IN CAELYLE'S COUNTRY 55 



The Carlyles were living on this farm while their 

 son was teaching school at Annan, and later at 

 Kirkcaldy with Irving, and they supplied him with 

 cheese, butter, ham, oatmeal, etc., from their scanty 

 stores. A new farmhouse has been built since 

 then, though the old one is still standing; doubt- 

 less the same Carlyle's father refers to in a letter 

 to his son, in 1817, as being under way. The 

 parish minister was expected at Mainhill. "Your 

 mother was very anxious to have the house done 

 before he came, or else she said she would run over 

 the hill and hide herself." 



From Mainhill the highway descends slowly to 

 the village of Ecclefechan, the site of which is 

 marked to the eye, a mile or more away, by the 

 spire of the church rising up against a background 

 of Scotch firs, which clothe a hill beyond. I soon 

 entered the main street of the village, which in Car- 

 lyle's youth had an open burn or creek flowing 

 through the centre of it. This has been covered 

 over by some enterprising citizen, and instead of 

 a loitering little burn, crossed by numerous bridges, 

 the eye is now greeted by a broad expanse of small 

 cobble-stone. The cottages are for the most part 

 very humble, and rise from the outer edges of the 

 pavement, as if the latter had been turned up and 

 shaped to make their Avails. The church is a hand- 

 some br*own stone structure, of recent date, and is 

 more in keeping with the fine fertile country about 

 than with the little village in its front. In the 

 cemetery back of it, Carlyle lies buried. As I 



