BORDER HISTORY AND POETRY. CHAPTER I. MEDIEVAL PERIOD-FEATURES OF BORDER LIFE AND CHARACTER. THE families introduced into the valleys of the Tweed and its tributaries by David I. and his immediate successors have now nearly all disappeared from the district. With a few exceptions, even their names have passed away from the hills and glens over which they once ruled, or they are borne by landless representatives. But their abandoned towers or dwelling-places still form one of the most characteristic and suggestive features of the scenery of Tweedside. you on many a knowe. The ruined Border Peel meets But, as a rule, not much of it remains. In many cases the tower itself, with the quaint human life carried on within it-the comfort there was, the terror and alarm, the hopes and fears, the courage to face danger, all have equally passed away; and seldom VOL. II. A now have we aught but the solitary ash, whose roots are enwoven beneath the green mound, where hall was bright and hearthstone gleamed. The names of the ancient possessors are mere dim memories; even their very graves are forgotten. They have undergone almost the last stage of human oblivion. Curiously enough the Border Keep bears the same name, peel or pile, as the Cymri gave to their hilldwellings (pill, moated or fossed fort). The circular fort of the older race is found generally near the comparatively modern keep, but higher up on the hill. These old mounded dwellings are arranged as carefully in sight of each other as are the medieval towers; and some of the larger of them, such as that on the East or White Meldon, near the junction of the Lyne with the Tweed, commands the view of upwards of twenty ring-forts and the lines of nearly as many valleys. But it certainly is curious, as showing the continuity of historical feeling, and the power of the past, that the race which actually displaced these old Cymri, settled on the hills, almost on the very spots where they had lived, and borrowed from them the name of their dwellings. It would be difficult to fix the exact date of the erection of any existing building or ruin in the shape of a Border castle. The strengths of the Borders were so frequently destroyed and rebuilt in the reigns of the early Stewarts, that we must regard what remains of them rather as representing to some extent the more ancient 1 Pill in British and Cornish, as well as in the language of ancient Gaul, signifies a fossed and mounded stronghold or fortress. It is unknown in Gaelic, but has been borrowed by the Teutonic. |