hese to me
Is sylvan Tweed; each tower and tree
That in its vale rejoices;
Dearer the streamlets one and all
That blend with its Eolian brawl
Their own enamouring voices!"

Remember, too, Dr. John Brown's exquisite Tweed's Well meditation, a
prose sermon to ponder over any Sabbath, and Ruskin's homely reverie--"I
can never hear the whispering and sighing of the Tweed among his
pebbles, but it brings back to me the song of my nurse as we used to
cross by Coldstream Bridge, from the south, in our happy days--

"For Scotland, my darling, lies full in my view,
With her barefooted lasses, and mountains so blue."

One thinks also of George Borrow's fascination for the Scottish Border,
when he asks ("Lavengro") "Which of the world's streams can Tweed envy,
with its beauty and renown?" and of Thomas Aird's pathetic
retrospect--"the ever-dear Tweed, whose waters flow continually through
my heart, and make me often greet in my lonely evenings." Nor do we
forget John Veitch, that truest Tweedsman of his time, always musing on
the Tweed, never at home but beside it, and of whose Romance and History
there has been no abler exponent.

Of the name Tweed itself, the meaning and origin are uncertain, and it
is hopeless to dogmatize on the subject except to say that there is an
apparent connection with the Cymric Tay, Taff, Teith, and Teviot--more
properly "Teiott," the common pronunciation above Hawick. Mr. Johnston
("Place-Names of Scotland") traces it to the Celtic _twyad_--"a hemming
in"--from "_twy_ to check or bind," which is a not unlikely derivation.
As to the source of the Tweed there is the curious paradox that what
passes for its source is not the real _fons et origo_ of the stream.
Poetically, the Tweed is said to take its rise in the tiny Tweed's Well
among the Southern Highlands, 1250 feet above sea level, and close to
where the marches of Peeblesshire, Lanarkshire, and Dumfriesshire meet.
But strictly speaking, the correct source is the Cor or Corse Burn, a
little higher up, which, dancing its way to the glen beneath, receives
the outflow of the Well as a sort of first tributary. For purposes of
romance, however, Tweed's Well will always be reckoned as the source, as
indeed it must have been so regarded ages ago. The likelihood is that
Tweed's Well was one of the ancient holy wells common to many parts of
Scotland. And since tradition speaks of a Mungo's Well somewhere in
these solitud