scene of which is that tract of wild heath and mountain bearing the same name, near the Trosachs in the Perthshire Highlands); and "The Eve of Saint John,” a ballad telling a story of Smaylho'me Tower, an old baronial keep near by his boyhood home, at Sandy Knowe. The scenery of these poems will be more fully described when the "tour" reaches them. In 1802-3 he published the collection of ballads, songs, and legendary poems that became so celebrated under the title already mentioned, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." In 1804 he published the metrical romance, "Sir Tristrem." At various times, at about this period, he composed a few short works like the "Fire King." But it was in 1805 that his first great and really characterized composition appeared, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Then his power also began to appear; power that may now be first realized (where it was first associated with Old-World places) during an excursion to the scenery of this Lay, in that region so distinctively rendered by him his own, the Midland Border of Scotland.

V.

EXCURSION TO SCENERY OF "THE LAY OF THE LAST
MINSTREL."

THIS scenery in the Midland Border of Scotland —a region

peculiarly romantic, in which many enjoyable excursions may be made- can be pleasantly reached now by a railway ride occupying less than two hours, from Edinburgh to Selkirk, and from that town by an easy and agreeable walk or drive of four or five miles up Yarrowdale to Newark Castle, to which, some time during the last decade of the seventeenth century, the "Latest Minstrel" is described wandering; where he sang this "Lay" to Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, who represented its ancient lords. A visit to this castle may also be made during the long tour that will be arranged hereafter, as shown in chapter xxxiii.

Scott had already shown his ability to write captivatingly of the olden time, it is evident, from the manner in which this poem came

to be written. The Countess of Dalkeith, a lady beautiful and lovely as she was noble, in her earnest desire to learn the traditions, the manners, and the history of this large and interesting Border region, — much of which is held by the great family of Buccleuch, of which she was so fair a member, - enjoined upon Scott the composition of a ballad upon one of these traditions, named that of "Gilpin Horner," and the Lay was the result.

Newark Castle, though dismantled, is a capital example of a Scottish baronial residence in a country where both Scotch and English forays were frequent. It is said to have been erected about the middle of the fifteenth century by James II. The writer found it a large, square, lofty, simple tower, built of small broken gray stones, its lower part having flush quoins of similar stone, and its upper part flush quoins of red sandstone. Two of the walls are flat topped and two terminate in gables. At the upper angles are turrets. The once high roof and the parapets are gone, leaving the walls capped with grass sward and small shrubs. The windows are high up and not large. The prevalent color is dark iron-gray, flecked with much dull-russet lichen. The door of the tower, on its north side, is a small square-headed door, the key to which the writer found with a custodian near by; and he offers the charitable hope that others, who obtain it as he did, may be enabled, as he was, also to enjoy undisturbed exploration of this grand old keep, and reading from the "Lay" within it. Its first, or basement, story, that which is first entered, is occupied by a hall dimly lighted through five little, grated, jail-like windows. The floor is of earth now, and rough. The ceiling is a semicircular arch, of flat, smallish, rudely shaped stones, rising in the centre perhaps twenty feet above the floor. In the north-west angle is the chief, and now only, stair, a neat and entire turnpike built of well-cut red sandstone. This must have been the "lady's stair," there being remains of an ordinary one in the opposite angle. From the main floor, that of the great hall and now grassy turf, the tower is open to the sky. Two or three floors and the roof once above this were apparently of wood. In the western wall is a high chimney and fireplace, and on either side are windows within deeply set arches. One can easily reach the top of the structure, whence is a pleasant view in which one sees the tower, surrounded by broken quadrilateral outworks, standing on a green hill, around nearly three sides of which the pure, brown, shallow Yarrow comes rippling, rustling, or dashing

over a pebbly or stony bed between prettily, not densely, wooded banks. All around are walnut-trees and large red-berried hawthorns. On the opposite side of the river is a park landscape backed by great hills, that were covered with dusky or yellowishgreen grass or brown heather when the writer saw them. On other sides are the beautiful and carefully kept grounds of "Sweet Bowhill," —a seat of the owner of all this region, the Duke of Buccleuch. Philiphaugh, seat of the Murrays, and Foulshiels, home of Mungo Park, the traveller in Africa, are also to be seen. The lands down the river eastward are more cultivated than those westward, where one may yet see stern heights, forested and heathery almost as in feudal times. One may see similar characteristics also along the southern horizon, that is defined by prominent flattened or more acute pyramidal elevations, bearing dark pines, or presenting beautiful colorings of grass and heather tints, grand examples of the Border Hill.

So it was in this characteristic Border stronghold, when its hall was a scene of hospitality, that the Aged Minstrel sang his "Lay" to the celebrated duchess of that also celebrated Duke of Monmouth, whose history need not be told here. One can recall the lady's form from among the Beauties of that style so favorite with Sir Peter Lely,— —a handsome rounded form, a fair face, and abundance of luxuriant curls.

"The Lay" at once transports us in imagination back to stirring and picturesque days of the middle of the sixteenth century, when, as Scott tells us, most of the personages introduced in the poem actually flourished. It at once brings to mind a lively representation of Border life in feudal and knightly times, singing "the custom of Branksome Hall," long the chief seat of the Buccleuch family.

This seat, a castle poetically Branksome, prosaically Branxholm, is about three miles from Hawick, or a dozen or more southward from Selkirk, in the green pastoral dale of Teviot, where it stands on a little eminence not far from the river. All about it now are well-kept fields, and lawns of turf, and privet and hawthorn hedgerows, and many shade-trees, and an aspect of peacefulness as if the place belonged to Arcadia. The writer found the edifice mainly modern, plain, two-storied, irregularly arranged, and built of rough chip stones (mostly covered with "rough-cast" plaster of a dingy buff color). Nearly the only ancient portion is at one corner, and

that is a moderate-sized four-gabled tower, in castellated style, with simple walls built of small stones, plain quoins, a blocking course, and, beneath the eaves, a corbel table. But Branksome is not such an Old-World place as Newark, and one can almost as readily imagine the action of "The Lay" at the latter,—action introducing one to much of the topography as well as feudal life of this Midland Border.

"The feast was over," the Minstrel sang,

"And the Ladye had gone to her secret bower;

Her bower that was guarded by word and by spell;"

meditating vengeance for her late husband, Lord Walter Scott of Buccleuch, then lying dead in the castle, slain by certain Kerrs in a street of Edinburgh. Their young son and their daughter Margaret, and many retainers, were mourning over him, while of

"Nine-and-twenty knights of fame,"
"Nine-and-twenty squires of name,"
"Nine-and-twenty yeomen tall,"
"Kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch ; "
"Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel;
They quitted not their harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night:"
"Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the warders ten;
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight,
Stood saddled in stable day and night,".
"Such was the custom of Branksome-Hall,”

And the Ladye,

"secret bower,"

To "watch against Southern force and guile,
Lest Scroop, or Howard, or Percy's powers,

Threaten Branksome's lordly towers,

From Warkworth, or Naworth, or merry Carlisle."

skilled in "magic mystery," was sitting in her

"In old Lord David's western tower,

And listens to a heavy sound,

That moans the mossy turrets round."
"The Ladye knew it well!"

In a "coming storm"

"It was the Spirit of the Flood that spoke,
And he called on the Spirit of the Fell."

She heard the two tell the story of Margaret, who was

sorrow

laden" with hopeless love for Lord Cranstoun, whose family was at feud with her own; and Margaret

"knew, her mother dread,

Before Lord Cranstoun she should wed,

Would see her on her dying-bed."

But the Mountain Spirit declared there should be "no kind influence"

"On Teviot's tide, and Branksome's tower,

Till pride be quelled and love be free."

"The unearthly voices ceast,"

Yet they "rung in the Ladye's ear.

She raised her stately head,

And her heart throbbed high with pride:-
:-

"Your mountains shall bend,

And your streams ascend,

Ere Margaret be our foeman's bride!'"

She went to the hall where her young son was playing among her armed retainers, and

who occupied lands, giving him his name, that were in Ettrick Forest, adjoining those of Buccleuch. She commanded him to mount his horse and hasten to Melrose Abbey, and enjoined him there to seek "the Monk of St. Mary's aisle;" and she continued,

"Greet the Father well from me;

Say that the fated hour is come,

And to-night he shall watch with thee,

To win the treasure of the tomb:""What he gives thee, see thou keep; Stay not thou for food or sleep:

Be it scroll, or be it book,

Into it, Knight, thou must not look;
If thou readest, thou art lorn!

Better had'st thou ne'er been born.""

And thus mysteriously bidden, away the man-at-arms galloped by many a spot well known through the Border; past Goldiland and Hawick and Minto Crags and Bowden Moor, until he reached Melrose after midnight, when "'twas silence," and he "sought the convent's lonely wall."

Already Scott had shown his faculty for intense localization, — that portion of his power rendering topography charming and making him peculiarly the Genius of place. And all this portion of the poem is delightfully demonstrative of this power, and others of his works associated with this region will add to this evidence,