bert's body floated in its stone coffin from Melrose,
dating the course of its seven years' wandering, ere it found a final
rest at Durham.

"From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years Saint Cuthbert's corpse they bore
They rested them in fair Melrose,
But though alive he loved it well
Not there his relics might repose,
For, wondrous tale to tell,
In his stone coffin forth he glides,
A ponderous bark for river tides,
Yet light as gossamer it glides
Downward to Tillmouth cell.

* * * * *

Chester-le-Street and Ripon saw
His holy corpse, ere Wardilaw
Hailed it with joy and fear;
Till, after many wanderings past,
He chose his lordly seat at last
Where his cathedral, huge and vast,
Looks down upon the Wear."

_Sir W. Scott_--MARMION.

The "stone coffin" was boat-shaped, "ten feet long, three feet and a
half in diameter, and only four inches thick, so that, with very little
assistance, it might certainly have swum; it still lies, or at least did
so a few years ago, in two pieces, beside the ruined chapel at
Tilmouth."--_Sir W. Scott's Notes to "Marmion."_

Three or four miles from Tillmouth, south-westward up the valley of the
Tweed, and just beyond Cornhill, lies the village of Wark, near which
the remains of the famous Border castle are still standing. The castle
was built on a stony ridge of detritus called the _Kaim_, which
stretches from Wark village towards Carham. In the reign of Henry I. all
those who owned land in the North were seemingly animated simultaneously
by a lively desire to secure their Borders; Bishop Flambard began to
build Norham Castle, Eustace Fitz-John, husband of Beatrice de Vesci,
built the greater part of Alnwick Castle, and Walter Espic raised the
mighty fortress, the great "Wark" or work (A.S. _were_ or _weare_) on
the steep ridge above Tweed, in "his honour (seignieury) of Carham."

From that time the castle of Wark went through a greater succession of
sieges, assaults, burnings, surrenders, demolitions, and restorations
than any other place in England, except, perhaps, Norham Castle or
Berwick-upon-Tweed. In an age and situation where hard blows given and
returned, desperate adventures and equal chances of life or death were
the common-places of everyday existence, Wark was probably the place
where these excitements were to be had oftener than anywhere else.

The romantic episode whi