Where—and what—is the “Scott Country”? Edinburgh—his birthplace, the centre of his literary and legal activities, the scene of The Heart of Midlothian and of the Chronicles of the Canongate, his “own romantic town”—might surely claim to enclose, if not the kernel, an essential part of the interest that surrounds the fame and the name of Sir Walter. Around it, between the Pentlands and Lammermoors and the sea, is territory immortally associated with the life and the works of the “Master of Romance”—Lasswade and Roslin, Borthwick and Crichton, “Goblin Ha’” and Prestonpans,

“Auchendinny’s hazel glade

And haunted Woodhouselee”,

Linlithgow Palace on the western and “Wolfs Crag” on the eastern boundary of Lothian. Fife, on the 6 strength of its possessions of Dunfermline, Falkland, St. Andrews, and other storied sites, might put forward a title to be ranked as a province of the Scott Country. So might Perthshire, by virtue of the “Fair City” and its “Fair Maid”, and joint ownership, with Stirling and Dumbarton, of entrancing scenes on Loch Katrine, Loch Ard, and Loch Lomond. Forfarshire also, wherein is placed the best remembered of the passages in The Antiquary, and even the distant Orkneys and Shetlands, have felt the touch of the Wizard’s wand.

Nor, in the briefest survey of the lands of Scott Romance, can one overlook the crumbling castles and the rugged shores once ruled by the “Lord of the Isles”; or the banks of the Clyde and Douglas Water; or the opposing shores of the Solway; or Redesdale and Teesdale, Gilsland and Triermain. The Peak District, Sherwood Forest, and the Marches of Wales; Kenilworth, and Woodstock, and even London streets themselves might tender a case for inclusion; while, looking farther afield, one is reminded that the genius of Walter Scott has cast its spell over the Ardennes and Touraine, Switzerland, Constantinople, and the Palestine of the Crusades.

These are, for the most part, merely excursions of a spirit whose abiding home or favourite haunt was the Valley of the Tweed and its encircling hills. Edinburgh itself, where there are so many rival memories, does not 7 recall the author of Waverley so instantly and intimately to our thoughts and affections as Abbotsford; and the triple Eildon, rather than Arthur’s Seat, is the “high place” of the Scott cult. If he brought a new glory to the Border Country, it was the Border Country that “made him”, as a man still more than as a writer; and he is the most typical, as he is the most honoured, of its many famous sons.

The greatest as well as

“The last of all the Bards was he

Who sung of Border chivalry”.

The pull of the blood has in this instance proved more potent than that of birth and early environment; although Walter Scott was from his childhood, at Sandyknowe and Kelso, familiar with Border scenes, as well as steeped in Border lore. At a later stage in his growth, lame as he was, with Shortreed and other congenial companions he tramped the glens and climbed the hills and hill-passes of Tweedside, gathering and storing as he went its history and romance for the delight of future generations,

“Giving each rock its storied tale,

Pouring a lay for every dale,

Knitting, as with a moral band,

His native legends with his land,

To lend each scene the interest high

Which Genius beams from Beauty’s eye.”
8

But while he knew by heart the whole Borderland, and had explored its chief river from where

“Tweed, Annan, and Clyde

A’ rise in ae hill-side”,

to where it enters the sea, under the time- and war-battered walls of the ancient town of Berwick, there were parts of the Tweed and its tributaries that he knew better than others. There is, in the eyes of Scott devotees, an Inner Circle, a “Holy of Holies”, of the Scott Country, and, fortunately for the pilgrim to these shrines, its centre lies where the main lines of road and rail, like those of river-drainage, converge around the meeting-place of Ettrick, Gala, and Leader with Tweed—under the shadow of the Eildon Hills and beside those two “miraculous” products of the hand and brain of man—Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford House. The creative art, in prose and verse, of the Great M............