'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