its passes
well, and he was pointed out as the very guide the young advocate
wanted. They started, accordingly, in a day or two afterwards, from
Abbotrule; and the laird meant to have been of the party; but "it was
well for him," said Shortreed, "that he changed his mind--for he could
never have done as we did."[105]

[Footnote 105: I am obliged to Mr. John Elliot Shortreed, a
son of Scott's early friend, for some _memoranda_ of his
father's conversations on this subject. These notes were
written in 1824; and I shall make several quotations from
them. I had, however, many opportunities of hearing Mr.
Shortreed's stories from his own lips, having often been
under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter, who to
the last always was his old friend's guest when business took
him to Jedburgh.]

During seven successive years Scott made a _raid_, as he called it,
into Liddesdale, with Mr. Shortreed for his guide; exploring every
rivulet to its source, and every ruined _peel_ from foundation to
battlement. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever been seen in the
district--the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig,
driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last of
these seven excursions. There was no inn or public-house of any kind
in the whole valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd's hut to
the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the
manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering,
wherever they went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible
relics of antiquity--even such "a {p.177} rowth of auld nicknackets"
as Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much
of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and not
less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of these
unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of
the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite
object before him in his researches seems very doubtful. "He was
_makin' himsel'_ a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed; "but he didna ken
maybe what he was about till years had passed: at first he thought o'
little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun."

"In those days," says the Memorandum before me, "advocates were not so
plenty--at least about Liddesdale;" and the worthy Sheriff-substitute
goes on to des