10 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



only just before the spawning season. One may further say, I 

 think, that the fish are not generally seen for long; they vanish 

 from sight with singular regularity. I recollect getting a leister 

 from a quaint old man of Tweedsmuir. It was, or is, for I have it 

 still, a rude and heavy weapon of four prongs, probably made by a 

 local blacksmith. I remembered that the prong points were much 

 blunted on the stones of Tweed. " Eicht or wrang I dinna ken Mr. 

 Calderwood," was the reply, " but its ta'en oot many a dozen." The 

 farm hands in the neighbourhood, and indeed the farmers themselves 

 in some cases, do not consider their winter complete if they have 

 not a night or two at " burning the water." The signs by which the 

 movements of the water bailiffs are made known to the initiated are 

 very interesting, but I am not going to tell how much I know on that 

 point. At Broughton the Biggar water enters. For a few miles it 

 is little but a deep broad ditch, but a good many salmon go up it at 

 " the back end." In times of flood they penetrate into Coulter Burn, 

 which flows from a flat divide, and occasionally when the water is 

 high flows to the Clyde at one end and to Biggar Water at the other. 

 Hence it sometimes happens that Tweed salmon find themselves 

 above the Falls of Clyde, and parr are subsequently caught where no 

 parr ought to be. 



An early writer, one Dr. Pennecuick, writes of the head water of 

 the river as follows : " Tweed runneth for the most part with a soft, 

 yet trotting stream, towards the north-east, the whole length of the 

 country, in several meanders, passing first through the Paroch of 

 Tweed's moor, the place of its birth, then running Eastward, it 

 watereth the parishes of Glenholm, Drumelzear, Broughton, Dawick, 

 Stobo, Lyne, Manor, Peebles, Traquair, Innerleithen, and from thence 

 in its course to the March at Galehope-burn, where, leaving Tweedale, 

 it beginneth to water the Forest on both sides, a little above Elibank." 

 A soft yet trotting stream may be said to be the character the whole 

 way to the sea, yet with increase of volume comes the dignity of 

 the large river, and the powerful glide and swirl. 



Tweed has not gone far before an old Peel Tower is passed, for in 

 the old days a line of signals could be flashed " from Berwick to the 

 Bield," and those towers are characteristic of the Tweed to this day. 



Many of them are not now to be readily identified. The highest 

 of all, for instance, Old Oliver Castle, which was in touch with 

 Drumelzier, is now no longer visible. The most famous in those 

 upper waters is Neidpath Castle, a short distance above Peebles. 

 Like Oliver it originally seems to have belonged to the Frasers. It 



