Former Lines of Road about A shiesteel. 329 



moorland road was not the most favourable position for 

 watching the process of disappearance, but Sir Walter must 

 have known the ground well, and he appears to have been 

 cognisant of no probable place of concealment. The line 

 he had probably taken would be des^cribed as riding up the 

 Yair Hope, and by the Black Dale, which would be the moor 

 in question into the road down the Peel Burn or Glenkinnon. 

 The name of Black Dale seeuis to apply to the whole 

 north side of the hill called the Three Brethren Cairn, most 

 of which has a line growth of heather. 



The incident of Sir Walter's seeing the man on the moor 

 is quoted by Mr Lang, with reference to a much more 

 remarkable story, if only because much more thoroughly 

 investigated, which happened in his own experience. The 

 hero must apparently have been a little mad, at least have 

 had a twist, mentally ; but he certainly appears to have 

 been seen, by more than one person at once, in a place 

 where he was not. 



What ghosts there were at Ashiesteel were, to use the 

 technical term, auditory, not visible. The principal one was 

 the piper, who was said to have been murdered and buried 

 in the Piperdale Park, ttie small square held west of the 

 house. The maids used to assert they heard him playing 

 when sitting up on summer nights to watch the great annual 

 washings of former days. "Piperdale" is another good case 

 of the way in which dale is used in the district, it having 

 nothing to do with valley in the Tweed country. 



The road going up the Peel Burn, though it was supposed 

 to be somewhat a shorter line between Yair and Ashiesteel 

 than the highroad which followed the Tweed, was not at all 

 an obvious one to anyone not knowing the country ; and 

 when the Highlanders marched down the Tweed in 1745, the 

 cattle of the neighbouring farms were hidden in the 

 Hagberry Hole, on the Peel, which seems to have been 

 there, as now, a wooded hollow on a hillside, otherwise 

 covered with heather and grass. 



The hagberries or bird-cherries (which are common in the 

 neighbourhood) have been superseded, for the most part, by 

 other trees in this particular hollow. 



It does not seem to be generally known that in the 

 Highlands, or perhaps in parts of them, for the tree is very 

 QQ 



