The first Abbey of Melrose, built of oak and thatched with reeds, occupied a nearly insulated site two miles down the river, where the village of Old Melrose now stands. It was a "Chaldee" foundation, as Mrs. Dods would say--was founded by Aidan of Lindisfarne, was the home of the St. Boisil after whom St. Boswell's is named, as well as of St. Cuthbert, was destroyed by Kenneth, after an existence of three hundred years, and, though rebuilt, sank into decay and ruin. Then, five hundred years after St. Aidan, came St. David, who, when the new monastery had been built, brought Cistercian monks from Rievaulx to fill it. Its experiences at the hands of the second Edward and the second Richard, of Evers and Latoun, and of Hertford, were identical with those of Dryburgh, and the dismal story need not be repeated. After the Reformation a part of the nave was used as the parish church, a barbarous wall of brick being put up at the west end, rising into an equally sightly vault to keep out the weather. Although these additions are a grievous eyesore, it was rightly decided, when early in the present century a church was built, to let them be, lest their removal should leave the ruins less secure. In 1832 these were repaired, and the circumstance that the Duke of Buccleuch allowed Sir Walter Scott to superintend the work is guarantee that it was done with a tender and reverent hand. The bell which counted the slow hours for the drowsy monks still tells the time, with quite as much accuracy as could be expected or desired. To the cloisters access is had by a low door at the north-east end of the nave--the entrance through which William of Deloraine was led to the wizard's grave. One of the tombs bears an incongruous printed label, "Michael Scott;" but the identification rests on evidence which would not even satisfy an antiquary--on nothing else, in truth, than the story of the "last minstrel," who was not scrupulous as to matters of fact. Nor is there anything but tradition to show that the magician was buried in the Abbey at all. In this instance, moreover, tradition is divided against itself, for one story has it that he was interred in the monastery founded by St. Waltheof at Holme Coltrame, in Cumberland. In one particular, however, the stories agree: they both aver that the magic books were buried with the wizard, or preserved in the monastery where he died; and here we have the hint of which Sir Walter has made such splendid use in the "Lay." There has been much controversy, by the way, over the question whether the ruins were ever explored by Scott by moonlight. Old John Bower, who for many years was the keeper of the abbey, maintained that he could never have done so, since he had never borrowed the key from him at night; and a verse has been quoted from Sir Walter himself against those who find it hard to believe that the sweetest lines in the "Lay" were not written from "personal experience":--