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he original shrine by the beautiful bend of the Tweed, a mile or two down the river from the second and more celebrated Melrose. Here Eata, "a man much revered and meek;" and Boisil, who gave his name to the neighbouring St. Boswells; and Cuthbert, the most illustrious of them all, served God with gladness. Of the latter, certainly the most conspicuous Borderer of his day, something more must be said. Three kingdoms claim his birthplace. The Irish Life of the Saint alleges him to be sprung of her own blood royal; he is affirmed also to have come of noble Northumbrian descent; whilst the Scottish tradition makes him the child of humble parents, born and reared in Lauderdale, one of the sweetest valleys of the Border. It is a fact, at any rate, that when the light of record first falls upon him the youthful Cuthbert is seen as a shepherd lad by the Leader; he is religiously inclined, and whilst his comrades sleep, he spends whole nights in prayer and meditation. One day he hears voices from out the unseen calling to him. Another night it is a vision of angels that he fancies he beholds bearing the soul of the sainted Aidan to the skies. Such was Cuthbert, a kind of mystic, a dreamer of strange dreams, destined apostle and Bishop, and next to Augustine himself the most illustrious figure in the annals of English monasticism. The church of Channelkirk dedicated to the Saint, probably indicates his birth-spot. The Leader valley is full of legends of his boyhood, the whole west of Berwickshire, indeed, being haunted ground for Cuthbert's sake. Other great names in the history of early Border Christianity are those of Benedict Biscop, the founder of the monasteries of Jarrow and Monk Wearmouth; Wilfrid, the founder of Hexham; and the Venerable Bede--the "father of English learning"--whose "Church History of the English People" is the greatest of the forty-five works that bear his name.

PLATE 4

HOLY ISLAND CASTLE:

HARVEST-TIME

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

BORDER WARFARE

It was doubtless due to the exigencies occasioned by those frequently recurring wars and raids from the 13th to the 16th century that the whole country on both sides of the frontier became so thickly studded with castles and peel-towers, the numerous ruins of which still form a distinctive feature in Border scenery, although from times much earlier the castles and strongholds were characteristic elements in the old Scottish landscape. Alexander Hume, of Polwarth, the poet-preacher of Logie, near Stirling, in his fine description of a "Summer's Day," thus refers to them:--

"The rayons of the sunne we see Diminish in their strength; The shade of everie tower and tree, Extended is in length. Great is the calm for everie quhair The wind is settlin' downe; The reik thrawes right up in the air, From everie tower and towne."

Generally these towers were planted on heights overlooking the river-valleys, and, as a rule, within sight of one another, in order that the signals of invasion or alarm--flashed by means of the bale fire--might be the more rapidly spread from point to point. Very few of them are now entire--the best-preserved on the Scottish side being, perhaps, Barns, at the entrance to the Manor valley; Bemersyde, still inhabited; and Oakwood on the Ettrick, incorporated in the present farm buildings; and on the English side, Corbridge and Doddington and Whittingham. From a return made in 1460 we find that Northumberland alone possessed 37 castles and 78 towers, and the Scottish side was equally well strengthened and defended. Amongst the larger and more important fortresses on the English side were the Castles of Alnwick, Bothal, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Coupland, Dilston, Elsdon, Etal, Ford, Naworth, Norham, Prudhoe, Wark, Warkworth; and on the Scottish side, Berwick, Branxholme, Caerlaverock , Cessford, Ferniherst, Hermitage, Hume, Jedburgh, Neidpath, Peebles, Roxburgh, Threave, Traquair, besides, as has been said, hundreds of peel and bastle-houses scattered all over the country.

It would be a quite impossible task to chronicle the incessant clan-raids of the Border, and to narrate all the invasions that took place on either side would be to repeat in great measure the general history of England and Scotland. But at least two authentic reports, covering little more than a year, may be quoted as showing the extraordinary havoc and destruction caused by the latter. "In 1544 Sir Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Latoun, with an English army, invaded the Scottish Border, and between July and November they destroyed 192 towns, towers, barmkyns, parish churches, etc.; slew 403 Scots and took 816 prisoners; carried off 10,386 head of cattle, 12,492 sheep, 1296 horses, 200 goats, and 850 bolls of corn, besides an untold quantity of inside gear and plenishing. In one village alone--that of Lessudden --Sir Ralph Evers writes that he burned 16 strong bastle-houses. Again in September of the following year, the Earl of Hertford a second time invaded the country, and between the 8th and the 23rd of that month, he razed and cast down the abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Dryburgh, and Melrose, and burned the town of Kelso. At the same time he destroyed about 30 towns, towers and villages on the Tweed, 36 on the Teviot, 12 on Rulewater, 13 on the Jed, 45 on the Kale, 19 on the Bowmont, 109 in the parishes of Eccles and Duns in Berwickshire, with 20 other towns and villages in the same county. The places destroyed are all named in the report to the English king, along with a classified list of that terrible sixteen days' destruction, embracing 7 monasteries and friars' houses, 16 castles, towers and peels, 5 market-towns, the immense number of 243 villages, with 13 mills, and 3 hospitals."

PLATE 5

VIEW OF NORHAM

CASTLE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

"My wound is deep. I fain would sleep; Take thou the vanguard of the three, And hide me by the braken bush That grows on yonder lilye lea.

"O bury me by the braken bush, Beneath the blooming brier; Let never living mortal ken That ere a kindly Scot lies here."

"Fight on, my men, Yet Fortune she may turn the scale; And for my wounds be not dismayed, Nor ever let your courage fail.

Thus dying did he brave appear Till shades of death did close his eyes; Till then he did his soldiers cheer, And raise their courage to the skies."

The era of Blood and Iron on the Borders has passed long since. Peace and prosperity prevail on both sides of the Tweed. Old animosities are seldom spoken of, and hardly ever remembered. A cordial amity and good-will and co-operation evidence the strength of the cementing element which no loyal heart, either north or south, can ever desire to see broken.

PLATE 6

TWIZEL BRIDGE OF THE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

NORTHUMBERLAND

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 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

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 North Tyne at Redesmouth, a little below the pleasant market-town of Bellingham. The chief towns are Berwick and Alnwick, Hexham being outside our present delimitation. Many of the smaller places, and the villages, are models of their kind. Wooler, at the base of the Cheviots, is a choice mountaineering and angling centre, from which, by way of Langleeford, is the favourite route to Cheviot top. It was at the Whitsun Tryst or Wooler sheep fair, that Scott's grandfather spent his old shepherd's thirty pounds in buying a horse instead of sheep, but with such happy results in the sequel. And hither came Scott himself in August, 1791, to imbue his mind with the legends, the history, and scenery of the neighbourhood. "Behold a letter from the mountains," he writes to his friend William Clerk, "for I am very snugly settled here, in a farmer's house , about six miles from Wooler, in the very centre of the Cheviot hills, in one of the wildest and most romantic situations, which your imagination, fertile upon the subject of cottages, ever suggested. 'And what the deuce are you about there?' methinks I hear you say. Why, sir, of all things in the world, drinking goat's whey; not that I stand in the least need of it, but my uncle having a slight cold, and being a little tired of home, asked me last Sunday evening if I would like to go with him to Wooler; and I, answering in the affirmative, next morning's sun beheld us on our journey through a pass in the Cheviots, upon the backs of two special nags, and man Thomas behind with a portmanteau, and two fishing-rods fastened across his back, much in the style of St. Andrew's cross. Upon reaching Wooler we found the accommodation so bad that we were forced to use some interest to get lodgings here, where we are most delightfully appointed, indeed. To add to my satisfaction we are amidst places renowned by feats of former days; each hill is crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn; and in no situation can you be near more fields of battle--Flodden, Otterburn, and Chevy Chase. Ford Castle, Chillingham Castle, Coupland Castle and many another scene of blood are within the compass of a forenoon's ride. Out of the brooks with which the hills are intersected, we pull trouts of half a yard in length, as fast as we did the perches from the pond at Pennicuik, and we are in the very country of muirfowl.... My uncle drinks the whey here, as I do ever since I understood it was brought to his bedside every morning at six, by a very pretty dairymaid. So much for my residence. All the day we shoot, fish, walk, and ride; dine and sup on fish struggling from the stream, and the most delicious heath-fed mutton, barn-door fowls, pies, milk cheese, etc, all in perfection; and so much simplicity resides amongst those hills that a pen, which could write at least, was not to be found about the house, though belonging to a considerable farmer, till I shot the crow with whose quill I write this epistle." . In this passage we have an interesting glimpse of what Northumberland was a hundred years ago, and of the great author enjoying a holiday while yet reading for the law, and before fame began to blow her trumpet in his praise.

PLATE 8

VIEW OF WARKWORTH

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

Among Northumbrian towns, Alnwick ranks next to Newcastle. But whilst the rise of the latter and its prosperity and colour have been each affected by the great industrial changes of the century, Alnwick's development has been very different. Lying peacefully amidst pastoral hills, by the side of a river unpolluted by modern commerce, this ancient Border town still presents the plain and austere aspect which it wore when the great stage-coaches passed through on their way from London to Edinburgh. In Newcastle, despite its numerous relics of antiquity, one's mind is ever dominated by the potent Present, whereas in Alnwick, it is ever under the spell of the dreamy Past. The quaint, irregular stone-built houses are touched with the sober hues of antiquity, and seem to take their character from the great baronial relic of feudal times. The history of the town is chiefly a record of

"Old unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago."

"Brave Galfred, who to Normandy With vent'rous Rollo came; And from his Norman Castles won, Assumed the Percy name."

PLATE 9

VIEW OF ALNWICK CASTLE

FROM A WATER COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

"After many wanderings past, He chose his lordly seat at last Where his Cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear."

"MERRIE CARLISLE"

A glance at the outskirts of Carlisle suggests at once the fact that its founders had considered the strategic value of the site. The old Brigantes never planted their towns without due examination of the whole lie of the land, and especially with a view to its defencibleness. The river-junctions were often their favourite settling places. Hence the origin of Carlisle, and many others of the Border towns--Hawick, Selkirk, Kelso, etc. With its three encompassing streams--the Eden, the Caldew, and the Petteril, which still enclose the Castle and Cathedral hills in a sort of quasi-island, Carlisle has been aptly called "the city of the waters." Its situation certainly is all but perfect, whilst the picturesqueness and the extensiveness of its surrounding scenery are the admiration of all who see it. Built upon a hill which its walls once enclosed but which would now shut out its most populous suburbs, Carlisle commands a prospect only limited by the lofty mountain chain that encircles the great basin in which Cumberland lies. From the summit of the Cathedral or from the Keep of the Castle, the eye sweeps without interruption a vast prepossessing landscape, rich in wood and water and fertile valleys, over which the light and shade are ever gambolling, and the seasons spreading their variegated hues. Southward, across this fair expanse, the majestic Skiddaw rears his noble crest, and Helvellyn his wedge-like peak, radiant with the first and last rays of the sun. Saddleback, and the lesser hills, link the apparently unbroken chain with Crossfell and the eastern range; while further to the left the Northumberland fells bound the horizon. Then come the uplands by Bewcastle and the Border and the pastoral Cheviots. Away round to the west, the magnificent belt is terminated by "huge Criffel's hoary top" standing in solemn grandeur above the Solway.

PLATE 10

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