JOHN YOUNGER'S FIRST TROUT. 155 



burgh angler could thus accomplish a day's fishing in 

 this pretty little water by leaving home in the morn- 

 ing and returning at night. There is an inn at Lillies- 

 leaf, where an angler who wished to stay might find 

 accommodation. At Ancrum, the lower part of the 

 Ale is quite handy ; and a bend which it makes about 

 three miles above that village is within walking dis- 

 tance of St. Boswell's. John Younger, of that place, 

 was bred on Ale-water, and in the last verses of his 

 which we have seen, he recalls to mind his primary 

 step to the angling excellence- which he has since at- 

 tained : 



" Still, as in a dream, I can see the first flee 

 George Grey in the Ayle- water kindly gae me : 

 Such pleasures of hope as it raised in my breast 

 Hae never by poet on earth been exprest. 

 * Where was ye a' day, laddie what been about ?' 

 When joyfu' I held out my first little trout: 

 To utter the feelings a' language is vain 

 But just it was what I can ne'er feel again, 

 Unless in idea : as we rub in life's rust 

 Wearing down into age ere we drop in the dust 

 The thoughts of a new birth may weel mak us fain, 

 Were it only a hope to be younglings again ! " 



Rather a pawJcie touch that of John's about the new 

 birth, we are afraid. 



A little way from Ancrum is the field of Ancrum 

 Moor or Lilliard's Edge, where a savage English fo- 

 ray upon Melrose and Teviotdale in 1545 was amply 

 avenged by the Earl of Angus, who pursued the ma- 

 rauders and smote them hip and thigh. 



About two miles below the mouth of the Ale, the 

 Jed enters the Teviot from the south. For the greater 

 part of its course, the angling in the Jed is much in- 



