t to compose in rhyme. When in Wester Buccleuch
my life was much more lonely, and became more tinged with thoughts and
feelings of a romantic cast. Owing to the nature of the stock kept on
the farm, it was my destiny day after day to be out among the mountains
during the whole summer season from early morn till the fall of even.
But the long summer days, whether clear or cloudy, never seemed long to
me--I never wearied among the wilds. My flocks being _hirsled_, as it is
expressed, required vigilance: but, if this was judiciously maintained,
the task was for the most part an easy and pleasant one. I know not if
it be worth while to mention that the hills and glens on which my charge
pastured at this period formed a portion of what in ancient times was
termed the Forest of Rankleburn. The names of places in the district,
though there were no other more intelligible traditions, might serve to
shew that it is a range of country to which both kings and nobles had
resorted. If from morning to night I was away far from the homes of
living men, I was not so in regard to those of the dead. Where a lesser
stream from the wild uplands comes down and meets the Rankleburn, a
church or chapel once stood, surrounded, like most other consecrated
places of the kind, by a burial-ground. There tradition says that five
dukes, some say kings, lie buried under a marble stone. I had heard that
Sir Walter, then Mr Scott, had, a number of years previously, made a
pilgrimage to this place, for the purpose of discovering the sepulchres
of the great and nearly forgotten dead, but without success. This,
however, tended, in my estimation, to confirm the truth of the
tradition; and having enough of time and opportunity, I made many a
toilsome effort of a similar nature, with the same result. With hills
around, wild and rarely trodden, and the ceaseless yet ever-varying
tinkling of its streams, together with the mysterious echoes which the
least stir seemed to awaken, the place was not only lonely, but also
creative of strange apprehensions, even in the hours of open day. It is
strange that the heart will fear the dead, which, perhaps, never feared
the living. Though I could muster and maintain courage to dig
perseveringly among the dust of the long-departed when the sun shone in
the sky, yet when the shadow of night was coming, or had come down upon
the earth, the scene was sacredly secure from all inroad on my part: and
to make the matter sufficientl