274 FISHING GOSSIP. 



THE TWEED AT DRYBURGH. 



A MORE appropriate resting-place for our great na- 

 tional minstrel and novelist could not have been 

 selected than the cloister-grounds of Dryburgh 

 Abbey. They lie within the circle where his brother 

 enchanter, Sir Michael Scott of Oakwood, is tra- 

 ditionally asserted to have set to task his clamorous 

 familiar, and through its agency 



" Cleft the Eildon Hills in three, 

 And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone." 



Thomas of Ercildoun, also (the Rhymer as he was 

 called), spun his boding octosyllabics within a horn's 

 sound of the sacred precincts. Melrose and the 

 nameless den haunted by the "white ladye of 

 Avenel," whose draped figure, moulded in alto relievo 

 centuries ago, embellishes the roof of one of the 

 banqueting apartments at Gala House, are not far 

 off ; and on the slope of a conspicuous height stands 

 erect the cynosure of all eyes Smailholin Tower. 

 In regard to its more immediate accessories and 

 points of attraction, Dryburgh Abbey, as a ruin, 

 carries the palm among the four great religious 



