Still Neidpath is fair, Neidpath of the
unhappy maid, and still we mark the tiny burn at Ashiesteil, how in
November,
Murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen,
Through bush and briar, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And foaming brown, with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
Still the old tower of Elibank is black and strong in ruin; Elibank, the
home of that Muckle Mou'd Meg, who made Harden after all a better bride
than he would have found in the hanging ash-tree of her father. These
are unaltered, mainly, since Scott saw them last, and little altered is
the homely house of Ashiesteil, where he had been so happy. And we, too,
feel but little change among those scenes of long ago, those best-beloved
haunts of boyhood, where we have had so many good days and bad, days of
rising trout and success; days of failure, and even of half-drowning.
One cannot reproduce the charm of the strong river in pool and stream, of
the steep rich bank that it rushes or lingers by, of the green and
heathery hills beyond, or the bare slopes where the blue slate breaks
through among the dark old thorn-trees, remnants of the forest. It is
all homely and all haunted, and, if a Tweedside fisher might have his
desire, he would sleep the long sleep in the little churchyard that lies
lonely above the pool of Caddon-foot, and hard by Christopher North's
favourite quarters at Clovenfords.
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