"They rolled him up in a sheet of lead-- A sheet of lead for a funeral pall; They plunged him in the cauldron red, And melted him, lead, and bones, and all. "At the Skelf-hill, the cauldron still The men of Liddesdale can show; . And on the spot, where they boiled the pot, The spreat and the deer-hair ne'er shall grow." ("Spreat" is a species of rush, and "deer-hair" a coarse kind of grass.) Not the least painful part of the operation one would think must have been the getting so large a body into so small a cauldron. Some necromancy stronger than his own must have been employed to get him into a pot of the dimensions of that long preserved at Skelf-hill and shown to the curious as the identical cauldron. Of the stones that still remain of the original nine, two used to be pointed out as those between which the muckle pot was suspended on an iron bar, gipsy-kettle fashion. In reality, I believe this last of the de Soulis family died in Dumbarton Castle, a prisoner accused of conspiracy and treason. A little way up Hermitage Water from the junction of Whitterhope Burn, stands the massive and most striking ruin of Hermitage Castle. Externally, the walls of this formidable stronghold are said to be mostly of the fifteenth century, but in part, of course, the building is very much older. The first castle built here is said to have been erected by Nicholas de Soulis in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and on a map of about the year 1300 Hermitage is shown as one of the {383}great frontier fortresses. There were, however, earlier proprietors of these lands than the de Soulis's, who may, presumably, have lived here in some stronghold of their own, to which their successors may have added. About the year 1180, Walter de Bolbeck granted "to God and Saint Mary and Brother William of Mercheley" the hermitage in his "waste" called Mercheley, beside Hermitage Water--then called the Merching burn. But from a much earlier date than this, possibly as early as the sixth century, the place had been famed as the retreat of a succession of holy men, and probably something in the nature of a chapel existed even then. The chapel whose remains still stand, close by the bank of the tumbling stream, a few hundred yards higher up than the castle, is, I understand, of thirteenth century origin. It measures a little over fifty-one feet in length and twenty-four in width, and the ruins are of much interest, if it were only for the thought of those who in their day must have heard mass within its walls, and perhaps there confessed their sins.