Highways and Byways in the Border. Lang Andrew
I have shed innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas, therefore, because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having a pitchfork in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it not, which of all things grieves me most in conscience. Within these seven years I never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kinds of wickedness."
This wretch, once on his feet, must have butchered some poor hind who had spared him. In reading Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, and the Register of Privy Council for the period of the Reformation, we find private war, murder, and rapine to have been almost weekly occurrences, from the Upper Tweed to the Esk. The new Gospel Light made the darkness visible, and we see robberies and vendettas among the dwellers in the peel towers, of which the empty shells stand beside every burn in the pleasant lands then clouded with smoke from blazing barn and tower and cottage. The later Ormistouns had "particularly deadly feud" with the Kers of Cessford; the Kers annexed their lands, and the last Ormistoun was a public hangman; the ancestral Orm was a flourishing and pious gentleman of the twelfth century, a benefactor of the early monks of Melrose. Meanwhile, the castle of Cessford, the ancestral hold of that line, is not far from a place called Morbattle in the Black Laird's day, and now, more pleasantly, Morebattle. The name has no connection either with festivity or feud, and "More" is not the Celtic mor, "great." "More" is "mere," a lake, and "botl" is Anglo-Saxon, "a dwelling." Cessford Castle had the name to be only second to Bothwell's castle of Dunbar, and Logan of Restalrig's eyrie on a jutting rock above the sea, Fastcastle. In the great English raid of 1523, "Dand Ker," Sir Andrew, the head of the clan, rather feebly surrendered the place, which was secure in walls fourteen feet thick.
An interesting find was made at Cessford in 1858. Whilst excavating, a few yards from the north wall of the castle, a workman unearthed a very fine old sword, and a dagger, both in fair preservation. The dagger measured about twenty-six inches, and bore on its blade the Scottish Thistle, surmounted by a crown. The sword was basket hilted, richly carved and embossed in silver. It measured forty inches in length; on one side of the blade was the Scottish Crown; on the other, the date 1511.
It was a Ker of Cessford, tradition tells, who in 1622 tried to carry off the goods and gear of Hobbie Hall of Haughhead, father of the famous Covenanter, Henry Hall. Hobbie, apparently, was quite able to take care of himself, as is testified by a large stone which stands on a knoll amid trees, near Kale water, on which is carved:
Here Hoby Hall boldly maintained his right
'Gainst reef plain force armed w. lawless might
For twenty pleughs harnessed in all their gear
Could not this valiant noble heart make fear
But w. his sword he cut the formost soam
In two: hence drove both pleughs and pleughmen home."
The stone was repaired and restored in 1854 by Lady John Scott.
Higher up than Kale comes Oxnam (locally, Ousenam) Water, which joins Teviot hard by Crailing. Once a nice trout stream, there is not left at this day much to tempt the angler whose dreams are of giant fish, though doubtless many a "basket" can be caught of fingerlings. In none of the Border streams, unhappily, is any restriction made as regards the size of the fish that may be taken. Everything goes into the creel of the fisher with worm in "drummly" waters, and of the holiday sportsman; moved by no compunctions, trammelled by no absurd qualms, – to them a fish is a fish; and as the latter, at least, probably never even sees a big trout, he attaches vast importance to the capture of a "Triton of the minnows." The writer, who had one day fished a Border river with all the little skill at his command, and had succeeded neither with dry fly nor with wet in capturing anything worthy to be kept, once came upon a sportsman of this holiday breed, rigged out with all the latest appliances which should inevitably lure the wiliest of trout from his native element. He "had had a splendid day," he said, in reply to enquiries. "What had he got them with? Oh-h, Fly." but what fly, he would not say. It was just "fly."
"Might he see the basket?" the baffled enquirer asked Proudly the lid was thrown back, and the contents displayed – a basket half filled with parr, and with trout, not one of which could have been six inches in length. Thus are the streams depleted.
It is a pleasant valley, that of the Oxnam. Across it runs the old Roman Road, – in days not very remote a favourite camping place of gipsies, – and up the valley to the south lies that noble sweep of blue hills, the Cheviots, smiling and friendly enough in summer, but dour and forbidding when the north east blast of winter strikes their blurred and gloomy faces.
Did those "muggers" and "tinklers," who of old frequented the Roman Road that runs south over Teviot and Jed and Oxnam, and away over the Cheviots down into Rede valley past Bremenium (High Rochester), did they ever come upon buried treasure or hoarded coins, one wonders. It is not many years since a well-known Professor, as he sat resting one day by the side of the old Road a little farther south than Oxnam valley, idly pushed his walking stick into a rabbit hole close to where he was seated. A few scrapes with the point of the stick, and something chinked and fell; then another, and another. But this buried treasure consisted only of copper coins, a vast number, none very rare; and no farther search revealed anything of value. Yet there must be plenty along that route, if one could but chance upon the proper spots. And surely, wherever there befell one of those countless fights or skirmishes that were for ever taking place in these Border hills, both in the days of the Romans and since, there must lie buried weapons. At Bloodylaws, up Oxnam, for instance. The {89}name is suggestive; but what occurred there, one cannot say – though there is the vague tradition of a mighty battle that left Oxnam for three days running red with blood. The country people, if you enquire from them the name of that hill, pronounce it with bated breath; – "Bluidylaws," they say in lowered voice. But I doubt that their tone is less the effect of old unhappy tradition telling how some great slaughter took place here, than the fact that "bluidy" is a word banned by the polite. This "three days red with blood," too, is an expression curiously common in the account given by country folk of any battle of which they may have local tradition. You will rind it used in connection with at least half a dozen other places in the Border-land besides Bloodylaws; and in the ballad of "The Lads of Wamphray" there occurs the line: "When the Biddes-burn ran three days blood." Wamphray is in Annandale, and the fight alluded to was between the Johnstons and the Crichtons in 1593. But the affair was a mere skirmish; "three days blood" is but a figure of speech in this and probably in most other instances. Still, on a spur of Bloodylaws there exists a well-defined circular camp, and there may be foundation for the local tradition of some grim slaughter.
CHAPTER IV JEDBURGH, AND THE JED
Two or three miles up Teviot from the junction of Oxnam Water, we come to Jed, a beautiful stream, on whose banks dreams the pleasant county town where, close on ninety years ago, they cried that cry of which they do not now like to think – "Burke Sir Walter!"
In all the Border there stands no place more picturesquely situated than Jedburgh, nor in historical interest can any surpass it. And though its ancient castle, and the six strong towers that once defended the town, have long since vanished, there remain still the noble ruins of its magnificent abbey, and other relics of the past, less noticeable but hardly less interesting; whilst the surrounding countryside brims over with the beauty of river, wood, and hill.
History gives no very definite information as to the date at which first took place the building of a castle at Jedburgh, but it appears certain that as early as the year 950 a.d. there existed in these parts some great stronghold, if, at least, "Judan-byrig" – where, when he had suppressed an insurrection in Northumbria, King Edred of England confined the rebel Archbishop of York – may be identified with "Jedburgh." Probably, however, there was in this neighbourhood a castle of sorts long prior to the date above mentioned, for both "Gedde-wrdes," or "Jedworths," the old and the new, were known settlements before the expiry of the earlier half of the ninth century, and in those turbulent days no community was rash enough to plant itself in hamlet or town except under the protecting shield of castle or strong place of arms.
In any case, before the end of the eleventh century, there certainly existed at Jedburgh a castle of formidable