FROM BEMERSYDE
HILL: SCOTT'S
FAVOURITE VIEW

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 89 and 123_)

[Illustration]

Both Scott and Campbell have sung of the unhappy Maid of Neidpath spent
with grief and disease, waiting her lover on the Castle walls, and
beholding him ride past all unconscious of her identity.

"He came--he passed--a heedless gaze,
As o'er some stranger glancing;
Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase,
Lost in his courser's prancing--
The Castle arch whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper spoken,
Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken."

The literary associations of Peebles--a charming township--are
outstanding. William and Robert Chambers (founders of _Chambers's
Journal_) were natives. So were Thomas Smibert and John Veitch, poets
and essayists both. Mungo Park (a Gideon Gray prototype) was the town's
surgeon for a time--an eternal longing for Africa in his soul. "Meg
Dods," the best landlady in fiction, was one of its heroines. And
"Peblis to the Play," probably by James I., is a Scots classic. Traquair
is poetic ground every foot of it. At its "bonnie bush" how many singers
have caught inspiration from Crawford of Drumsoy in 1725, to Principal
Shairp in our own day! Shairp's lyric may well be quoted in full. It is
by far the finest contribution to modern Border minstrelsy. "Thank ye
again for this exquisite song; I would rather have been the man to write
it than Gladstone in all his greatness and goodness," was the exuberant
"Rab" Brown's compliment to the author:

"Will ye gang wi' me and fare
To the bush aboon Traquair?
Owre the high Minchmuir we'll up and awa',
This bonny simmer noon,
While the sun shines fair aboon,
And the licht sklents saftly doun on holm and ha'.

"And what would you do there,
At the bush aboon Traquair?
A lang dreich road, ye had better let it be;
Save some auld skrunts o' birk
I' the hillside lirk,
There's nocht i' the warld for man to see.

"But the blithe lilt o' that air,
'The Bush aboon Traquair,'
I need nae mair, it's eneuch for me;
Owre my cradle its sweet chime,
Cam' soughin' frae auld time,
Sae tide what may, I'll awa' and see.

"And what saw ye there
At the bush aboon Traquair?
Or what did ye hear that was worth your he