And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, Then go—but go alone the while— Then view St. David's ruined pile; And, home returning, soothly swear Was never scene so sad and fair."
The moon did not rise that night.
I walked about the fields, lingered about the Cross in the market, looked expectantly at the Abbey, until two in the morning.
"It was near the ringing of matin bell,
The night was well nigh done."
The moon did not rise, and neither did the white lady. It was not because there was a mist, a Scottish mist, over the heavens; they were clear, the stars were shining, and the pole star held true, Charles' wain—as Charles should in Bonnie Scotland—held true to the pole. But it was a late July moon, and those Eildon hills and their circling kin rose so high against the night sky—daytime they seemed modest enough—that the moon in this latitude as far north as Sitka did not circle up the sky. Neither does the sun in winter, so the guardian explained to me next day.
Fair Melrose is fairest, o' nights, at some later or earlier time of the year. It was then that I resolved to return in December, on December 27, when the festival of St. John's is celebrated with torch lights in the ruins of the Abbey—and Michael Scot comes back to his own! But then I reflected that the moon is not always full on the Eve of St. John's.
"I cannot come, I must not come,
I dare not come to thee,
On the Eve of St. John's, I must walk alone,
In thy bower I may not be."
I chose, years later, an October moon, in which to see it "aright."
Viewed by day, Melrose is surely fair; fair enough to enchant mortal vision. It is the loveliest ruin in the land where reform has meant ruin, and where from Kelso to Elgin, shattered fanes of the faith proclaim how variable is the mind of man through the generations, and how hostile when it forsakes.
Melrose is an old foundation. In truth the monastery was established at old Melrose, two miles farther down the Tweed, and is so lovely, so dramatic a corner of the Tweed, that Dorothy Woodsworth declared, "we wished we could have brought the ruins of Melrose to this spot." She missed the nearby murmur of the river as we do.
This oldest harbour of Christianity was founded in the pagan world by monks from Iona. Therefore by way of Ireland and not from Rome, blessed by Saint Columba sixty years before Saint Augustine came to Canterbury. It was the chief "island" between Iona and Lindisfarne. Very haughty were these monks of the West. "Rome errs, Alexandria errs, all the world errs; only the Scots and the Britons are in the right." There is surely something still left of the old spirit in Scotia, particularly in spiritual Scotia.
Near Melrose was born that Cuthbert who is the great saint of the North, either side the Border, and who lies in the midst of the splendour of Durham. A shepherd, he watched his sheep on these very hills round about us, and saw, when abiding in the fields, angels ascending and descending on golden ladders. Entering Melrose as a novice he became prior in 664, and later prior at Lindisfarne. When the monks were driven from the Holy Island by the Danes they carried the body of St. Cuthbert with them for seven years, and once it rested at Melrose—
"O'er northern mountain, march and moor,
From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years St. Cuthbert's corpse they bore,
They rested them in fair Melrose;
But though alive he loved it well,
Not there his relics might repose."
When King David came to the making of Scotland, he came into the Middle Marches, and finding them very lovely—even as you and I—this "sair sanct to the Croon," as his Scottish royal descendant, James VI saw him—and James would have fell liked to be a saint, but he could accomplish neither sinner nor saint, because Darnley crossed Mary in his veins—David determined to build him fair Abbeys. Of which, Melrose, "St. David's ruined pile," is the fairest. He brought Cistercians from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, to supplant the Culdees of Iona, and they builded them a beautiful stone Melrose to supplant the wooden huts of old Melrose. It centered a very active monastic life, where pavements were once smooth and lawns were close-clipped, and cowled monks in long robes served God, and their Abbot lorded it over lords, even equally with kings.
But it stood on the highway between Dunfermline and London, between English and Scottish ambitions. And it fell before them. Edward I spared it because the Abbots gave him fealty. But Edward II, less royal in power and in taste, destroyed it. The Bruce rebuilded it again, greater splendour rising out of complete ruin. When Richard II came to Scotland he caused the Abbey to be pillaged and burned. And when Hertford came for Henry VIII, after the Thirty Nine Articles had annulled respect for buildings under the protection of Rome, the final ruin came to St. David's church-palace. Yet, late as 1810, church service, reformed, of course, was held in a roofed-over part of the Abbey ruin. To-day it is under the protection of the Dukes of Buccleuch. And, we remember as we stand here, while the beams of lightsome day gild the ruin, the mottoes of the great family of the Border, Luna Cornua Reparabit, which being interpreted is, "There'll be moonlight again." Then to light the raids, the reiving that refilled the larder. But to-morrow for scenic effect.
Examined in this daylight, the beauty of Melrose surely loses very little. It is one of the most exquisite ruins in the United Kingdom, perhaps second to Tintern, but why compare? It is of finest Gothic, out of France, not out of England. In its general aspect it is nobly magnificent—
"The darken'd roof rose high aloof
On pillars, lofty, light and small;
The keystone that locked each ribbed aisle
Was a fleur de lys or a quatre feuille,
The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;
And the pillars with clustered shafts so trim,
With base and with capital flourish'd around
Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound."
And, as a chief detail which yields not to Tintern or any other, is the east window over the high altar, through which the moon and sun shines on those buried hearts—
"The moon on the east oriel shone
Through slender shafts of shapely stone,
By foliaged tracery combined.
Thou would'st have thought some fairy'd hand
'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand
In many a freakish knot had twined,
Then framed a spell when the work was done,
And changed the willow wreaths to stone.
The silver light, so pale and faint,
Showed many a prophet and many a saint,
Whose image on the glass was dyed,
Full in the midst his cross of red
Triumphant Michael brandish'd,
And trampled on the Apostate's pride;
The moonbeams kissed the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain."
Abbotsford
If "Scott restored Scotland," he built the "keep" which centers all the Scott-land of the Border side.
Two miles above Melrose, a charming walk leads to Abbotsford; redeemed out of a swamp into at least the most memory-filled mansion of all the land. Scott, like the monks, could not leave the silver wash of the Tweed; and, more