|
Oh softly, Jed, thy silver
currents lead,
Round every hazel copse, and smiling mead,
Where lines of firs the glowing landscape screen,
And crown the heights with tufts of deeper green;
While mid the cliffs, to crop the flowery thyme,
The shaggy goats with steady footsteps climb.
- Leyden’s Scenes of Infancy.
The low countries of Scotland
combine much of the beauty of the sister kingdoms. We have the sparkling
rivers, the purpled hills, the woods of pine and birch, the moory wastes
with their varied glories of gorse and heather, while blended with these
Scotch attributes, we have cultivated meadows, smiling cottages and
hedgerows, that would do honour to the broad lands south of the Tweed.
Roxburghshire adds to this twofold beauty the renown of being classic
ground, for the wand of the Northern Wizard has given it a worldwide name
for all that is interesting in legendary history and in modern literature.
The Tweed, the glorious Border river, is a name which wakes a peculiar
thrill of love and interest in all those who have been dwellers on its
banks, and the blue Cheviots are scarcely less familiar household words.
Various tributaries of the Tweed are likewise dear to Lowland hearts—the
Yarrow, the Leader, theLiddel, the Gala, and, very specially to some of us,
that clear little stream, the surroundings of which Burns commemorated as
“Eden scenes on crystal Jed.”
As the poet was in love with a fair Jedburgh lady1 that same year, his
praises, however, of Jedburgh localities, must be taken cum grano salis.
With all deductions, much true beauty remains in the deep valley, with its
wooded banks and its bright waters, and its varied
1 Miss Isabella Lindsay, daughter of Dr. Lindsay. She married a Mr.
Armstrong, and became the mother of the late General Armstrong, Master of
the Mint to the Emperor of Russia. Before Bums left Jedburgh he presented
his portrait to this young lady (1787).—Cunningham’s Life of Bnms.
combinations of colour, for—blended with the green of summer, and the spring
flushes of orchard blossom, and the russets of golden autumn,—there are
rich-coloured precipices of old red sandstone— called in local parlance “scaurs,”—which
are very noted features in the landscapes of Jed. On this little river, and
in the centre of its valley, we find the small and not very populous town of
Jedburgh— or Jed worth, as it used to be called, from ged, signifying withes
or twigs, and worth, a court or lawn, which suited well its old locality— a
town or court with stretches of forest on every side ;—a noted and busy
place in its day, though its fame was not always of a pacific or
praiseworthy sort.
Only ten miles from the Border, Jedburgh was the centre of Border warfare.
It was the gathering-place of Scotish armies, and the favourite point of
attack of the English, who burned it to the ground six or seven times, while
their soldiers frequently occupied the castle. It was not a walled town, but
its houses were so constructed as to admit of but four entrances, which had
gates, and were named Castle-gate, Highgate, Canongate, and Bum Wynd, which
circumstance gave rise to the belief that it was a regularly fortified town.
The Earl of Surrey wrote to Henry VIII. of “the fine houses and six good
towers” which he destroyed, and a red flush upon the ruined Abbey still
tells its tale of the fires then kindled. He added, “I found the Scottes at
this time the boldest men and the hottest that ever I saw in any nation."
The Raid of Redeswire terminated the Border warfare in a manner very
creditable to the warlike fame of Jedburgh. This celebrated engagement took
place in 1575, between the Scots, headed by the Rutherfurds of Hunthill and
Hundalee, and the English, under Sir George Heron, Keeper of Tyndale. It was
fought on the slopes of the Carter Fell, at the pass into England by
Redesdale, over which marched the invading armies of both countries. A
sudden onslaught of Jedburgh citizens gave the victory to the Scots, when
“They raised'the slogan with ane shout,
Fy, Tyndaill, to it—Jedburgh’s out! ”
In the vicinity of Jedburgh there still remain many landmarks of the
patriotic past. A mile and a half from the town, on the top of a scaur
overlooking the Jed, are the remains of the celebrated camp of that “ good
Sir James of Douglas35 who
“Quhen he was blyth he was lufly,
And meyk and sweyt in cumpany;
But quha in battaill mycht him se,
Anither countenance had he.”
It is said that he defeated ten thousand Englishmen near the Lintalee camp,
a victory which “added another blazon to the shield of Douglas,33 and
secured all the south of Scotland for King Robert the Bruce, who was then
absent in Ireland. Half a mile above the camp is Femyhurst Castle, the
ancient seat of the Kerrs, and the scene of fierce struggles and wild
legends. Then there is Bairnkin, an old fastness of the Oliphants, and four
miles farther up the river the ruined church of Old Jedworth, founded by
Ecgred, Bishop of Lin-disfarne, about the year 800. On every side are traces
of peels and camps, especially of the latter, at Scraesburgh, Gilliestongues,
Rink or Camp-town, and Chesters; while the frequent caves in the scaurs, as
at Hundalee, Lintalee, and Mossburnsford, were probably favourite places of
refuge for border heroes in their ever-changing tides of fortune. It was at
the church of Southdean, or “Sooden ” as it is called, on the Jed, that the
Scotish army, as described by Froissart, assembled for the expedition which
terminated in the battle of Otterbum in “Chevy Chase.”
The ballad lore, and the numerous remains of peel-houses and fortified
towers throughout Roxburghshire, as well as stern historical facts, leave no
room for doubt that the little forest town was frequently the scene of other
encounters and adventures less patriotic and creditable than struggles
against the usurpation of England. “Dalesmen” and "marchers,” or in other
words thieves and freebooters, carried on a guerilla warfare from the
fastnesses of the neighbouring forests, so that Jedburgh was kept in a
constant moil of civil strife of a vexatious and ignoble kind, from the
earliest monarchies till the days of the Regent Moray, who exerted his
authority with some success against the rule of rapine which existed in the
Border county. The proverbial expression of “Jeddart justice” itself tells a
vivid tale of the Lynch-like manners and customs of the place, where it was
said to be the fashion “to hang first and try afterwards!” A
ferocious-looking weapon of Border warfare, a sort of battle-axe, helped on
the dubious character of that anti-pacific locality by its satiric name of
“a Jedburgh staff”!
Jedburgh Castle was entirely demolished as early as 1490. It was situated on
a hill at the head of the town, and was a favourite residence of the early
Scotish kings. David i. held his court principally at Roxburgh, but had also
his royal castle at Jedworth ; Malcolm iv. died within its walls ; Alexander
hi. celebrated there with great festivities his marriage with the beautiful
Jolande of France. Mr. Cosmo Innes gives the following interesting account
of Jedburgh at this period:—“Alexander III. and his queen, the daughter of
the lordly De Coucy, chose Jedburgh and its lovely valley as a favourite
residence. After the death of that king, John Cumin rendered his account as
bailiff of the king’s manor of Jedworth, in which he charges himself with
66s. 8d. as the rent of the new park, which used to be the place of the
queen’s stud (equicium regince), 26s. Sd. for the sales of dead wood ; and
states his outlay for mowing 66 acres of meadow, and for winning and
carrying it for forage for the castle. Item, for 900 perches of ditch and
hedge (fosse et haye) constructed about both the wood and the meadows of
Jedworth, 116s. 6d. I think I cannot be mistaken in translating these words
ditch and hedge ; and if so, you have by far the earliest instance of such a
fence on record. I suppose the wood so enclosed may have been the bank of
Femyhurst, and the meadows those fairy fields by the side of the Jed which
form one of the most beautiful and peculiarly Scotch scenes I have ever
seen.”
Queen Mary Stuart kept court at Jedburgh on several occasions, her residence
being an ancient house, carefully preserved, and associated with her name.
From thence too she started on her wild visit to Bothwell in 1566, at
Hermitage Castle, in Liddesdale, twenty statute miles from Jedburgh, a
distance which she performed to and fro in one day on horseback, on the
roughest roads, and in the midst of Border perils. The fatigue and anxiety
so shook her nerves that she lay sick of a lingering fever for a whole
month, in the dark wainscoted rooms of the old Jedburgh house.
Jedburgh was also a favourite resort of the ecclesiastical world. Its noble
abbey—presenting in its chancel a fine specimen of the earlier Norman
architecture, as well as of the later in the beautiful door of the cloister,
and in the western gable—was founded by David i., and owes its demolition,
not to the Deformation but to English soldiers. There were also large
monastic and conventual establishments, of which but the names remain, such
as the “Friars’” and the “Lady’s Yards.” The gardens and the orchards, which
so beautifully mingle with the town buildings, owe their celebrity, it is
said, to the careful culture of the old monks. Magnificent old pear-trees
from French grafts, planted by them, were much admired for their picturesque
beauty, many being three feet in diameter; but those that remain, though old
and gnarled, are but the offshoots, and none date further back than three or
four hundred years. Jedburgh pears have long been widely famed, and the
Jedburgh plum is of rare excellence, rivalling the green-gage. Some of the
ecclesiastics of Jedburgh, however, had wider celebrity than that of being
good horticulturists, and Adam Bell, one of its Carmelite friars, wrote a
History of Scotland.
At the foot of the Canongate, spanning the Jed, there is a fine old bridge
of ashlar, with three circular ribbed arches, dating from the time of the
building of the Abbey. In “the ’45,” when “Prince Charlie” entered
Jedburgh by tins bridge, it was the scene of a vehement and rejoicing
Jacobite -welcome. He took up his quarters at the hostelry of The Nag’s
Head, still in existence.
After all the sore, yet, on the whole, successful battles which Jedburgh
waged for the liberty and independence of Scotland, it was at last the Union
with England, which, by ruining its trade, did it more harm, and brought it
nearer absolute ruin, than Surrey and all his soldiers. In the middle and
towards the end of last century Jedburgh had greatly declined; its citizens
were called “idlers,” the old trees were cut down, the churchyard lay open
to all intruders, and the fine old Abbey was a quarry from whence was taken
the material for parochial buildings. From one of its aisles ascended daily
the hum of the lessons or the shouts of the play-time of unruly schoolboys.
Jedburgh, in short, was in a bad case, and, following the general rule in
such circumstances, Superstition abode within its shades. Witches and
fairies supplied the place of more substantial inhabitants. The Witches’
green was a real and abiding locality, and a window in the Abbey was called
the Witch’s Wheel, through which it was believed that veritable fairies
danced by moonlight.
Neither the presence of superstition, desolation, and ruined stone and
mortar, nor the absence of red chimneys, successful moneymaking, and the
modem wear and tear of life, could prevent a new and deeper renaissance of
the old energy and activity of Jedburgh. It was not only that men of poetry
and adventure began to arise throughout Roxburghshire, such as Leyden,
Thomson,1 Pringle,2 and others; such gifts might be expected amidst the
stirring memories of the past, and the beautiful scenery of the present. The
deeper gifts of intellect, however, appear about this time to have been
lavished with no scanty hand upon the men of Jedburgh, so that the
peculiarly gifted ones who were yet to arise in their midst found a fit
nursing-place, and helping hands on every side to cherish and uphold. The
thews and the sinews of the men of old reappeared in the mental conformation
of their descendants. Battles of a higher life went bravely on in the
fields, forests, streets, and ruins, where in the old-world days valiant yet
useless conflicts of flesh and blood had been lost and won. Conquerors went
forth conquering from the valley of the Jed, subduing ignorance, combating
superstition, inventing new blessings for the nations, discovering new laws
and beneficent designs, and bringing glory to Him who reigneth over mind as
well as matter.
One of the poems of Thomson, which is less known than his Seasons, is an Ode
to Sir Isaac Kevdon—
“When Newton rose, our philosophic son,”
so that appreciation of science was not wanting even among the poets.
Thomas Pringle, author of Scenes of Teviotdale, Ephemerides, and a series of
African Poetical Sketches, of which “The Bush Boy” is the best known. He was
connected with Blackwood's Magazine at its commencement. |
