16 Report of Meetings for 1885. By Jas. Hardy. 



refuge with, their families far from their native clime. A high 

 hill called Jock's Hill catches the eye to the eastward. It is 

 equally pre-eminent from the Bughtrig Hills, and Wooden Law 

 beyond the Kale. The folks of Newbigging were a simple race. 

 The favourite story kept up against them has always been that 

 of their attempt to catch the moon. " The legend goes that they 

 from time to time seeing the moon shining over the hill, took it 

 into their beads to try and lay hold of it. They therefore formed 

 themselves into a band .one nigbt, and placing a ladder upon a 

 sled, they climbed to the top of Jock's Hill, intending to rest 

 the ladder foot there, and thereby capture the luminary. To 

 their surprise they found themselves as far as ever from the 

 moon, and they felt baffled and descended the hill. On reaching 

 the village, one of the party declared, to his astonishment, he 

 found the moon shining into the hen's baulk. The moon, they 

 concluded, was too fickle to lay hold of." (W. Brockie in Border 

 Treasury, p. 186). 



Birkenside, along the rising ground on our left, is a long belt 

 of dark fir wood of 300 acres, on .the estate of the Marquis of 

 Lothian, who is the predominant landowner in the parish. None 

 of it is allowed to be cut, and it consists of excellent old red pine. 

 An ancient iron-axe has been found near Birkenside. Reaching 

 the road that traverses the narrow vale of Oxnam water, the 

 carriages turned up by the school-house and Burnmouth, that 

 the company might see the ancient marks of cultivation, still 

 vividly traced on the green sward of the hill slopes. On the 

 depression between the road and the Oxnam, opposite Blood}- - 

 laws Hill, the foundation of Bloodylaws Peel, were discovered 

 while draining about 25 years ago. The well that supplied it 

 with water was tapped. Its " strand " trickled into the "Peel 

 syke," which finds its way to the Oxnam. 



Mr Thomson, Towford, states that there are two fields around 

 the old Peel called the " Berwickers." "To the east of these 

 existed some seventy or eighty years ago a house called the 

 ' Arkers.' " Arlcers is marked in the map of the parish, given in 

 the old Statistical Account, but scarcely so contiguous as this. 

 I have suggested that these names may inform us where some 

 of the old Bercarice or sheepcotes may have been placed. The 

 word is well known in charters, and may have descended in a 

 corrupted form. There is an example from a neighbouring parish. 

 Cecilia, the daughter of Eschina of Molle.gave the Kelso monks 



