260 NOVEMBER 



Border. Its lords were chiefs of the once powerful 

 clan of Maxwells, and the hill on the north side of 

 the castle gave its name as their slogan * Wardlaw ! 

 bide Wardlaw ! ' Yonder to the south, beyond the 

 wide firth, the Cumberland hills Skiddaw and 

 Saddleback whitened with their first snow, show 

 pale, but clear ; paler and less clear, because of the 

 smoke-drifts from Whitehaven and Workington, 

 may be traced farther to the west the clustering 

 summits of the Isle of Man. On the east, the eye 

 rests on a truncated green cone, conspicuous over 

 the gentle elevations of the plain, as Carlyle exult- 

 ingly tells Goethe in one of his letters. This is 

 Birrenswark, a much fortified and oft contested 

 stronghold Trimontium of Eoman generals, who 

 thus rendered the Celtic name treamli monaidh, the 

 village on the hill. To the north the view is con- 

 tracted by the deep woodland encircling the massive 

 keep of Comlongan, still in the possession of the 

 Murrays. 



But in this land lying on the very highway of 

 English invasion let the eye once begin to wander, 

 and memories rise thick and fast from every hill 

 and hamlet, every tower and river. For the present, 

 I want to talk only of the humble little kirk among 



