Far across the shimmering green meadows and through the fragrant
orchards came the sound of bagpipes--on this my first evening in
Scotland! And whether or not you care for the pipes, there is nothing
like them in a Scottish twilight, a first Scottish twilight, to
reconstruct all the Scotland that has been.
The multitudes and the individuals came trooping back. At a time of
famine these very fields were filled with huts, four thousand of them,
for always the monks had food, and always they could perform miracles
and obtain food; which they did. That for the early time. And for the
late, the encampment of Leslie's men in these fields before the day when
they slaughtered Montrose's scant band of royalists at Philipshaugh, and
sent that most splendid figure in late Scottish history as a fugitive to
the north, and to the scaffold.
I knew that in the Abbey before the high altar lay the high heart of The
Bruce, which had been carried to Spain and to the Holy Land, by order of
Bruce, since death overtook him before he could make the pilgrimage.
Lord James Douglass did battle on the way against the Moslems in
southern Spain, where "a Douglass! a Douglass!" rang in battle clash
against "Allah, illah, allah," and the Douglass himself was slain. The
heart of The Bruce flung against the infidel, was recovered and sent on
to Jerusalem, and then back to Melrose. The body of Douglass was brought
back to Scotland, to St. Bride's church in Douglass, and his heart also
lies before the high altar of Melrose. "In their death they were not
divided."
There lies also buried Michael Scot
"Buried on St. Michael's night,
When the bell toll'd one and the moon was bright."
On such a night as this, I hoped. And Scot is fit companion for the
twilight. This strange wizard of a strange time was born in Upper
Tweedale, which is the district of Merlin--the older wizard lies buried
in a green mound near Drummelzier. Michael traveled the world over,
Oxford, Paris, Bologna, Palermo, Toledo, and finally, perhaps because
his wizardry had sent him like a wandering Jew from place to place, back
to the Border, his home country, where he came and served the Evil One.
Dante places him in the Purgatory of those who attempt blasphemously to
tear the veil of the future. The thirteenth century was not the time in
which to increase knowledge, whether of this world or the next. Even
to-day perhaps we save a remnant of superstition, and we would not boast
"I could say to thee
The words that cleft the Eildon hills in three."
Very dark against the gathering dark of the night sky rose the Eildon
hills above, cleft in three by the wizardry of Scot. To that height on
the morrow I should climb, for it is there that Sir Walter Scott, a
later wizard, had carried our Washington Irving, just a century ago, and
shown him all this Borderland--which lay about me under the increasing
cover of night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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