OUR PASTORAL LIFE. 241 



blooming heather ; and at midday he wooed her on the broomie 

 knowe, 



" Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom ;" 



and as twilight drew on she was his companion as he trod home- 

 wards his way through the darkening dean. These meetings, 1 need 

 not say, were all imaginary. Love often dallies with its own crea- 

 tions. I question if one of them ever happened, — certainly not one 

 in the dean without a name. The fearfu' bit lassie would have died 

 of palpitation and terror to have met any one, at such an hour, in 

 such a lonesome and ghaist-like place. The courage she could 

 muster never carried her further, in the twilight hour, than to the 

 secresy of the trysting tree, which stood in the village pathway, and 

 almost within call. 



The " trysting Tree " ! Ah ! there is something in that name 

 which carries us back to pleasant memories and associations which 

 " I may not tell you." Milton will have it that 



" every shepherd tells his tale 

 Under the Hawthorn in the dale;" 



Goldsmith delights to remember and to paint 



" The Hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade. 

 For talking age, and whispering lovers made ;" 



and Burns never drew a finer picture than when he placed the 

 " youthful, loving, modest pair" " beneath the milk-white Thorn that 

 scents the evening gale." It was a favourite scene with that great 

 poet. He has selected a similar locality to depict his meetings with his 

 Highland Mary ; and in his beautiful ballad entitled " The Soldier's 

 Return," he represents the " gallant sodger," when he has reached 

 the "bonnie glen" — "where early hfe I sported," — happy to recog- 

 nise the trysting thorn still remaining where he had won the affec- 

 tions of the faithful lass, " sweet as yon Hawthorn blossom." — -I am 

 very sure that these scenes would not have had the same charm, — 

 would not have summoned up the same landscape, — nor such sweet 

 associations of season and of place, had any other tree or bush than 

 the Hawthorn been selected. Well know the poets this. Hence a 

 pleasing, although a minor poet, made his boy Tammie find his ain 

 wee-thing 



" Down by the burnie whar flow'rs the Haw-tree;" 



and again Sir Walter Scott, when he traces the course of the troubled 

 loves of Cranston the Knight and of Margaret of Branksome— the 

 most interesting characters in his " Lay," — tells us 

 " A fairer pair were never seen 

 To meet beneath the Hawthorn green." 



We have, or have had, three famous Trysting Trees in our district. 

 One of them is, I think, an Elm which overshadows a walk by the 

 Teviot's silver stream near Roxburgh Castle. It has been celebrated 

 by Mr. Houy in some verses which have been published in a school 



VOL. I. ^ 



