408 Notes on Tarroiu. By James Hardy. 



9. The Tomb of CocTcburn of Henderland ; and the owners ofHender- 

 land Estate. 



We now pass out of Yarrow and the skirts of St. Mary's Loch 

 into Megget (or Meggat) dale, to view the ruined tower of the 

 Cockburns of Henderland, (a family now extinct), and the site 

 of the little chapel and churchyard, where probably weie deposi- 

 ted under a memorial slab, the remains of the founder of the 

 chapel and his spouse ; — Peter de Cockburn and his wife Marjory. 

 The tomb has got mixed up, both in literature and in the popular 

 belief, with the history of an unworthy scion of the race, who 

 was more enamoured with the half-savage career of a leader of 

 thieves, and the " idle limmers " of the Borders, than the straight- 

 forward path of loyalty and fair dealing ; a traitor to his sovereign, 

 and a waster of the family inheritance ; who met with a tragic 

 end as the meed of his crimes, which left a lasting impression not 

 only among the dwellers among these hills, in his own generation, 

 but is not even yet obliterated. Although we are now awake to 

 the reality of events as they happened, it will probably not dissi- 

 pate the cherished opinion, and this spot will continue to be 

 visited as the tomb of an imaginary Piers Cockburn, whom the 

 king of Scotland cruelly hanged, without a form of trial, over the 

 gate of his own tower, and not as the mausoleum of a Border 

 chieftain of stainless name and exemplary conduct. The popu- 

 lar tale is thus related by Mr Elliot Aitchison in the " Scottish 

 Journal of Topography, Antiquities," etc., i. pp. 126-7 ; 

 Edinburgh, 1847, now become a rare book. 



" When James V., in 1530, made an excursion to the Border, to restore 

 peace to the ' Debateable Land,' Cockburn fell a victim to the royal venpje- 

 ance — justice it could not be called, and the deed is still regarded by the 

 peasantry of the district as one of unjustifiable tyranny. On the king and 

 hia armed followers reaching Henderland" Tower, a message was sent to 

 Cockburn that he was wanted immediately. The borderer, being at 

 dinnor, returned an answer that he would not stir, were it the king him- 

 self who wanted him, until he had finished his repast. The messenger 

 was sent back to say that it was the ' king himself ' who wanted him, and 

 that he might prepare for instant death. Thus taken by surprise — hia 

 followers being absent, and surrounded only by his family — the knife with 

 which he had been eating dropped from Cockburn' s hand, for well he knew 

 the object of the royal visit — and without being allowed a moment's pre- 

 paration for death, he was hanged over his own gateway. His body was 

 buried on the top of a little knoll on the other side of the tributary brook 

 which flows past the ruins, and a " through-stone " [the figure shows that 

 it ia not a through-stone] marks the spot, which was lately enclosed and 



