108 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



safely swam across. Their pursuers, however, gave 

 up the chase at sight of the rushing torrent : 



' All sore astonish'd stood Lord Scroope 



He stood as still as rock of stane ; 

 He scarcely dared to trew his eyes, 



When through the water they had gane. 

 " He is either himsell a devil frae hell, 



Or else his mother a witch maun be ; 

 I wadna hae ridden that wan water 



For a' the gowd in Christentie." ' 



But even in the midst of the rough warfare of 

 these olden days, there was often a thread of tender 

 affection and romance woven by the ballad-singers 

 into their tales. The vale of the river Yarrow has 

 been more specially consecrated by these tragic songs, 

 and the £ dowie howms o' Yarrow ' have come to be 

 identified with all that is most pathetic in the min- 

 strelsy of the Border. From the time of the early 

 ballads a succession of minor poets had sung of this 

 vale, until the pathos of its history was fully revealed 

 to the whole world by Scott and Wordsworth. 



It may be readily granted that the fascination of 

 Yarrow has mainly sprung from the recollection of 

 the human incidents which have been transacted 

 there, and which have been enshrined in so much 

 touching verse. But these tragic associations will 

 not, I think, of themselves wholly account for this 

 fascination, nor for the sad tone of the poetry. There 

 seems to me to be a source of peculiarly impressive 

 power in the scenery of the valley itself, and that 

 to this source not a little of the glamour of Yarrow 

 is to be attributed. Nowhere throughout the whole 



