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She was satisfied that the whole retinue, with her husband at their head, were off to the beetling Castle of Tushielaw, from whose heights so many a riever had been precipitated into the Ettrick. This conviction, coming, as it did, on the back of a disturbed slumber, in which her dreams had partaken of the dire nature of a nightmare, increased her fears.
The song to the time of "Ettrick Banks" you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much even in manuscript.
I made a particular application of my doctrine in the pulpit to the family, exhorted them all to lay all these things to heart, exhorted them also to secret prayer, supposing they kept family worship, urged their relative duties upon them, etc. etc. And then at his leaving Ettrick, he writes: 'Thus I parted with a people whose hearts were knit to me and mine to them.
Wallace still led the pursuit of Edward, and meeting those auxiliaries from the adjoining counties, which his provident orders had prepared to turn out on the first appearance of this martial chase; he poured his troops through Ettrick Forest, and drove the flying host of England far into Northumberland.
Now, there is our natural and lawful adversary, auld Sir Gideon Murray o' Elibank, carries his head as high as though he were first cousin to a king, or the sole lord o' Ettrick Forest.
Death laid its hand on his little boy Ettrick, and another child was so burnt in a fire that happened at their bungalow that he died also, whilst his beloved wife narrowly escaped the same fate. Yet he bore all this with patience. Stern commander though he was, his men loved him so much that they wanted to give him a month of their pay to assist him in the loss of means occasioned by the fire.
Here and there a gnarled thorn bush rattled its dry twigs in the wind; there were bits of dykes and rusty wire fences, but he saw no path except the winding tracks the sheep had made. Still Ettrick water was not far off, and he would strike it if he held south. Heavy rain met him on the summit, and after struggling on for a time he took shelter behind a broken dyke.
We rode through the ancient royal burgh of Selkirk, halted and corned our horses at a romantic village, nigh to some deep linns on the Ettrick, and reached the market ground at Thirlestane-green a little before mid-day. We soon found Hogg, standing near the foot of the market, as he called it, beside a great drove of paulies, a species of stock that I never heard of before.
In summer Alec had quite revelled in its greenness and softness, as he lay on it reading the Arabian Nights and the Ettrick Shepherd's stories: now it was "white with the whiteness of what is dead;" for is not the snow just dead water?
'However I am pleased with the works of our Scotch poets, particularly the excellent Ramsay, and the still more excellent Fergusson, yet I am hurt to see other places of Scotland, their towns, rivers, woods, haughs, etc., immortalised in such celebrated performances, whilst my dear native country, the ancient Bailieries of Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham, famous both in ancient and modern times for a gallant and warlike race of inhabitants; a country where civil and particularly religious liberty have ever found their first support and their last asylum, a country the birthplace of many famous philosophers, soldiers, and statesmen, and the scene of many important events in Scottish history, particularly a great many of the actions of the glorious Wallace, the saviour of his country; yet we have never had one Scottish poet of any eminence to make the fertile banks of Irvine, the romantic woodlands and sequestered scenes of Aire, and the heathy mountainous source and winding sweep of Doon, emulate Tay, Forth, Ettrick, Tweed, etc.
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