386 Anniversary Address. 



shealings) here and there, among their several flocks." * The 

 survey of 1542 describes the Redesdale men as living in sheels 

 during the summer months and pasturing their cattle in the 

 grains and hopes of the country, on the south side of the 

 Coquet about Wilkwood and Redlees. We had expected a 

 waterfall at the Linn above Linnbrig, but it is only a rapid, 

 occasioned by the river rushing through a deft ; but the pool 

 is there — the true linn, in the original acceptation of the word 

 — dark and bottomless. We examined here the interesting 

 junction of the porphyry with the lowest formation — the 

 Tuedian— of the carboniferous system, whose beds are tilted 

 up. This was also seen in the Redlees burn. An amphi- 

 theatre of flatter ground opened up to us as we got on the hill- 

 side above the Linn, and traced the Coquet up by Shillmoor 

 away towards the Border side ; and yet not so depressed but 

 that broad hill still rose over hill, and interweaving with one 

 another, till on the horizon they formed a rim whereon the 

 shadows of the clouds reposed. The western side was bleaker 

 and wilder, and speckled with heath. On the east stood 

 Cushet Law, the monarch of Kidland. It was somewhere up 

 on those far-off wilds that, some three hundred years ago, the 

 indwellers of Alwinton kept watch and ward, by day as 

 well as by night, to prevent the country from being harried 

 by the audacious Scottish reivers. October 6, 1551. *^ The 

 Day-Watch of Ryddys-daill." " The inhabitants of Allenton, 

 and the Parkheyd, to watch at Paspetheheyde, with two men 

 in the watch ; and Persevall Harbottell, and John Wylkyn- 

 son, to be setters and searchers of that Watch." " So the 

 Day watch of Ryddysdaill ends at Paspethe ; where it joyns 

 with Cookedaill." " The Day-watch of Cookdaill." " Allen- 

 ton to watch to Paspethe with two men every day ; setters 

 and searchers of this watch John Wylkinson, the Laird of 

 Donesgrene, John Wylkinson, otherwise called Gordes John" 

 *' Item, the passages from Allenton to Clenell, to be kept with 

 four men [nightly] of the inhabitors of Allenton, the Park- 

 heyd, Newton, Foxton and New hall."t Unarmed parties 



« Camden's Britannia, by Gibson, p. 1079. 

 t Nicholson's Border Laws, pp. 179, 181, 183. 



