northern mountain, march and moor,From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years St. Cuthbert's corpse they bore,
They rested them in fair Melrose;
But though alive he loved it well,
Not there his relics might repose."
When King David came to the making of Scotland, he came into the Middle Marches, and finding them very lovely—even as you and I—this "sair sanct to the Croon," as his Scottish royal descendant, James VI saw him—and James would have fell liked to be a saint, but he could accomplish neither sinner nor saint, because Darnley crossed Mary in his veins—David determined to build him fair Abbeys. Of which, Melrose, "St. David's ruined pile," is the fairest. He brought Cistercians from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, to supplant the Culdees of Iona, and they builded them a beautiful stone Melrose to supplant the wooden huts of old Melrose. It centered a very active monastic life, where pavements were once smooth and lawns were close-clipped, and cowled monks in long robes served God, and their Abbot lorded it over lords, even equally with kings.
But it stood on the highway between Dunfermline and London, between English and Scottish ambitions. And it fell before them. Edward I spared it because the Abbots gave him fealty. But Edward II, less royal in power and in taste, destroyed it. The Bruce rebuilded it again, greater splendour rising out of complete ruin. When Richard II came to Scotland he caused the Abbey to be pillaged and burned. And when Hertford came for Henry VIII, after the Thirty Nine Articles had annulled respect for buildings under the protection of Rome, the final ruin came to St. David's church-palace. Yet, late as 1810, church service, reformed, of course, was held in a roofed-over part of the Abbey ruin. To-day it is under the protection of the Dukes of Buccleuch. And, we remember as we stand here, while the beams of lightsome day gild the ruin, the mottoes of the great family of the Border, Luna Cornua Reparabit, which being interpreted is, "There'll be moonlight again." Then to light the raids, the reiving that refilled the larder. But to-morrow for scenic effect.
Examined in this daylight, the beauty of Melrose surely loses very little. It is one of the most exquisite ruins in the United Kingdom, perhaps second to Tintern, but why compare? It is of finest Gothic, out of France, not out of England. In its general aspect it is nobly magnificent—
"The darken'd roof rose high aloof
On pillars, lofty, light and small;
The keystone that locked each ribbed aisle
Was a fleur de lys or a quatre feuille,
The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars with clustered shafts so trim,
With base and with capital flourish'd around
Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound."
And, as a chief detail which yields not to Tintern or any other, is the east window over the high altar, through which the moon and sun shines on those buried hearts—
"The moon on the east oriel shone
Through slender shafts of shapely stone,
By foliaged tracery combined.
Thou would'st have thought some fairy'd hand
'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand
In many a freakish knot had twined,
Then framed a spell when the work was done,
And changed the willow wreaths to stone.
The silver light, so pale and faint,
Showed many a prophet and many a saint,
Whose image on the glass was dyed,
Full in the midst his cross of red
Triumphant Michael brandish'd,
And trampled on the Apostate's pride;
The moonbeams kissed the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain."
Abbotsford
If "Scott restored Scotland," he built the "keep" which centers all the Scott-land of the Border side.
Two miles above Melrose, a charming walk leads to Abbotsford; redeemed out of a swamp into at least the most memory-filled mansion of all the land. Scott, like the monks, could not leave the silver wash of the Tweed; and, more loving than those who dwelt at Melrose and Dryburgh, he placed his Abbot's House where the rippling sound was within a stone's throw.
The Tweed is such a storied stream that as you walk along, sometimes across sheep-cropped meadows, sometimes under the fragant rustling bough and athwart the shifting shadows of oak, ash, and thorn—Puck of Pook's hill must have known the Border country in its most embroidered days—you cannot tell whether or not the deep quiet river is the noblest you have seen, or the storied hills about are less than the Delectable mountains.
The name "Tweed" suggests romance—unless instead of having read your Scott you have come to its consciousness through the homespun, alas, to-day too often the factory-spun woolens, which are made throughout all Scotland, but still in greatest length on Tweedside.
Dorothy Wordsworth, winsome marrow, who loved the country even better than William, I trow—only why remark it when he himself recognized how his vision was quickened through her companionship?—has spoke the word Tweed—"a name which has been sweet in my ears almost as far back as I can remember anything."
The river comes from high in the Cheviot hills, where East and West Marches merge and where—
"Annan, Tweed, and Clyde
Rise a' out o' ae hillside."
And down to the sea it runs, its short hundred miles of story—
"All through the stretch of the stream,
To the lap of Berwick Bay."
As you walk along Tweedside, you feel its enchantment, you feel the sorrow of the thousands who through the centuries have exiled themselves from its banks, because of war, or because of poverty, or because of love—
"Therefore I maun wander abroad,
And lay my banes far frae the Tweed."
But now, you are returned, you are on your way to Abbotsford, there are the Eildons, across the river you get a glimpse of the Catrail, that sunken way that runs along the boundary for one-half its length, and may have been a fosse, or may have been a concealed road of the Romans or what not. Scott once leaped his horse across it, nearly lost his life, and did lose his confidence in his horsemanship.
"And all through the summer morning
I felt it a joy indeed
To whisper again and again to myself,
