FISHING AND DRINKING OP OLD. 147 



We happen to know, however, from other sources, 

 that such an hypothesis would scarcely consist with 

 authentic facts; and that a " Hawick gill" was even 

 more frequently in request in those days than in our 

 own. Wherefore, then, are there no old Border drink* 

 ing songs ? Frankly, we do not know, and have not 

 time to guess. Perhaps the old minstrels thought that 

 their profession of recording the loves, wars, and thiev- 

 ings of the border chiefs would be lowered by singing 

 of the bottle, and left that to pert Edinburgh lawyers 

 who followed the Circuit, such as the one who de- 

 clares, in a highly humorous but rather equivocal ditty, 

 in the praise of " Jonet Eeid, Marion White, and Jean 

 Violet, being slicht women and taverners," that 



" This song of thrie lasses 

 Was made aboon glasses 

 In Jedburgh at the Justiciair." 



But whether or not there was much fishing or fuddling 

 in Roxburghshire three hundred years ago, there is a 

 fair proportion of both now, and 



" The men of pleasant Tiviedale, 

 Fast by the river Tweed," 



can handle both the rod and the glass like adepts. 



The Teviot rises near Mosspaul, on the borders of 

 Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire. An inn at this 

 place, on the Hawick and Carlisle road, gives the 

 angler the opportunity of fishing the higher tributaries 

 and hill-burns, which combine to form the river in its 

 early stages. These have the usual character of such 

 burns, the trout small but plentiful, and the green 

 hills and bare moors pleasant in summer and autumn, 

 when such streams are most worth fishing. The Teviot 



