Surely it is the
deepest, the steepest, and the greenest cleugh that is shone on by the
sun! Thereby we met an angler, an ancient man in hodden grey, strolling
home from the Rankle burn. And we told him of our bad day, and asked him
concerning that hideous fly, which had covered the loch and lured the
trout from our decent Greenwells and March browns. And the ancient man
listened to our description of the monster, and He said: "Hoot, ay; ye've
jest forgathered wi' the Bloody Doctor."
This, it appears, is the Border angler's name for the horrible insect, so
much appreciated by trout. So we drove home, when all the great
tableland was touched with yellow light from a rift in the west, and all
the broken hills looked blue against the silvery grey. God bless them!
for man cannot spoil them, nor any revolution shape them other than they
are. We see them as the folk from Flodden saw them, as Leyden knew them,
as they looked to William of Deloraine, as they showed in the eyes of Wat
of Harden and of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead. They have always
girdled a land of warriors and of people fond of song, from the oldest
ballad-maker to that Scotch Probationer who wrote,
Lay me here, where I may see
Teviot round his meadows flowing,
And about and over me
Winds and clouds for ever going.
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