Mr. Stuart on Melrose. 145 



but little damage was to be expected from wind ; nevertheless 

 thunderstorms and deluges of rain, with consequent floods from 

 the river, might have been more disastrous in their consequences, 

 but for the solidity of the foundation and strength of the masonry. 

 The monks of Brinkburn Priory succeeded in entailing their 

 beautiful church upon centiuies of generations, and the judicious 

 restorations now in progress will assist in furthering their endea- 

 vours for scores of generations to come. 



After we have viewed our subject with all its feudal accessories 

 of steel-clad founders, royal charters, and pious gifts of lands and 

 woods ; with all its architectural detail of tower, turret, and 

 cloister ; with fancied resonance of chant and chime still Hngering 

 in nooks ; the most romantic legend in connection with it still 

 remains untold. The fairies, dead and gone this many a weary 

 year, are supposed to he buried at Brinkburn. Peace be to their 

 tiny ashes ! for they coidd not have a more fitting place of sepul- 

 ture ; nor more verdant aisles than those from which the birds 

 and bees intone their requiem. 



\t\xmL 



By John Stuart, F.S.A., Edinburgh. 



The history of Melrose as a religious establishment draws back 

 to that early time when the torch of the Christian faith kindled at 

 the shrine of lona was soon after rekindled at holy Lindisfarne, 

 and dispersed its beneficent light over h-eathen Northumbria. At 

 that time the kingdom of the saintly Oswald extended through 

 Lothian to the Forth, and when, with the assistance of Aidan, 

 he had trained a colony of monks at Holy Island, he dispersed 

 them into various reHgious houses which he estabhshed. One of 

 these was Melrose, which dates from about the middle of the 7th 

 century. Of this monastery, Eata, one of twelve Saxon youths 

 instructed by Aidan, was the first Abbot, when Boisil was its 

 Prior. The next Prior, who as a boy, herded his flocks in the 

 neighbouring vale of the Leader, has, as the holy Cuthbert, left an 

 imperishable name, not so much for the many miracles attributed 

 to him by his biographers, as for the austere piety, unworldly 

 self-denial, and missionary zeal, by which he awed and converted 

 the neighbouring pagans to the Christian faith. 



This primitive monastery was burned by Kenneth, King of the- 

 Scots, in his invasion of the Saxon territory, b\it in 875 it seems 

 to have been rebuilt, when it became one of the resting places of 

 the body of St. Cuthbert, when removed from its sepulchre at 

 Lindisfarne, on account of the invasion of the Danes. Before the 

 end of the 1 1th century Melrose appears to have been ruined and 

 deserted, except for a short time between 1073 and 1075, when it 

 became the retreat of a few monks, among whom was the historiajX; 



