senses the history and romance of the
Borderland. He had heard from the 'aged hind,' or at the 'winter
hearth,' the old tales of woe and mirth; wild conjurings of superstition
or real events that, although nearer then by a hundred years than they
are to-day, had already been magnified, distorted, glorified in passing
through the medium of the popular memory. His dreaming fancy did the
rest. Looking from his point of vantage across the fair valley of the
Tweed to the blue chain of Cheviot, every notch in which was 'a gate and
passage of the thief,' every fold below it, the site of some battle or
story of old,

'Over Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood,
And all down Teviotdale,'

he was able to repeople the scene as it was when ballad romance was not
only written but lived:

'I marvelled as the aged hind
With some strange tale bewitched my mind,
Of forayers, who with headlong force
Down from that strength had spurred their horse.

. . . . .

And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers' slights, of ladies charms,
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms;
Of patriot battles won of old
By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold.'

There could not have been a more 'meet nurse for a poetic child' than
the green slopes, the black rocks, and the grey keep, reflected in its
still 'lochan,' of Scott's ancestral home at Sandyknowe. Dryburgh,
Melrose, and Kelso, are hidden in the valley below. The huge square
tower of Hume--'Willie Wastle's' castle--stands on the same sky-line as
Smailholm peel itself, keeping guard along with it over the passes and
marches of the ancient Scottish Kingdom. Wrangholm is near by, where St.
Cuthbert dreamed and played boyish sports before he set forth on his
mission to christianise Northumbria. Bemerside, the Broom o' the
Cowdenknowes, and the Rhymer's Tower are not far off; Huntly Bank is
also where True Thomas lay alone listening to the throstle and the jay,
under the Eildon tree, and

'Was war of a lady gay
Come rydyng ouyr a fair le';

Mellerstain, whence the hero of _James Haitlie_ rode to find favour in
the eyes of the king's daughter, and where Grizel Hume and the
Mellerstain Maid afterwards sung notes as wild and sweet and fresh as
ever came from fairyland; and many a famous spot besides. The
three-headed Eildons are in sight, with Dunion, Ruberslaw, Penielheugh,