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In the first place, I went down the Tweed a few miles and crossed it in a ferry-boat to see Dryburgh Abbey. Here, embowered among the trees in a silver curve of the river, stands this grand monument of one of the most remarkable ages of the world. Within an hour's walk from Melrose, and four or five years only after the completion of that edifice, the foundations of this were laid.
It was a cold though rather bright morning, with a most shrewd and bitter wind, which blew directly in my face as I sat beside the driver. An English wind is bad enough, but methinks a Scotch one, is rather worse; at any rate, I was half frozen, and wished Dryburgh Abbey in Tophet, where it would have been warmer work to go and see it.
It is astonishing. We will not dwell upon it now, but make a separate chapter on it when I have seen most of the other ruins of the kind in the kingdom. The French are given to the habit of festooning the monuments and graves of their relatives and friends with immortelles. Nature has hung one of hers to Dryburgh Abbey. It is a yew-tree opposite the door by which you enter the ruins.
These trifling remains, however, were sufficient to convey some idea of the beautiful proportions in which the whole had been constructed; they resembled much the finest part of Dryburgh Abbey, in Scotland. The modern cathedral, built near the site of the old one, has a mean exterior, but possesses considerable splendour in the inside.
Now, at Dryburgh, the river veils itself like a mourner, and its song is the Sleep Music which has in it the secret of death and of life beyond. I stood for a minute alone in front of the tomb where Sir Walter's body lies with those he loved best, in the place he loved best, and transparent green shadows like the spirits of shadow hid me from the sunlight.
"You look as if you were conjuring up the White Lady of Avenel, who will come to any one who knows how to call her, here at Dryburgh," he said. And I opened my eyes as if he had jerked me back by the arm from the days of the Druids to the era of motor-cars. And so he had by the ear, not the arm. If Sir S. had spoken to me then it would have been different.
Then there was that giant fish lost near Dryburgh by Colonel Haig of Bemersyde, "perhaps the greatest salmon ever hooked in Tweed," as Sir Herbert Maxwell remarks in his Story of the Tweed. Lost fish are proverbially the largest fish, but in this instance it was not the fisher who boasted of the weight.
She gave a piercing shriek, looked wildly round her, and abandoned herself to the most agonizing despair; exclaiming in a tone of the utmost pathos, "ah! deceitfu' man, hae ye beguiled me too!" and then she sunk back in the carriage, and buried herself in the deepest silence. 18th August. Set out to view the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Called on Capt.
Grose says: "The freestone of which the monastery of Dryburgh and the most elegant parts of the Abbey of Melrose were built, is one of a most beautiful color and texture, and has defied the influence of the weather for more than six centuries; nor is the sharpness of the sculpture in the least affected by the ravages of time.
"Yes, and the scene in the Tolbooth where Rob Roy gives Bailie Nicol Jarvie them three sufficient reasons fur not betrayin' him." The old man grinned. He seemed to be at his happiest in praising, and finding another to praise, his favorite author. "Interesting old illustrations these are," said Davenport, taking up another volume. "Dryburgh Abbey that's how it looks on a gray day.
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