Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan», sayfa 9
Chapter Sixteen.
Sunny Memories of the Border-Land
“Pipe of Northumbria, sound;
War pipe of Alnwicke,
Wake the wild hills around;
Percy at Paynim war.
Fenwicke stand foremost;
Scots in array from far
Swell wide their war-host.
“Come clad in your steel jack,
Your war gear in order,
And down hew or drive back
The Scots o’er the border.”
Old Ballad.
“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer, – “I tell you what it is, you’ll never do it.”
He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be able to take her all in, optically, and his head was cocked a-trifle to one side, consideringly. “Never do what?”
“Never reach Scotland.”
“Why?”
“Why? First, because a two-ton caravan is too much for even two such horses as you have, considering the hills you will have to encounter; and, secondly,” he added with a sly smile, “because Scotchman never ‘gang back.’”
I seized that little world-wise editor just above the elbow. He looked beseechingly up at me.
“Let go?” he cried; “your fingers are made of iron fencing; my arm isn’t.”
“Can you for one moment imagine,” I said, “what the condition of this England of yours would be were all the Scotchmen to be suddenly taken out of it; suddenly to disappear from great cities like Manchester and Liverpool, from posts of highest duty in London itself, from the Navy, from the Army, from the Volunteers? Is the bare idea not calculated to induce a more dreadful nightmare than even a lobster salad?”
“I think,” said the editor, quietly, as I released him, “we might manage to meet the difficulty.”
But despite the dark forebodings of my neighbours and the insinuations of this editor, here I am in bonnie Scotland.
“My foot in on my native heath,
And my name is – ”
Well, the reader knows what my name is.
I have pleasant recollections of my last day or two’s drive in Northumberland north, just before entering my native land.
Say from the Blue Bell Hotel at Belford. What a stir there was in that pretty little town, to be sure! We were well out of it, because I got the Wanderer brought to anchor in an immensely large stackyard. There was the sound of the circus’s brass band coming from a field some distance off, the occasional whoop-la! of the merry-go-rounds and patent-swing folks, and the bang-banging of rifles at the itinerant shooting galleries; but that was all there was to disturb us.
I couldn’t help thinking that I never saw brawnier, wirier men than those young farmers who met Earl P – at his political meeting.
I remember being somewhat annoyed at having to start in a procession of gipsy vans, but glad when we got up the hill, and when Pea-blossom and Corn-flower gave them all the slip.
Then the splendid country we passed through; the blue sea away on our right; away to the left the everlasting hills! The long low shores of the Holy Isle flanked by its square-towered castle. It is high water while we pass, and Lindisfarne is wholly an island.
“Stay, coachman, stay; let us think; let us dream; let us imagine ourselves back in the days of long, long ago. Yonder island, my Jehu John, which is now so peacefully slumbering ’neath the midday sun, half shrouded in the blue mist of distance, its lordly castle only a shape, its priory now hidden from our view —
“‘The castle with its battled walls,
The ancient monastery’s halls,
Yon solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,
Placed on the margin of the isle.’
” – Have a history, my gentle Jehu, far more worthy of being listened to than any romance that has ever been conceived or penned.
“Aidan the Christian lived and laboured yonder; from his home in that lone, surf-beaten island scintillated, as from a star, the primitive rays of our religion of love.”
Jehu John (speaks): “Excuse me, sir, but that is all a kind o’ Greek to me.”
“Knowest thou not, my gentle John, that more than a thousand years ago that monastery was built there, that —
“‘In Saxon strength that abbey frowned
With massive arches broad and round,
That rose alternate row and row
On pond’rous columns short and low,
Built ere the art was known,
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk
The arcades of an alleyed walk
To emulate in stone.
On those deep walls the heathen Dane
Had poured his impious rage in vain.’
“Hast never heard of Saint Cuthbert?”
“No, sir; can’t say as ever I has.”
“John! John! John! But that wondrous, that ‘mutable and unreasonable saint’ dwelt yonder, nor after death did he rest, John, but was seen by many in divers places and at divers times in this kingdom of Britain the Great! Have you never heard the legend that he sailed down the Tweed in a huge stone coffin?”
“Ha! ha! I can’t quite swallow that, sir.”
“That his figure may even until this day be seen, that —
“‘On a rock by Lindisfarne
Saint Cuthbert sits and toils to frame
The sea-born beads that bear his name.
Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound:
A deadened clang – a huge dim form
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
And night were closing round.’”
“It makes me a kind of eerie, sir, to hear you talk like that.”
“I can’t help it, John; the poetry of the Great Wizard of the North seems still to hang around these shores. I hear it in the leaves that whisper to the winds, in the wild scream of the sea-birds, and in the surf that comes murmuring across that stretch of sand, or goes hissing round the weed-clad rocks.
“But, John, you’ve heard of Grace Darling?”
“Ah! there I do feel at home.”
“Then you know the story. At the Longstone Lighthouse out yonder she lived. You see the castle of Bamburgh, with its square tower, there. We noticed it all day yesterday while coming to Belford; first we took it for a lighthouse, then for a church, but finally a bright stream of sunshine fell on it from behind a cloud – on it, and on it alone, and suddenly we knew it. Well, in the churchyard there the lassie sleeps.”
“Indeed, sir!”
“Shall we drop a tear to her memory, my gentle Jehu?”
“Don’t think I could screw one out, sir.”
“Then drive on, John.”
I remember stopping at a queer old-fashioned Northumbrian inn for the midday halt. We just drew up at the other side of the road. It was a very lonely place. The inn, with its byres and stables, was perched on the top of a rocky hill, and men and horses had to climb like cats to get up to the doors.
By the way, my horses do climb in a wonderful way. Whenever any one now says to me, “There is a terrible hill a few miles on,” “Can a cat get up?” I inquire.
“Oh, yes, sir; a cat could go up,” is the answer.
“Then,” say I, “my horses will do it.”
At this inn was a very, very old man, and a very, very old woman, and their son Brad. Brad was waiter, ostler, everything, tall, slow, and canny-looking.
Brad, like most of the people hereabout, spoke as though he had swallowed a raw potato, and it had stuck in his throat.
Even the North Northumbrian girls talk as if they suffered from chronic tonsillitis, or their tongues were too broad at the base.
When the dinner had been discussed, the dishes washed, and I had had a rest, the horses staggered down the hill and were put in.
I said to Brad, “How much, my friend?”
“Whhateveh yew plhease, sirr; you’gh a ghentleman,” replied Brad, trying apparently to swallow his tongue. I gave him two shillings.
No sooner had it been put in his trousers pocket than the coin started off on a voyage of discovery down his leg, and soon popped out on to the road. Brad evidently had sprung a leak somewhere, and for a time the money kept dropping from him. Whenever he moved he “layed” a coin, so to speak, and the last I saw of Brad he was leaning lazily against a fence counting his money.
I remember that near the borders we climbed a long, long hill, and were so happy when we got to the top of it – the horses panting and foaming, and we all tired and thirsty.
The view of the long stretch of blue hills behind as was very beautiful.
Here on the hilltop was an inn, with its gable and a row of stables facing the road, and here on a bit of grass we drew up, and determined to take the horses out for the midday halt. But we reckoned without our host. The place was called the Cat Inn.
The landlady was in the kitchen, making a huge pie.
No, we could have no stabling. Their own horses would be home in half an hour.
She followed me out.
“Half an hour’s rest,” I said, “out of the sun will do my poor nags some good.”
“I tell ye, ye canna have it,” she snapped.
“Then we can have a bucket or two of water, I suppose?”
“Never a drop. We’ve barely enough for ourselves.”
I offered to pay for it I talked almost angrily.
“Never a drop. You’re no so ceevil.”
Talking of Northumbrian inns, I remember once having a good laugh.
A buxom young lassie, as fresh as a mountain-daisy, had served me, during a halt, with some ginger-ale.
After drinking and putting the glass down on the table, I was drying my long moustache with my handkerchief, and looking at the lassie thoughtfully – I trust not admiringly.
“Ah, sir,” she said, nodding her head and smiling, “ye need na be wiping your mouth; you’re no goin’ to get a kiss from me.”
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 lassies” 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 lassie 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 lassies 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 shaggy 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 attitude 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 principally – pigs and politics.
Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a wilder, more chequered, or more romantic history than the once-circumvallated 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 shuttlecock for many a century. Scores of fearful battles were fought in and around it; many a scene of carnage and massacre 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 bloody battles have been fought; it has been lost and regained many times within the compass 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 space 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.
Once there was a toll here, and here clandestine marriages used to be performed by priests, the last of whom died from an accident some time ago.
I was told I would see a sign pointing out the house for border marriages, but probably it has been removed. These border marriages were considered a saving in money and in time. The priests were not slow in looking out for custom, and would even suggest marriage to likely couples. One priest is said to have united no less than one thousand five hundred.
An old lady came out from the door of one of the cots. I asked her civilly, and I hope pleasantly, if she would marry either my coachman or my valet.
She said no, she kept hens, and they were care and trouble enough.
I found some ginger-ale in the cheffonier, and had it out, and we all drank —
“Here’s a health, bonnie Scotland, to thee.”
Then I got the guitar, and sang as the horses trotted merrily on, with music in their footsteps, music in every jingle of their harness, and poetry in their proudly tossing manes.
The scenery around us was pleasant enough, but strange. Of the land we could not see half a mile in any direction, for the scenery was a series of great round knolls, or small hills, cultivated to the top, but treeless and bare. It put me in mind of being in the doldrums in the tropics, every knoll or hill representing an immense smooth wave.
The sea, close down on our right beneath the green-topped beetling cliffs, was as blue as ever I had known it to be.
We stopped for a few minutes to gaze and admire.
There was a stiff breeze blowing, that made the Wanderer rock like a ship in a sea-way. There were the scream of gulls, the cawing of rooks, and the whistling of the wind through the ventilators, and the whispering of the waves on the beach beneath the cliffs, but no other sound to break the evening stillness.
Within two miles of Ayton the road sweeps inland, and away from the sea, and a beautiful country bursts all at once upon the view.
On this evening the sun’s rays slanted downwards from behind great clouds, lighting up the trees and the hills, but causing the firs and spruces that were in shadow to appear almost black.
Ayton Castle was passed on the right, just before we crossed the bridge and rattled into the sweet wee town of Ayton itself. The castle is a modern house of somewhat fantastic appearance, but placed upon the braeland there, among the woods, it looks charming, and the braeland itself is a cloudland of green.
Ayton is placed in a lovely valley on the River Eye, which goes wimpling and winding round it. The town itself is pretty, rural, quaint, and quiet. I do wonder if it is a health resort or not, or whether turtle-doves go there to spend the honeymoon.
If they do not they ought to.
The landlord of the hotel where I put my horses, like myself, came from the far north; he soon found me a stand for the Wanderer, a quiet corner in a farmer’s field, where we lay snug enough.
Towards sunset about ten waggon loads of happy children passed by. They had been at some fête or feast. How they did laugh and crow when they saw the great caravan, and how they did wave their green boughs and cheer!
What else could I do but wave my hat in return? which had the effect of making them start to their feet and shout till the very welkin rang, and the woods of bonnie Ayton re-echoed the sound.
Reader, a word here parenthetically. I was not over-well when I started from home just one month ago. I got up from “the drudgery of the desk’s dull wood” to start on my tour. Now I am hard in flesh, and I have the power to enjoy life as one ought to. Here is an extract from my diary of to-day written on the road:
“How brightly the sun is shining. What a delightful sensation of perfect freedom possesses me! I cannot be too thankful to God for this the most enjoyable of all travels or outings I have ever had during a somewhat chequered career. It would hardly be too much to say that at this moment I feel perfectly happy and content, and that is surely saying a deal in a world like this.”
