The hill on which Selkirk stands is studded round with neat gentlemen’s seats, and forms a striking contrast with those on the opposite side of Philiphaugh, which are uniformly dark, bleak, and unproductive. Sheltered by one of these, and situated directly south from Selkirk, there stands, in the ravine formed by the Shawburn, a little cottage thatched in the Scottish fashion, with the usual accompaniments of a _kail-yard_, a _midden_[65] before the door, and a _jaw-hole_. The inhabitants of this humble tenement, if, like us, you be driven in by stress of weather, will be very obliging in telling all they know about Philiphaugh, and how Montrose galloped “up the burn and away over Minchmoor,” in his retreat before Lesly’s victorious army. They will likewise tell an indistinct story about a division of Lesly’s troops, which, led by a countryman, came down this way in order to cut off his retreat. This evidently alludes to the circumstance of Lesly despatching a body of his horse across the river to attack Montrose’s right wing in the rear, upon which the unfortunate general, finding himself hemmed in on all sides, cut his way through his foes, and abandoned the field.[66] In corroboration of what we suppose, the inhabitant of the cottage points out several _tumuli_ or mounds[67] on a little peninsula formed by a sweep of the stream, where the conflict had been greatest. He also speaks of having now and then dug up in his potato-field the remains of human bones. This _cicerone_ of Philiphaugh is a very singular-looking man, and well merits the little attention which you may feel disposed to pay him. He is what is called a country weaver—that is, a person who converts into cloth the thread and yarn spun by the industrious female peasantry of his neighbourhood. It is not perhaps generally known—at least among our southern neighbours—that the common people of Scotland in general manufacture their own clothes, and that from the first carding of the wool to the induing of the garment. The assistance of the weaver and the dyer is indeed required; but every other department of the business they are themselves fit to undertake,[68] and sometimes the aid of the dyer is entirely dispensed with, when the cloth, bearing the natural colour of the wool, is termed _hodden-grey_, an expression to which Burns has given a more than ordinary interest. The weaver is usually a person of no little importance in a rural district; for his talents are in universal request. The specimen of the craft now before us was unusually poor, and, not being free of the Selkirk incorporation, was, like the Paria of the Indian tale, obliged to fly from the customary haunts of his brethren, and seek an asylum in this solitary place. According to his own account of his affairs, he “daikers on here in a very sma’ way,” but when he can get _customer-wark_, has no occasion to complain. _Customer-wark_ is the species of employment which we have