Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
left of it, merely two sides indeed, and it was only tenanted 
by Daws and Bunnies. It stood on a little knowe with a 
few scroggy trees near it, and was surrounded by a mire, 
almost dry, which in old days was probably full of bogwater. 
The purple hills, scarred with brown plough-rigs, rose 
around, and one could easily imagine Julian Avenel’s burly 
mosstroopers hurrying home after a successful raid in some 
far green valley on the “ English side.” 
The men of the Merse were said long ago to be famed 
for bravery and boldness, and the women of the Merse for 
beauty. The word Merse is sometimes said to have come 
from the old Teutonic word Mersche , a marsh, and cer- 
tainly some parts of the neighbourhood are known to have 
been nothing but marshland. The Merse proper is said to 
lie between the Lammermuir hills on the north, the Tweed 
on the south (the English dividing-line), and Lauderdale on 
the west. 
But, although the men of the Merse are law-abiding 
enough now, the innate love of fighting awakes whenever 
the Empire calls to arms, and Scottish regiments never lack 
Border men. But now the only raiders to be seen were 
sundry Blackheaded Grey Gulls called Pickie Maws, or 
sometimes Pictarnies. In “ The Antiquary,” Sir W. Scott 
calls them Pictarnies ; the Farsearchers, as'Hurdis calls them, 
and Greycoated Pensioners. They were following the 
distant ploughmen and “ lifting ” the insects and worms 
turned up. They had their home over the brow of the 
hill beyond a great firwood, in a tiny loch surrounded by 
marshy ground, and nearly choked by reeds and rushes, 
called the Pickie Moss, or Mire, where we saw their nests, 
like untidy bundles of straw, floating out of reach in the 
very centre of the bog. A widespread tradition calls Gulls 
the souls of shipwrecked seamen, and says they cannot 
stay long away from the sea. True it is that, like the 
Vikings of old, the Pictarnies at times completely dis- 
appear from their inland rests and wing their way back to 
the sea. In September and October the myr is deserted, 
we are told, not a grey feather to be seen. But since the 
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