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If we stand on the wind-swept top of Yeavering Bell, we are surrounded by the evidences of still more remote days, for the whole of the summit was once a fortified camp of the ancient Britons.
"Ye may say that," said he gladly, "a weel-watered land. But a' this braw south country is the same. I've traivelled frae the Yeavering Hill in the Cheviots to the Caldons in Galloway, and it's a' the same. When I was young, I've seen me gang north to the Hielands and doun to the English lawlands, but now that I'm gettin' auld I maun bide i' the yae place.
And when Angle and Saxon were driving the early inhabitants before them, westward and southward, these hills and valleys still sheltered a considerable population; and Bede tells us of a royal residence not far away, at the foot of the well known Yeavering Bell, one of the more important hills of the range.
Though a brisk and sparkling stream in certain parts of its course, the general characteristics of the Till are well borne out by the lines There is yet more of historical and traditional interest to note in this view from the top of Yeavering Bell, which, as I saw it last, lay warm in the glow of a September afternoon.
This country dwelling, to which came Paulinus and his royal friends, was Ad-gefrin, or Yeavering; and though it is extremely unlikely that any traces of it could remain until our day, yet tradition points out a fragment of an old building still standing there, as a remnant of the royal residence.
In the region of Kirknewton, a pretty little village to the north-west of Yeavering, where Colledge Water joins the Glen, which gives its name to the romantic district of Glendale, Paulinus baptised many hundreds of Edwin's people; and the name of Pallinsburn which is now confined to a house at some little distance from the burn enshrines the memory of yet another scene of the labours of the indefatigable monk.
Turning our eyes now northward across the Glen from Yeavering Bell, we are looking towards Coupland Castle, and the fact that it was built so late as the reign of James I. bears eloquent testimony to the insecurity of life and property on the Borders even at that period.
It rises to a height of more than 1,100 feet, and then abruptly ends in a wide, almost level top, grass-grown and boulder-strewn, and crowned near the centre with a roughly-piled cairn. The ancient name of Yeavering Bell, as given by Bede in his account of the labours of St. Paulinus, was Ad-gefrin.
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