Norham. 229 



Sir Walter Scott, in the opening of " Marmion," 

 has this fine description of Norham : — 



■ " Day set on Norham's castled steep, 

 And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 



And Cheviot's mountains lone : 

 The battled towers, the donjon keep, 

 The loophole grates, where captives weep, 

 The flanking walls that round it sweep, 



In yellow lustre shone. 

 The warriors on the turrets high, 

 Moving athwart the evening sky, 



Seem'd forms of giant height : 

 Their armour, as it caught the rays, 

 Flash'd back again the western blaze, 



In lines of dazzling light." 



From the ramparts of nodding Neidpath Castle, the 

 dying girl bent down to * hail the banished lover, 

 recalled, alas ! too late, by a sorrowing father. She 

 met the unrecognising glance raised to her changed > 

 face, and stricken by the pang of pain, fell back dead, 

 while the lover was hurrying up the stair to greet her. 

 Elibank Tower, the rude home of Muckle-mou'ed Meg, 

 sung often in ballad, and idealised by Browning, over- 

 looks the Tweed, the Siller Tweed, which Scott pined 

 for by " the yellow Tiber and the green, becastled 

 Rhine." 



And then there is Abbotsford, sacred to the memory 

 of the Magician of the North, and Ashestiel, his first 

 love on the classic stream (of which we speak else- 

 where), and Yair, the home of a branch of the power- 

 ful Pringles, and many another classic house and 

 home, each with its own history, its own traditions, its 

 legends and song lore. 



A very different aspect does the Scottish river pre- 

 sent, when it glides down into something of a lake-like 



