A HISTORY OF PEEBLESSHIREThe Parish of TweedsmuirThere is scarcely a parish in Scotland, hardly a village, which cannot boast of being the birthplace of a famous man. The parish of Tweedsmuir can do more than this. If we follow the course of one of the most famous rivers in the world from where its waters, majestic in breadth and power, strive with the waves of the North Sea before they merge with them forever at the great bar at Berwick, if we journey 'from Berwick to the Beild,' as the old saying goes, through a hundred miles of beautiful country, we find at last, in a lonely, marshy, moorland place the little pool which is the birthplace of the Tweed. It was the sea whose action first formed the Tweed valley. The ice age followed, and great glaciers covered the place where waves once chafed and where the wind now sweeps down the glens of Gameshope and Talla, Fruid and Menzion, and over the grey-bouldered river over which heather and rowans hang. Those were times when history still had to be made, and only the trained geologist can tell with anything like accuracy what the Tweed uplands must have been in their loneliness those thousands of years ago, when no baser living things were there than God the Creator and Nature, His artisan. When centuries dispelled the ice, and the grey Silurian crags stood stark and bare, Nature clothed them with thick vegetation. The higher slopes were covered with heather and bracken, hazel, juniper, thorn, rowan and birch, and by the tumbling burns and the riverside grew ash and willow, fir, aspen and alder. 'It was a forest wherever wood could grow'. In course of time that riot of trees and thick undergrowth became a famous hunting ground – the Wood of Caledon. The Earl of Huntingdon, afterwards King David I, referred to it as 'My Waste,' and part of it was used as pasturage for his flocks and herds. In the time of the Stewarts, and later, it was known as Ettrick forest. 'Ettricke Foreste is a feir foreste, While the upper vale of Tweed was in the making, there came to populate it the little wiry, dark-skinned, active Iberians, earliest forebears of the Border Scots. Celtic, Goidels, Celtic Brythons, Angles and Norsernen each had their day, each their share in forming that amalgam of racehood that has produced our sturdy Border breed. From the Romans, when they built their great Wall, the Cymri took refuge in the wilds of Upper Tweeddale. There too, when Rome had failed them, came the Romo-Britons, who for several centuries carried on a gallant struggle against the encroaching hordes of pagans from the north, and from the 'Winged Hats' who sailed across the sea to ravage and destroy. 'Their last refuge was the Border hills.' Both by the works of their hands and by the names they gave to places, the Cymri and those who succeeded them left their mark. The forts of the Cymri, their 'camps' or 'rings,' are still to be found on the hills. The 'standing stones' were possibly cromlechs, or what in Cymric France are known as dolmens. The cairns of stones that mark the graves of heroes were known in Cymric as 'carns' or 'carnedd,' and many a place-name dates from a period regarding which our knowledge must remain scanty and serves as a memento of the race which bestowed it. Much water had run to the sea, many centuries passed since the days of nebulous legend, when, in the twelfth century, parishes began to come into existence; but it was not until 1643 that the parish of Tweedsmuir was disjoined from that of Drumelzier, and started 'fully equipped with all parochial necessaries' on its own account. Before that recognition of respectability Tweedsmuir passed through many stormy times. The mere fact that the Frasers and the Tweedies were proprietors in the parish for some hundreds of years meant that for what might have been one of the peacefullest parts of God's earth, there was no peace. For these indeed were 'bloodye men,' as the notorious Sir Robert Ker, writing in the sixteenth century, described some equally bloodthirsty neighbours. In Cymric the Tweed was the Twyi, that which cheeks or limits. To this day, in Welsh, Twyad means 'a hemming in.' In 1175 Bede writes it as Tuede, and when we find the ancestors of the Tweedies, who held a large share of the lands of Upper Tweed, calling themselves Thomas or John – as the case might be – 'de Tueda,' it is natural to assume that their name is derived from the river. But it is not so, as it is now definitely established that the name is derived from 'Twedyn' in Lanarkshire, from which the family originally came. However, the Tweedies own by tradition an origin fit for the descendants of some of the gods of Greece. According to that tradition, and as recorded by Sir Walter Scott, an old warrior left his hills and valleys to go to the Crusades. He came home after some years to find his young wife in possession of a sturdy son. Her simple explanation was that as she wandered one day by the river, its radiant god came out of its depths, became by force her lover, and was therefore ancestor to as turbulent a race of fighting men as ever clove skulls on the Border. 'The Tweedies gart their noddles crack, 'Thole and think on,' the motto of the family, did not mean that their powers of endurance and their 'thinking on' was invariably for the good of their neighbours. Between the families of Tweedie and Veitch – for knowledge of whom we must seek the records of other parishes – there existed a feud beside which the vendetta of the Montagus and Capulets seems merely a slight and elegant misunderstanding. The details of most of the frays and forays in which the Tweedies were engaged are also mostly in other parish records. They were possessed of many of the fortresses – strung almost as thickly as beads on a rosary – that existed for common defence, and were so often a protection against uncommon offence, along the Tweed valley. Fruid Castle, up Fruid Water, of which nothing now remains, was one of their strongholds. From its tower a signal beacon could be passed to Hawkshaw, thence to Oliver, Polmood, Kingledoors, Stanhope, Mossfennan, Wrae, Drumelzier, Tinnies, Dreva, Lour, Dawyck, Stobo even on to the very mouth of Tweed. The Tweedies showed originality in the variety of their crimes. In 1565 Adam Tweedie of Dreva, as mild a mannered man as ever cut a throat, was arraigned for 'cutting off Robert Ramage's luggis (ears) and dismembering him thereof.' Evidence was too strong for Adam to plead not guilty, so he frankly owned up and was absolved. Probably Ramage deserved all he got. Or is this a case of undue influence? for just about this time was not 'Walter Tuedy,' of the Drumelzier family 'exhorter' and preacher at Broughton and Dawyck? Two Tweedies lent a hand at the murder of Rizzio, but when Mary, Queen of Scots, escaped from Loch Leven, they were found among her supporters. As late as 1654 Tweedie of Kingledoors – a worldly fellow, this – brought upon himself the censure of the Kirk for having 'twice or thrice broken the Sabbath Day by riding towards Edinburgh and coming from it on the Sabbaths, and by staying from the efternune's service in Tweedsmuir Kirk to speak of worldlie business.' He was however, 'so ingenuous in confessing' that he escaped with a rebuke from the minister, and 'promised not to do the like again.' In 1753 a gentleman of Leith lost his heart to Miss Margaret Tweedie of Oliver. To quote a letter from him first demands the apology which is not always rendered to those whose most intimate affairs are given to a captious public when the writers are no longer in a position to protest. From the salubrious climate of Leith he wrote: 'Dearest on earth, should I attempt to describe the strength of my passion for you, I might soon exhaust my flood of eloquence but not come up to the truth of the case. May heaven prove propitious to my earthly treasure. O how my heart akes when surly winter threatens so soon to lay his icy hand on our world, where you reside in so inclement a place.' Despite his eloquence, the course of his love was, apparently, not smooth, for his courtship languished during ten years. In 1763 he had the happy thought of trying to alleviate for his treasure some of the discomforts of the dreich valley in which she dwelt, for a letter arrived, addressed to 'Miss Peggy Tweedie with a pound of tea,' and they were married the following year. The Frasers were Sheriffs of Tweeddale and their territorial possessions were vast. 'This noble and ancient family,' says Nisbet 'were originally from France, and settled in Scotland as early as the reign of Achaius, 794, coeval with Charlemagne.' Oliver Fraser, possibly that 'Olifurd' from Tweeddale who witnessed some documents in the reign of Malcolm IV (circa 1153–1165), built Oliver Castle, 'grim guardian of the Upper Tweed,' when David I was King. Most famous of the Frasers was Sir Simon Fraser, friend and supporter of William Wallace and of Robert the Bruce. From the reign of Malcolm IV till the death of Alexander III the Frasers, Frisels, or de Fresels – who bore the fraises, the strawberry leaves of nobility, on their shields from the time of the Crusades – were the most powerful family in Upper Tweeddale. Their first and last seat was that of Fruid, but one may look in vain for its traces up the lonely valley. Only some grassy mounds and a few old trees remain. In 1291, having put off the evil day as long as he could, Simon Fraser, chief of the clan, took the oath of allegiance demanded by Edward I. It broke his heart, and he came home to Oliver to die. His son, another Simon, waited as long as was possible, but he, also, was compelled to take the oath. He evidently took it with mental reservations, for in 1296 we find him fighting against the English at the Battle of Dunbar, where he was taken prisoner. In 1297, being given the choice of languishing in an English prison or of going to Flanders to fight for England, he, like a true Borderer, preferred the chance of death in battle – no suffocating walls around him. At the end of the campaign his services were handsomely rewarded, and he came home to find that Wallace, his distant kinsman, was proving a doughty champion for Scotland. That he stood to lose all by deserting the English King and throwing in his lot with a hunted rebel were matters that made him hesitate only for a little. It must have been fairly exasperating for King Edward when Fraser, whom he had appointed Keeper of Ettrick Forest, headed a Scottish rising along with Sir John Comyn and triumphantly routed the English troops, who greatly out numbered a little army of Lanarkshire and Tweeddale men, at the Battle of Roslin. Wallace's Trench, at Hangingshaw, in Yarrow, remains as a memorial of Wallace's guerilla warfare, and the patriot could always find safe shelter in the castle of his friend, Simon Fraser. In 1305 Wallace was treacherously taken prisoner and executed in London, and Bruce arose to take his place and win for Scotland the independence that she has never lost. At Methven, near Perth, in 1306, when Bruce and his army were surprised and sustained disastrous defeat, Simon Fraser three times saved the life of his friend and leader. A short time later he was taken prisoner, hanged, drawn and quartered in London, and 'his head smyten off and placed upon London brig on a sper.' As he went to the gallows, and as he stood under the fatal tree, his fine personal appearance and whole bearing drew expressions of sympathy, not only from the tender hearts of the women, but from the less susceptible men of the rough London crowd. The question of the descent of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, from the lords of Oliver Castle is one which, so far as the writer is aware, has never been satisfactorily settled. According to Nisbet's Heraldry there would seem to be no doubt as to the fact, but other authorities dismiss the local belief as mere legend. Best known of the Hays, another wild Border brood, is Hay of Talla, one of the murderers of Darnley. 'Wild your cradle glen, Where Hay's peel tower stood, no one knows. Even before the waters of the Reservoir wiped out the peaty bogland by the burn, no trace of any building was to be seen there. He was one of two executed for the murder of Darnley in 1568. Another figure that stands grimly out from a host of Border fighters is that of Porteous of Hawkshaw. His peel tower was up the Hawkshaw burn, near Falla Moss. As recently as a hundred years ago a farmhouse and cottages, known as 'Hawkshaw Auld Toun,' marked where it had been, and another Hawkshaw remains on the Fruid valley side of the hill. When Cromwell was on his devastating march through the Lowlands a party of sixteen of his troopers, stationed at Biggar, fell into the hands of Porteous. He made his men 'fell them one by one with a mall' and fling them into Falla Moss. One unfortunate, less violently felled than the others, regained consciousness, struggled out of the moss, and fled. He ran along way, and when his pursuers caught him up he saved them the trouble of an execution by throwing himself over a cliff at Glencraigie. Early in the nineteenth century some herds took the trouble to dig for the fifteen in the Moss, and found what remained of the Ironsides who were so unlucky as to encounter a Border reiver. According to a contemporary historian. 'The greatest relieff at this time was by some gentillmen callit mosstrouperis, quha, haiffing quyetlie convenit in threttis and fourties, did cut off numberis of the Englishes, and seased on thair pockettis and horsis.' Of the tale of Hawkshaw's treatment of his prisoners there is a local variant, firmly adhered to in the district. Some English reivers, they say, had the impudence to 'lift' some cattle belonging to Porteous. He followed them, hot-trod, and, at the Cowt's Road (cowt, a colt, or a big rough fellow) by Wamphray Water-head, he caught up with them, got back his cattle and captured the Englishmen. He kept them prisoners until, getting bored at having to supply them with food, he took the simplest means of getting rid of inconvenient visitors, killed them and threw them into Falla Moss. It is not possible to say which version of the tragedy is the correct one. Probably they are different incidents in the life of Porteous, who set no special value on human life, especially that of men born on the wrong side of the Cheviots, and who had a moss conveniently handy. Doubtless Captain Porteous of 'Porteous Mob' notoriety – a Peeblesshire man – was a scion of the house whose motto was 'Let the Hawk Shaw.' Long before 'The Killing Times' the upper waters of Tweed and of the lonely burns that flow into it must many a time have been tinged with blood. Tweedsmuir was a Covenanting parish, as the records of its church prove. The church was built in 1643, – a little whitewashed, barn-like building with square pews, a 'laird's loft' and a small belfry at one end – and the Duke of Queensberry, ancestor of 'Old Q,' was its patron. In 1675 its minister was one Francis Scott, and on October 3rd of that year it is chronicled that the minister was 'hardlie daring to stay sermon for murderers, or robbers, falling upon him, as of other ministers in the Parish.' Whether these 'murderers and robbers' were sons of the Covenant or followers of 'Bluidy Clavers' is rather a nice point to decide for Mr. Scott proved to be an informer and in May, 1688, was 'outed' by his flock. Session records also have as entries: 'No session kept by reason of all the elders being at conventicles.' To be minister of the little Kirk where in happier days, Chalmers and Guthrie have preached, must have been a nerve-racking business when Claverhouse and his troopers were abroad. The hills and cleughs and moss-hags of Tweedsmuir furnished hiding-places for many a Covenanter. Donald Cargill, of the Barony Church of Glasgow, is credited with having given his name to 'Donald's Cleugh' and its burn, which runs into Gameshope. Peden, 'the Prophet,' still has a memorial in 'Peden's Pulpit,' a boulder up Gameshope Glen. James Renwick, Alexander and Michael Shields, the Rev. Gilbert Veitch, twice condemned to death and for twenty years hunted through the Borders, and other valiant upholders of the Covenant, all held conventicles in wild places where the horses of 'the Persecutors' could not find footing. 'It will be a bloody night in Gemshop this' is Hogg's opening sentence in his 'Brownie of Bodsbeck.' Some sixteen years ago, a fisher returning from a day on Gameshope Loch, came on one of the 'hags' which may have sheltered some of those whose sudden disappearance, when pursuit was at its hottest, seemed little less than miracle . . . 'A covy of grouse got up almost at my feet. The day was windless and very still, and as I stood watching the flight of the birds, the faint melodious tinkle of underground water somewhere very near to me, fell on my car. Glancing around, I saw on the flat ground in front of me within a yard of my feet, what appeared to be a hole, almost entirely concealed by heather. It was from this direction that the sound of the drip, drip of falling water seemed to come. Kneeling down, I pulled the heather aside, and found a hole two or three feet in diameter, and beneath it a roomy kind of chamber hollowed out of the peaty soil. It was a place perhaps five feet deep, big enough at a pinch to conceal half a dozen men ; a place from which – unless there was a way out from below – a man might never find exit, if inadvertently he fell in and in his fall managed to break a limb. Unseen of man, he might lie in that peaty grave till his bones bleached, rest in that lonely spot till the last dread trumpet called him forth to judgement.' Next day the writer accompanied the discoverer of the hole to examine it. Yard by yard was paced, it must have been passed and re-passed, but no tinkle of water was heard and an hour of careful search was spent in vain. Shepherds affirm that four or five such 'hags' are believed to exist in Gameshope Glen and the moor by the loch, but although they blame them for the death of sheep which mysteriously vanish they can give no exact information about any of them. Was it in such dens that the Pagan ancestors of the devout men of the moss-hags, the last remnants of the swarthy little Picts whose stills were underground and who were reputed to be able to hide for days in bogs with only their heads above the quaking ground, found their last strongholds? Did 'the Brown Man of the moors, who stays beneath the heather-bell' and who, in his 'Watcher by the Threshold' Mr. John Buchan has revived into such a very flesh-creeping bogie, still lurk, when his tribe was supposed to be extinct, in those hags up Gameshope? Indeed the setting is most suitable, for it would be hard to find a lonelier, wilder spot than Gameshope Cleugh, with its burn dashing from linn to linn, its marshy ground strewn with great boulders, and only the rush of water, the sough of the wind, the curlew's shrill and the pewit's dolorous cry to sound in its solitude. And, even at high noonday, the loch is an eerie, sinister looking piece of water. While the reservoir at Talla was being made there were men who thought to reach a possible job more quickly if they tramped across the hills and came down the glen. But more than one who tried to brave its rigours in wintry weather lay down to die under the scanty shelter of a boulder, and was found lying cold and dead by shepherds who came up the cleugh when snow was melting or when a storm of some wild days had abated. On an autumn day, when the yellows and reds of the hills are turned into sad-colour, and the cleughs that cleave their sides are splashes of inky black, when furious gales sweep down from the north, flaying the faces of those who meet them and making even the sturdy little black-faced sheep stagger as they try to keep their footing among the grey stones and on the sparse, benty grass of the hillsides, it would seem as though the wrath of God were abroad. Sleet, like wisps of smoke, drives down the hills and turns into the thick greyness of a forest fire when it reaches the great boulders and the wan water of the burn that moans its way down the valley. 'Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air their nests,' but the lairs of the foxes, high up on the hills, must prove chilly shelter on such a day. Even the peregrine falcons must shiver in their nests, and if, as rumour says an occasional eagle is still to be seen there, it must find its eyrie no fit habitation for a royal bird. At Fiend's Fell, near Talla Linns, eagles used to nest – one was killed in 1883 – and when they still ravaged the flocks, not so many years ago, one seized a herd boy, who had a hard fight to escape. On such a day as this even the water of the reservoir, destined for the humbling servitude of the household taps of Edinburgh, is lashed into angry waves, foaming against their barriers. Talla Linns are in flood, and the spray that dashes skywards, as water crashes down the rocks, might be incense immortalizing the psalms and prayers of the martyrs. It was at Talla Linns – the 'Witches' Linn' – that the Great Conventicle described by Sir Walter Scott,' was held in June, 1682. 'The place was remarkably well adapted for such an assembly. It was a wild and very sequestered dell in Tweeddale surrounded by high hills, and far remote from human habitation. A small river, or rather a mountain torrent, called the Talla, breaks down the glen with great fury, dashing successively over a number of small cascades. . . Here the leaders among the scattered adherents of the Covenant, men, who in their banishment from human society, and in the recollection of the severities to which they had been exposed, had become at once sullen in their tempers and fantastic in their religious opinions, met with arms in their hands, and by the side of the torrent discussed, with a turbulence which the noise of the stream could not drown, points of controversy as empty and unsubstantial as its foam.' Thus Sir Walter. Of the Conventicle, an old shepherd whose genial personality is missed by everyone now that he rests in the little graveyard by the side of Tweed, said on the day that the War Memorial was unveiled 'There's never been sic a crood here afore – no' sin the time o' the Great Conventicle. They say there was sic a hash o' folk, an' they sang the Psalms that lood, that they drooned the soond o' the Linns.' The Conventicle lasted for three days, during which time not only did the Covenanters most narrowly escape an onslaught from Claverhouse and his troopers, but Claverhouse, thanks to his insufficient information, escaped from being made an example to all 'persecutors.' For those stern followers of Calvin who looked on him and his like as malefactors deserving righteous execution, numbered a hundred and twenty, and were mostly armed. Claverhouse was Sheriff of Galloway, and on his way from Edinburgh to Kenmure Castle, where he had his headquarters, he spent a night at what, in a letter to the Duke of Queensberry, he calls 'The Bille,' while, only four miles off, his quarry was assembled. But, apparently, the host at the Bield kept his own counsel, both to his guest and to the little company at Talla Linns, until all chance of a bloody encounter was past. A few days later, news of what he had missed reached Claverhouse. He heard from the Rev. Francis Scott, who evidently liked to run with the hare as well as to hunt with the hounds, that the Covenanters had mostly come from Clydesdale, crossing Tweed by the stepping-stones which then existed between the Bield and the little white, glebe cottage, then the manse, but averred that 'they did no prejudice in his house, further than meatt and drink.' Claverhouse notes that 'There was a dragoon all Tuesdays night, at the changehouse at the Bille.' In the green and peaceful graveyard, surrounded by clustering sentinels of dark pines, guarded by the everlasting hills, and past which Tweed croons her melody, is the grave of one of the martyrs. 'Old Mortality's' white pony used to be tied to the churchyard gate while he re-lettered the stone. Martyr who was cruely murdered at Corehead by Col. James Douglas and his Party for his Adherance to the word of God and Scotland's Covenanted work of Reformation 1685 Executed in the year 1726 'When Zion's King was Robbed of his right His witnesses in Scotland put to flight When popish prelats and Indulgancie Combin'd 'gainst Christ to ruine Presbytrie All who would not unto their idols bow They socht them out and whom they found they slew For owning of Christ's cause I then did die My blood for vengeance on his enemies did cry.' This on the tombstone. On the flat stone which covers the grave a quotation from a contemporary writer, added in 1910, is given: 'John Hunter, a Tweedsmuir lad, was accidentally visiting a sick friend at Corhead when timely in the morning he was surprised with Douglas and his Dragoons. He fled to the hill a great way, but one named Scott, being well horsed, compassed him and came before him. He was most barbarously shot through the body, felled on the head with the neck of a gun, and casten headlong over a high steep craig said to be the Beef Tub.' There are various theories as to the origin of Quarter Knowe the knoll on which the Kirk of Tweedsmuir stands. Some believe it to have been a British camp, or a place of Druidical worship; others see in its shape a Roman tumulus, while some of the country folk are assured that the mound was caused by the confluence of Tweed and Talla. The Rev. John Dick, for many years minister of the parish, pronounces it to be 'really of alluvial foundation.' On the stones in the graveyard one can read a good deal of the history of the people of the parish. A stranger once said to an old shepherd-the majority of Tweedsmuir men are shepherds – 'This is a beautiful, healthful place. You have grand air, splendid water, everything to promote longevity.' 'Ou aye,' the old man cheerily replied, 'Naebody dees here. When folk get owre auld, they just tak a gun an' shoot them.' The tombstones certainly give a large proportion of aged people, from 70 to 80 and upwards, but one stone, chronicling the deaths of a shepherd of Fruid and his family, gives their ages as 85, 12, 16, 47, 77 and 85. This is their epitaph : 'Death pities not the aged head The life and death of a lad of fifteen is also delightfully recorded Whate'er could die of William Ker |
With few exceptions, those who did not die well up in years died still in harness, or from accident. A granite stone, engraved with pick and shovel, commemorates knights of labour, many of whom died far from home and friends. 'To the memory of the men who died during the progress of the Talla Water Works, 1895–1905, of whom thirty are interred in this churchyard.' One man, a stalwart gamekeeper, was killed by falling from the rocks at Loch Skene when he and others were hunting foxes. His collie managed to scramble down the crags and reach his master's body, and so faithfully did he guard it that, for a time, no one dared venture near it. Another shepherd at Menzion, 'lost his life in that Memorable Snowstorm, 25th January, 1794.' The endearing quality of recklessness did not leave the blood of those Tweeddale folk, who made somewhat of a hobby of 'lifting' the property of their ancient enemies, until their pastime was finally stamped out, by royal decree, in the seventeenth century. The Reivers' Resting Stone is to be found on the road by Carterhope to Moffat, and on stilly nights, when the moon rides high, almost can we hear the lowing of tired cattle, the jingle of spurs and of harness, and see the raiders following the moor roads over the hills and across the heather from the other side of the Border. 'O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, That the reivers did not limit their energies to lifting the bestial and gear of their cousins on the English side is proved many times by State Papers. 'Hawks winna pike oot hawks een' yet in February, 1489, Thomas Porteous of Hawkshaw was convicted of having – quite accidentally on purpose – lifted from Oliver seventy-four lambs, the property of William and Laurence Tweedie. Tweed's Well is so nearly in Annandale and so close to that gloomy fissure in the hill known as the storage of a hardy raider – 'The Marquis of Annandale's Beef-Stand,' or 'The Devil's Beef-Tub'-that the old couplet, 'Annan, Tweed and Clydecomes being very near correct, and doubtless the reivers of Tweeddale as well as those of Annandale found it a handy place for the temporary shelter of their booty. The hills and rough pasturage by river and burnside have always provided excellent grazing for a hardy breed of sheep. In this district, and on the moors that lie between Tweed and Yarrow, James IV grazed as many as 10,000 sheep and exported their wool to Flanders. 'The sheep of this Country are but small, yet very sweet and delicious, and live to a greater age than elsewhere, by reason of the Salubrity of the Air and wholesome dry feeding,' writes Dr. Pennecuik in 1715. It may have been partly due to a lawful pride in the physique of the parishioners of Tweedsmuir that the parochial authorities were so upset when 'fremd folk' of inferior stamina arrived there. Dr. Burns, minister of Tweedsmuir from 1831–1843, records that 'Foreign mendicity annoys us greatly, and the conveyance of cripples from hence to Moffat (eight miles) forms, as might be expected, a very important item in our annual expenditure.' Statistics for a little over a century do not show great fluctuation, but in 1793 the parish minister laments over the dismal decrease of population during the previous seventy years, owing to farms being, enlarged in extent and diminished in number. In 1723 there were twenty-six resident tenant farmers; in 1793 Only three farmers were resident in the parish. The population in the following years were: 1755 – 397 The present valuation of lands and farms is £5,248 19s. 2d.; and of Talla Reservoir £22,093. The road that runs through the valley was the coaching road from Edinburgh to Dumfries via Moffat. Originally the Bield was the Post Office and second stage on the road. Later the mail changed horses at the Crook Inn, a mile or so below the village, where 'post-chaises and horses' were also to be had, and the Bield gave up to the Crook its duties as Post Office. While Episcopacy still stank in the nostrils of the followers of Calvin, – the Crook was used as the Presbyterian meeting house and in 1688 a minister was ordained there. It was a landlady of the Crook who hid a hunted hill-man in her peat-stack until the dragoons had refreshed themselves and ridden away. A successor of hers, 'Jeanie o' the Crook,' made famous in a poem by Hamilton Paul, the witty minister of Broughton – a divine not exactly to the taste of those who gathered at Talla Linn foot in earlier days – lies under a tombstone in the graveyard, still bearing her title, 'Jeanie o' the Crook.' Many a notable man has stayed in that little hostelry, rather bereft of sun-shine by its closely surrounding trees and its huddle of hills before and behind – the only inn between Peebles and Moffat, a distance of thirty odd miles. Lord Cockburn, on circuit always stayed there. Bishop Forbes was there many a time. Veitch, Shairp, Christopher North, John Brown, Blackie Russell of the Scotsman, Andrew Lang, all knew it well. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, his eyes perhaps slightly jaundiced by losing a wheel of his post-chaise near it one bleak November night, describes it as 'one of the coldest looking, most cheerless places of reception for travellers that we ever chanced to behold ... isolated and staring in the midst of the great glen of Tweed, closed in by high green sloping hills on all sides.' William Black, in his Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, makes his travellers spend a night at the Crook, and dine on ham and eggs and whisky. In old days the Crook was one of four inns. It was the Bield that Claverhouse honoured with his presence, and apparently Burns, and his friend Thomas Campbell, found the whisky there superior to that of the Crook. But the stone on its gable-end does not record the names of any of those illustrious guests, but tells us that here was born the Rev. John Ker – a gifted divine. The third inn is described by the chatty Pennecuik as 'a little alehouse,' recently built at 'a place upon the highway called Tweed's Slush or Tweedshaw. 'He also mentions a little ale-house at 'Tweedhopefoot.' Here dwelt the famous 'Babe,' 'Bab,' or 'Bairn of Tweedhopefoot,' a hugh fellow noted for his feats of strength, one of which was to carry for a wager a load of meal (20st.) on his back from Peebles to his own house, with only two rests on the way. A Peebles man went with him to see that he played fair, and, when they reached the ford at Drumelzier, weariedly asked how they were to get across, 'jump on to the tap o the meal an' a'll cairry ye owre,' briskly replied the Babe, and the man, convinced that he had a Titan to deal with, returned home. An old woman, still living at The Riggs, who has many times heard the story in her youth, confirms this tale and declares that Welsh rested once only on the way, at 'the Haggen End,' near Stanhopefoot. Jamie Welsh, The Babe, is supposed to be the hero of a tale of Covenanting times; but one fancies that it is more likely to have been one of his ancestors, a less easily recognisable Welsh who was pursued by Claverhouse's dragoons about the same time that John Hunter met his death. He fled across the hills to Fruid valley, and reached the house of the herd at Carterhope. The herd's wife, with great presence of mind, made no attempt to hide him but made him sit down by the fire. Later, the dragoons rode up and came in to search the cottage, 'Get up, ye lazy lout!' said the good-wife, giving Welsh a great clout on the lugs, 'Gang ot and mind the sodgers' horses!' And in the 'lazy lout' who stood by their horses' heads none of the troopers thought of finding the Covenanter they sought.' Another giant, less respectable than the Babe, is described by Pennecuik as 'a huge mighty fellow that robbed all on the way, but was at last surprised and shot to death, as Tradition goes.' Presumably there were two giants of equally evil fame, and this was one who found a grave opposite the Hawkshaw burn. But the giant of greatest fame is he whose death is, ingenuously supposed by an eighteenth century minister of Tweedsmuir to have given origin to the story of Jack the Giant Killer. The big standing stone, midway between the schoolhouse and the farmhouse of Menzion, is obviously the sole survivor of a cromlech, or of a Druidic circle. The two stones lying near it are ordinary boulders, but the Statistical Account of the parish in 1833 declares that it once had many fellows that were broken up and carted away, presumably to build stone dikes. The standing stone is known as the Giant's Stone, and local tradition tells that for long the district was plagued by the giant, until a gallant little archer marked his prey and shot him from the other side of the river – a notable shot, even for a bowman of the Forest. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a man casting peats actually found a grave near the standing stone. It was lined with smooth, thin stones, and covered by a large flagstone. In it were fragments of 'an urn of strong earthenware,' but if the man found anything else he forgot to mention it. Thirty years previous to this discovery an urn, probably cinerary, was found under a cairn on Nether Oliver – the Crook Hill, where once stood Oliver Castle – and, some fifty years ago some men who were building dikes round the young woods on Oliver came on a grave and unearthed from it an earthenware beaker urn of unusual design, now in the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh. That the parish might provide rich fields of research for the archaeologist is abundantly proved by the existence of mounds and cairns which have still to be explored. At the Riggs, opposite Fruid Water, are evidences of ruins which may be Druidical or may merely mark the site of a peel tower of later date. The names of the various 'waters' are in themselves alluring – Cor Water, Hearthstane Burn (more correctly Hartstane or Harestane, which may have taken its name either from the harts that once used to come, pale, dappled shadows in the twilight, to drink at the burn, or from Harstane, Cymric for a boundary stone), Tweedhope, Fruid Water (Cymric fruyd), Glencraigie burn, Badlieu, Hawkshaw (wood of the hawks), Old Fingland, Menzion, Glenriska, Moat, Polmood. Polmood obviously comes from a pool, common alike to Cymric and Gaelic. 'There are,' says Pennecuik 'a number of little limpid Brooks, Burns and Springs that are seen sprinkling down the Green and Grassie Hills, with a Melancholy but agreeable Murmure.' These burns and the upper reaches of Tweed, which, once more to quote a most observant authority with a gift of language 'runneth for the most part with a soft, yet trotting stream towards the North-East,' once made the parish a paradise for anglers. Within the memory of our own generation the burns teemed with plump yellow trout that fought most gamely for their lives. In Tweed the greedy, tiresome, little parr far outnumber the trout, and sea-trout there are shy. But up the four miles of Menzion burn and the ten miles of Fruid there are many pools that are a sore temptation to those who love 'nae music,' 'Ken nae tunes sees no crime in catching the fish which shooting tenants are possibly too superior or too ignorant to allure with well-chosen fly or skilfully cast worm. In Megget Water, above Talla a Peebles man once creeled 100 trout with worm in a day. The Ettrick Shepherd was responsible for 'a cartfu'' of forty-five dozen. A Tweedsmuir man's record is 14lb. of trout, the biggest weighing 2lbs., caught with fly on Gameshope burn; and, not a year ago, a young shepherd, fishing with bait, got fifty-two trout, averaging a quarter of a pound, in the same burn. Should the fisherman, like most anglers, have an eye for beauty and a love for solitary places, there can be no more perfect place to fish than Gameshope burn, strewn with great, grey boulders in whose shadows the big trout lurk, rowans, silver birches, heather, and blaeberry bushes hanging over its dark pools and mirroring themselves in water that rushes onward, to crash from linn to linn in seething circles of snowy foam, And what says a local poet of Fruid Water, where good trout are still to be found? 'If ye're for peace, and a day that will haud forever, Talla, before the Edinburgh Corporation tamed it for utilitarian needs, ran through a marshy valley, and its trout were dark and 'ill faured,' taking on the colour of the peathags among which they lived. The reservoir has been stocked with Loch Leven trout, and now and again a good fish is taken. But they are not the 'bonny fechters' of Gameshope burn, and are too often long, lank, and dour. This, however, is not of much concern to the Water Trust Commissioners. So long as the loch with its area of 300 acres can daily supply Edinburgh householders with ten million gallons of water, what more can they desire? In Carlow's Linn, crossed by an old, single-arched bridge, for many years the only bridge over Tweed above Peebles, between the hamlet and the church and schoolhouse, there lives, so it is said, that wily muckle trout of tradition that every respectable river must possess. Bold hearts say that they have 'touched' this immortal lure of fishermen with fly, but so long as Tweed rushes roaring between and over the rocks of the Linn, and the black pool below swirls and eddies, the luck must ever remain on the side of the hunted. The hills which, somewhat insufficiently at times, shelter the valley, have been once and for all described by one who was born at Biggar, and to whom all the silent and lonely places of his native shire were dear. In his essay on Minch-moor, Dr. John Brown writes of 'the huge Harestane Broadlaw – nearly as high as Ben Lomond – whose top is as flat as a table, and would make a race-course of two miles, and where the clouds are still brooding,' and of 'the great round-backed, kindly, solemn hills of Tweed, Yarrow and Ettrick,' which 'lay all about like sleeping mastiffs – too plain to be grand, too ample and beautiful to be commonplace.' Broadlaw, 2754 feet above sea-level has near its summit a spring known as Geddes's Well, and Hartfell Spa, on Hartfell, as late as in 1831, had its 'chalybeate waters transported for the use of many diseases of ulceration.' Opposite Broadlaw, otherwise called 'Talla Banks,' rise the precipices and rugged chasms of the Gairlet, 'where the wide-winged hawk doth hover ' – the haunt of the hunting falcon from immemorial times. On all the hills blaeberries grow profusely, and on Broad Law, on Moll's Cleugh Dodd, and on Gairlet and other sleeping mastiffs of the valley where the snow lies long and over which clouds so often hang, one finds the whortleberry (the 'Idean vine' of 'The Lady of the Lake'), and the mountain cloudberry. The names of the hills are not always easy to explain. Why should the hill near Earlshaugh be called 'The Crown of Scotland'? No one knows. Ever and again the parish crops up in history, but it is to legend and local tradition that it owes most of its romance. Historical facts stand out like stark boulders, but time adds traditions that, like wild thyme and moss and little mountain heartsease climb up and beautify them. Taliessen, 'the bright browed,' bard of Urien and Owen, British princes who lived in King Arthur's time, is supposed to have given his name to Talla, but probably both he and Talla Merlin the Seer, the wizard Merlin, last of the Druids, who also lived in the sixth century, and who was murdered at Drumelzier, found refuge in the great Wood of Caledon when Arthur, the Christian King, inflicted a terrible defeat at Arderydd in the Liddell valley in 573. Already Arthur had fought a mighty battle 'in Silva Caledonis' – the Wood of Caledon – and Merlin had seen the power of the Druids fall before the new religion of Christianity. No longer a revered seer but a hunted Pagan, Merlin, half-crazed, wandered for fifty years in those uplands before merciful death overtook him in merciless form. 'Ten years and forty, the sport of lawless ones, For the defeat and death of his King, Merlin held himself responsible. Death takes all away, why does he not visit me was his anguished cry. When Christianity had come to stay, and Tweed's Cross, near Tweed's Well, had been raised on what was once a place of Druidical worship and become a holy wayside shrine, there occurred the meeting of Merlin with Kentigern. St. Kentigern, better known as St. Mungo, 'The Beloved ' – from the Cymric 'Mwyn Cu', my dear one – one of the earliest Scottish apostles of Christianity, was appointed Bishop of the Borders by the victor of Arderydd and held his position until 603 AD. They were full of zeal and stout of heart, these early Christian missionizers, daring fierce weather, dangerous journeys, and fearlessly facing their angry antagonists, the pagan people of the wilds. In the course of his wanderings St. Mungo found himself in the lonely valley of Upper Tweed, and one day as he knelt in prayer, probably by Tweed's Cross, the gaunt, wild-eyed, half-crazy Merlin stood before him, 'with hair growing so grime, fearful to see.' By the peat and heather, the murmur of running water in their cars, for long the two men talked together. And, at last, the words of the teacher of a Gospel of infinite love and boundless mercy found their way into the broken heart of the old Druid, and St. Mungo won him for his fold. He baptized him with water from a stream, and when Merlin was driven into Tweed and had stakes driven through his half-drowned body by the rough herds of Drumelzier, it was not a fierce worshipper of heathen deities whom they martyred, but a believer in the crucified Christ. No one now can tell where the Christianized people of Tweedsmuir had their first place of worship, but in the middle of the eighteenth century faint traces of a chapel and burying-ground were still seen at Hawkshaw, and the sculptured head of a monk was dug up there. Not far from Tweed's Well is the Badlieu Burn. A little white farm-house stands beside it, and near there are buried a murdered woman, her father, and her little child. Somewhere before the year 1000 A.D. one of Scotland's rulers was Kenneth the Grim – grim only in the word which denotes great strength. For nearly eight years he ruled peacefully and well, a monarch whose sternness was used only when justice required it, and whose wisdom, good looks, and personal charm made him one of the most popular kings of his line. Polmood was a royal hunting box, and Kenneth, a keen huntsman, hunted with zest the Wood of Caledon, where game was always to be had in plenty. At the close of a long day's sport he lost his way in the mist of the gloaming and found himself at the hut of the herd of Badlieu. The door was opened by the herd's daughter, Bonnie Bertha of Badlieu, a girl in all ways beautiful. In her Kenneth found the queen of his heart, and in him Bertha the knight of her dreams. There could be no question of making the peasant girl his queen. He had a queen already; he had made a loveless match. But his dream of love went on, and in course of time Bertha bore her royal lover a son. And while the King, more and more, adored Bonnie Bertha and her babe, the heart of his lawful wife grew more and more bitter against him, his light o' love, and her bastard. An incursion of the Danes took Kenneth off to the coast to fight and repel them. The victory won, he unwillingly went to do duty at his court before hastening back to Polmood. He found the Court in mourning. He was told that the Queen had been stricken by a fever and had, after a few days' illness, died, raving mad. Kenneth made no pretence of a sorrow he did not feel, and rode, hotfoot, to Badlieu. There was now no reason why Bertha should not be his queen. But at Badlieu he found a harried nest. Tragic signs of violence showed on every side. An old peasant told him what had happened. His queen had sent murderers to slay Bertha, her father, and her little son, and their graves were in the peat on the hillside by the burn. Kenneth got a spade and proved for himself that the tale was true. His heart was broken, and when, a broken man, a few years later he led an army against the forces of his cousin Malcolm, he met with dire defeat. He was sorely wounded in the head, his eyes burned out, and he, who had known an idyll of love and fatherhood in the lonely valley, died in all the physical and mental anguish that man can undergo. Other kings, or kings to be, have left their traces here. Erickstane, between Tweed's Well and Moffat, was the spot where that very perfect knight, Sir James of Douglas, first met Robert the Bruce on his way to Scone to be crowned King of Scotland. In 1745 part of Prince Charlie's army marched to Derby through Tweedsmuir. The Lowlands were much more Jacobite in theory than in practice, and when the sympathies of Hunter of Polmood were believed by his dependents to be with the Stewarts, they took the precaution of locking up the Laird until all danger was past. At Tweedshaws, where the army halted, an officer's silver-mounted sword and a highland dirk were left, and are still in possession of descendants of the family who entertained their owners. Tradition says that the manners of the Highlanders were all that could be desired, but the Lothian carters kept up their proverbial reputation. In somewhat later days, when the Edinburgh mail-coach had brought the echoes of cities nearer Tweedsmuir, the hysterical fear of witchcraft that James Sixth of Scotland and First of England had done his royal, foolish best to spread, was still a genuine thing in Tweedsmuir, and, at Blairshope, up Fruid Water, lived Nannie Gannet, a reputed witch. 'It's nearly noo twae hunner year One does not know where she kept her witches' Sabbaths – there are plenty of canty places up Tweedsmuir way – nor what manner of evil she wrought where sheep and wild birds must have served as her only victims. But that she was, like most of the unfortunates who were strangled at the stake and burned, by royal decree, a woman of bigger brain and sharper wits than her compeers, at least one story remains as proof. Nannie waited one day at the Riggs to catch the coach to Moffat. But the sight of her was enough for the passengers, their guard and driver. People of their intelligence could not dream of sitting in a coach with a person who, rightly or wrongly, was the terror of the district, and they would have none of her. Not unnaturally, Nannie was annoyed. Shaking her fist at the driver, she told him that evil would befall him and his coach, and that she would be in Moffat before him. Then, kilting up her skirts, off she set, by devious paths and short cuts, and on the grassy old drove road to Moffat. Sure enough, the coach had not gone far before a wheel came off, and when the damage had been repaired and the coach at last trundled into Moffat, Nannie was waiting to welcome her detractors, her face wreathed in sinful smiles, in the Market Place, where she had arrived two hours before them. Near Nether Menzion, no longer to be found, there once existed the grave of a woman who had, poor unfortunate, the power of spreading dread more horrible than anything known to Nannie Gannet. Marion Chisholm came from Edinburgh while the Plague was raging there (?circa 1645), bearing with her a bundle of clothing in which the Black Death was lurking. The people at three farms – Nether Menzion, Fruid, and Glencotho, wiped out then forever – became infected, and those who escaped the pestilence pulled down on the bodies of those who died the roofs and walls of the houses they had lived in, the ruins acting as grim monument for the Plague and its victims. As far as one knows, Marion Chisholm was only a vagrant. And it is strange how many vagrants have climbed up there to the hills to find their last hours. It would seem as if man's instinct was ever to climb, ever, always, to strive to reach higher. In the Australian bush this is so. The lost child, the 'bushed' man is always found not going downwards, not on the level, but always, with latest effort, mounting upwards. In the autumn of 1923, in a solitary, seldom-used little sheep stell at the head of Fruid valley, a young herd came on the body of a poor old tramp. He had been dead for days, but from whence he came, who, in life, he was, no one ever knew. Near the Bield, on a field above Tweed, is the Cadger's Acre. In 1700, when the people of the district had found the accommodation of vagrants too great a tax heir hospitality, it is said that the first Earl of March granted a piece of ground where, in perpetuity, the 'cadgers' might camp with impunity. Here they still camp, in winter as well as in summer – but to winter in Tweedsmuir, when icy sleet drives before the wind and the snow falls, falls, falls – an ever-deepening pall upon hill and moor, on loch and on river, means a heart and frame of iron. In 1821 there took place as gallant a tragedy as snowstorm ever brought to pass. The mail-coach for Edinburgh left Moffat late one February afternoon in one of the wildest snowstorms that ever raged. McGeorge, the guard, an old soldier, had lately been found fault with for being late with the mail, and when those at Moffat spoke of danger he would not listen. He must push on. Near the Beef Tub the coach stuck fast. It seemed a hopeless business, yet McGeorge would not give in. The horses were cut free from their traces, loaded with the mail bags, and the guard, driver and a solitary passenger tramped on. As they neared Tweedshaws the tired horses gave out. But the indomitable McGeorge refused to think of failure. The passenger was persuaded to return to Moffat, but guard and driver, loaded with the mails, pursued their course in the face of a blinding storm. Their bodies were found under drifted snow, near where the mail bags were hung on a snow-post, several days later. On McGeorge's face was 'a kind o' a pleasure,' said the man who found him. When first sought for, the bodies could not be found. But on the night following a vain search one of the searchers, Dan Kirk, dreamed that he saw a funeral going along a part of the old road from Moffat still unsearched. With difficulty he persuaded the other men to take their shovels and explore the place of his dream, and there it was that the two dead men were discovered. In January, 1909, a snowstorm gave yet another tragedy to that dreich road between Tweedsmuir and Moffat. A gay party of young people came to Tweedsmuir one stormy January night to give a concert, and, after a gay evening, went off at 3 a.m. to Glenbreck, where they were to rest for a few hours before going home to Moffat. The snowstorm was so severe that it was not until the afternoon of the next day that they made an attempt to start, a snowplough clearing the way ahead of them. Having struggled on for some miles, the driver of their coach gave up the effort as being too impossible, and persuaded all but two of the party to return to Glenbreck. Two young men would not listen to warning and fought on. There was no moon, the drifting snow blotted out all trace of road, and at length one of them, dead beat, fell down in the snow. He could not stir another step, he said, and his companion, sticking the shovel he carried in the drift beside him to mark the spot, turned back for help. But, dazed and helpless, he wandered throughout that terrible night and found none to aid him. At dawn he reached a shepherd's cottage, but when he and the herd, in sleet and pouring rain – for a thaw had set in – reached the spot where the young man lay, half buried in the snow, they came too late. Lonely, very lonely, are those cleughs and hills and burns of Tweedsmuir. They can be very eerie in the gloaming. Almost one can hear the soft footfall of the Brown Men of the Moor behind one as one puts up one's rod and turns homeward when the darkening makes it hard to find safe footing amongst the heather bushes and the peat-hags and big stones by the burnside. But never, in any weather, at any hour, does Tweedsmuir lose its beauty. On a chill October evening, with fine rain beginning to drift down, one still has the grey road, the brown shadows. The sky is grey, white clouds merging gently into it, and blue-grey, round-shouldered hills lie beyond. The benty grass is red-brown, the heather has not yet lost all its purple, and banks of purple and brown rise skywards up the steep hillsides, with a graciousness and amplitude of line that only those who have seen can adequately comprehend. One wanders across the moors, climbs the hills, follows river and burns to their lonely sources, and always one finds the little Kirk of Tweedsmuir, its spire showing above the trees on the green knowe, a peaceful, welcoming, homelike sight. So also, perhaps, the shepherds find it – it, and the acre of God beside it – for 'evermore where Tweed and Talla flow They have a War Memorial now at Tweedsmuir. When duty called, the men of the moor and the moss-hags, fearless of storms, required no driving. There were not many who could go – only forty – and of those who went fifteen laid down their lives, and some who returned were sorely maimed. On that autumn day in 1920, when the Memorial was unveiled by the Lord Lieutenant of the County, bereft by the War of a gallant son, and himself so soon to die, a stalwart keeper, an ex-sergeant, played on the pipes 'The Flowers of the Forest.' Their wail ceased, a bugler took the piper's place, and 'The Last Post' was sounded. Far up amongst the hills and glens it rang and echoed – 'where, over the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying.' The last honours were given to those whose glens and hills know them no more forever. They gave their lives for the land they loved, for the little valley they held most dear. Reproduced from 'A History of Peeblesshire' by JW Buchan and Rev H Paton, 1925–27, Jackson, Wylie and Co of Glasgow |
|
|
Next page Back to Introduction |