128 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1904 



family it remains, one of them having been appointed in 

 1542 "captain and keeper of the place and castle of Newark, 

 with power to make deputies and constables." The Castle, 

 however, though romantically situated, owes its fame rather 

 to the poetic fancy of the Border Minstrel, than to the 

 prowess of "mighty earls," having been selected by him as 

 the scene of the recital of the Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

 Passing on the right the handsome modern mansion of 



Broadmeadows — to which in 1803 Sir Walter 

 Yarrow. Scott, in the hope of becoming its possessor, 



appointed the Ettrick Shepherd to be steward — 

 and the road over Minchmoor, a broad-based mountain rising 

 1,856 feet above the sea-level, and dividing the valleys of the 

 Yarrow and Tweed, the traveller reaches Hangingshaw, the 

 home of the "outlaw" Murray, who maintained a retinue 

 worthy of a king, and, if the burden of the ballad regarding 

 him may be accepted, was in a position to treat with his 

 rightful Sovereign on his own terms. The old tower has 

 entirely disappeared ; but the situation, at a time when the 

 surrounding hills were clad with Forest trees, was eminently 

 suited to serve as the stronghold of a disaffected baron. The 

 late Dr Russell, in his Reminiscences of Yarrow, narrates : 

 "Hangingshaw Castle had a commanding position halfway 

 up the hill, with a long straight avenue in front and behind, 

 flanked by noble beeches. A few feet of the walls, with a 

 broken arched chamber, were still to be seen within the 

 memory of man. The more modern Mansion-house that stood 

 hard-by was burned to the ground while still in the possession 

 of the Murrays — a circumstance that crowned their mis- 

 fortunes." From this point the prospect widens, and assumes 

 a pastoral character, the Yarrow, lined by mountain ash and 

 hazel, glistening like a thread of silver amid a landscape 

 seamed with rills and mountain pathways, along whose course 

 full many a deed of chivalry and vengeance has been enacted. 

 Following the excellent Itinerary provided by Mr Craig Brown, 

 the party had their attention drawn to the farm of Tinnis, 

 on the right, which in 1600 passed from the possession of 

 the Homes, represented by John, brother to Alexander Home 

 of Manderston, Berwickshire, into that of James Pringle of 

 Buckholm, and thereafter in 1619 became the property of the 



