Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

BERWICKSHIRE
it, along with Lothian and part of Northumberland, to
his brother David. It rose, in David's time, to much
consequence ; received many distinguished Norman and
Anglo-Saxon families as settlers ; and had Berwick for
its capital. Berwick then also became practically the
capital of all the country from the northern part of
Northumberland to the Firth of Forth, and began to
figure as a great seaport, as a place of rich churches,
monasteries, and hospitals, and as one of the first four
royal burghs of Scotland. Tradesmen from the Low
Countries and other parts of the Continent settled in it,
and furthered its prosperity ; and Scandinavian rovers
made descents on it, but were successfully repulsed.
The English laid claim to it in the time of William
the Lyon, stormed it in the time of Alexander II. , and
involved it in a series of contests and disasters during
the dispute for the succession of the Scottish crown.
The town thenceforth became an object of continual
jealousy, and of repeated blows and negotiations between
the Scotch and the English ; it was valuable during
their many international wars, for at once its wealth,
its fortifications, and its extensive command of the
Border districts ; it often suffered the miseries of siege
and capture, so as to be now a Scotch town, and now an
English one ; and in 1482 it was finally relinquished by
the Scotch. Berwickshire, throughout great part of its
extent, necessarily partook largely in the vicissitudes
and disasters of Berwick ; and it contemporaneously
suffered much also from the high-handed movements
of the Cospatricks, the Homes, the Hepburns, and the
Douglases, and from the multitudinous turmoils of the
Border reivers. Scarcely is their a mile of it, scarcely a
natural fastness in it, scarcely a ruin or a vestige of an
old baronial fortalice, but what bears testimony to
ancient tumult and bloodshed. So insecure was it, or
so destitute of appliances for protection for peaceful hus-
bandry, that most of it, down to the 15th century, was
available at best for the feeding of flocks and the rearing
of cattle. Yet after the advent of peaceful times, it rose
rapidly and brilliantly into a state of general prosperity,
and, in more modern times, it has equalled the best central
districts of Scotland in at once social, industrial, educa-
tional, and religious advancement.
In several places are cairns, supposed to belong to the
times of the Otadeni, whose camps or vestiges of camps
are at Habchester, Wardlaw Hill, Legerwood Hill, and
Birkenside Hill. Otadenian and Roman remains are in
Cockburnspath parish, and Roman camps are at Chesters
in Fogo, Battleknowes in Whitsome, and on a hill in
Channelkirk. Pictish camps are in Channelkirk and
Lauder parishes. Two military stations, supposed to
have been originally a Danish camp, are on a hill near
Raecleughhead in Langton parish. An ancient unin-
scribed standing stone or obelisk is at Crosshall in
Eccles. An earthen mound, called Herrit's Dyke, with
a ditch on one side of it, is about a mile from Greenlaw ;
and, not very many years ago, could have been traced
in continuation about 14 miles eastward. Three con-
centric circles of stone, called Edwin's or Woden's Hall,
are on the Whitadder, about a mile below Abbey St
Bathans. Remains of ancient monastic houses are at
Dryburgh, Coldingham, and Abbey St Bathans ; and
sites of others are at Coldstream, Eccles, and St Abb's
Head. Old castles, or ruins or sites of such, are at
Lauder, Hume, Cockburnspath, Fast, Cranshaw, Dunse,
Huntly, Edrington, Ayton, Leitholm, Hutton, Morriston,
and Evelan. Aldcambus is famous for Bruce's meeting
with the papal envoy, Lauder Bridge for the murder of
James III. 's minions by the Earl of Angus, and a tabu-
lar space on the top of Dunse Law for the encampment
on it of Leslie's Covenanting army ; while Gordon parish
and its village of Huntly were the early residence of the
great Gordon family of the north of Scotland, and give
name to respectively their dukedom of Gordon and their
marquisate of Huntly. A county history is still a
desideratum, but Berwickshire folklore has been col-
lected in Popular Bhymes, Sayings, and Proverbs of the
County of Berwick, with illustrative notes by George
Henderson (1S56) ; the popular speech is learnedly
BIGGAR
handled in James Murray's Dialect of the Southern
Counties of Scotland (1873); and a great amount of
valuable matter, scientific and antiquarian, is contained
in the Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club,
which was instituted in 1831.
Berwickshire Railway, a railway chiefly in Berwick-
shire and partly in Roxburghshire. Starting from a
junction at Dunse with the Reston and Dunse branch of
the North British, it goes south-westward, through
Berwickshire, past Greenlaw and Gordon, to Earlston ;
thence proceeds southward into junction with the Hawick
line of the North British at Newton St Boswells. It is
20J miles long ; was authorised in 1862, on a capital of
£100,000 in £10 shares, and £33,300 on loan ; was
opened from Dunse to Earlston in Nov. 1863, and from
Earlston to Newton St Boswells in Oct. 1865 ; and in
1876 was vested in the North British.
Bethelfield. See Kirkcaldy.
Bethelnie, the north-western district of Meldrum
parish, Aberdeenshire, about 3J miles NW of Old
Meldrum village. Here till about 1684 stood the ori-
ginal parish church, still represented by its foundations
and graveyard. Core Hill of Bethelnie (804 feet) occupies
much of the district, and has a ridgy form, extending
into the contiguous parish of Fyvie. Rock crystal is
found on it, and a ' Roman Camp ' lay on its SE skirts,
but has been obliterated.
Bettyhill. See Fake.
Bevelaw. See Bavelaw.
Eiblestone, an ancient landmark in Birnie parish,
Elginshire, about a mile E of Birnie church. It lies on
the side of the road from Birnie to Rothes, and has
engraven upon it the figure of a book.
Biddes or Bidhouse Burn, a rivulet of Crawford parish,
S Lanarkshire, rising on the SE slope of Tomont Hill
(1652 feet), and running If mile north-eastward, till it
falls into Evan Water, 7^ miles NW of Moffat. Its
banks were the scene in 1592, of a sanguinary onslaught
upon the Crichtons by the Johnstones of Wamphray, led
by William Johnstone of Eirkhill. An old ballad says:
'Then out spoke Willie of the Kirkhill,
Of fighting:, lads, ye'se hae your fill ;
And from his horse Willie he lap,
And a burnished brand in his hand he gat.
Out through the Crichtons Willie he ran,
And dang them down, baith horse and man,
O but the Johnstones were wondrous rude,
When the Biddes Burn ran three days blude.'
Biel. See Beil.
Big Cumbrae. See Cttmbrae.
Bigga, an uninhabited island in the N of Shetland, in
Yell Sound, 1J mile W of the south-western extremity
of Yell island. It is 2J miles long.
Biggar (Gael, bigthir, ' soft land '), a town and a
parish on the eastern border of the Upper Ward of
Lanarkshire. The town by road is 12 J miles ESE of
Lanark, and 28 SW of Edinburgh ; by a branch of the
Caledonian, opened in 1860, it is 37 miles from the
latter city, 3| ENE of Symington Junction, 41 ESE of
Glasgow, and 15| W by S of Peebles. A small, yet
picturesque and ancient place, it is built on a sunward
slope to left and right of the Tweeddale Biggar Burn,
but within 2 miles of the Clyde's main valley, and
within 6 of Tinto and Culter Fell. It consists of one
very broad main street, two back streets, and the West-
raw suburb, this last, across the burn, communicating
with the older portion by the new iron bridge of 1873 ;
in 1451 it was created a burgh of barony, in 1863 a police
burgh, being governed by a senior and 5 junior magis-
trates. It has a post office with money-order, savings'
bank, insurance, and telegraph departments, branches
of the Commercial, Royal, and National banks, a local
savings' bank, 15 insurance agencies, gas-works (1839), a
commercial hotel and 4 inns, an Elizabethan corn-ex-
change (1861) with a clock-tower, a public library, and
a horticultural society. The collegiate parish church of
St Mary, founded in 1545 by Malcolm, third Lord Flem-
ing, for a provost, 8 prebendaries, 4 singing boys, and 6
bedesmen, is interesting as among the latest, if not
indeed the last, of Scotland's pTe-Reformation churches.
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