But Drummelzier's most famous association is with Merlin the seer, Merlin Wylt, the Wild, as he is called, to distinguish him from Merlin Ambrosius, who is believed to have uttered his oracles and succumbed to Vivien's enchantments in the preceding century. The story goes that after the battle of Arderydd, in or about the year 573, he fled to the wilds of Tweeddale, and here passed the remainder of his life with a reputation for insanity; that he prophesied that he should die from earth, water, and wood, and accordingly, being pursued by a band of unappreciative rustics, he leapt into the Tweed here and was impaled upon a stake; and that they buried him where the Pausayl brook flows into the river, the spot being marked by the scraggy thorn which is visible from the churchyard. For anyone not blessed with a mighty intuition it is not easy to be sure of anything about Merlin except that he was, and was not. Mr. Veitch, however, paints an impressive picture of Merlin as no wild man of the woods, but as "a heart-broken and despairing representative of the old Druidic nature-worship, at once poet and priest of the fading faith, yet torn and distracted by secret doubt as to its truth." In the same volume--that on the history and poetry of the Border--the eloquent professor remarks that we are "apt to interject into ancient actors and thinkers modern ideas, at which probably they would have stood amazed." Beyond Merlindale, "hearsed about" with black firs, the stream expands until it becomes broader than it is at many points within a dozen miles of its mouth. The Edinburgh road bears it company nearly from Broughton to its source; but instead of crossing to the western bank some way above Drummelzier, it is pleasanter, if you have no "machine"--that is, are not driving--to keep along the eastern bank for some two or three miles farther, when a delightful saunter across a magnificent haugh, besprinkled with the yellow tormentilla and many another timid wild flower, brings you to Stanhope Bridge, and so again to the highway. A few years ago, when the Tweed had one of its spasms of turbulence, this bridge was swung bodily round to the bank, while several others higher up were swept clean away. As the Crook Inn is approached the stream has again become attenuated; the valley, too, has straitened, the hills are less abrupt and barren than those seen in the distance a few miles below, and occasionally a small plantation is espied, where the mavis and the merle may be heard flooding the air with their amorous minstrelsy. The Crook, beloved of anglers, who have tender memories of its luscious mutton, as well as of the good sport which can almost always be had in this part of the stream, is still the comfortable place it used to be before it classed itself as a hotel and acquired fashionable habits.