Polmood, near by, was the scene of Hogg's lugubrious "Bridal of Polmood," seldom read now, one imagines. Kingledoors in two of its place-names preserves the memory of Cuthbert and Cristin, the Saint and his hermit-disciple. Stanhope was a staunch Jacobite holding, one of its lairds being the infamous Murray of Broughton, Prince Charlie's secretary, the Judas of the cause. Murray, by the way, was discovered in hiding after Culloden at Polmood, the abode of his brother-in-law, Michael Hunter. Linkumdoddie has been immortalized in Burns's versicles beginning, "Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed"--a study in idiomatic untranslateable Scots. Here is the picture of Willie's wife--a philological puzzle. "She's bow-hough'd, she's hein-shinn'd, Ae limpin leg a hand-breed shorter; She's twisted right, she's twisted left, To balance fair in ilka quarter; She has a hump upon her breast, The twin o' that upon her shouther; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie a button for her. "Auld bandrons by the ingle sits, An' wi' her loof her face a-washin'; But Willie's wife is nae sae trig She dights her grunzie wi' a hushion; Her walie nieves like midden-creels, Her face wad 'fyle the Logan Water; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie a button for her." At Drumelzier Castle the turbulent, tyrannical Tweedies reigned in their day of might. Of their ghostly origin, the Introduction to the "Betrothed" supplies the key. They were constantly at feud with their neighbours, specially the Veitches, and were in the Rizzio murder. See their history (a work of genuine local interest) written quite recently by Michael Forbes Tweedie, a London scion of the clan. In the same neighbourhood, the fragment of Tinnis Castle (there is a Tinnis on Yarrow, too,) juts out from its bold bluff, not unlike a robber's eyrie on the Rhine. Curiously, this is a reputed Ossian scene (see the poem, "Calthon and Colmal.") The "blue Teutha," is the Tweed--"Dunthalmo's town," Drumelzier. Merlin's Grave, near Drumelzier Kirk, should not be forgotten. Bower's "Scotichronicon" narrates the circumstances of his death: "On the same day which he foretold he met his death; for certain shepherds of a chief of a country called Meldred set upon him with stones and staves, and, stumbling in his agony, he fell from a high bank of the Tweed, near the town of Drumelzier (the ridge of Meldred), upon a sharp stake that the fishers had placed in the waters, and which pierced his body through. He was buried near the spot where he expired." "Ah! well he loved the Powsail Burn (_i.e._, the burn of the willows) Ah! well he loved the Powsail glen; And there, beside his fountain clear, He soothed the frenzy of his brain. Ah! Merlin, restless was thy life, As the bold stream whose circles sweep Mid rocky boulders to its close By thy lone grave, in calm so deep.