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Page 31
The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood
could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as at M'Neill's
Zareeba and at Abu Klea,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well.
Ah, Sir, the hearts of the rulers may wax faint, and the voting classes may
forget that they are Britons; but when it comes to blows our fighting men
might cry, with Leyden,
My name is little Jock Elliot,
And wha daur meddle wi' me!
Much is changed, in the country-side as well as in the country; but much
remains. The little towns of your time are populous and excessively black with
the smoke of factories--not, I fear, at present very flourishing. In
Galashiels you still see the little change-house and the cluster of cottages
round the Laird's lodge, like the clachan of Tully Veolan. But these plain
remnants of the old Scotch towns are almost buried in a multitude of 'smoky
dwarf houses'--a living poet, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has found the fitting phrase
for these dwellings, once for all. All over the Forest he waters are dirty and
poisoned: I think they are filthiest below Hawick; but this may be mere local
prejudice in a Selkirk man. To keep them clean costs money; and, though
improvements are often promised, I cannot see much change for the better.
Abbotsford, luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes
of Selkirk, Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerlethen. On the other hand, your
ill-omened later dwelling, 'the unhappy palace of your race,' is overlooked by
villas that prick a cockney ear among their larches, hotels of the future. Ah,
Sir, Scotland is a strange place. Whisky is exiled from some of our
caravanserais, and they have banished Sir John Barleycorn. It seems as if the
views of the excellent critic (who wrote your life lately, and said you had
left no descendants, _le pauvre homme_) were beginning to prevail. This pious
biographer was greatly shocked by that capital story about the keg of whisky
that arrived at the Liddesdale farmer's during family prayers. Your Toryism
also was an offence to him.
Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let us be
thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the Border country
remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at Ashiestiel some days ago: the
house seemed just as it may have been when you left it for Abbotsford, only
there was a lawn-tennis net on the lawn, the hill on the opposite bank of the
Tweed was covered to the crest with turnips, and the burn did not sing below
the little bridge, for in this arid summer the burn was dry. But there was
still a grilse that rose to a big March brown in the shrunken stream below
Elibank. This may not interest you, who styled yourself
No fisher,
But a well-wisher
To the game!
Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have 'grand gallops
among the hills'--those grave wastes of heather and bent that sever all the
watercourses and roll their sheep-covered pastures from Dollar Law to White
Combe, and from White Combe to the Three Brethren Cairn and the Windburg and
Skelf-hill Pen. Yes, Teviotdale is pleasant still, and there is not a drop of
dye in the water, _purior electro_, of Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath
me, smitten with wind and rain--the St. Mary's of North and of the Shepherd.
Only the trout, that see a myriad of artificial flies, are shyer than of yore.
The Shepherd could no longer fill a cart up Meggat with trout so much of a
size that the country people took them for herrings.
The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it lies, within a
little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone, and the graven letters,
and the sword and shield, sleep 'Piers Cockburn and Marjory his wife.' Not a
hundred yards off was the castle door where they hanged him; this is the tomb
of the ballad, and the lady that buried him rests now with her wild lord.
Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair,
When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair;
Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae,
When I turned about and went my way! (1)
Here too hearts have broken, and there is a sacredness in the shadow and
beneath these clustering berries of the rowan-trees. That sacredness, that
reverent memory of our old land, it is always and inextricably blended with
our memories, with our thoughts, with our love of you. Scotchmen, methinks,
who owe so much to you, owe you most for the example you gave of the beauty of
a life of honour, showing them what, by Heaven's blessing, a Scotchman still
might be.
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