Highways and Byways in the Border: IllustratedLang, Andrew
History
Highways and Byways in the Border: Illustrated
Lang, Andrew
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Description and travel
Across the loch from the quiet grave-yard on the hill, lies "Bowerhope's
lonely top," and Bowerhope farm, so loved of its tenant of many years
ago. In his "Reminiscences of Yarrow," the late Rev. Dr. Russell
mentions that "Bowerhope farmhouse was so low in the roof that my father
at the exhortations had to stand between two of the rafters, so that the
Kitchen full of people and full of smoke was not the most pleasant
place to speak in. Yet old Sandy Cunningham, the tenant, used to say:
'Ministers may talk o' Heevin' as they like; commend me to Bowerhope; I
cud tak a tack [lease] o't to a' eternity.'"
On our right, on the same side of the loch with us as we stand facing
Bowerhope, is Henderland, where, on a spot called the Chapel Knowe, is
a grave-slab, and on it, sculptured, a sword and what appear to be
armorial bearings, with the inscription: {299}"Here lyis Perys of
Cokburne and hys wyfe Marjory." This, we used to be told, was the grave
of a famous freebooter, whom King James V, (dropping in, as it were, one
day while the unsuspecting reiver sat at dinner,) took, and hanged over
the gate of his own castle, the tower whose weather-battered fragments
are still to be seen here.
[Illustration: 0319]
His wife, it was said, fled to the adjacent Dow Glen, a rocky chasm
through which rushes the Henderland burn, and there, says Sir Walter
Scott, cowering on what is still called the Lady's Seat, she strove "to
drown amid the roar of a foaming cataract, the tumultuous noise which
announced the close of his existence." But Cokburne of Henderland, like
Adam Scott of Tushiealaw, was executed in Edinburgh, before King James
set out on his expedition. Moreover, that Cokburn of Henderland's
Christian name was {300}William. This, therefore, cannot be the grave
of James' victim in 1530. but whatever the real story of "Perys Cokburne
and hys wyfe, Marjory," their fate has given rise to a ballad fuller of
pathos than all the countless pathetic ballads of Yarrow,
"My love he built me a bonny bower,
And clad it a' wi' lilye flower,
A brawer bower ye ne'er did see,
Than my true love he built for me.
"There came a man, by middle day,
He spied his sport and went away;
And brought the King that very night,
Who brake my bower, and slew my knight.
"He slew my knight, to me sae dear;
He slew my knight, and puin'd his gear;
My servants all for life did flee,
And left me in extremitie.
"I sewed his sheet, making my mane;
I watch'd the corpse, myself alane;
I watch'd his body, night and day;
No living creature came that way.
"I took his body on my back,
And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sat;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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