Stories of the Border Marches by John Lang and Jean Lang

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STORIES OF THE BORDER MARCHES

[Illustration]

BY JOHN LANG
AND JEAN LANG

LONDON: T.C. & E.C. JACK LTD.
67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH

1916

PREFACE

The quotation that speaks of "Old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles
long ago," has grown now to be hackneyed. Yet, are not they those "old,
unhappy, far-off things" that lure us back from a very commonplace and
utilitarian present, and cause us to cling to the romance of stories
that are well-nigh forgotten?

In these days of rushing railway journeys, of motor cars, telegrams,
telephones, and aeroplanes, we are apt to lose sight of the tales of
more leisurely times, when lumbering stage-coaches and relays of willing
horses were our only means of transit from one kingdom to the other.

Because the "long ago" means to us so infinitely valuable a possession,
we have striven to preserve in print a few of the stories that still
remain--flotsam and jetsam saved from the cruel rush of an overwhelming
tide.

One or two of the tales in this volume are perhaps not quite so familiar
as is the average Border story, and some may contain less of violence
and of bloodshed than is common. Yet it must be owned that it is no easy
task to divorce the Border from its wedded mate, violence.

JOHN LANG.
JEAN LANG.

CONTENTS

THE WHITE LADY OF BLENKINSOPP 1

DICKY OF KINGSWOOD 17

STORM AND TEMPEST 28

GRISELL HOME, A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HEROINE 45

KINMONT WILLIE 66

IN THE DAYS OF THE '15 82

SEWINGSHIELDS CASTLE, AND THE SUNKEN TREASURE OF
BROOMLEE LOUGH 108

THE KIDNAPPING OF LORD DURIE 115

THE WRAITH OF PATRICK KERR 132

THE LAIDLEY WORM OF SPINDLESTON-HEUGH 136

A BORDERER IN AMERICA 147

BORDER SNOWSTORMS 164

THE MURDER OF COLONEL STEWART OF HARTRIGGE 187

AULD RINGAN OLIVER 195

A LEGEND OF NORHAM 208

THE GHOST OF PERCIVAL REED 223

DANDY JIM THE PACKMAN 231

THE VAMPIRES OF BERWICK AND MELROSE 237

A BORDER MIDDY 244

SHEEP-STEALING IN TWEEDDALE 256

A PRIVATE OF THE KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS 271

HIGHWAYMEN IN THE BORDER 282

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 295

ILLICIT DISTILLING AND SMUGGLING 304

SALMON AND SALMON-POACHERS IN THE BORDER 322

THE GHOST THAT DANCED AT JETHART 342

A MAN HUNT IN 1813 346

LADY STAIR'S DAUGHTER 351

STORIES OF THE BORDER MARCHES

THE WHITE LADY OF BLENKINSOPP

Among the old castles and peel towers of the Border, there are few to
which some tale or other of the supernatural does not attach itself. It
may be a legend of buried treasure, watched over by a weeping figure,
that wrings its hands; folk may tell of the apparition of an ancient
dame, whose corpse-like features yet show traces of passions unspent; of
solemn, hooded monk, with face concealed by his cowl, who passes down
the castle's winding stair, telling his beads; they whisper, it may be,
of a lady in white raiment, whose silken gown rustles as she walks. Or
the tale, perhaps, is one of pitiful moans that on the still night air
echo through some old building; or of the clank of chains, that comes
ringing from the damp and noisome dungeons, causing the flesh of the
listener to creep.

They are all to be found, or at least they _used_ all to be found,
somewhere or other in the Border, by those who love such legends. And,
perhaps, nowhere are they more common than amongst the crumbling,
grass-grown ruins of Northumberland.

Away, far up the South Tyne, and up its tributary the Tipalt Burn, close
to the boundary of Cumberland, there stands all that is left of an
ancient castle, centuries ago the home of an old and once powerful
family. The building dates probably from early in the fourteenth
century. In the year 1339 "Thomas de Blencansopp" received licence to
fortify his house on the Scottish Border, and it is supposed that he
then built this castle.

Truly that was a part of England where a man had need be careful in his
building if he desired to sleep securely and with a whole skin, for on
all sides of him were wild and turbulent neighbours. From the strenuous
day of the old Romans, who built across those hills that long line of
wall, which stands yet in parts solid and strong, for centuries the
countryside was lawless and unruly, the inhabitants "ill to tame," and
every man a freebooter. The Thirlwalls, the Ridleys, the Howards of
Naworth, the wild men of Bewcastle; the Armstrongs, Elliots, Scotts, and
others across the Border, they were all of them--they and their
forebears to the earliest times--of the stuff that prefers action,
however stormy, to inglorious peace and quiet, and the man who "kept up
his end" in their neighbourhood could be no weakling.

Whether the Blenkinsopps were strong enough permanently to hold their
property intact among such neighbours one does not know, but at any
rate, in 1488 John de Blenkinsopp and his son Gerrard committed the
castle to the custody of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, Warden of
the East and Middle Marches. Percy's care of the building, however, does
not seem to have been particularly zealous, or else "the false Scottes"
had again, as was their wont, proved themselves to be unpleasant
neighbours, for in 1542 the place is described as "decayed in the Roof,
and not in good reparation."

Before this date, however, there had been at least one of the
Blenkinsopp family on whose reputation for daring and strength no man
might cast doubt. Far and wide, Bryan de Blenkinsopp was known for his
deeds in war; he was counted gallant and brave even amongst the bravest
and most gallant, and his place in battle was ever where blows fell
thickest. But it is said that he had one failing, which eventually
wrecked his life--he was grasping as any Shylock. Love of money was his
undoing.

In spite of many chances to do so, in spite of the admiration in which
he was universally held, Bryan de Blenkinsopp had never married. He was
greatly admired, and yet, for a certain roughness and brutality in him,
greatly feared, by many women, and he had been heard many a time
scoffingly to say that only would he bring home a wife when he had found
a woman possessed of gold sufficient to fill a chest so large that ten
of his men might not be able to carry it into his castle. Brides of this
calibre did not then grow in profusion on either side of the Border, and
had he continued to live uninterruptedly in his own country, no doubt
Bryan de Blenkinsopp might have remained to the end unmarried. But:
"When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till
I was married." In that, Bryan might have anticipated _Benedick_, as
well as in the resolution. "Rich she shall be, that's certain." He went
abroad to the wars. Perhaps he was with Henry V at Agincourt, and
thenceforward, till the king's death in 1422, saw more of France than of
England. In any case, to the unbounded wonder of the countryside, when
at length he did return, Bryan brought back with him a foreign bride to
Blenkinsopp. And what added to the wonder, the bride brought with her a
chest of treasure so heavy that twelve of Bryan's retainers could with
difficulty bear it into the castle.

Naturally, all this gave rise to endless talk; what prattling little
busybody but would relish so succulent a morsel! Ere long the local
gossip-mongers revelled in a perfect feast of petty scandal. Stories in
minute detail spread quickly from mouth to mouth. The eccentricities and
shortcomings of the foreign bride were a priceless boon to the scanty
population of the district; in castle and in peel tower little else for
a time was talked of. To begin with, the mere fact that she was a
foreigner, and that neither she nor any of her immediate followers could
speak English, told heavily against the lady in the estimation of the
countryside. Then, hardly anyone ever saw her (which in itself was an
offence, and the cause of still further tattle). She was very little,
folk said who professed to be well informed, and her face and hands
showed strangely brown against the white robes that she habitually wore;
her eyes were like stars; her temper quick to blaze up without due
cause. Backstairs gossip, no doubt; but there were even pious souls who,
in strictest confidence, went so far as to hazard the opinion that the
lady was not quite "canny"; she might, they thought, quite possibly turn
out to be an imp of the Evil One sent with her gold to wile Bryan's soul
to perdition. The belief was not more fantastic than many another that
prevailed at that day, and later; and the fact that she was never known
to go to mass, nor had been seen to cross the threshold of a sacred
building, lent some weight to it. This was the kind of "clash" that
floated about the countryside.

But assuredly there was this much foundation for talk: Bryan and his
foreign bride were far from happy together. As time went on, their
quarrels, indeed, became notorious. It was whispered that the fount from
which flowed all the trouble was nothing more nor less than that chest
of gold which the bride had brought for dowry. The lady, folk said,
would not surrender it to her husband; no matter how he stormed. _She_
was not of the kind that tamely submits, or cringes before a bully; on
the contrary, she ever gave back as good as she received. Finally,
things came at length to such a pitch, that the lady and her foreign
servants, it was said, at dead of night had secretly dug a great hole
somewhere in the huge vaulted dungeons of the castle, and had there
buried her gold and the rich jewels which now she hated as the cause of
her troubles.

Then, a little later, followed the climax--after violent scenes, Bryan
himself disappeared, as if to show that, the treasure being somewhere
beyond his ken, or out of his reach, he had no further use for the wife.
He might, no doubt, have resorted to poison, or to the knife, in order
to revenge himself; or he might have so made life a burden to her--as is
done sometimes, one is told, even by modern husbands--that she would
have been glad to lick his hand like a whipped spaniel, and to have
owned up, perhaps, to the place where she had hid the gold. But if he
killed her, her secret might die with her, or the servants who were in
her confidence might themselves secure the treasure. Again, she had
plenty of spirit, and, indeed, rather seemed to enjoy a fight, and it
was possible that bullying might not cause her to try to conciliate him
by revealing the whereabouts of the hidden treasure. So Bryan took the
course that he judged would make things the most unpleasant for his
wife, and which would at the same time rid him of her. He simply
disappeared.

And now the poor little lady, fierce enough in quarrel, and bitter
enough in tongue, was inconsolable. In spite of all--it is one of the
most inscrutable of the many inscrutable points in the nature of some
women--in spite of all, she had loved her great, strong, brutal,
bullying husband, and probably was only jealous of the gold because he
had showed too plainly that in his estimation it, and not she, came
first. Her days, unhappy enough before, were now spent in fruitless
misery, waiting for him who returned never again. A year and a day
passed, and still no tidings came to her of Bryan de Blenkinsopp. The
deserted wife could bear no longer her life in this alien country, and
she, too, with all her servants, went away. Folk, especially those who
had always in their hearts suspected her of being an imp of Satan, said
that no man saw them go. Probably she went in search of her husband; but
whether or not she ever found him, or whether she made her way back to
the land from which she had come, none can say, for from that day to
this all trace is lost of husband and of wife. Only the tale remained in
the country people's minds; and probably it lost nothing in the telling
as the years rolled on.

The story of the White Lady of Blenkinsopp became one to which the
dwellers by Tyneside loved to listen of a winter's evening round the
fire, and it even began to be whispered that she "walked." More than one
dweller in the castle claimed to have seen her white-robed figure
wandering forlorn through the rooms in which she had spent her short,
unhappy wedded life. Perhaps it may have been due to her influence that
by 1542 the roof and interior had been neglected and allowed to fall
into decay.

Yet though shorn of all its former grandeur, for some centuries the
castle continued to be partly occupied, and as late as the first quarter
of last century, in spite of the dread in which the White Lady had come
to be held, there were families occasionally living in the less ruined
parts of the building.

About the year 1820 two of the more habitable rooms were occupied by a
labouring man with his wife and their two children, the youngest a boy
of eight. They had gone there, the parents at least well knowing the
reputation of the place; but weeks had passed, their rest had never in
any way been disturbed, and they had ceased to think of what they now
considered to be merely a silly old story. All too soon, however, there
came a night when shriek upon shriek of ghastly terror rang in the ears
of the sleeping husband and wife, and brought them, with sick dread in
their hearts, hurrying to the room where their children lay.

"Mither! mither! oh mither! A lady! a lady!" gasped the sobbing
youngest boy, clinging convulsively to his mother.

"What is't, my bairn? There's never a lady here, my bonny boy. There's
nobody will harm ye."

But the terrified child would not be comforted. He had seen a lady, "a
braw lady, a' in white," who had come to his bedside and, sitting down,
had bent and kissed him; she "cried sore," the child said, and wrung her
hands, and told him that if he would but come with her she would make
him a rich man, she would show him where gold was buried in the castle;
and when the boy answered that he dare not go with her, she had stooped
to lift and carry him. Then he had cried out, and she had slipped from
the room just as his father and mother hurried in.

"Ye were dreamin', my bonny lamb," cried the mother; and the parents,
after a time, succeeded in calming the child and in getting him again to
fall asleep. Night after night, however, as long as the boy remained in
that room, this scene was re-enacted; the same terror-stricken screams,
the same hurried rush of the parents, the same frightened tale from the
quivering lips of the child. Dreams, no doubt, induced by some childish
malady; a common enough form of nightmare, suggested by previous
knowledge of a story likely to impress children. But to the day of his
death--and he died an old man, a successful colonist, prosperous and
respected, a man in no way prone to superstitious weakness--the dreamer
ever maintained that it was something more than a dream that had come to
him those nights in Blenkinsopp Castle. He could feel yet, he said, and
shuddered to feel, the clasp of her arms and the kiss on his cheek from
the cold lips of the White Lady; and the dream, if dream it were, was
not due to suggestion, for he was conscious of no previous knowledge of
the legend.

The White Lady of Blenkinsopp has fled now, scared from her haunt by the
black smoke of tall chimneys and the deep--throated blare of steam
hooters; coal dust might well lay a more formidable spectre than that of
a Lady in White. But no man has ever yet discovered the whereabouts of
her hidden treasure, though many have sought.

Seventy or eighty years ago, there came to the inn of a neighbouring
village a lady, who confided to the hostess of the inn that in a dream
she had seen herself find, under a certain stone, deep in the dungeon of
a ruined castle, a chest of gold; and Blenkinsopp, she said, answered in
every detail to the castle of her dream. Assuredly, she thought, to her
now was to be revealed the long-sought burial-place of the White Lady's
treasure. But patiently though the dreamer waited on and importuned the
castle's owner, permission to make a systematic search among the ruins
was too hard to obtain, and the disheartened seer of visions departed,
and returned no more. And so the hidden treasure to this day remains
hidden; no prospector has yet lit on that rich "claim," no "dowser" has
poised his magic hazel twig above its bed, nor has clairvoyant revealed
its whereabouts.

But rumour had it once that the long-sought hiding-place was found.
Orders had been given that the vaults of the castle should be cleared of
rubbish, and fitted up as winter quarters for cattle, and as the workmen
proceeded with their task they came on a low doorway, hitherto unknown,
on a level with the bottom of the keep. This doorway gave on a narrow
passage, leading no man knew whither. The report flew abroad that here
at last was the Lady's vault, and people flocked to see what might be
seen. None dared venture far along this passage, till one, bolder than
the rest, taking his courage in both hands, went gingerly down the way
so long untrod by human foot. The passage was narrow and low, too low
for a man to walk in erect; after a few yards it descended a short
flight of steps, and then again went straight forward to a door so
decayed that only a rusted bolt, and one rust-eaten hinge, held it in
place. Beyond this door, an abrupt turn in the passage, and then a
flight of steps so precipitous that the feeble beam of his lantern could
give the explorer no help in fathoming their depth; and when this
lantern was lowered as far as it was in his power to do so, the flame
burned blue and went out, killed by the noxious gases that stagnant
centuries had breathed. Dizzy and frightened, the explorer with
difficulty groped his way back to the fresher air of the vault, and no
persuasion could induce him, or any of his fellows, to venture again so
far as to that long flight of steps. The employer of those labourers was
a man entirely devoid of curiosity or of imagination, possessed of no
interest whatsoever in archaeology; so it fell out that the passage was
closed, without any further effort being made to discover to what
mysteries it might lead.

About the year 1845, one who then wrote about the castle visited the
place, and found that boys had broken a small hole in the wall where the
passage had been built up. Through this hole they were wont to amuse
themselves by chucking stones, listening, fascinated, to the strange
sounds that went echoing, echoing through the mysterious depths far
below. Here, say some, lies the buried treasure of the White Lady of
Blenkinsopp. But there are not wanting unsympathetic souls, who pride
themselves on being nothing if not practical, who pretend to think that
this hidden depth is nothing more mysterious than the old draw-well of
the castle.

This story of the White Lady is not the only legend of the supernatural
with which the old family of Blenkinsopp is connected.

Where Tipalt Burn falls into Tyne, stand on the opposite bank the ruins
of Bellister Castle. There, many hundred years ago, dwelt a branch of
the Blenkinsopps. To Bellister there came one night at the gloaming a
wandering harper, begging for shelter from the bitter northerly blast
that gripped his rheumatic old joints, and sported with his failing
strength. He was a man past middle age, with hair thin and grey, and a
face worn and lined; his tattered clothes gave scant protection from
inclement weather. As was the custom in those times, the minstrel's
welcome was hearty. Food and drink, and a seat near the fire, were his,
and soon his blood thawed, the bent form of the man seemed to
straighten, and his eye kindled as, later in the evening, "high placed
in hall, a welcome guest," he touched his harp and sang to the company.
You could scarcely now recognise the weary, bent, old scarecrow that but
two hours back had trailed, footsore and tired, across the castle
drawbridge. The change was astonishing, and many jested with the harper
on the subject.

But one there was who noticed, and who did not jest. They were
increasingly uneasy looks that the lord of the castle from time to time
threw towards the minstrel. What, he pondered unquietly, caused this
amazing change in the appearance of one who so lately had seemed to be
almost on the verge of the grave? Was he in truth the frail old man he
had pretended to be, or had he overacted his part, and was he no
minstrel, but an enemy in disguise? The lord's looks grew blacker and
more black, and ever more uneasy as the evening proceeded; and the more
he suspected, the more he drank to drown the disquiet of his mind. At
length his unease became so marked that unavoidably it communicated
itself to the rest of the company. Even the rough men-at-arms desisted
from their boisterous jests, and spoke beneath their breath. The harper
glancing around as the silence grew, and finding the lord's black looks
ever upon him, trailed off at last in his song and sat mute, with
uncertain fingers plucking at the strings of his instrument. The company
broke up, glad to escape from the gloom of their lord's glances, and
somebody showed the old man to a rude chamber, where a bundle of pease
straw was to serve him for bed.

But the lord of Bellister sat on, "glooming" morbidly to himself. Bitter
feud existed between him and a neighbouring baron. Had he not cause to
distrust that baron, and to believe that means neither fair nor
honourable might be employed by his enemy to wipe out the feud? What if
this self-styled harper should turn out to be no minstrel after all, but
a hired assassin, a follower of that base churl, his hated foe! To
suspect was to believe. In his excited, drink-clouded brain wrath sprang
up, fully armed. He would speedily put an end to that treacherous
scheme; his enemies should learn that if one can plot, another may have
cunning to bring to naught such treachery. And little mercy should be
shown to the base tool of a baser employer.

"Bring hither quickly to me that minstrel," he called. "And it will be
the better for some of you that there be no delay," he muttered beneath
his breath, with a threatening blow of his fist on the table.

Of old his servants and dependants had learned the lesson that it was
well not to linger over the carrying out of their passionate lord's
orders. But in this instance, speed was of no avail; they were obliged
to return, to report to a wrathful master that the bird had flown; the
place was empty, the old man gone. Threatening glances and black looks
had scared him; without waiting for rest, he had fled while yet there
was time, less afraid of exposure to a wild and stormy night than to
find himself in the clutches of a petty tyrant.

That the man had fled was to Blenkinsopp quite convincing proof that his
suspicions were justified. Immediate pursuit was ordered. "Lay the
sleuth hounds on his trail without an instant's delay. Let _them_ deal
with him!"

* * * * *

Less than a mile away, by some willows that once marked a ford in the
river, men hurrying after the baying hounds came up too late. Echoing
across the heath, an agonised shriek rang on their ears, drowned by the
snarling as of wild beasts. Lying on its back on the river bank, head
and shoulders in the shallow stream, the man-hunters found but a frail,
mutilated body that had once been the wandering old minstrel.

This was what gave rise to the legend of the Grey Man of Bellister. Ever
since that hideous night, at intervals the "Grey Man" has been wont to
appear to belated travellers along that road. Near the clump of willows
he might first be seen, hurrying, hurrying, his long grey cloak flying
in the wind. And woe to him on whom he chanced to turn and look; his
wild eye and torn face, his blood-clotted beard, would freeze with
horror those who gazed, and disaster or death followed hard on the track
of the vision.

It is a hundred years now, and more, since last the "Grey Man" was seen.
Perhaps his penance for sins committed on earth is ended; or perhaps it
is that against railways, and drainage, and modern scoffings, he and his
like cannot stand. He is gone; but even yet, about the scene where once
as a man the old minstrel fled for dear life, there hangs at the dead
time of night a sense of mystery and awe. As the chilly wind comes
wailing across the everlasting hills, blending its voice with the
melancholy dirge of the river, one may almost believe that through the
gloom there passes swiftly a bent, hurrying figure. Perhaps it is but
the swaying of a branch near by, that so startlingly suggests the waving
in the wind of a threadbare cloak.

DICKY OF KINGSWOOD

Your Border ruffian of the good old days was not often a humorist. Life
to him was a serious business. When he was not reiving other people's
kye, other people were probably reiving his; and as a general rule one
is driven to conclude that he was not unlike that famous Scotch terrier
whose master attributed the dog's persistently staid and even melancholy
disposition to the fact that he "jist couldna get enough o' fechting."

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