274 FISHING GOSSIP. 
THE TWEED AT DRYBURGH. 
A MORE appropriate resting-place for our great na- 
tional minstrel and novelist could not have been 
selected than the cloister-grounds of Dryburgh 
Abbey. They lie within the circle where his brother 
enchanter, Sir Michael Scott of Oakwood, is tra- 
ditionally asserted to have set to task his clamorous 
familiar, and through its agency 
“ Cleft the Eildon Hills in three, 
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone.” 
Thomas of Ercildoun, also (the Rhymer as he was 
called), spun his boding octosyllabics within a horn’s 
sound of the sacred precincts. Melrose and the 
nameless den haunted by the “white ladye of 
Avenel,” whose draped figure, moulded in alto relievo 
centuries ago, embellishes the roof of one of the 
banqueting apartments at Gala House, are not far 
off ; and on the slope of a conspicuous height stands 
erect—the cynosure of all eyes—Smailholm Tower. 
In regard to its more immediate accessories and 
points of attraction, Dryburgh Abbey, as a ruin, 
carries the palm among the four great religious 
