United States or American Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Leaving the Eildon Hills on my right, and following the course of the Tweed, I saw, as I progressed, Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other spots famous in border song. Issuing from a steep and woody lane, I came out on a broad bend of the river, with a wide strand of gravel and stones on this side, showing with what force the wintry torrents rushed along here.

Melrose, the Eildon Hills, the haunt of Thomas of Ercildoune, Jedburgh, Yetholm, the Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them much nearer. Smailholme Tower, the scene of some of Scott's youthful days, and of his ballad of "The Eve of St. John," is also one of these.

It was low and plaintive the air was familiar to me my whole soul became entranced the tear-drop swam in my eyes it was one of Scotland's sweetest ditties "The Broom o' the Cowdenknowes."

Lady Gowrie was thus mother-in-law of the Earl of Atholl, who died at Gowrie House in August 1594. Lady Atholl is said to have opposed the marriage. Another sister, Beatrix, was Maid of Honour to James’s Queen, and later married Hume of Cowdenknowes; hence come the Earls of Home.

Another hard brush, and finished four pages by twelve o'clock, then drove out to Cowdenknowes, for a morning visit. The house is ancient and curious, though modernised by vile improvements of a modern roof and windows. The inhabited part has over the principal door the letters S.I.H.V.I.H. The first three indicate probably Sir John Hume, but what are we to make of the rest?

"The Monastery" and "The Abbot," with which I was not familiar before I entered my teens. There was not a hill or a burn or a glen that had not a song or a proverb, or a legend about it. Yarrow braes were not far off. The broom of the Cowdenknowes was still nearer, and my mother knew the words as well as the tunes of the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

A new feeling possessed me. In vain I called pride to my aid I could not drive her from my thoughts. Sleeping or waking, her voice and form were ever present. I left the town for a time to free myself from these unwelcome feelings, pleasing as they were. I felt angry at myself for harbouring them; but all my endeavours were vain go where I would, I was with my Mary on the Cowdenknowes.

Haydn tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was the articulate idea.