198 A BORDER TOWER 



and summer fishing, anglers must be allowed a little 

 licence in the autumn. 



But the charm of Tweed fishing does not rest alone 

 on the sport. Every hillside, every haugh, is associated 

 with some story of Border chivalry, and is full of 

 memories to one who takes the trouble to learn the 

 simple lore. When Washington Irving first visited 

 Abbotsford, and Scott took him to the top of the 

 Delectable Mountains to view the widespread glory 

 of Lammermuir, Torwoodlee, Ettrick and Teviotdale, 

 he could hardly believe that this was the actual scene 

 of enchantment. 



' I gazed about me,' he wrote afterwards, ' for a time with 

 mute surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I 

 beheld a mere succession of grey, waving hills, line beyond 

 line, as far as my eye could reach, monotonous in their 

 aspect, and so destitute of trees that one could almost see 

 a stout fly walking along their outline ; and the far-famed 

 Tweed appeared a naked stream, between bare hills, without 

 a tree or thicket on its banks. And yet such had been the 

 magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, 

 that it had a greater charm for me than the richest scenery 

 I had ever beheld in England.' 



It is true that had we never been drunk of the cup of 

 Scott's romance, the hills that tower so grandly in his 

 lays might have remained for us but geological pimples, 

 the vaunted merse but indifferently drained meadow 

 ground, the grey peles of Smailholm and Earlstoun but 

 inconvenient, rudely built country-houses caruerunt 

 quia vate sacro ; but nevermore shall one pass through 

 this land indifferent to the apocalypse which dawned 



