Anniversary Address, S83 



been renewed since the day they were first set up ; so that — 



" Half effaced by rain and sliine, 

 The Eed Horse prances on the sign." 



Greyhound coursing in the autumn is said to give it notoriety. 

 The eye could now cross over to '^dark Simonside's" com- 

 manding hulk, surmounted like Ras-castle, &c., with its pecu- 

 liar diadem of sandstone cliiF. This sandstone series often 

 breaks off abruptly all at once, as in the bleak height above 

 Holystone; and its lower moors, as at Harbottle, are strewed 

 about in disorder with fantastic shaped rocks and crags, as if 

 they had been a battle field of the giants. This angularity of 

 outline, and the dark brown heath that invests them, form a 

 distinctive feature between them and the neatly modelled 

 green hills of the Cheviots, over against which they ever 

 stand with a dark menacing frown. In the broad interval of 

 arable country between the hills, in former ages, a strong 

 colony of laborious Saxons had formed a settlement, of which 

 there is still on evidence, the names attached to the manors 

 and farm-steadings, some of them not quite capable of ex- 

 planation, but looking like the coinage of one and the same 

 mint. For example there are Borrowdon, Elylaw, Scren- 

 wood, Netherton, Trewhitt (Trewyck), Yetlington, Lorbottle, 

 Sharperton, Farnham, Wreigh hill, Caistron (Kesterene), 

 Bickerton, Flotterton, Thropton, Wharton, Snitter, Carting- 

 ton, Harbottle, Biddleston, Harehaugh, Swindon, Rimpside, 

 E-yehill, &c. It was the descendants of these men that 

 flocked to Paulinus at Holystone, to obtain from him the 

 initiatory rite of Christianity. 



On our right " peeping out from a Druidical grove of huge 

 oaks," in a recess among the green hills, and half-way up their 

 sides, is Biddleston hall, the " Osbaldistone Hall," of the 

 author of '^Rob Roy;" but it is no longer "an antiquated 

 edifice." We now reached the actual scene of the Club's visit ; 

 the Coquet, so often sung in the " Fisher's Garlands," glitters 

 in crystal radiance ; further up, on the verge of the moors, 

 «ve discern the light gracefulness and fair tresses of the native 

 birch ; while beneath us, on a sheltered flat by the waterside, 

 very much in a cluster, lies the small village of Alwinton : 



