The Heather-Moon
red-gold in the western sunlight in a hollow near the river; such red
and gold colour as the old sandstone had, in contrast with the green of
lichen and green of waving grass, I wouldn't have believed in, if I'd
seen it in a picture. I should have said, "The artist who painted that
ruined castle put on the colours he would like to see, not those he did
see." But I should have misjudged him, because the colours were real.
Once there was a double moat all round the vast, triangular castle, and
still there's water in one of them. You would have thought the Maxwell
ladies had thrown their rubies and diamonds into it one wild day when
they were escaping from enemies, and that the jewels had lain ever since
at the bottom of the moat unnoticed, though the sunlight found out and
treacherously tried to tell the secret. Think of Ptolemy writing about
Caerlaverock, and calling it Carbantorigun! I'm glad we haven't to call
it that now, or I should always have to say _it_--as one goes on saying
"you" to a person whose name one hasn't caught.
Even if Caerlaverock were in hideous surroundings, it would be
magnificent: but the river Solway is its silver foreground, and Lochar
Moss is its mysterious background; so it is perfect in beauty as in
strength, and if only no such hateful things as cannons had been
invented, it would not now be a ruin. Although it lies so low, it was
built to resist everything but gunpowder: for how could the Maxwells
dream that all their beautiful arrangements for pouring down molten lead
and boiling oil would be useless against a new foe?
Edward I took the castle in 1300, but Bruce got it back thirteen years
later; and there was much fighting and tossing back of the Key from one
hand to the other even before the great siege when the Earl of Essex
punished Lord Herries for defending Queen Mary. Still, the walls stood
bravely, and after the Essex affair they were made stronger than
ever--so strong and so splendid it must have seemed as if Caerlaverock
need never capitulate again to any enemy. But no sooner had the Maxwells
finished a lovely new facade, the best they'd ever had, with carved
window and door caps of the latest fashion, than Colonel Home came along
with his grim Covenanters and blew up everything with his horrid
cannons. I can't help disliking him, for the Maxwells seem to have been
the most fascinating people. One Lord Maxwell of the seventeenth
century, who was Roman Catholic when it wasn't safe to be Roman
Catholic, used to disguise himself as a beggar, and play the fiddle in
the market-place of Dumfries as a signal to tell the faithful of his own
religion where and when they might come to Mass. They understood
according to certain tunes agreed upon, which was easy, as they had only
three meeting-places. A nice old man in the castle told us these stories
and showed us the exquisite courtyard where Burns came one day when he
was seventeen and cut on a stone in the wall the initials R. B. in a
triangle, like a masonic sign, which suggests the wedge shape of the
castle.
Sir S. knew all about this carving, and said that Americans had offered
two thousand pounds for the stone. But the Duchess of Norfolk, who is
mistress of Caerlaverock in her own right, turned up her nose,
metaphorically speaking, at the offer. "I bid ye fair:" is the motto
that goes with the crest over the huge gateway between two towers, and
the rumour is that the Americans, in bidding for the stone of the
initials, quoted this motto; but their aptness did them no good. In one
of those towers Murdoch, the blind Duke of Albany, was imprisoned for
seven years by James I before he was executed at Stirling; and they say
that in the green hollow where the great red ruin glows he can be seen
walking in the moonlight on the anniversary of his beheading.
One of my favourite stories in history is about Lord Nithsdale and his
brave, clever wife who saved him on the eve of his execution by dressing
him in her clothes and letting him walk calmly out of the Tower of
London in her place. Think of being able to do such a thing for a man
you loved! He was one of the Lords Nithsdale who came from Caerlaverock;
and not far away, at Terregles House, is a portrait of that Countess of
Nithsdale, with the cloak which her husband wore when he escaped. They
have a Prayer Book, too, of Queen Mary's in that house, for she gave it
to Lord Herries, who sheltered her in her flight after the battle at
Langside, eighty miles away. But we didn't see these things. It was the
old man at the castle who told us of them, because they are still in the
keeping of the Maxwell family, of which he is very proud.
We hurried quickly through Dumfries, not to see or think of the Burns
associations there until we should come back; but at Lincluden Abbey,
close by, we were forced to think of him--although, as far as our trip
was concerned, he wasn't born. At Lincluden, where he loved to come,
walking out from Dumfries (as he must have walked to Caerlaverock to cut
his initials) he saw the Vision. And Lincluden is so sweet a place that
my thoughts of it, mingling very humbly with the great poet's thoughts,
will lie together in my memory as pressed flowers lie between the pages
of a book.
The road which leads from Dumfries to Lincluden seems like a quiet
prelude to a lovely burst of music, so gentle and pretty it is. Then
suddenly you come to the promontory stitched on to the mainland with
great silver stitches of rivers, the Cluden and the Nith; and there are
old earthworks, fallen into ruin, which guard the Abbey as the skeletons
of watch-dogs might lie guarding a dead master. There's a mound, too, by
the side of the ruined church, and it is called a Mote, which means
something desperately interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower
in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it
the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling
sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with
roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little
bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look on at the
great burning.
We went into the church to see the tomb of Margaret Countess of Douglas,
who was a daughter of King Robert the Third; and somehow the mutilations
of the effigy made it more beautiful, causing you to see as in a blurred
picture the thousand events of troublous times which had passed over the
figure, leaving it through all peacefully asleep. A daughter of a king,
with the Douglas Heart to guard her, she would be too noble in her stony
slumber to show that she minded losing her features and a few other
trifling accessories which might spoil the looks of less important
women.
When we came out, high in the sunset glory gleamed a silver sickle,
reaping roses. It was the heather moon, and I cried out to Sir S. as I
saw it, "Wish--wish! Your first sight of the heather moon, and over our
right shoulders for luck! Whatever we wish _must_ come true!"
I was so excited that I seized his hand; and he was too polite to give
it back to me like a thing he didn't want. So he held it firmly in his
while we both looked up to the sky, silently making our wishes. My wish
was to be that my mother might love me; but I stopped and thought, "What
is the good of making such a wish, when I've only one, and I'm sure to
get that one without the heather moon, as mothers all love their
children." This caution was very "canny" and proved my Scottish blood, I
couldn't help thinking, as I paused in order to select the most
appropriate wish for the heather moon to grant.
Several ideas presented themselves with a bow: a wish to be happy: but
that wasn't "concrete" enough, as Sir S. would say. A wish to be very
rich and able to do anything in the world I might like to do; but being
rich sounds so fat and uninteresting--or else bald-headed; for nearly
all the photographs in picture papers of desperately rich people are one
or the other, or both. At last I began to be nervous, for if Sir S. or
Mrs. James (who was close by) should speak before I'd given my wish to
the new moon, she'd be unable to grant it, even with the best
intentions. That is a well-known fact in connection with wishing by the
moon. I have it on the authority of both Mrs. Muir and Heppie. Being in
a hurry, I grew confused, and so could think of nothing more important
than to wish for my knight never to forget me in future, wherever he may
be. And just as I'd finished, he said, "Well? What did you wish?"
Of course I couldn't tell him such a wish as that; but, luckily, you
must never let anybody know what you've wished by a moon or a star, if
you want the wish to come true.
I explained this to Sir S., and he said, as far as he was concerned, it
didn't matter, for he hadn't wished after all. "Oh, what a waste of the
heather moon!" I cried, for it really seemed too bad. But he answered
that the only thing he particularly wished for just then was a thing
which wasn't fair to wish, on account of the 'other party concerned.' I
laughed, and said if he had _wished_ to wish, he had wished, in spite of
himself, and the heather moon had heard; because that's the business of
any well-trained new moon, and the heather moon is the best-trained of
the year. "'The other party concerned' must just take the risk," I said.
"And very likely 'twill be the best thing for him, her, or it in the
end."
"I daren't hope that," said he, looking up at the silver sickle as
earnestly as if we weren't talking nonsense.
"Don't you think the heather moon knows best?" I reproached him. But he
did not answer, and only hummed under his breath, as we walked to the
waiting car:
"How far, how far to Gretna?
It's years and years away--
And coach-and-four shall nevermore
Fling dust across the day."
All the way along the shadowy, switchback road from Dumfries going to
Sweetheart Abbey (I like to write the name, it is so pretty and
old-fashioned) we had glimpses of the moon scattering silver through the
tree branches as she fell down the west. I thought the soft white curve
like a baby's arm, rounded at the elbow; and it waved us good-night over
the heather-clad mound of Criffel, as a baby might wave over the fat
shoulder of a big nurse dressed in purple. It is _cheek_ of Criffel to
call itself a mountain, and of course it wouldn't dare to if there were
other real mountains within twenty-five miles.
When I made this remark Mrs. James asked me where, in my sequestered
life, I had got hold of such an unladylike word as "cheek," but I told
her I must have been born knowing it, as there was never a time in my
memory when I didn't. Also Mr. Douglas had used it several times in
Carlisle Castle.
"Haven't you forgotten him yet?" asked Sir S.
"It would be silly to forget, and have to make his acquaintance over
again at Edinburgh," I said. "He asked me particularly to think of him
during our trip whenever I should see the Douglas Heart. Now I have just
seen it at Lincluden."
"Douglas Heart indeed! Douglas cheek!" I heard Sir S. mutter.
There is one part of that road between Dumfries and Sweetheart Abbey I
shall never forget: the view from Whinny Hill--a sudden view springing
from behind trees, as if a green curtain had been pulled back from a
picture. In this picture there were the silver Nith, and purple Criffel
of course (which always tries to get itself noticed wherever you turn),
a great forty-foot monument put up to commemorate Waterloo; and again
the red triangle of Caerlaverock glowing on the green shore of the
Solway Firth.
I suppose the people who were shy of seeming sentimental insisted on
calling Sweetheart Abbey New Abbey. I can imagine Sir S. voting for the