These Border hills have produced from time to time many a long-distance runner of immense local celebrity,--such for instance, as the far-famed Will of Phaup--but few of them, I imagine, could have "lived" with Jamie Telfer in that burst of his across the trackless heather and the boggy moors from the Dodhead, over by the headwaters of Ale, across Borthwick, across Teviot, on to Slitrig at "Stobs Ha'," and from there back again to Teviot at Coultercleuch. It must be a good sixteen miles at the least, across a country over which no runner could travel at a pace so fast as that with which the ballad credits Jamie. But if anyone did this run, I fear it was no Jamie Telfer. At least in the fair Dodhead up Ettrick there was at the supposed date of the ballad, and for generations before, no Telfer, but a Scott. The Dodhead of the ballad must be some other place of the same name, possibly that near Penchrise, by Skelfhill. Following up Ettrick, past Hyndhope and Singlie, we come to Deloraine, an ancient possession of the Scotts, for ever {281}famed through its association with William of Deloraine and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel": "A stark moss-trooping Scott was he, As e'er couch'd Border lance by knee." There are various theories as to the derivation of the name "Deloraine." [Illustration: 0301] One, in accord with the local pronunciation of the word--"Delorran," with the accent on the second syllable--gives its origin as from the Gaelic, "dal Grain," the place or land of Orain, who, I understand, was a Celtic saint. There is also the explanation given by the Rev. Dr. Russell of Yarrow, in the Statistical Account of the Parish of 1833. "In 1503, James IV endowed his Queen, the Lady Margaret of England, with the Forest of Ettrick and Tower of Newark, which had formerly been the dowry of Mary of Guelders. Hence, probably, our two farms of Deloraine (de la reine) received their name, or afterwards perhaps from Mary of _Lorraine_." One would prefer to adopt Dr. Russell's interpretation of the name, but probably the place was called "Delorran" long before the day of any of the historical characters mentioned. Higher still up Ettrick is Tushielaw, with its fragment of{282} a ruined tower, the home in old days of that formidable freebooter Adam Scott, "the king of the Border," or "king of thieves." Local tradition tells that he was hanged by James V to the branch of an ash tree that grew within his own castle walls--retributive justice on a man who had himself, in like manner, sent to their doom so many poor wretches from the branches of that same tree. The ash no longer stands, but in _Chambers' Gazetteer_ for 1832 there is this note concerning it: "It is curious to observe that along its principal branches there are yet visible a number of nicks, or hollows, over which the ropes had been drawn wherewith he performed his numerous executions."