REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1908 245 



At 10-45 the drive was resumed. In passing out of the 

 village the members were shown the birthplace of Rev. 

 Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), whose ministerial career 

 was associated with Lower Brixhara, a fishing village on the 

 Devonshire coast, and whose contribution to the hymnology 

 of our time is rendered evergreen through that " song 

 that may not die" — Abide with me. The course adopted lay 

 due North by Kaimflat, Stichill Eastfield, Legars and Hume- 

 hall, and proved of a switch-back order, making heavy 

 demands upon the horses. On all sides vegetation was in 

 an advanced stage considering the late and unpropitious 

 spring, a break of cabbages on Eastfield giving little 

 indication of having suffered from the severe storm and frost 

 of Saturday April 25th. The gradual ascent to Hume 

 afforded a tine prospect of the Merse in spite of a heat haze 

 which obscured the view towards Cheviot. It was mid-day ere 

 the party reached the straggling row of thatched cottages, 

 snugly set on a slope screened from the North by protruding 

 rock, which furnishes shelter for the cultivation of spring 

 flowers on which the villagers feed their bees, and entered 

 under the genial leadership of Mr John Cuthbert, registrar, 

 the precincts of the Castle. In the course, of a descriptive 

 paper he referred to the vast pages of the great book of 

 Nature spread out before them, the Stichill and Smailholm 

 hills with their "crag and tail," and the great glacial scoop, 

 the vale of Tweed below, with the Eastern Cheviot round 

 which ground glaciers and icebergs, compared with which 

 the greatest of man's inventions dwindle into insignificance. 

 Hume Castle, however, is not without distinction. Standing 

 on a rocky height about 700 feet above the sea, it formed 

 for centuries one of the chief bulwarks of the Borders. It 

 is now only a modernized ruin, its pseudo-battlements having 

 been built towards the close of the eighteenth century by 

 the last Earl of Marchmont, when the foundations of the 

 old fortress had been almost completely effaced. It has been 

 classified as a castle belonging to the First Period, forming 

 an irregular square and enclosed by a lofty wall about 6 ft. 

 in thickness. On the North-West this wall rises above a 

 precipice and is sufficiently well fortified ; but on the other 

 three sides, where the ground slopes gradually, flanking works 



