Читать книгу The Spell of Scotland - Keith Clark - Страница 5

You may go westward from here, by train and coach, and carriage and on foot, to visit this country where every field has been a battlefield, where ruined peel towers finally keep the peace, where castles are in ruins, and a few stately modern homes proclaim the permanence of Scottish nobility; and where there is no bird and no flower unsung by Scottish minstrelsy, or by Scott. Scott is, of course, the poet and prose laureate of the Border. "Marmion" is the lay, almost the guide-book. It should be carried with you, either in memory or in pocket.

If the day is not too far spent, the afternoon sun too low, you can make Norham Castle before twilight, even as Marmion made it when he opened the first canon of Scott's poem—

"Day set on Norham's castle steep

And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,

And Cheviot's mountains lone;

The battled towers, the donjon keep,

The loophole grates, where captives weep,

The flanking walls that round it sweep,

In yellow luster shone."

There is but a fragment of that castle remaining, and this, familiar to those who study Turner in the National Gallery. A little village with one broad street and curiously receding houses attempts to live in the shadow of this memory. The very red-stone tower has stood there at the top of the steep bank since the middle Eleven Hundreds. Henry II held it as a royal castle, while his craven son John—not so craven in battle—regarded it as the first of his fortresses. Edward I made it his headquarters while he pretended to arbitrate the rival claims of the Scottish succession, and to establish himself as the Lord Superior. On the green hill of Holywell nearby he received the submission of Scotland in 1291—the submission of Scotland!

Ford castle is a little higher up the river, where lodged the dubious lady with whom the king had dalliance in those slack days preceding Flodden—the lady who had sung to him in Holyrood the challenging ballad of "Young Lochinvar!" James was ever a Stewart, and regardful of the ladies.

"What checks the fiery soul of James,

Why sits the champion of dames

Inactive on his steed?"

The Norman tower of Ford (the castle has been restored), called the King's tower, looks down on the battlefield, and in the upper room, called the King's room, there is a carved fireplace carrying the historic footnote—

"King James ye 4th of Scotland did lye

here at Ford castle, AD 1513."

Somehow one hopes that the lady was not sparring for time and Surrey, and sending messages to the advancing Earl, but truly loved this Fourth of the Jameses, grandfather to his inheriting granddaughter.

Coldstream is the station for Flodden. But the village, lying a mile away on the Scotch side of the Tweed, has memories of its own. It was here that the most famous ford was found between the two countries, witness and way to so many acts of disunion; from the time when Edward I, in 1296, led his forces through it into Scotland, to the time when Montrose, in 1640, led his forces through it into England.

"There on this dangerous ford and deep

Where to the Tweed Leet's eddies creep

He ventured desperately."

The river was spanned by a five-arch bridge in 1763, and it was over this bridge that Robert Burns crossed into England. He entered the day in his diary, May 7, 1787. "Coldstream—went over to England—Cornhill—glorious river Tweed—clear and majestic—fine bridge."

It was the only time Burns ever left Scotland, ever came into England. And here he knelt down, on the green lawn, and prayed the prayer that closes "The Cotter's Saturday Night"—

"O Thou who pour'd the patriot tide

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,

Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,

(The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art,

His friend, inspirer, guardian and reward!)

O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;

But still the patriot and the patriot bard,

In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!"

Surely a consecration of this crossing after its centuries of unrest.

General Monk spent the winter of 1659 in Coldstream, lodging in a house east of the market-place, marked with its tablet. And here he raised the first of the still famous Coldstream Guards, to bring King Charles "o'er the water" back to the throne. Coldstream is the Gretna Green of this end of the Border, and many a runaway couple, noble and simple, has been married in the inn.

Four miles south of Coldstream in a lonely part of this lonely Border—almost the echoes are stilled, and you hear nothing but remembered bits of Marmion as you walk the highway—lies Flodden Field. It was the greatest of Scotch battles, not even excepting Bannockburn; greatest because the Scotch are greatest in defeat.

It was, or so it seemed to James, because his royal brother-in-law Henry VIII was fighting in France, an admirable time wherein to advance into England. James had received a ring and a glove and a message, from Anne of Brittany, bidding him

"Strike three strokes with Scottish brand

And march three miles on Scottish land

And bid the banners of his band

In English breezes dance."

James was not the one to win at Flodden, notwithstanding that he had brought a hundred thousand men to his standard. They were content to raid the Border, and he to dally at Ford.

"O for one hour of Wallace wight,

Or well skill'd Bruce to rule the fight,

And cry—'Saint Andrew and our right!'

Another sight had seen that morn

From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn,

And Flodden had been Bannockburn!"

The very thud of the lines carries you along, if you have elected to walk through the countryside, green now and smiling faintly if deserted, where it was brown and sere in September, 1513. One should be repeating his "Marmion," as Scott thought out so many of its lines riding over this same countryside. It is a splendid, a lingering battle picture—

"And first the ridge of mingled spears

Above the brightening cloud appears;

And in the smoke the pennon flew,

As in the storm the white sea mew,

Then mark'd they, dashing broad and far,

The broken billows of the war;

And plumed crests of chieftains brave,

Floating like foam upon the wave,

But nought distinct they see.

Wide ranged the battle on the plain;

Spears shook, and falchions flash'd amain,

Fell England's arrow flight like rain,

Crests rose and stooped and rose again

Wild and disorderly."

Thousands were lost on both sides. But the flower of England was in France, while the flower of Scotland was here; and slain—the king, twelve earls, fifteen lords and chiefs, an archbishop, the French ambassador, and many French captains.

You walk back from the Field, and all the world is changed. The green haughs, the green woodlands, seem even in the summer sun to be dun and sere, and those burns which made merry on the outward way—can it be that there are red shadows in their waters? It is not "Marmion" but Jean Elliott's "Flower of the Forest" that lilts through the memory—

"Dule and wae was the order sent our lads to the Border,

The English for once by guile won the day;

The Flowers of the Forest that foucht aye the foremost,

The pride of our land are cauld in the clay.

"We'll hear nae mair liltin' at the eve milkin',

Women and bairns are heartless and wae;

Sighin' and moanin' on ilka green loanin'—

The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away."

I know not by what alchemy the Scots are always able to win our sympathy to their historic tragedies, or why upon such a field as Flodden, and many another, the tragedy seems but to have just happened, the loss is as though of yesterday.