ELLEMFORD INN — GEOKDIE HAMILTON. 165 



affords excellent facilities for fishing all these upland 

 waters. From no other place indeed can the upper part 

 of the Dye, the Watch, or the Fasney, be conveniently 

 got at, while the Whitadder is three miles, and the 

 higher portion of the Blackadder six miles, distant. 



Half-a-mile below the confluence of the Dye, on the 

 Whitadder, stands Ellemford Inn, the most noted of 

 all the fishing hostels in these parts. Until within the 

 last five or six years, its landlord was the redoubtable 

 Geordie Hamilton, who as an angler had few equals, 

 and as an innkeeper was beyond all praise. He died 

 in 1856 ; but none of the fishing frequenters of the 

 Whitadder who had the luck to visit Ellemford in the 

 days of Geordie's glory can ever forget him. Rather 

 more than six feet in height, with the aspect of an 

 angling patriarch, coat and waiscoat of voluminous di- 

 mensions, corduroy knee-breeches, grey " rig-and-fur" 

 stockings, and fishing creel of the largest size, Geordie 

 was a sight to startle a cockney ; while the heartiness 

 of his laugh and language with those of whatever degree 

 whom he admitted among his familiars, his shrewd bor- 

 der-wit, his remarkable capacity for toddy, and his won- 

 derful fishing-stories, of themselves tempted anglers to 

 his lonely inn on the skirts of the Lammermoors, were 

 it but to spend a night in his company. At the water- 

 side he was an invaluable companion. Bred as a sal- 

 mon-fisher on Tweedside, he had studied the conditions 

 of air and water as affecting angling from his boyhood ; 

 and he knew the habits and temperaments of the sal- 

 monidse as if he had been brought up amongst them — 

 as indeed might partly be afSrmed. As a minnow-fisher 

 he was probably unequall-ed on the borders — as a worm- 



