most varied and brilliant prospects.

Robert Crawford sings of them as "Cheviot braes so soft and gay," and
Gilpin likens the hirsels browsing on the most acclivitous to pictures
hung on immense green walls. From time immemorial those charming uplands
have been grazed by the quiet, hardy, fine-wooled, white-faced breed of
sheep which bear their name; and in the days of the raids (for this is
the true "raider-land" of history) they were resonant, more than any
other part of Scotland, with the clang of freebootery and the yell of
strife. Mrs. Sigourney's apostrophe to the present day flocks may be
quoted:

Graze on, graze on, there comes no sound
Of Border warfare here,
No slogan cry of gathering clan,
No battle-axe, or spear.
No belted knight in armour bright,
With glance of kindled ire,
Doth change the sports of Chevy-Chase
To conflict stern and dire.

Ye wist not that ye press the spot,
Where Percy held his way
Across the marches, in his pride,
The "chiefest harts to slay;"
And where the stout Earl Douglas rode
Upon his milk-white steed,
With "fifteen hundred Scottish spears,"
To stay the invaders' deed.

Ye wist not, that ye press the spot
Where, with his eagle eye,
King James, and all his gallant train,
To Flodden-Field swept by.
The Queen was weeping in her bower,
Amid her maids that day,
And on her cradled nursling's face
Those tears like pearl-drops lay:

Graze on, graze on, there's many a rill
Bright sparkling through the glade,
Where you may freely slake your thirst,
With none to make afraid.
There's many a wandering stream that flows
From Cheviot's terraced side,
Yet not one drop of warrior's gore
Distains its crystal tide.

PLATE 7

FLODDEN FIELD AND
THE CHEVIOT HILLS

FROM A WATER COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 40, 48, 99, 103, 121_)

[Illustration]

Of the river valleys running south of the Border line, the chief are the
Breamish, or the Till, as it is termed from Bewick Brig--the "sullen
Till" of "Marmion"; the Aln, from Alnham Kirk to the sand-banks of
Alnmouth, a glen emphatically rich in legendary lore; the Coquet, the
most picturesque and most popular trouting-stream in the North of
England; and Redesdale, redolent of "Chevy Chase," rising out of Carter
Fell, and joining the