270 Report of Meetings. By James Hardy. 



flowery braes, gay with the sunflower-cistus and scented with 

 the mountain-thyme ; 



" While a lone fairy angler, with glimmering hand, 

 From the thyme-laden banks waves her delicate wand." 



The gloom of Yarrow is merely a poetical fiction ; it is a quiet 

 pastoral valley, fully as animated and cheerful as any other far 

 withdrawn river-basin enclosed by heavy and not particularly 

 picturesque hills massed behind each other. These are grander 

 and wilder where they, as it were, draw themselves up to their 

 full height, and approximate to enclose St. Mary's Loch and the 

 Loch of the Lowes ; and dark peat rifts scar their mossy brows. 



Cultivation to some extent attends the stream, with greater or 

 less continuity, nearly to St. Mary's Loch, forming a narrow 

 verge to the green or heathy grazings on the back ground. 

 There are thriving crops of grain, and turnips, and clover grass, 

 almost up to the lake's brink. The farm-houses and buildings 

 are superior, and the cottages are better even than several in the 

 low country ; most of them are slated, and a thatched dwelling is 

 the exception. 



We pass Lewenshope and Tinnis, and then reach the broken 

 Deuchar bridge (a narrow bridge for riders and pack-horses), 

 near which the mill only now survives. Deuchar was a stirring 

 place once, when the carriers traversed the country from Ettrick 

 and made it a rendezvous. It once had its own chapel and 

 tower of defence. The highway to Edinburgh, in those times, 

 went up Deuchar burn — over Deuchar hill and Minchmoor to 

 Traquair. Deuchar-swyre was the scene of the events that 

 gave origin to the woeful ballad, " The Dowie Dens of Yarrow." 

 " A fairer rose did never bloom, 

 Than there lay cropped on Yarrow." 



The first halt was called at Yarrow Kirk, where the company 

 alighted to see the church of the Eutherfords and Eussells, and 

 the resort of the Ettrick Shepherd and his family! on the day of 

 rest. The manse is well sheltered with trees, and is favoured 

 with other amenities. The church, built in 1640, has no special 

 features of interest, unless it be a mural tablet at the back, 

 dedicated to the memory of the Eev. John Eutherf ord, — father 

 of Dr. John Eutherford, — "the Yarrow Doctor" — Professor of 

 the Practice of Medicine, in the early medical school in Edin- 

 burgh, and one of its institutors, — grandfather of Dr. Daniel 

 Eutherford, from 1786 to 1819 Professor of Botany in the 

 University of Edinburgh ; — and honoured also to have been the 



