AND ANGLING SONGS. 1 97 



Under the fronds of the opening fern 



Where the blind mole rears its furrow. 

 I have haunts by the shell-strewn tide, 

 But dearer to me the river-side ; 

 Where, all summer-night over, 

 Neath greene-wood cover, 



My angle and I bear companye. 



ST. MARY'S LOCH. 



ST. MARY'S LOCH and Tibby Shiels I Lone St. Mary's every 

 reader of the Border Minstrelsy, and of Wordsworth and Hogg, 

 every lover of pastoral scenery knows well. It is but a step from 

 the Sutor Burgh to where Ettrick and Yarrow, the sister streams 

 of the Forest meet. Both are beautiful, but Yarrow, above 

 where they blend, surpassingly so. Its banks are adorned with a 

 spontaneous fringe of alders and birches, above which, crowding 

 the knolled slopes on either side, wave oaks, elms, planes, limes, 

 beeches, ashes, larches, and Scotch firs, in well-blended profusion. 

 Connected with this strip of valley-land, the utilitarian processes 

 of agriculture are here and there being carried on, but so as to 

 gratify, not offend the eye of taste ; the crowning heights ex- 

 hibiting by turns the triumphs of arboricultural science, the 

 obduracy of nature, and that reserveful spirit which leads to the 

 harbouring and nurture of those persecuted children of the mist, 

 yclept grouse and black game. 



Ettrick, as you recede from the range of associations connected 

 with the mills and manufactories, is perhaps just as engaging 

 after all. Oakwood Tower, the fastness of the wondrous wizard 

 Michael Scott overshadows it, and so do the ruins of Tushielaw, 



