78 Dr. Wilson's Notes on the 



levels, has now, for the most part, gradually drained itself off 

 to the westward. Into this loch had flowed the waters of the 

 Cheviots, entering it, as the little river Kail, by a narrow 

 gorge towards the eastern extremity: and it is doubtless 

 through the agency of this often impetuous current, that 

 those alterations have chiefly been effected which have divert- 

 ed the stream from what is now the narrow limits of Linton 

 Loch ; and left it contracted to a few stagnant pools, imbedded 

 in a deep but not extensive morass, from which, however, still 

 flows a considerable body of water by an artificially constructed 

 chaimel . The near vicinity of the loch presents many localities 

 of interest, as well in legendary lore as from later associations. 

 The hollow at Wormington, still known as the " worm's hole," 

 marks, according to the familiar story, the ancient haunt of a 

 monstrous serpent or dragon, the destruction of which, by 

 William de Somerville, obtained for him the gift of the sur- 

 rounding barony from William the Lion. The little knoll, 

 consisting wholly of fine sand, on which the church of Linton 

 is built, has seemed to the peasant to justify the tradition, that 

 its elevation was the work of two sisters, who sifted the heap 

 as a voluntary penance, to expiate in a brother the crime of 

 murder. The traces of the foundations of the neighbouring 

 fortalice, still lurking under their covering of green sward, 

 recal the memory of more than one of the scarcely less stirring 

 while more authentic scenes of border warfare ; and closer to 

 the loch, perched above its southern margin, we have the little 

 possession of Wideopen, the inheritance of the poet Thomson, 

 who is said to have gathered here, among the storms of the 

 hills, many of the materials for the admirable descriptions in 

 his poem of Winter.^ Through the adjoining tract of the 

 Cheviots, spreads that range of which it could be said, as in 

 the ballad of the Battle of Otterbourne : — 



" The deer runs wild on hill and dale, 

 The birds fly wild frae tree to tree." 



Few places, therefore, could be more appropriate for the dis- 

 covery of any remains which were to aid in giving body to our 

 traditions, as in forming a link between remote and existing 

 states of civilization. 



The moss, which constitutes the body of the Linton morass, 

 is variable in depth, and covers a very extensive deposit of 

 marl, to obtain which, for agricultural purposes, operations 

 on a considerable scale were undertaken by the tenant, Mr. 

 Purves, by whom the relic of the interesting animal, found in 



* History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, vol. iii., p. 21 : Linton and 

 its Legends. 



