358 Mr Hardy on Langleyford Vale and the Cheviots. 



because the flocks require to be herded, as a distinction from 

 Common burn, farther up, where there prevailed a sort of 

 socialism as regarded occupancy. The bank that descends 

 to Care burn is the Armer brae. The hill-side on the left 

 is the Slack, indicating a depression in the hills. There is in 

 it a uoted foxhole, and tiny water-fall with its crop of brittle 

 and other ferns ; and still farther up a miniature representa- 

 tion, in its broken tiers of pillared rocks, like the fragments 

 of an aurora, of the grander Heiihole. Indeed, the shapes of 

 the hills, whether conical, or lumpy, or rock crowned, as well 

 as the configuration of ravines, are over and over repeated 

 among the Cheviots. The opposite hill, with its grand 

 steeps of blue glitters and scanty share of grass, is Hartheugh. 

 You stumble here and there upon small camps amongst the 

 wilderness of ferns on its south-eastern flanks ; and at its 

 tops, for it has two, are many folds, and hut-circles to guard 

 them. In modern times a house had been erected between 

 its eminences ; for the summit comprehends a very con- 

 siderable rock-roughened and benty space. The wind, it is 

 said, once blew up the hearthstone, which is still reckoned 

 by the shepherds a marvel ; but as the last occupant was a 

 reputed witch, such an occurrence might have been taken 

 for granted. After this, we are quite prepared to find on the 

 other side of Hartheugh, the Devil's Knowe and Hell-path. 

 Crossing Care-burn, we come upon the Using-Shank, which 

 may admit of a variety of meanings. Old Using stood near 

 Broadstruther. The next hill-face to Broadstruther is Luk- 

 inarks ; and there is a field of the same name at Middleton 

 Hall. We have also Arks among the southern Cheviots, and 

 in Roxburghshire. Airig, in Gaelic, is a summer pasture ; 

 and lucken is a bog in Ettrick Forest : which applies well 

 enough here. Farther over, where we again look down upon 

 Langleyford vale, is the hill called the Sneer. Sneer, by a 

 reference to Jamieson, is equivalent to snifter ; and I have 

 no doubt there is cold enough on it to make both shepherd 

 and dog turn up their noses. Its highest peak is appropri- 

 ately named Cold-law. So far for the minor topography. 



The eastern grassy end of the Sneer hill has once been the 

 scene of British cultivation ; traces of their twisted ridges, 

 balks, huts, tombs, folds, with others of more recent con- 

 struction at the expense of the ancient, and fence walls nearly 

 obliterated, being scattered up to and across the ridges. Mr 



