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'd nae sorrow, With Humes that dwelt on Leader-side, And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow." Blainslie, famous for its oats ("There's corn enough in the Blainslies"), and Whitslaid Tower, a long ago holding of the Lauder family, are passed a mile or two on. At Birkhill and Birkenside the road forks leftwards to Legerwood, where Grizel Cochrane of Ochiltree (afterwards Mrs. Ker of Morriston), heroine of the stirring mail-bag adventure narrated in the "Border Tales," sleeps in its lately restored kirk chancel. Chapel, and Carolside with a fine deer park, and most charming of country residences--at the latter of which Kinglake wrote part of his "Crimean War"--sit snugly to the right, in the bosky glen below. PLATE 24 CRIFFEL AND LOCH KINDAR FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH PAINTED BY JAMES ORROCK, R.I. [Illustration] Earlston, the Ercildoune of olden time--name much better suited to the quiet beauty of its charming situation--has no unimportant place both in Scottish history and romance. It has been honoured by many royal visits. Here David the Sair Sanct subscribed the Foundation Charter of Melrose Abbey in 1136, and his son the Confirmatory Charter in 1143. Other royal visitors followed; there James IV. encamped for a night on his way from Edinburgh to Flodden; Queen Mary made a brief stay at Cowdenknowes as she passed from Craigmillar to Jedburgh; and lastly came Prince Charlie (unwelcome) on his march to Berwick-on-Tweed. But above all it is renowned as having been the residence (and birthplace probably) of Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, or simply, as literary history prefers to call him, Thomas of Ercildoune. The Rhymer's Tower, associated with this remarkable personage, stands close to the Leader. Only a mere ivy-clad fragment remains (some 30 feet in height), but the memories of the place stretch back to more than six centuries, when Thomas was at the height of his fame as his country's great soothsayer and bard--the _vates sacer_ of the people. His rhymes are still quoted, and many of them have been realised in a manner which Thomas himself could scarcely have anticipated. Scott makes him the author of the metrical romance "Sir Tristrem," published from the Auchinleck _MS._ in 1804, but the Rhymer is unlikely to have been the original compiler. With his Fairyland adventures and return to that mysterious region, everybody is familiar. A quaint stone in the church wall carries the in
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