40 Dr. Wilson on Linton and its Legends. 



of sifting as much sand as would form the mound upon which 

 Linton church was to be built, his life might be saved. Female 

 hearts are kind, and enduring in their affections ; and the fond 

 sisters bent themselves to the task, which, through patient toil, 

 was at length completed, though at the sacrifice of one of 

 their lives. Thus the youth was delivered, and the stoneless 

 heap remains now as a clear testimony to many of the truth of 

 the legend, while a hollow, a short distance to the westward, 

 marks the spot from which the materials were taken. 



If we cast our eye, from this very eminence, over the plain 

 beneath us ; and, still more, if we follow the course of the Kail 

 towards the narrow outlet at Marlefield; it will appear evident 

 that the whole of the flat expanse has formed, at one time, the 

 bed of a considerable lake, of which a miserable remnant still 

 remains to the eastward, but by far the greater part of which has 

 been drained off, partly by being filled up through the debris 

 carried down from the hills, and partly by a gradual alteration 

 of the levels at the lower extremity. There would necessarily 

 be a time, before the Kail had completely worn its channel 

 through the old red sandstone at Marlefield, down to the existing 

 level, when, with every alternation of the seasons, as drought or 

 moisture prevailed, the bed of the lake would present either a 

 dry and barren surface to be swept over by the winds, or a wide 

 expanse covered by the waters of the freshet, charged with the 

 particles of fine silt or sand, the detritus of the Cheviot por- 

 phyries, which every tributary streamlet would sweep with it in 

 its course. On the subsidence of the waters, each new deposit 

 of sand would again be subjected to the influence of the sun and 

 the breeze ; and the prevailing south-westerly winds, passing with 

 violence over an expanse bare of herbage, would whirl it up in 

 clouds, and carry it eastward. The nearest of the neighbouring 

 eminences, so placed as to break the force and change the direction 

 of the gale, would cause it to deposit its burden ; and the sand, 

 eddying as it fell, would accumulate in heaps under the brow of 

 the height. A recurrence of this process, at short intervals, 

 through no very protracted series of years, would suffice to raise 

 such a mound as that of Linton ; and it was thus, in all proba- 

 bility, that the knoll was actually raised. 



The legend of the sisters must at once be abandoned, owing 

 to its incredibility. Even in these days, when our command over 

 the material world has risen so high, w T e can scarcely be asked to 

 contemplate the possibility of two maidens, though they had 

 toiled, each for three lives, with every conceivable amount of pa- 

 tience and ingenuity, being able to sift, into a material so exceed- 

 ingly minute in its particles, a mound of the dimensions of that of 

 Linton ; which at a rude estimate, but certainly not an exagge- 



