142 Field Meeting— Buenfoot. 



the Kirtle and its tributary streams was ascended, first by easily 

 wiudiug- stages, amid fields from which the population of distant 

 Dundee draws its daily milk supply. Disused lime quarries at 

 several points indicate the nature of the geological formation. 

 As the road winds past West Linnbridgeford and the hamlet of 

 Laurie's Close, we get among purely pastoral regions, bleak and 

 treeless, and the ascent becomes so toilsome that the vehicles are 

 lightened. A short halt is called at the little moorland inn named 

 Callister Hall, that sits on the dividing line of the watershed, some 

 seven hundred feet above sea level ; and here we look back over 

 a beautiful panorama of hill and dale and stream that is closed 

 with the Solway's silver streak and Criffel, its sentinel hill. 

 Thence at a smart pace we run down the Wauchope valley, tracing 

 first the course of its upper tributaries, the Bigholm and the Logan 

 burns ; and a spin of six miles brings us to the town of Langholm, 

 where the Wauchope joins the Esk. But first we make a halt at 

 Wauchope old churchyard, which is still one of the burial-places 

 for Langholm, and view in its immediate vicinity the site of the 

 ancient castle of Wauchope. Tlie Rev. Mr Buchanan, the parish 

 minister, Mr Scott of Arkinholm, and Mr Hyslop, chairman of the 

 Langholm Parish Council, here awaited the party and pointed out 

 the scanty remains of masonry which mark the foundations of the 

 castle, the line of the moat where it can still be traced, and the 

 remnant of an abutment for the drawbridge. The castle wall has 

 been built on the precipitous bank of the Wauchope, that is at this 

 point a rugged ravine. At the other side the entrenchments are 

 now intei'sected by the public road. The history of the stronghold 

 is almost au entire blank ; but it is said to have been the seat of 

 the Lindsays, who were a formidable family on the borders in the 

 fourteenth century, as we may infer from a reference to them in 

 the ballad of "•• Chevy Chase." 



The Gordons gay, in English blude 



Tiiey wat their hose and shoon ; 

 The Lindsays flew like fire about 



Till all the fray was done. 



A Lindsay was also associated with Bruce and Kirkpatrick in the 

 slaughter of Comyn at Dumfries. Among the debris with which 

 the ground is cumbered there was picked up some time ago a 

 metal hasp curiously worked in serpent pattern, which was pur- 

 chased from the finder for the national museum of antiquities in 



