mpin leg a hand-breed shorter;
She's twisted right, she's twisted left,
To balance fair in ilka quarter;
She has a hump upon her breast,
The twin o' that upon her shouther;
Sic a wife as Willie had,
I wadna gie a button for her.

"Auld bandrons by the ingle sits,
An' wi' her loof her face a-washin';
But Willie's wife is nae sae trig
She dights her grunzie wi' a hushion;
Her walie nieves like midden-creels,
Her face wad 'fyle the Logan Water;
Sic a wife as Willie had,
I wadna gie a button for her."

At Drumelzier Castle the turbulent, tyrannical Tweedies reigned in their
day of might. Of their ghostly origin, the Introduction to the
"Betrothed" supplies the key. They were constantly at feud with their
neighbours, specially the Veitches, and were in the Rizzio murder. See
their history (a work of genuine local interest) written quite recently
by Michael Forbes Tweedie, a London scion of the clan. In the same
neighbourhood, the fragment of Tinnis Castle (there is a Tinnis on
Yarrow, too,) juts out from its bold bluff, not unlike a robber's eyrie
on the Rhine. Curiously, this is a reputed Ossian scene (see the poem,
"Calthon and Colmal.") The "blue Teutha," is the Tweed--"Dunthalmo's
town," Drumelzier. Merlin's Grave, near Drumelzier Kirk, should not be
forgotten. Bower's "Scotichronicon" narrates the circumstances of his
death: "On the same day which he foretold he met his death; for certain
shepherds of a chief of a country called Meldred set upon him with
stones and staves, and, stumbling in his agony, he fell from a high bank
of the Tweed, near the town of Drumelzier (the ridge of Meldred), upon a
sharp stake that the fishers had placed in the waters, and which pierced
his body through. He was buried near the spot where he expired."

"Ah! well he loved the Powsail Burn (_i.e._, the burn of the willows)
Ah! well he loved the Powsail glen;
And there, beside his fountain clear,
He soothed the frenzy of his brain.

Ah! Merlin, restless was thy life,
As the bold stream whose circles sweep
Mid rocky boulders to its close
By thy lone grave, in calm so deep.

For no one ever loved the Tweed
Who was not loved by it in turn;
It smiled in gentle Merlin's face,
It soughs in sorrow round his bourn."

A prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer--

"When Tweed and Powsail meet at Merlin's Grave,
England and Scotland sha