irge"--a clever Surtees forgery undetected by Scott. Leyden's second
Hermitage ballad--two of the best in the "Minstrelsy"--deals with the
Cout or Chief of Keeldar, in Northumberland, done to death by the "Ogre"
in the Cout's Pool close to the Castle. In the little God's-acre at
Hermitage the Cout's grave is pointed out (Keeldar also shows what
purports to be the Cout's resting-place). Memories of Mary and Bothwell
come to us, too, at Hermitage. Here the wounded Warden of the Marches
was visited by the infatuated Queen, who rode over from Jedburgh to see
him, returning the same day--a rough roundabout of fifty miles--which
all but cost her life. Dalhousie's Dungeon, in the north-east tower,
recalls the tragic end of one of the bravest and best men of his
time--Sir Alexander Ramsay, of Dalhousie, who was starved to death at
the instance of Liddesdale's Black Knight, here anything but the "Flower
of Chivalry." One may wander all over the Hermitage and Liddel valleys
without ever being free from the romance-feeling which haunts them.
Relics of the Roman occupation are in abundance on every hillside--

"Many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."

This was the homeland of the Elliots, "lions of Liddesdale," and the
sturdy Armstrongs, of the crafty Nixons and Croziers--"thieves all":

"Fierce as the wolf they rushed to seize their prey:
The day was all their night, the night their day."

It is to be regretted that so few of the dozens of clan-strengths which
at one time studded the district are any longer in evidence. Hartsgarth,
Roan, (so named from the French Rouen), Redheugh, Mangerton--"Kinmont
Willie's" Keep--Syde--"He is weel kenned Jock o' the Syde," Copshaw
Park--the abode of "little Jock Elliot"--Westburnflat--an "Old
Mortality" name--Whithaugh, Clintwood, Hillhouse, Peel, and
Thorlieshope, have mostly all disappeared since Scott's day. A
generation more utilitarian in its tastes has arisen, and the stones
taken to set up dykes and fill drains. Near the junction of the Liddel
and Hermitage stood the strongly posted Castle of the "Lords of Lydal,"
and the important township of Castleton--not unlike the Roxburghs
between Tweed and Teviot; and, like them also, both have long since
passed from the things that are. Only the worn pedestal of its
"mercat-cross" and a lone kirkyard have been left to tell the tale. Two
miles farther down is the village of Newcastleton, formerly Copsh