re, in the middle of the scenes where
the story is laid and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron
went on pilgrimage,

"And took with him this elvish page
To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes,"

it was to the ruined chapel _here_ that he came,

"For there, beside our Ladye's lake,
An offering he had sworn to make,
And he would pay his vows."

But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,

"Of the best that would ride at her command,"

and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady
lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of
lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is
within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still;
and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, "where
victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten miles. These
gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at feud with the Kers,
tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone St. Mary of the Waves."

"They were three hundred spears and three.
Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream,
Their horses prance, their lances gleam.
They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day;
But the chapel was void, and the Baron away.
They burned the chapel for very rage,
And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page."

The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because they
failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I read
again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely
breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among
the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and
lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and
delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in
his own country, and have one drop of the blood of his Border robbers in
my own veins?

It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, whom
we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we have
changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was "The Lady
of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir
Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world's
poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and doomed to
deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the critics who tell us,
occasionally, that Sco