TOWN AND CASTLE OF DUNSE. 41 full conviction of the fact, that the earth had for ever closed over that form. which we were wont to love and reverence; that eye, which we had so often seen beaming with benevolence, sparkling with wit, or lighted up with a poet's frenzy; those lips, which we had so often seen monopolizing the attention of all listeners, or heard rolling out, with nervous accentuation, those powerful verses with which his exuberant fancy was ever teeming; and that brow, the perpetual throne of generous expression and liberal intelligence. Overwhelmed by the conviction of this afflicting truth, men moved away without a parting salutation, singly, slowly, and silently. The day began to stoop down into twilight; and we, too, after giving a last parting survey to the spot where now repose the remains of our Scottish Shakspeare-a spot lovely enough to induce his sainted spirit to haunt and sanctify its shades-hastily tore ourselves away.* The town of Dunse, the emporium, though not the capital, of the county, contains an industrious and thriving population of three thousand, or upwards. The new town-house, surmounted by a tower of elegant design and proportions, is highly ornamental to the place. The ancient town, which extended from the small lake along the southern skirt of the Law, has entirely disappeared with the progress of manorial embellishment, and become a part of the castle park. One relic, however, has survived, in a large stone, which is now built into the wall, and points out the spot where the house of Duns Scotus is traditionally reported to have stood.t Dunse Castle, the princely seat of Hay of Drumelzier, is a modern structure, erected on the remains of the ancient fortress of that name, which passed from the family of Randolph, earl of Moray, by the marriage of his daughter, the * For a more copious detail of this ceremony, the reader is referred to an excellent paper in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine—a periodical of great talent and popularity. + This prince of logicians, it will be remembered, became famous in consequence of his two hundred arguments advanced against the positions of Alberto Magnus. According to Paul Jovius, he was buried in a fit at Cologne, in 1308, and was afterwards found to have turned in his coffin! Dr. Grainger, the wellknown author of "The Sugar Cane," was also a native of Dunse. The interior decorations are splendid; some of them, curiously beautiful. The Gothic style prevails both in the architecture and furniture. The staircase is exceedingly fine; one of the galleries is lighted by a window of stained glass, the most brilliant, probably, in Scotland. Mr. Hay has collected many original portraits, and possesses the best of the Seton Gallery. One of the latter, the first Viscount Kingston, drawn as he appeared on alighting after the flight of Worcester, is worthy of particular notice. -Chambers. A few miles south of Dunse, is the ancient seat of the Homes of Wedderburn, well deserving of a visit. The park contains a monument to the memory of George, one of the heroes of “Polwarth Thorn," who fell in resisting an attack "made upon him while at dinner," from the English border. M renowned Agnes, with Cospatrick, earl of Dunbar. It was the head quarters of General Leslie while the Scottish army lay encamped on the neighbouring hill in 1639. The apartment where he dined, with his staff, is with good taste suffered to remain in the same state in which it was left. The summit of Dunse Law still shows evident traces of the encampment to which we allude; but a forest of broom-wood has long thrown its bright green mantle over the surface, and restored to nature and pastoral tranquillity what had been usurped for less hallowed purposes. But never, perhaps, did an army of twenty-six thousand men meet in the same camp, who exhibited such a picture of religious harmony and orderly deportment. The best spirit of the first Crusaders seemed to have infused itself into every order and condition among them. The sounds of worship had replaced the shouts of war and wassail; and the tents of the officers, and the turf-cabins of the soldiers, were hourly hallowed by devotional exercises. Every company had their colours flying at the tent door, emblazoned with the arms of Scotland, and this motto, "For Christ's crown and covenant." The sanctity of the cause in which they had armed, and the confidence with which they reposed on Divine aid, had awakened a . religious enthusiasm which pervaded all ranks, and made each ambitious to prove himself a champion worthy of the cause he had espoused, and the religious toleration to which he so ardently aspired. It was one of those scenes which no combination of circumstances can ever again produce. The Covenanters, like the Crusaders, are now extinct; but they have left a due proportion of traits which must ever command the gratitude and admiration of their successors, and exalt the men for the sake of the motives which called for their exertions. While the army of the Covenant were posted on the hill, the royal standard was waving within sight on the opposite side of the Tweed; and after three weeks of mutual threats and defiance, both camps were broken up on ratification of the short-lived treaty entered into between the king and his subjects.* The melancholy fate of Tillibatie, though familiar to most readers, may be here introduced as illustrative of a ferocious period of Border history. As vice-regent of Scotland, during the duke of Albany's absence in France, although but a short time in power, he appears to have given promise of a vigorous administration; but in the exercise of the trust and authority reposed in him for the maintenance of public order, he had the misfortune to draw upon himself the vengeance of those whose violence he had checked by the strong arm of the law; so that, what did him honour as a magistrate, became fatal to him as a man. Having occasion to hold a justice court at Dunse, he set out from Holyrood under the safe conduct of the lairds of Sessford and Phernihirst, who had pledged their word to re-conduct him in safety * Not De la Beauté, as it has been written; the French title and name being that of a small town in the department of the higher Alps-La Bâtie, Sir Anthony D'Arcy, sieur de la Bâtie-commonly Tillibatre. EYEMOUTH.-COLDINGHAM PRIORY. 43 Of LAMMERMOOR our limits will only permit us to present a few additional features. Eyemouth, once so conspicuous in the "annals of contraband," is still a port of considerable activity. Close to the harbour is the house of Gunsgreen, built by a wealthy smuggler, and in allusion to which, a member once observed in the senate, that smuggling was here carried on to such an alarming extent, that one man had been enabled from its gains to erect a splendid palace. For the better security of his contraband traffic, this proprietor had various secret store-rooms constructed within or near the mansion; and some of which, it is conjectured, still remain, with their precious commodities, as a prize for some future discoverer. A few years since, a pair of horses were nearly swallowed up in consequence of the roof of one of these secret ware-rooms giving way, while the plough was passing over it in a neighbouring field. The house and grounds are now in possession of the venerable and retired pastor of Ayton.† Halidon hill, already mentioned as one of the battlefields in which right and might have so often striven for ascendency, is a prominent object in this neighbourhood. The ancient Priory of Coldingham, though reduced and mutilated in all its beauty and dimensions, is still worth a pilgrimage. Its straggling fragments and consecrated pavements, now abandoned to the plough; and the Saxon arch, the last of its royal palace, are still sufficient to justify the belief of its early magnificence, and to illustrate the history of what, reputedly, was the first asylum of christian missionaries in Scotland. About fifty or sixty years ago, the skeleton of a nun was found standing erect in a niche of the wall, to the capital. The laird of Wedderburn, however, bearing him a strong grudge, as agent in the duke of Albany's cause, watched his opportunity, till, finding him at a little distance from his attendants, he took no pains to conceal his murderous intentions. Tillibatie feeling that he was ensnared, put spurs to his horse; and being well mounted, hoped to have escaped by the fleetness of his steed: but being a total stranger, and ignorant of the locality by which he pursued his way towards the castle of Dunbar, his horse foundered in a morass, and there his enemies came upon him in his helplessness, and foully assassinated him. He wore his hair, says the chronicle, long, platted, and flowing from his neck, by which Sir David Home of Wedderburn, fastened the head to his saddle bow, a trophy not of valour, but barbarity— "As vile a stroke As ever wall-eyed wrath, or staring rage, • A distillery, now in full operation here, is capable of making one thousand five hundred gallons of aqua weekly, and most of which is sold in London for the support of the "gin palaces." The reader acquainted with this locality, will regret to hear that the house of Ayton, so long the prominent object from the London road, and remarkable for the beauty of its grounds, was accidentally burnt to the ground in the course of last year. It is the castle of which Ford, in his dramatic chronicle, alluding to the siege by Surrey, general of Henry VII., says, “This strongest of their forts, old Ayton Castle, was yielded and demolished." It was founded by a Norman, named De Vescie-afterwards, De Eitun, and fell into the possession of the Homes about the commencement of the fifteenth century. where, in expiation of some breach of her vows, she had been built up alive. Of the dress in which she had been consigned to her doom, the shoes, and their silk latchets, were all that remained. Discoveries of this nature lessen our regret that the power and place where such atrocities could be perpetrated, have, in this country at least, vanished together and for ever.* About four miles from Coldingham, is the celebrated foreland of St. Abb's Head, consisting of two abrupt hills, separated by a deep ravine from the adjoining portion of the promontory, and occupied, respectively, by the ruins of a monastery, and a station of the preventive service. A spiral path conducts us to an esplanade on the summit of the eastern hill, where the remains of St. Abb's church are slightly traced on the undulating surface. Here a very few stones still remain upon each other—a small enclosure like a low turf fence-the apparition of a deserted burying ground, sporting upon its withered breast a ghastly nosegay of hemlocks and nettles; the sea, in front, to which the eye can discern no shore; and a savage scene spreading as far behind, are the characteristics of a place resorted to twelve hundred years ago, for the performance of christian rites by the Pict, the Briton, and, perhaps, the Roman. The ruins lie within ten yards of a precipice, three hundred feet in depth, covered over with sea-fowl, and at the bottom of which the ocean roars and boils without intermission. It might have served as an original for Shakspeare's Cliff "How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes below! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, Shew scarce so gross as beetles." Fast Castle, a baronial fortress well known in history, crowns the adjoining promontory, to which it gives name; and like St. Abb's church, built in tottering suspense over the brink of a precipitous rock, "Puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain, In 1410, Patrick Dunbar, one of the younger sons of the earl of March, * Coldingham occurs in history as early as A.D. 661, at which Abbe, or Ebba, sister to Osy, king of Northumberland, was abbess, and entertained St. Cuthbert, prior of Melros, for several days. Eight years later, Etheldreda, queen of Egfred, king of Northumberland, became a nun of this house. In 709, it was destroyed by lightning, in punishment, it is said, of the dissolute lives of its monastic inmates; and after a long interval, was re-founded by king Edgar, in 1098, and dedicated to St. Cuthbert. + Mr. Robert Chambers, to whose popular work the reader is referred for the Legend of St. Abb. |