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| The Yarrow Flower |
The
Dowie* Dens of Yarrow, the river of sorrow, the valley of romance, of
honour, of vendetta and feud, a valley that always stirs the
imagination.
Only
the stones remain from centuries of conflict, the silent stones.
The
winding road runs alongside the river, the eponymous yarrow flower
grows in the verges, the land is largely empty, given over to sheep
and forestry but once, it thronged with farmers, warriors, huntsmen,
lords and knights, reivers, raiders and thieves. Kings visited to
chase deer and later to enforce their laws and appoint wardens to
maintain them.
Much has been made quite properly of the depopulation visited on the
Highlands of Scotland by "the clearances" but the Lowland
clearances that emptied these valleys have often been overlooked.
Long gone are the days when John Murray, the Outlaw Murray of the
ballads, could...
keepis five hundred men... a royalle companie.
or
even the eighty to a hundred horsemen raised by Scott of Buccleugh in
the raid on Carlisle to rescue William Armstrong of Kinmont recounted
in the ballad Kinmont Willie.
Now,
only the sheep graze where once the people of the valley flourished.
The villages of Yarrow and that of Ettrick that took their names from
the neighbouring rivers have almost disappeared.
Yet
the stones remain, From Neolithic standing stones to Iron Age marker
stones and medieval towers, they stand mutely, keeping their
secrets to their lichen covered hearts.
My
trip took me past Foulshiels, the lowly cottage where Mungo Park,
explorer of the Niger was born and on,
past the standing stones with their evocative names, the Warriors
Rest, the Glebe stone, the Yarrow stone.
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| The Warriors Rest, The Glebe Stone and The Yarrow Stone |
The
last of these, the Yarrow stone, is inscribed with the names of Nudoss
and Dumnogenos, sons of Liberalis, princes of the Damnoni, the
Strathclyde Britons, killed in battle with the invading Angles.
It
is probably a reworked neolithic monument as the whole area seems to
have been a religious site from earliest times with many burials.
Pressing
on to Craig Douglas, I paused at the farm once occupied by James Hogg
the poet and writer.
It
was the site of the Douglas tower destroyed on the orders of James II
in 1450. Legend has it that it was the site from where the lovers
eloped as recalled
in the ballad The Douglas Tragedy,
only to be caught at the Douglas stones further up the valley where
the duel to the death of brothers and lover occurred.
He's
mounted her on a milk-white steed
And
himself on a dapple grey,
With
a bugelet horn hung down by his side,
And
lightly they rode away.
Lord
Willam lookit o'er his left shoulder,
To
see what he could see,
And
there he spy'd her seven brethren bold,
Come
riding o'er the lea.
The
brothers and father do battle with Lord William, the brothers are
slain and the father wounded but William sustains a mortal wound and
dies in the maiden's arms.
Lord
William was dead lang ere midnight
Lady
Marg'ret lang ere day-
And
all true lovers that go thegither,
May
they have mair luck than they!
Lord
William was buried in St. Marie's kirk,
Lady
Marg'ret in Marie's quire;
Out
o' the lady's grave grew a bonny red rose,
And
out o' the knight's a brier.
And
they twa met, and they twa plat,
And
fain they wad be near;
And
a' the world might ken right weel,
They
were twa lovers dear.
The
Bught Stones and the The Douglas Stones, ancient stone circles said
to be the site of the fateful
affray,
are now densely covered with conifer forest
and,
try as I might, I couldn't find them. That will be an expedition for
another day
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| Blackhouse Tower |
A
later peel, the Blackhouse Tower still guards the path by the Douglas
burn taken by the fleeing lovers.
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| St Mary's Loch |
Further
on towards St Mary's kirk, the kirk o' the forest, and the scenic St
Mary's Loch, I passed Dryhope Tower, birthplace of Mary Scott, the
Flower of Yarrow and wife of Walter Scott of Harden from whom Sir
Walter Scott claimed descent. This redoubtable lady was alleged to
have served a dish of spurs on a salver to her reiver husband
indicating that times were hard and he needed to go raiding again!
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| Dryhope |
Passing
the loch and the kirk, I turned up the Megget Water, tributary of the
Yarrow and passed the grave of Piers Cockburn, knight and reiver,
hanged for his crimes by Royal Warrant at his castle door. Forever
remembered in the ballad The Lament of the Border Widow,
the story of Cockburn's demise has been romanticised to fit in with
the old predictions and tales. The reiver was,
in fact,
executed in Edinburgh after due process of law. Still, it makes a
good story in an evocative setting.
From
Cockburn's
tomb the road winds up past the Megget reservoir which flooded the
valley and submerged the castle tower of Cramalt, long the hunting
lodge of the Stuart kings. In The Bridal of
Polmood, James Hogg
that assiduous collector of ancient tales, describes how four hundred
men would assemble to drive the deer
" with hound and horn"
to the archers on Hunter Hill behind Cramalt.
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| Cramalt tower |
There is a facsimile of the ground
plan of the old tower on the banks of the reservoir but the deer have
long been replaced by sheep and the forest is no more.
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| Sheep not deer |
The
climb took me up to the watershed between the Megget and Talla waters
running east and west respectively. Here,
I found the Megget Stone. Perhaps it was a boundary marker between
the Iron Age tribes, the Selgovae and the Novantae or maybe from even
more remote times when these
valleys were full of people with
traders and farmers exchanging goods and produce at fixed points
recognised by all.
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| The Megget Stone |
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| The empty Megget Vale |
If
only these stones could speak and show, what tales they would tell
*dowie is Auld Scots for sad or sorrowful
