But Yarrow Vale is strewn with the sites of those tragedies of the far-off years, forgotten by history but remembered in song and tradition. Its green hills enclose the very sanctuary of romantic ballad-lore. Its clear current sings a mournful song of the 'good heart's bluid' that once stained its wave; of the drowned youth caught in the 'cleaving o' the craig.' The winds that sweep the hillsides and bend 'the birks a' bowing' seem to whisper still of the wail of the 'winsome marrow,' and to have an undernote of sadness on the brightest day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very spirit of 'pastoral melancholy' broods and sleeps in this enchanted valley. St. Mary's Kirk and Loch; Henderland Tower and the Dow Linn; Blackhouse and Douglas Craig; Yarrow Kirk and Deucharswire; Hangingshaw and Tinnis; Broadmeadows and Newark; Bowhill and Philiphaugh--what memories of love and death, of faith and wrong, of blood and of tears they carry! Always by Yarrow the comely youth goes forth, only to fall by the sword, fighting against odds in the 'Dowie Dens,' or to be caught and drowned in the treacherous pools of this fateful river; always the woman is left to weep over her lost and 'lealfu' lord.' In the Dow Glen it is the 'Border Widow,' upon whose bower the 'Red Tod of Falkland' has broken and slain her knight, whose grave she must dig with her own hands: 'I took his body on my back, And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat; I digged a grave and laid him in, And happed him wi' the sod sae green. But think nae ye my heart was sair When I laid the moul's on his yellow hair; O think nae ye my heart was wae When I turned about awa' to gae. Nae living man I 'll love again, Since that my lovely knight is slain; Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair I 'll chain my heart for evermair.' An echo of this, but blending with poignant grief a masculine note of rage and vengeance, is the lament of Adam Fleming for Burd Helen, who dropped dead in his arms at their trysting-place in 'fair Kirkconnell Lea,' from the shot fired across the Kirtle by the hand of his jealous rival: 'O thinkna ye my heart was sair, When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair! There did she swoon wi' meikle care On fair Kirkconnell Lea. O Helen fair, beyond compare! I 'll make a garland o' thy hair Shall bind my heart for evermair Until the day I dee.' Still older, and not less sad and sweet, is the lilt of _Willie Drowned in Yarrow_, the theme amplified, but not improved, in Logan's lyric: 'O Willie 's fair and Willie 's rare, And Willie wondrous bonnie; And Willie hecht to marry me If e'er he married ony.' Gamrie, in Buchan, contends with the 'Dowie Howms' as the scene of this fragment; but surely its sentiment is pure Yarrow: