About Philipshaugh, two miles from Selkirk, the trees are in something
of large estate, with oak and birch and fir and rowan, making dark
shadows in the fair morning, as the historically minded traveler would
fain have it. For it was there that Montrose met defeat, his small band
against Leslie's many men. All about there lie legends of his fight and
his flight across the Minchmoor and on to the North.
And through here Scott loved to wander. Here he let the Minstrel begin
his Last Lay--
"He paused where Newark's stately Tower
Looks down from Yarrow's birchen bower."
And it was hither the Scotch poet came with Wordsworth, as the English
poet describes it--
"Once more by Newark's Castle gate
Long left without a warder,
I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee
Great Minstrel of the Border."
Nearby, and near the highways, is the deserted farm cottage, the
birthplace of Mungo Park, who traveled about the world even as you and
I, and I fancy his thought must often have returned to the Yarrow.
The driver will point out the Trench of Wallace, a redout a thousand
feet long, on the height to the North; and here will come into the
Border memories of another defender of Scotland who seems rather to
belong to the North and West.
Soon we reach the Kirk of Yarrow, a very austere "reformed" looking
basilica, dating back to 1640, which was a reformed date, set among
pleasant gardens and thick verdure. Scott and Wordsworth and Hogg
have worshiped here, and from its ceiling the heraldic devices of many
Borderers speak a varied history.
[Illustration: NEWARK CASTLE.]
Crossing the bridge we are swiftly, unbelievingly, on the Dowie Dens of
Yarrow.
"Yestreen I dream'd a dolefu' dream;
I fear there will be sorrow!
I dream'd I pu'd the heather green,
Wi' my true love on Yarrow.
"But in the glen strive armed men;
They've wrought me dole and sorrow;
They've slain--the comeliest knight they've slain--
He bleeding lies on Yarrow.
"She kiss'd his cheek, she kaim'd his hair,
She search'd his wounds all thorough;
She kiss'd them till her lips grew red,
On the dowie houms of Yarrow."
Then we come into the country of Joseph Hogg. The farm where he was
tenant and failed, for Hogg was a shepherd and a poet, which means a
wanderer and a dreamer. And soon to the Gordon Arms, a plain rambling
cement structure, where Hogg and Scott met by appointment and took their
last walk together.
Hogg is the spirit of all the Ettrick place. Can you not hear his
skylark--"Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless"--in that
far blue sky above Altrive, where he died--"Oh, to abide in the desert
with thee!"
And now the driver tells us we are at the Douglass Glen, up there to the
right lies the shattered keep of the good Lord James Douglass, the
friend of Bruce. Here fell the "Douglass Tragedy," and the bridle path
from Yarrow to Tweed is still to be traced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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