s _Hortus Kewensis_ and
W. Roxburgh's _Plants of the Coast of Coromandel_.

DRYBURGH ABBEY, a monastic ruin in the extreme south-west of
Berwickshire, Scotland, about 5 m. S.E. of Melrose, and 1-1/4 m. E. of
St Boswells station on the North British railway's Waverley route from
Edinburgh to Carlisle. The name has been derived from the Gaelic _darach
bruach_, "oak bank," in allusion to the fact that the Druids once
practised their rites here. The abbey occupies the spot where, about
522, St Modan, an Irish Culdee, established a sanctuary--a secluded
position on a tongue of land washed on three sides by the Tweed. Founded
in 1150 by David I.--though it has also been ascribed to Hugh de
Morville (d. 1162), lord of Lauderdale and constable of Scotland--it
enjoyed great prosperity until 1322, when it was partially destroyed by
the English under Edward II. It suffered again at the hands of Richard
II. in 1385, and was reduced to ruin during the expedition of the earl
of Hertford in 1545. After the Reformation the estate was erected into a
temporal lordship and given (1604) by James VI. to John Erskine, 2nd
earl of Mar. At a later date it was sold, but reverted to a branch of
the Erskines in 1786, when it was acquired by the 11th earl of Buchan.
In 1700 the abbey lands belonged to Thomas Haliburton, Scott's
great-grandfather, and, but for an extravagant grand-uncle who became
bankrupt and had to part with the property, they would have descended to
Sir Walter by inheritance. "We have nothing left of Dryburgh," he said,
"but the right of stretching our bones there." The style in general is
Early English, but the west door and the restored entrance from the nave
to the cloisters are fine examples of transitional Norman. Though in
various stages of decay, nearly every one of the monastic buildings is
represented by a fragment. Of the cruciform church--190 ft. long by 75
broad at the transepts--there remain some of the outer walls, a segment
of the choir, the east aisle of the north transept, the stumps of some
of the pillars of the nave, the west gable, the south transept and its
adjacent chapel of St Modan. The most beautiful of these relics is St
Mary's aisle of the north transept, in which were buried Sir Walter
Scott (1832), his wife, son, his son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart, and
his ancestors, the Haliburtons of New Mains. Sir Walter's tomb is a
plain block of polished Peterhead granite, inscribed only with his name
and