nty miles, with a fall of five hundred and forty-five feet,
it joins the Esk at the Moat of Liddel, below Canonbie, near the famous
Netherby Hall, twelve miles north of Carlisle and about eight from
Langholm. It is fed by a score of affluents, of which the chief are the
Hermitage and Kershope Waters, the latter constituting for nine miles or
so the immediate boundary between the two countries. From its
geographical position as cut off from the main division of the county,
Liddesdale has little in common with the valleys of the Tweed and
Teviot. A Liddesdaler, for instance, seldom crosses over to Tweedside,
nor can a Tweedsider be said to have other than a comparatively slight
acquaintanceship with his southern neighbour of the shire. Indeed,
Liddesdale has been described as belonging in some respects more to
England than to Scotland, and in a sense, it may be said to be the very
centre of the Border Country itself.

PLATE 25

CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

[Illustration]

If now-a-days one may roam through Liddesdale with some degree of
comfort, it was a very different matter for Scott and Shortreed little
more than a hundred years since. They knew scarcely anything of the
district, which lay to them, as was said, "like some unkenned-of isle
ayont New Holland." But Scott was bent on his Minstrelsy
ballad-huntings. And it was the very inaccessibility of the Liddel glens
which inspired him with the hope of treasure. For seven autumns in
succession they "raided" Liddesdale, as Scott phrased it, and, as he
anticipated, some of the finest specimens in the Minstrelsy were the
outcome of these excursions. Evidence of the utter solitariness and
roadlessness of the region is found in the fact that no wheeled vehicle
had been seen in Liddesdale till the advent of Scott's gig about 1798.
Nor was there a single inn or public-house to be met with in the whole
valley. Lockhart describes how the travellers passed "from the
shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful
hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the
homestead, gathering wherever they went songs and tunes and occasionally
more tangible relics of antiquity." But a hundred years have wrought
wondrous transformation on the wild wastes of the Liddel. The
"impenetrable savage land" of Scott's day, trackless and bridgeless, is
now singularly well opened up to civilisatio