The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 22

But near Tweedmouth, in the fields of oats and wheat, we came upon whole gangs of girls cutting down thistles. Each was armed with a kind of reaping-hook at the end of a pole. Very picturesque they looked at a distance in their short dresses of green, grey, pink, or blue. But the remarkable thing about them was this. They all wore bonnets with an immense flap behind, and in front a wonderful contrivance called "an ugly"--a sunshade which quite protected even their noses. And this was not all, for they had the whole of the jaws, chin, and cheeks tied up with immense handkerchiefs, just as the jaws of the dead are sometimes bound up.

I could not make it out. Riding on with my tricycle some distance ahead of the Wanderer, I came upon a gang of them--twenty-one in all--having a noontide rest, sitting and reclining on the flowery sward.

I could not help stopping to look at them. From the little I could see of their faces some were really pretty. But all these "thistle la.s.sies"

had their "uglies" on and their jaws tied up.

I stopped and looked, and I could no more help making the following remark than a lark can help singing.

"By everything that's mysterious," I said, "why have you got your jaws tied up? You're not dead, and you can't all have the toothache."

I shall never forget as long as I live the chorus of laughing, the shrieks of laughter, that greeted this innocent little speech of mine.

They _did_ laugh, to be sure, and laughed and laughed, and punched each other with open palms, and laughed again, and some had to lie down and roll and laugh. Oh! you just start a Northumbrian la.s.sie laughing, and she will keep it up for a time, I can tell you.

But at last a young thing of maybe sweet seventeen let the handkerchief down-drop from her face, detached herself from the squad, and came towards me.

She put one little hand on the tricycle wheel, and looked into my face with a pair of eyes as blue and liquid as the sea out yonder.

"We tie our chins up," she said, "to keep the sun off."

"Oh-h-h!" I said; "and to save your beauty."

She nodded, and I rode on.

But in speaking of my adventure with the thistle la.s.sies to a man in Berwick--"Yes," he said, "and those girls on a Sunday come out dressed like ladies in silks and satins."

I remember that our first blink o' bonnie Scotland was from the hill above Tweedmouth. And yonder below us lay Berwick, with its tall, tapering spires and vermilion-roofed houses. Away to the left, far as eye could reach, sleeping in the sunlight, was the broad and smiling valley of the Tweed. The sea to the right was bright blue in some places, and a slaty grey where cloud shadows fell. It was dotted with many a white sail, with here and there a steamboat, with a wreath of dark smoke, fathoms long, trailing behind it.

Berwick-on-Tweed, I have been told more than once, belongs neither to Scotland nor to England. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It is a county by itself. My royal mistress ought therefore to be called Queen of Great Britain, Berwick, and Ireland. But I will have it thus: Berwick _is_ part and parcel of Scotland. Tell me not of English laws being in force in the pretty town; I maintain that the silvery Tweed is the natural dividing line 'twixt England and the land of mountain and flood.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

SCENES IN BERWICK--BORDER MARRIAGES--BONNIE AYTON.

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, 'This is my own, my native land;'

Whose heart has ne'er within him burned As home his weary footsteps, turned From wandering on a foreign strand?"

These lines naturally rang through my mind as I rode on my cycle over the old bridge of Tweed. The caravan was a long way behind, so after getting fairly into Berwick I turned and recrossed the bridge, and when I met the Wanderer I gave the tricycle up to Foley, my worthy valet and secretary, for I knew that he too wanted to be able to say in future that he had ridden into Scotland.

Yes, the above lines kept ringing through my mind, but those in the same stirring poem that follow I could not truthfully recite as yet--

"Oh! Caledonia, stern and wild, Nurse meet for a poetic child; Land of brown heath and s.h.a.ggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood."

--Because round Berwick the scenery is not stern and wild, and though there may be roaring floods, the mountains hold pretty far aloof.

Through narrow archways, and up the long, steep streets of this border town, toiled the Wanderer. We called at the post-office and got letters, and went on again, seeking in vain for a place of rest. We were nearly out of the town, when, on stopping for a few minutes to breathe the horses, I was accosted by a gentleman, and told him my wants.

Ten minutes afterwards the great caravan lay comfortably in a pork-curer's yard, and the horses were knee-deep in straw in a neighbouring stable.

A German it is who owns the place. Taking an afternoon walk through his premises, I was quite astonished at the amount of cleanliness everywhere displayed. Those pigs are positively lapped in luxury; of all sorts and sizes are they, of all ages, of all colours, and of all breeds, from the long-snouted Berkshire to the pug-nosed Yorker, huddled together in every att.i.tude of innocence. Here are two lying in each other's arms, so to speak, but head and tail. They are two strides long, and sound asleep, only dreaming, and grunting and kicking a little in their dreams. I wonder what pigs do dream about? Green fields, perhaps, hazel copses, and falling nuts and acorns. The owner of this property came in, late in the evening, and we had a pleasant chat for half an hour. About pigs? Yes, about pigs princ.i.p.ally--pigs and politics.

Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a wilder, more chequered, or more romantic history than the once-circ.u.mvallated Berwick-on-Tweed.

How far back that history dates is somewhat of a mystery, more in all likelihood than a thousand years, to the days of Kenneth the Second of Scotland. He it was, so it is written, who first made the Tweed the boundary between the two countries. Is it not, however, also said that the whole country north of Newcastle properly belongs to Caledonia?

However this may be, Berwick was a bone of contention and a shuttlec.o.c.k for many a century. Scores of fearful battles were fought in and around it; many a scene of carnage and ma.s.sacre has its old bell-tower looked down upon; ay, and many a scene of pomp and pageantry as well.

"It is a town," says an old writer, "that has been the delight, nay, but also the ransom of kings--a true Helena, for which many b.l.o.o.d.y battles have been fought; it has been lost and regained many times within the compa.s.s of a century of years, held in the hands of one kingdom for a time, then tossed by the other--a ball that never found rest till the advent of the Union."

Very little, I found, remained of its ancient castle, only a crumbling corner or two, only a few morsels of mouldering ruin, which makes one sad to think of.

The atmosphere is not over pure, and there is an all-pervading odour of fried fresh herrings, which a starving man might possibly relish.

I saw much of Berwick, but that much I have no s.p.a.ce here to describe.

Yet I would earnestly advise tourists to make this town their headquarters for a few weeks, and then to make excursions up the Tweed and into the romantic land of Scott and Hogg, the bard of Ettrick.

Indeed, the places of interest in this border country that lie on both sides of the Tweed are almost too numerous to be mentioned. Past the Ladies' Well you would go on your journey up stream, and there you would probably stop to drink, getting therefrom a cup that in reality cheers, but inebriates not. If an invalid, you might drink of this well for weeks, and perhaps continue your journey feeling in every vein and nerve the glad health-blood flowing free, feeling indeed that you had obtained a new lease of life. Onward you would go, pausing soon to look at the beautiful chain bridge, the tree-clad banks, and the merry fisher-boats.

Etal you would visit, and be pleased with its quiet beauty, its old castle on the banks of the smooth-flowing Till, and its cottages and gardens, its peace-loving inhabitants and happy children.

You would not miss Wooler, if only for the sake of the river and mountain scenery around it.

Nor Chillingham, with its parks of wild cattle, though you would take care to keep clear of the maned bulls.

If a Scot, while gazing on the battlefield of Flodden sad and melancholy thoughts would arise in your mind, and that mournful but charming song "The Flowers of the Forest" would run through your memory--

"I've seen Tweed's silver stream, Glittering in the sunny beam, Grow drumlie and dark as it rolled on its way.

O fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting?

O, why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?

Thy frowns cannot fear me, Thy smiles cannot cheer me, For the Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away."

[By the Flowers of the Forest he means the Scottish army at Flodden.]

The village of Norham would calm and delight an invalid, however nervous he might be, and the tree-foliage, the flowery sward, the grand old castle ruin once seen on a summer's day, or even in the quiet summer's gloaming, could never be forgotten.

Need I mention Floors Castle, Kelso Abbey, Melrose Abbey, or the abbeys of Jedburgh and romantic Dryburgh? Scott says--

"He who would see Melrose aright Must see it by the pale moonlight."

The same may be said about Dryburgh too.

Just a word about Saint Abb's Head, then I'll put my horses to, and the Wanderer shall hurry on northwards ho!

Here were the nunnery and chapel of Saint Abb, the ruins of the former still to be seen on the top of precipitous cliffs that stand out into the sea. Go, visit Saint Abb's on a stormy day, when the wild waves are dashing on the rocks, and the sea-birds screaming around. A feeling of such awe will steal over you as probably you never felt before.

On the 17th of July, about 2:30 pm, the Wanderer rolled out of Berwick, and at four o'clock we crossed the undisputed line which divides Scotland from sister England.

There are two old cottages, one at each side of the road. This is Lamberton.