tower Hotel, and contains part of an ancient keep of the Douglases--"Doulanwrack's (Douglas of Drumlanrig's) Castell," which Sussex spared in 1570 when he "made an ende of the rest" of Hawick,--but "you would look at it twice before you thought" of a castle of chivalry. [Illustration: 0206] The people of Hawick have retained many of the characteristics of the old Borderers; they are redoubted foes at football; and are said to be not very scrupulous raiders--of mushrooms. Their local patriotism is fervid, and they sing with passion their song of "Teribus and Teriodden," which refers to "Sons of heroes slain at Flodden,"--among other Flowers of the Forest. And, like their neighbours at Selkirk, they cherish a banner, said to have been captured from the English. The Hawick {187}trophy, however, is not attributed to Flodden, but to a slightly later fight at Hornshole, near Hawick, when those who were left of the townsfolk fell on, and defeated with great slaughter, an English raiding party. [Illustration: 0207] That the mysterious words Teribus {188}and Teriodden, or Odin, are a survival of a pious ejaculation imploring the help of Thor and Odin, I can neither affirm nor deny. [Illustration: 0208] It would be a gratifying thing to prove that the memory of ancient Scandinavian deities has survived the sway of the mediaeval Church and the Kirk of John Knox. But I have not heard that the words occur in documents before the eighteenth century. The town has a site naturally beautiful, as Slitrig, a very rapid stream, here joins Teviot, which, above the mills of Hawick is _electro clarior_; not of a pure crystal translucency, but of a transparent amber hue. Slitrig takes its rise on the Windburgh Hill, on the northern side of the Liddesdale watershed, a hill of old the known resort of the Good People, whose piping and revels might {189}often be heard by the solitary shepherd. [Illustration: 0209] The rivulet is said to well out from a small, black, fathomless little loch high up on the hill. Here, as all knew, dwelt the Keipic, or other irritable spirit prone to resent human intrusion, and if a stone should chance to be thrown into the depths of the lakelet, {190}resentment was pretty sure to be expressed by a sudden dangerous overflow of water into the burn, whereby destruction would be carried down the valley. That, tradition tells, is how Hawick came to be devastated, and all but swept away, early in the eighteenth century. A shepherd, it was said, had quite accidentally rolled a large stone into the lake, and had thus roused the Spirit of the mountain to ungovernable fury. Leyden thus writes of the tradition: "From yon green peak, black haunted Slata brings The gushing torrents of unfathomed springs: In a dead lake, that ever seems to freeze,