Читать книгу The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast - Various - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Leading Characteristics—The View from Berwick—Lindisfarne—The History and Present State of Berwick—Norham Castle and Marmion—Ladykirk—Tillmouth—Twisell Castle and Bridge—Ford Castle and Flodden—Coldstream—Wark Castle—Hadden Rig.

“A bonny water” was the phrase used of the Tweed by a peasant-woman whom Dorothy Wordsworth met when she came to spy out the Border river. Homely as the expression is, it would not be easy to find another quite so meet. To grandeur, to magnificence, the stream can make no claim, either in itself or in its surroundings. Of screaming eagles, of awful cliffs, of leaping linns, of foaming waves, it knows nothing. No more horrid sound is heard in its neighbourhood than the cry of the pale sea-maw; its banks are rarely precipitous, never frightful; it has not a single waterfall to its name; and, save where its surface is gently ruffled by glistening pebbles, it flows smooth as (pace the poet) the course of true love usually is. Yet of charms more gracious how profuse it is! In its careless windings, its silvery clearness, its sweet haughs and holms, its affluence of leaf and blade, its frequent breadth of valley, it is dowered with all the amenities of a large and generous landscape, distributed into combinations of incessant variety. Nor does it owe much less to art and association than to Nature. It glides or ripples by some of the most impressive ruins, ecclesiastical and secular, in all Scotland. At point after point it shines, for the inner eye, with “the light that never was on sea or land.” If over other Scottish streams as well the magician’s wand has waved, the Tweed is twice blessed, since it can speak not only of “Norham’s castled steep” and “St. David’s ruined pile,” but of Ashestiel, and Smailholm, and Abbotsford. And then its course takes it through the very heart of the Debateable Land—birthplace of myth and legend, of fairy tale and folk-song—battlefield where hostile races and envious factions and rival clans have met in mortal strife. For centuries it was the wont of its waters to reflect the fire-bale’s ruddy glare, of its banks to resound with the strident Border-slogan; and until long after the coalition of the Crowns its fords continued to be crossed by reiving marchmen in jack and helmet, driving before them their “prey,” or scurrying before the avenging “hot trod,” led on by blaring bugle-horn and mouthing bloodhound.

HIGH STREET, BERWICK, WITH THE TOWN HALL.

THE ROYAL BORDER BRIDGE, BERWICK.

A bonny water it truly is, but not a brisk. Except in time of spate, it pursues its way, not wearily, it may be, but certainly lazily, and even wantonly, often wimpling into curves and loops which half suggest that, forgetful of its destiny, it is about basely to wind back to whence it came, and calling to mind Mr. Swinburne’s river, of which all that can be said is that it creeps “somewhere safe to sea.” When in the chiming humour, which is not seldom, it sings sweetly enough, but crooningly rather than liltingly—less to you than to itself, or in accompaniment to the birds that pour out their lavish strains along its banks. Not that there is any particular reason why it should take life more seriously. To things commercial it does not condescend. It is tidal only to Norham, and none but mere cockle-shells can get even so far. And if it has a drainage basin second only to that of the Tay among Scottish streams, it has never been alleged that in this respect there is any failure of duty. Let it be said, too, that while it rarely hastes, on the other hand it seldom rests. The “mazes” to which it is addicted are not usually “sluggish;” to the spiky rush or the cool shiny discs of the water-lily it shows no special favour; while dark pools “where alders moist and willows weep” are only to be found by those who seek. Exciting the influences of the stream are not; but they are at any rate cheerful.

THE COURSE OF THE TWEED.

One whose only knowledge of the Tweed is gained from what can be seen of it at Berwick, and when the tide is out, would not be likely to think of it more highly than he ought to think. For even at its “latter end” it seems to have no great sense of the dignity of life; it rolls neither broad nor deep, and does little more than trickle into the larger life to which it has all along so indolently tended. Nor is it here altogether happy in the surroundings which it owes to art and man’s device. Berwick itself, rising from the water’s edge to the top of Halidon Hill, and partly girdled by its fine wall, used as a promenade in these piping times of peace, looks quaint, and comely as well, seen from the opposite or southern bank. But when one has crossed the stream by the old bridge—Berwick Bridge, which has stood here since the time of James I.—and looks across at Tweedmouth, exactly opposite, and at Spittal, which has thought fit to spring up a little farther east and just at the river’s mouth, the impression is less pleasing. Neither of these places is pretty in itself, while for their size they make an amazing amount of black smoke. Then there is Robert Stephenson’s great railway viaduct, the Royal Border Bridge, which it is the fashion to praise up to the skies, as it well-nigh reaches them. As a successful bit of engineering, it is no doubt all very well; but an addition to the beauties of the scene it is not, whatever guide-books and gazetteers may say. In other directions, however, and farther afield, the outlook is more satisfactory. Away to the south the grey and rugged Cheviots make a glorious horizon-line; while out at sea are the Farne Islands, with their memories of St. Cuthbert, most austere of Western ascetics, and of Grace Darling, whose heroism puts so strange a gloss upon the holy man’s abhorrence of womankind. The remnants of the ancient Abbey of Lindisfarne are among the very few examples of Saxon architecture which the destructiveness of the Danes has left to us; and that even these ruins remain, is due to no negligence of theirs. When they descended upon the island in the seventh century, not for the first time, they made a brave attempt to leave a desert behind them; but the massive strength which the builders of the church had intended to oppose to “tempestuous seas” was able in some degree to withstand their “impious rage.” The abbey no longer shelters St. Cuthbert’s remains, which must be sought in the Cathedral that looks down upon the Wear. But the old Saxon arches and columns have a stronger interest than this could have invested them with; for was it not here, in Sexhelm’s Vault of Penitence, dimly lighted by the pale cresset’s ray, that the hapless Constance de Beverley, after solemn inquisition, was doomed to her terrible death, the while her betrayer was listening to the song which so melodiously contrasts the traitor’s fate with the destiny of the true lover?

VIEW FROM THE RAMPARTS, BERWICK.

Berwick-on-Tweed is certainly not happy in having no history. Its beginnings are not clearly ascertainable; but it was for long a Saxon settlement, until the Danes, attracted by the rich merse-lands through which the Tweed flows, helped themselves to it. Then came the turn of the Scots, who held it off and on from about the time of Alfred the Great until John Balliol renounced the authority of his liege lord, to whom he had sworn fealty at Norham. When an English army approached, the citizens were by no means alarmed, although it was led by Edward himself. “Kynge Edward,” they cried from behind their wooden stockade, “waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, dike thee.” But they were better at flouting than at fighting; and they soon had bitter reason for lamenting that they had not kept their mocks to themselves. The place was stormed with the most trivial loss, and nearly eight thousand of the citizens were massacred. Some brave Flemings who held the Red Hall were burnt to cinders in it; and the carnage only ceased when the sad and solemn priests bore the Host into Edward’s presence and implored his mercy. Then the impetuous monarch, who in his old age was able to say that no man had ever asked mercy of him and been refused, burst into tears, and ordered the butchery to stop. But the lion’s paw had fallen, and Berwick was crushed. When Edward sat down before it, it was not only the great Merchant City of the North, but ranked second to London among English towns; he left it little more than a ruin, and it has never since been anything but “a petty seaport.” Through its gates the king went forth to play the rôle of the conquering hero in Scotland; and when his over-lordship had been effectually vindicated, the Scottish barons and gentry met here to sulkily do him reverence.

Two-and-twenty years later there came another turn of the wheel. When Robert Bruce wrested his native land from the feeble hands of the second Edward, Berwick shared in the emancipation. Its capture was held to be an achievement of the first order, and after it, as Leland tells us, “the Scottes became so proud ... that they nothing esteemed the Englishmen.” But presently a weaker Bruce reigned in the North and a stronger Edward in the South. In due course the town was again beleaguered by an English force. A Scottish army under the Regent, Archibald Douglas, came to its relief; but the English held a strong position on Halidon Hill, and, met by their terrible showers of clothyard shafts, the Scots turned and fled, leaving Berwick to its fate. Thus it once more became English, and never again did it change masters, though it was allowed to retain many of its privileges. In these later days, however, it has had to part with one after another of its peculiarities, and now it is substantially a part of the county of Northumberland.

NORHAM CASTLE.

That a place which has received so many rude buffets should have few very ancient remains is not to be wondered at. The present walls, which stand almost intact, and in excellent preservation, though the town in its recent prosperity has straggled outside their line, have a very respectable antiquity, dating as they do from the closing years of the sixteenth century; but of the older fortifications, which embraced a much more considerable space, scarcely a vestige is left, except an octagonal tower; while of the castle, which frowned over the stream where the north bank is steepest, little beyond the foundations has survived. A part of the site has been appropriated to the uses of a railway station, which by a well-meant but unhappy thought has been made to take a castellated form. The fortifications were dismantled some forty or fifty years ago, but there is still much to recall the ancient importance of the town as a place of arms. Nor have the citizens lost the military spirit which was bred into their forbears. They are proud to tell the stranger within their gates that there is almost as large a garrison here as at Edinburgh; and even the tavern-signs bear witness to a traditional love of arms.

The parish church dates only from the Puritan period. It is said to be “quaint” when it is only ugly; and to be a plain specimen of the Gothic when it is not Gothic at all, except in the opprobrious sense in which the term was first applied to mediæval architecture by the superior persons of the Restoration. There being no tower—the Puritans had no taste for “steeple-houses”—the parishioners are summoned to service by the bells of the Town Hall, in the High Street, where also the curfew is still rung at eight of the clock every evening. Although the Anglican is here the Established Church, the prevalent form is the Presbyterian, which has many places of worship, while various other communions are also well represented. But there seems to be some want of resource in finding distinguishing names for the various churches and chapels, for there is a Church Street Church, and hard by a Chapel Street Church, while several places of worship are nameless. Among these latter is one which bears on its front the legend “Audi, Vide, Tace”—intended, presumably, for a concise exposition of the whole duty of the pew in relation to the pulpit.

JUNCTION OF THE TILL AND THE TWEED.

Not a great way from the first of the bends in which the stream indulges, and within sight of the towers of Longridge, the Whiteadder from the Lammermoors, reinforced by the Blackadder, renders up its tribute. Two miles above this point the river is crossed by the Union Suspension Bridge, which, built by Sir S. Brown in 1820, is said to have been the first structure of the kind erected in these islands, while as bridges go along the Tweed it is also quite an antiquity; for, until the beginning of the century, there was only one between Peebles and Berwick, a space of more than sixty miles. Now they are many, yet there has been little sacrifice of beauty to utility, for, as a rule, when not picturesque, they are at least neat and modest. Hereabouts the valley is fairly broad, the banks rising on either hand into a long succession of rolling meadows green with herbage, or of furrowed fields red with tilth, in the prime of summer smothered with tender shoots of corn all aglow with the bright yellow blooms of the runch—to the wayfarer a flower, to the husbandman a weed. So curve to curve succeeds until Norham Castle comes in sight, standing on a lofty cliff of red freestone which rises almost sheer from the water on the southern bank, and disdainfully rearing itself high above the trees that have presumed to grow up around it.

TILLMOUTH HOUSE, FROM THE BANKS OF THE TILL.

When this ancient little village first had a stronghold no one seems to know. As early as 1121 a fortress was built here by Bishop Flambard, of Durham; but it was not the first to occupy the site. After the death of “this plunderer of the rich, this exterminator of the poor,” the castle was so roughly handled by David I. that in 1164 we find another Bishop of Durham, Hugh Pudsey, virtually rebuilding it, and adding a massive keep. But warrior-priests were not much to the mind of the king who suggested the assassination of Thomas à Becket, and so, some ten years after he had rebuilt it, the bishop was prevailed upon to pass it on to William de Neville; and from this time onwards it appears to have been treated as a royal fortress. Thus it came about that more than once it was the scene of conference between William the Lion and the English King whose only association with the noble beast was through his brother. And here also came Edward I., to decide between the thirteen claimants to the crown of Alexander III., and to do a little business on his own account as well. A memoir of the Dacres on its condition early in the sixteenth century speaks of the keep as impregnable; but it was nothing of the kind. Like all these Border strengths, it was always being taken and retaken; and only a few years before this memoir was written, James IV., then on his way to Flodden, had brought up Mons Meg against it, and with the “auld murderess’s” help had possessed himself of it. Pudsey’s massive keep still remains, though in a greatly shattered state, and shorn of its mighty proportions; there are also bits of other parts of the castle, the whole enclosed within a wall of ample circuit.