Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 6

TWEED
year without their charm. Early June decks them
with a tender green, in which are set the yellow violet
and the rock rose, and even the cloudberry lifts its
snow-white blossom from the heart of the black peat-
moss. Midsummer deepens and enriches the bloom,
and brings the bracken in the lush green of the year.
In early August the braes and moors are touched and
brightened with the two kinds of the heatherbell ere
they gradually flush deep in large breaks of the common
purple heather. Autumn, late autumn, throws the
fading beauty of tender colour over the heather bloom ;
and the bent of the Moorland, " the bent sae brown " of
the old ballads, that knew and felt many a blood-stain
in long gone foray and feud, — that bent amid which, in
the very dawn of Border legend and poetry, the Queen
of Faery took her leave of Thomas of Ereildoune —
throws in October days its tresses free to the wind
with a waesome grace, touching the heart as with the
hushed life of the old story. And in winter the snow
wraps those hills in a robe so meet, that their statuesque
outlines are seen and followed in their entireness and
in their minute details, as at no other time ; standing
against the heavens in the clear relief of forms, new, as
it were from the sculptor's hand.' From Broughton
downwards the valley is much wider, the bottom being
occupied by large tracts of fertile haughland, and
though the bounding lines of heights continue, they
are farther from the river. Owing to the windings of
the stream, the heights seem at many points as if
almost meeting and enclosing rich and fertile vales, as at
Melrose, where the whole hollow seems from some points
of view to be entirely shut in by hills. Many of the
haughs here and elsewhere have rich orchards. ' After
the first mile or two,' says Dorothy "Wordsworth, in
describing the course of the river from Peebles to Mel-
rose in the beginning of the present century, 'our
road was seldom far from the river which flowed in
gentleness, though perhaps never silent ; the hills on
either side high and sometimes stony, but excellent
pasturage for sheep. In some parts the vale was
wholly of this pastoral character ; in others we saw
extensive tracts of corn ground, even spreading along
whole hill sides and without visible fences, which is
dreary in a flat country ; but there is no dreariness on
the banks of the Tweed — the hills, whether smooth or
stony, uncultivated or covered with ripe corn, had the
same pensive softness. In one very sweet part of the
vale a gate crossed the road, which was opened by an
old woman who lived in a cottage close to it ; I said to
her, "You live in a very pretty place." "Yes," she
replied, "the water of Tweed is a bonny water." The
lines of the hills are flowing and beautiful, the reaches
of the vale long ; in some places appear the remains of
a forest ; in others you will see as lovely a combination
of forms as any traveller who goes in search of the
picturesque need desire, and yet perhaps without a
single tree ; or at least if trees there are they shall be
very few, and he shall not care whether they are there
or not. ' The constant character of the gently varying
scenes ' was that of tender pensiveness ; no bursting
torrents when we were there, but the murmuring of the
river was heard distinctly, often blended with the
bleating of sheep. . . . The transitions of this vale
were all gentle except one, a scene of which a gentle-
man's house was the centre, standing low in the vale,
the hills above it covered with gloomy fir plantations,
and the appearance of the house itself was gloomy.
There was an allegorical air — a person fond of Spenser
will understand me — in this uncheerful spot single in
such a country,
" The house was hearsed about with a black wood." '
The absence of wood and the constantly pastoral ap-
pearance of the hills is not now so marked, for, from
the point where the valley widens out, downwards, the
skirting hills are fringed or covered with thriving
plantations, mostly formed since the beginning of the
present century. At some points, particularly about
Neidpath and Floors Castle, these woods have been
460
TWEEDSMUIR
laid out with taste, but at other places the scenery has
often suffered from the too regular and methodical
nature of the planting. The bed of the river is almost
everywhere composed of basaltic and sandstone rocks,
or of pebbles of these imbedded in clear sharp sand,
and the water is generally bright and clear.
See also Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's Scottish Rivers
(Edinb. 1874) ; J. Russell's Haigs of Bemersyde (Edinb.
1881) ; Professor Veitch's Border History and Poetry
(Glasg. 1878) ; the same author's River Tweed in
volume issued to subscribers to the Royal Association
for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland (Edinb.
1884) ; Borrow's Lavengro ; and, for sketches of the
scenery along the upper part of the river, Black's Strange
Adventures of a Phaeton.
Tweeddale. See Tweed, Peeblesshire, and Yestee.
Tweedsmuir, a^large parish of SW Peeblesshire, con-
taining, close to its northern extremity, the Crook
Inn, 6J miles S of Broughton station, 16 \ N by E of
Moffat, 36 SSW of Edinburgh, and 12 SSE of Biggar,
under which there is a post office of Rachan Mill. It
is bounded NW and NE by Drummelzier, E by the
Megget section of Lyne, SE and S by Moffat in Dum-
friesshire, and SW and W by Crawford in Lanarkshire.
Its utmost length, from N to S, is 8| miles ; its utmost
breadth, from E to W, is 8f miles ; and its area is 51
square miles or 32,612f acres, of which 144 are water.
The Tweed, here a mountain stream, rises in Tweed's
Well at an altitude of 1500 feet above sea-level, and
runs 10J miles north-north-eastward, until, 3 furlongs
N by E of the Crook Inn, it passes off into Drummel-
zier. It thus divides Tweedsmuir into two unequal
portions, that to the E being very much larger than
that to the W. During this course it is joined by
twenty-three rivulets, which all have their source in
Tweedsmuir, and the largest of which are Fruid
Water, rising at 2500 feet, and running 8 miles north-
north-westward ; Talla Water, rising at 2300 feet,
running 6J miles north-westward, and itself receiving
Oameshope Burn ; and Hearthstane or Harestane
Burn, rising at 2000 feet, and running 4$ miles north-
westward. Another tributary, Polmood Burn, rises in
Drummelzier at 2250 feet, and over the last 2J miles of
its 4 miles' west-north-westerly course traces the Drum-
melzier boundary. The high road from Edinburgh to
Moffat and Dumfries runs 9f miles up the parish close
to the W bank of the Tweed, and just at the Lanark-
shire boundary crosses from Tweeddale into Annandale
by a 'col' 1334 feet high. In the extreme N, where
the Tweed passes off into Drummelzier, the surface
declines to 743 feet above the sea : and chief elevations
to the W of the river, as one goes up the valley, are
"Nether Oliver Dod (1673 feet), *White Knowe Head
(1707), *Culter Cleuch Shank (1801), *Black Dod (1797),
and *Cltde Law (1789) ; to the E, Great Knock (2267),
*Broad Law (2754), Middle Dod (2179), Garlavin Hill
(2383), Molls Cleuch Dod (2571), *Lochcraig Hill
(2625), and *Hartfell (2651), where asterisks mark
those summits that culminate on the confines of the
parish. ' It will be seen from your list of our moun-
tains, ' writes the Rev. John Dick, M. A. , who has been
minister from 1858, ' that Tweedsmuir embraces some of
the highest summits in the Southern Highlands, and
these are pierced by numerous deep glens of various
scenery, some wildly moorland, some quietly pastoral,
some ruggedly broken, and all bearing their contribution
to the " siller Tweed. " The whole parish is mountainous,
but the upper vale of the Tweed toward Tweedshaws is
comparatively bare and featureless, though even here
there are often, especially up the tributary burns, close
scenes of simple beauty which charm and surprise the
solitary angler or pedestrian. Lower down the land-
scape is much more impressive in outline and more
picturesquely diversified in detail. Near the village,
which consists of only a few detached cottages, the
road to St Mary's Loch crosses the old stone bridge of
one arch, under which the confined Tweed, tumbling
through a rocky chasm, plunges into a deep linn
well known to angler and artist. To the left of the