78 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



and salmon — are close by Lessudden; and, just across 

 the bridge, is Dryburgh Abbey, where the Last Mins- 

 trel himself was laid to sleep in 1832, and whither, in 

 1854, his son-in-law and biographer was brought to be 

 laid beside him. The upper part of the Mertoun fish- 

 ings is let to an English gentleman, who resides at 

 Lessudden during the grilse season, and has a keeper 

 who watches that particular water during the open 

 season, and, like other keepers, becomes a member of 

 the regular Tweed police during close-time. 



We cannot pass Lessudden without a salutation to 

 our venerable friend, Mr. John Younger. John is the 

 village shoemaker, and the pedal encasements which 

 he turns out are worthy of the highest praise. If an 

 angler wants a pair of stout Tweed fishing-boots, or of 

 walking boots to wade in, by themselves or along with 

 waterproof leggings, we should, in all honesty, recom- 

 mend him to John Younger. He is now old, however 

 — having indeed passed the point fixed by the Psal- 

 mist for summing up human existence. He was a 

 militia-man in 1804, when the false alarm of a French 

 invasion spread from beacon to beacon all over the 

 south of Scotland, and he marched boldly to Kelso to 

 help in repelling Bonaparte. He has been a poet from 

 his youth upwards, and only the other day we noticed 

 a copy of capital verses from his pen in a Newcastle 

 publication. Besides providing the inhabitants of St. 

 Boswell's with shoes for half a century, John was ex- 

 alted at one time to the position of postmaster for the 

 village, but we believe he did not find Her Majesty's 

 service very remunerative, and resigned it. It is, how- 

 ever, in his capacity as an angling- writer and fly- 



