XXII. "OLD MORTALITY." Fifth Novel of the Series; Written 1816; Published Dec. 1, 1816; Author's Age, 45; Time of Action, May 5, 1679-1690. EXPL 'XPLORATION of the Lands of Scott has been supposed, as already shown, to lead from Carlisle to Glasgow. Between these two cities, and, parenthetically, between scenes of "Rob Roy," are interesting places associated with this capital story. There are two classes of these places, one relating to the historical subject, vividly illustrated by this novel, and one to the real or supposed scenes of its incidents. Both classes can be visited from either of the cities just named, or the former class from Moffat, a pretty watering-place nearly midway, and the latter from Lanark, nearer Glasgow. --- "Old Mortality" has been called the "Marmion" of the Waverley novels. Its character is certainly animated and quite historical. It was the first novel in which Scott reproduced the aspects of the past almost entirely from resources of study rather than from those of observation. The success is triumphant. Again, for this work, Mr. Train (page 161) provided much material and rendered assistance by collecting and supplying information about incidents. The more historical features are delineated from public or printed authorities rather well known, and present Scott's conceptions of the general subject of which he treats in this story, — that of the Westcountry Covenanters during the latter part of the seventeenth century. "The remarkable person [he stated in the introduction, 1829] called by the title of Old Mortality was well known in Scotland about the end of the last century. His real name was Robert Paterson. He was a native, it is said, of the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfries-shire, and probably a mason by profession." Scott met him, for the only time, at the churchyard or castle of Dunottar (Kincardine), in 1793. During about forty years his sole occupation was that of repairing and recutting inscriptions upon tombstones erected to Covenanters who had suffered for conscience' sake. Many of these memorials are scattered in remote spots throughout south-western Scotland. Their protector, during a visit to some of these near Bankend, parish of Caerlaverock, about eight miles from Dumfries, was found by the roadside, seriously ill, and was thence taken to a house where he soon died. He was buried in the churchyard of Caerlaverock, where no stone marked the place of his repose, until recently, when Messrs. Black, the eminent Edinburgh publishers of Scott's works, caused to be erected on the spot a round-topped, red freestone, bearing a crossed mallet and chisel over the following inscription: "Erected | To The Memory of Robert Paterson | The | Old Mortality | of | Sir Walter Scott | who was Buried Here | February, 1801. "Why seeks he with unwearied toil Through Death's dim walls to urge his way, Reclaim his long arrested spoil, And lead oblivion into day?" The West-country Covenanters were a peculiar people. Scott endeavored to portray them correctly, and also their great opponent, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, an officer so prominent in the royal service, and in his pursuit of these persons, against whom he was commissioned, and whose character, Scott is reported to have said, has been "foully traduced; . . . who, every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado; who rode a goblin horse; was proof against shot, and in league with the devil." He was, at least, a soldier detailed to unfortunate duty. Whatever opinion, between exaggerated praise or censure, may now be held respecting these Covenanters, we can but believe them, in some manner, worthy of the enthusiastic regard they have gained among a large and respectable class of their countrymen. They were strong religious zealots, opposed in faith and in politics to the existing powers of Church and of State, at a period when religious feeling was often extremely violent. They erred in regard to their worldly interests, and in regard to policy, and had not all the lovable qualities; but few have lived more devotedly or have demonstrated more earnestly the stern virtues of Scottish character. Whatever are the opinions of travellers now respecting them, all may be interested in visiting a wild and picturesque region consecrated by their sufferings, borne while they served, even to death, what they honestly believed duty to liberty of faith and of practice. Accordingly, we may well employ a day, while at the pretty little water. spa, Moffat, already named, by driving and walking into the recesses of the Middle Border hill-country, accessible up the vale of Moffat We shall thus be able to see remarkable places associated with the Covenanters and the general subject of the novel sketched in this chapter; and also not a few objects suggestive of legend and of poetry. One of the first of these latter that may be seen, after leaving Moffat on this excursion, is Cragieburn, known in Burns's verses, "Sweet fa's the Eve on Cragieburn,” — and also in Hogg's ballad, "Mess John,” and where lived that “lass with golden locks.” This place is on the north side of the vale, and is shown by trees and a plain house. The burn flows through a very small wooded ravine. A mile farther, on the south side of the road are, or were, two little, whitewashed cottages, in one of which it is said, that "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." About six miles from Moffat, and also southward, is the farm-house of Bodsbeck, situated within a confined plantation of Scotch firs and ash-trees, and very suggestive of the Ettrick Shepherd. Immediately behind and above it is the Great Hill of Bodsbeck, a lofty tumular mass, picturesquely varied in form, on the bare, grass-grown surfaces of which graze many sheep. All along this side of the route is a range of hills, and closely opposite this, the steep and high prominently pointed mountain Saddleback. In this vicinity was enacted not a little of Hogg's interesting story about Covenanters, "The Brownie of Bodsbeck." Ten miles from Moffat, and a short distance northward from the road, is the "Gray Mare's Tail," the highest waterfall in southern Scotland. A rather narrow stream, whitened in plunges over rough rocks, pours, in one broad, broken sheet, over a precipitous crag of jagged, eccentrically stratified, gray rock, forming the head of a lateral ravine, and bounding a dark pool that receives the waters. Thence these dash on to, and through, the great vale of the Moffat. The entire height of the fall is about three hundred and fifty feet. It is part of a capital example of peculiarly Scottish scenery, mantic, although wild, bare, rocky, and almost treeless; indeed, it has little vegetation besides grasses, ferns, and a few whin-bushes or other small plants. -ro A little farther up the vale is "Dobb's Linn," deriving the latter part of its name from the precipitous crag nearly three hundred feet high that it presents, and the former portion from a legend, slightly profane and apocryphal, of two worthies of the Covenant, who, assaulted here by the Great Enemy, stoutly drove him to the brink and over it. He at once changed himself into a bundle of skins, and tumbled safely down the steep, and escaped with only a sound beating, received before his miraculous descent, from the two stout and pious mortals, named Hab Dobson and Davie Din: 66 men o' merk, an' men o' mense; What the Covenant would dow!" Dang the Deil owre Dob's Linn." Near this place is a high, bare hill-top, called "Watch Knowe," or Hill, where the Covenanters, when they assembled in this vicinity as they often did, were accustomed to place a sentinel to watch for pursuers. There is also, in the linn, a cave used by some of the worthies. Eleven and a half miles from Moffat, at Birkhill, is a rustic inn. Before it, Claverhouse is said to have shot four Covenanters. From it, is perhaps the most convenient access to Loch Skene, a small and very secluded lake, nearly two miles distant among the hills, where may be found a remarkably impressive scene, described (like the "Tail" fall) by Scott in the introduction to the Second Canto of "Marmion," in lines beginning, — "There eagles scream from shore to shore; Down all the rocks the torrents roar ; O'er the black waves incessant driven, There can scarcely be found in a country as ancient and populous as southern Scotland, another scene of such utter and impressive loneliness as that visible from a height east of this lake. Everywhere around is a wide tract of great, heavy, rounded hills, destitute of trees, and forming one vast extent of brown-russet moorland, crossed and seamed by black mosses, with treacherous depths of soft mud, and broken by deeply cleft burn ravines. The prevailing tone of color is varied only where the higher surfaces present tints of grayish or brownish green, with here and there, exceptionally, an exposure of brighter hue. No human dwelling, and scarcely a sign of human work or life appears. And this barren and forsaken region was once a land of refuge to the Covenanters, and even yet is peculiarly haunted with stories of their trials. To a first look, there hardly seem to be many hiding-places in such an open country; but examination of it shows that its surfaces are too rough and unreliable to permit movements by mounted troopers like the "persecutors." Lightly dressed persons could, with knowledge of it, readily gain advantages, or find escape among its intricacies. In addition to these, dense, impenetrable mists, that frequently and suddenly envelop it, utterly perplex strangers. Thus adapted to purposes of fugitives, it became a chosen retreat of the hunted Covenanters. And there, in the gloom of clouds or of night, when alone they could venture from hiding-places, they assembled for that worship denied them in their homes. "From the midst of that inhospitable wilderness," wrote James Hogg, "from those dark morasses, and unfrequented caverns, the prayers of the persecuted race nightly rose to the throne of the Almighty; prayers, as all testified who heard them, fraught with the most simple pathos, as well as bold and vehement sublimity." Nightly, were "songs of praise sung" "with ardor and wild melody" "to that Being under whose fatherly chastisement they were patiently suffering." Amidst these cheerless wastes, while the last reigning Stuarts struggled against religious freedom in Britain, the Covenanters prayed and chanted, endured and died. Since their days the region is probably unchanged, — blighted as if in retribution for the sorrows they bore while in it, and rendered a vast abiding monument, silent, yet awful in expressiveness, -God's visible memorial of their devotion. From Birkhill, travellers should go, about four miles farther, to "Tibby Shiels," a small but well-known comfortable inn, long kept by Mrs. Isabella Richardson, from whom it derives its name. It is in one of the most poetic regions of all poetic Scotland. Near it is an appropriate statue of the Ettrick Shepherd. West of it is the Loch of the Lowes, and east of it the famous lake of the Border lands, Saint Mary's Loch. The charms of the latter have been sung by many poets. It will be again visited when the route of the Tour leads southward from Scotland, and when (in chapter xxxiii.) another series of scenes is sketched,― lands peculiarly those of the reiver and the foray, of ballad and of poetic legends, as the places just described are lands of the Covenanter. On the north side of Saint Mary's Loch (at the base of the great, bare hills that environ both lakes), is a disused graveyard, where many Covenanters were buried. The oldest date, however, that |