158 Historic Notices of llatujhton Castle. 



side, above Bellingham, on the Nortk Tyne ; and the scene is the 

 subject of one of the frescoes at Wallington, in which the late 

 Mr W. A. Charlton sat to the painter as the lord of the castle. 

 The story goes on to say that while Sir Hugh de Widdrington 

 and his retainers set out on their needful quest, and having re- 

 turned — it is not told us with what success — were sleeping that 

 night the sleep of the wearied if not of the just, his natural 

 enemy, Sir Haco of Featherstone Castle, on the South Tyne, and 

 hisband, overpowered the warder and gained a footing in the Castle 

 yard, hoping to drive the cattle forth without discovery in the 

 silence and darkness. But Sir Hugh was awakened by the tramp 

 of armed men, and, suspecting his mortal foe, very literally cir- 

 cumvented him by passing from the castle through an underground 

 way to the chapel on the lawn, which has long been ruinous, and 

 thence into the open air. Half of the South Tyne men were 

 wounded or slain, and the rest fled for their lives. Sir Haco was 

 unhorsed, taken prisoner, and placed in durance. Marion, the 

 fair daughter of the unfortunate lord of Featherstone, asked per- 

 mission of her mother to crave her father's life from his fierce 

 captor, whom, when she reaches Haughton Castle under the 

 charge of their chaplain, and kneeling to Sir Hugh prefers her re- 

 quest, she in her turn captures by love's potent power. A 

 marriage shortly ensues at Featherstone, when the deadly feud 

 of three generations, "bequeathed from bleeding sire to son," 

 is healed thereby, and thus "all's well that ends well." 

 ' Various historic scenes and associations and legendary in- 

 cidents, as we can now perceive, have clustered round the hoary 

 walls and battlements of this ancient Border fortress. The place 

 that once knew as its feudal masters Swynburns and Wid- 

 dringtons, famous in Scottish and English story, knows them no 

 more, it may be for ever. The noble stream of North Tyne, 

 where many a salmon leaps, still flows calmly or dashes rapidly 

 along its rocky bed above and below the ancient ferry, as 

 it did 700 years ago, "making sweet music with the enamelled 

 stones." The wooded slopes are as beautiful as of yore on both 

 its banks, rendering not inappropriate the name of the green, 

 tlower-gemined, retiring haugh on the opposite side, studded 

 with its leafy trees and undergrowth, which is familiar to the 

 local ear as "Paradise." These are the same; but the old 

 dwellers in the massive "strength" which towers above them 

 almost in its pristine glory, even the last descendants of the last 



