The Monastery | Page 2

trusted,) is the glen of the river, or rather brook, named the
Allen, which falls into the Tweed from the northward, about a quarter
of a mile above the present bridge. As the streamlet finds its way
behind Lord Sommerville's hunting-seat, called the Pavilion, its valley
has been popularly termed the Fairy Dean, or rather the Nameless Dean,
because of the supposed ill luck attached by the popular faith of ancient
times, to any one who might name or allude to the race, whom our
fathers distinguished as the Good Neighbours, and the Highlanders

called Daoine Shie, or Men of Peace; rather by way of compliment,
than on account of any particular idea of friendship or pacific relation
which either Highlander or Borderer entertained towards the irritable
beings whom they thus distinguished, or supposed them to bear to
humanity. [Footnote: See Rob Roy, Note, p. 202.]
In evidence of the actual operations of the fairy people even at this time,
little pieces of calcareous matter are found in the glen after a flood,
which either the labours of those tiny artists, or the eddies of the brook
among the stones, have formed into a fantastic resemblance of cups,
saucers, basins, and the like, in which children who gather them
pretend to discern fairy utensils.
Besides these circumstances of romantic locality, mea paupera regna
(as Captain Dalgetty denominates his territory of Drumthwacket) are
bounded by a small but deep lake, from which eyes that yet look on the
light are said to have seen the waterbull ascend, and shake the hills with
his roar.
Indeed, the country around Melrose, if possessing less of romantic
beauty than some other scenes in Scotland, is connected with so many
associations of a fanciful nature, in which the imagination takes delight,
as might well induce one even less attached to the spot than the author,
to accommodate, after a general manner, the imaginary scenes he was
framing to the localities to which he was partial. But it would be a
misapprehension to suppose, that, because Melrose may in general pass
for Kennaquhair, or because it agrees with scenes of the Monastery in
the circumstances of the drawbridge, the milldam, and other points of
resemblance, that therefore an accurate or perfect local similitude is to
be found in all the particulars of the picture. It was not the purpose of
the author to present a landscape copied from nature, but a piece of
composition, in which a real scene, with which he is familiar, had
afforded him some leading outlines. Thus the resemblance of the
imaginary Glendearg with the real vale of the Allen, is far from being
minute, nor did the author aim at identifying them. This must appear
plain to all who know the actual character of the Glen of Allen, and
have taken the trouble to read the account of the imaginary Glendearg.
The stream in the latter case is described as wandering down a romantic
little valley, shifting itself, after the fashion of such a brook, from one
side to the other, as it can most easily find its passage, and touching

nothing in its progress that gives token of cultivation. It rises near a
solitary tower, the abode of a supposed church vassal, and the scene of
several incidents in the Romance.
The real Allen, on the contrary, after traversing the romantic ravine
called the Nameless Dean, thrown off from side to side alternately, like
a billiard ball repelled by the sides of the table on which it has been
played, and in that part of its course resembling the stream which pours
down Glendearg, may be traced upwards into a more open country,
where the banks retreat farther from each other, and the vale exhibits a
good deal of dry ground, which has not been neglected by the active
cultivators of the district. It arrives, too, at a sort of termination,
striking in itself, but totally irreconcilable with the narrative of the
Romance. Instead of a single peel-house, or border tower of defence,
such as Dame Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of
the Allen, about five miles above its junction with the Tweed, shows
three ruins of Border houses, belonging to different proprietors, and
each, from the desire of mutual support so natural to troublesome times,
situated at the extremity of the property of which it is the principal
messuage. One of these is the ruinous mansion-house of Hillslap,
formerly the property of the Cairncrosses, and now of Mr. Innes of
Stow; a second the tower of Colmslie, an ancient inheritance of the
Borthwick family, as is testified by their crest, the Goat's Head, which
exists on the ruin; [Footnote: It appears that Sir Walter Scott's memory
was not quite accurate on these points. John Borthwick, Esq. in a