NOTES ON WILLIAM SCOTT. BY T CRAIG-BROWN 103 



the Esk and Tima. On a certain occasion in 1842, he was 

 taking two headstones to Yarrow with two carts, and was 

 driving the second cart. Probably falling asleep on the shaft, 

 he fell off, and the cart passed over his body. The man driving 

 the cart in front did not observe the accident, and drove on 

 some distance before finding out the loss of his companion. 

 The accident happened about 100 yards to the west of the 

 cottage at Hopehouse called the Shank End, and close to the 

 present smithy. The body was found by Kirsty Brown, 

 afterwards wife of Matthew Palmer, who was 22 years of age 

 at the time of the accident, and knew William Scott, and who 

 furnished these particulars. Palmer says he was something 

 better than a labouring man, rather like a dominie, and 

 reckoned a clever man ; but he never heard that Scott had 

 put oot a huiky There being no hoadstone to his memory 

 in Ettrick churchyard, Palmer's idea that Scott's body must 

 have been taken back with the carts to his own country is 

 probably right. The name "Thirlestone Cottage " was put on 

 the Newcastleton headstone in ignorance of the real name 

 of the house where Scott breathed his last, immediately after 

 being lifted into it. The stone in the churchyard is a very 

 elaborate one ; indeed it forms quite a feature in the place. 

 One of Wm. Scott's sons was professor of Oriental Languages 

 in Aberdeen, and another was schoolmaster of Beath, in 

 Fifeshire. 



Scott's books are of little or no value, being slipshod in style, 

 inaccurate in fact, and somewhat uncontrolled as regards 

 imagination. An idea of their reliability may be formed from 

 his description of Philiphaugh as the place where the " Marquis 

 of Graham" was defeated ("Exploits," page 239), and of 

 Sunderland Hall as "an ancient building belonging to Sir 

 Walter Scott, Bart." (" Beauties," page 2U8). Nevertheless, 

 when one considers the difficulties and disabilities under which 

 he must have laboured his work appears meritorious. It 

 involved considerable taking of pains ; and where he deals with 

 what came under his own notice (the excavations of Hermitage 

 Castle, for example), he succeeds in achieving work of real 

 value. It was a life apparently of some vicissitudes ; and the 

 end — that of a man not without culture and learning reduced to 

 carting stones in his old age and crushed to death under one of 

 his own loads — is pathetic enough. 



