Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 2 (of 2)Howitt, William
General
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Howitt, William
Literary landmarks -- Great Britain; Poets, English -- Homes and haunts
The next morning I took my way to Dryburgh, the closing scene of the
present paper. Dryburgh Abbey lies on the Tweed, about four miles from
Melrose. You turn off--when you have left the Eildon hills on your
right, and have seen on your left, in the course of the river, the
Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other classic spots--down a steep and
woody lane, and suddenly come out at a wide bend of the river, where,
on your side, the gravel brought down by the floods spreads a
considerable strand, and the lofty banks all round on the other are
finely wooded. Few are the rivers which can show more beautiful
scenery in their course than the Tweed. But what strikes you strangely
are the ruins of a chain bridge, which some time ago was carried away
by the wind. There stand aloft the tall white frames of wood to which
the bridge was attached at each end, like great skeletons; and the two
main chains stretch across, and fragments of others dangle in the
air--iron rags of ruin. It has a most desolate and singular look.
This, I suppose, was put up by the late whimsical Earl of Buchan, to
whom Dryburgh belonged, as now, to his nephew. At the opposite end of
the bridge peeps out of the trees the top of a little temple. It is a
temple of the Muses, where the nine sisters are represented
consecrating Thomson the poet. Aloft, at some distance in a wood, you
descry a gigantic figure of stone; and this, on inquiry, you find to
be William Wallace, who, I believe, was never here, any more than
Thomson. It was intended for Burns, but as the block was got out of
the quarry on the opposite side of the river, close to where you land
from the ferry-boat, the fantastic old fellow took it into his head
that, as it was so large a block, it should be Wallace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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