TIBBY FOWLER.

  “Tibby Fowler o’ the glen,
  A’ the lads are wooin’ at her.”—­Old Song.

All our readers have heard and sung of “Tibby Fowler o’ the glen;” but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about four miles of Berwick.  No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom.  Now, gentle reader, if you have looked upon the scene we have described, we shall make plain to you the situation of Tibby Fowler’s cottage, by a homely map, which is generally at hand.  You have only to bend your arm, and suppose your shoulder to represent Edrington Castle, your hand Clarabad, and near the elbow you will have the spot where “ten cam’ rowing owre the water;” a little nearer to Clarabad is the “lang dyke side,” and immediately at the foot of it is the site of Tibby’s cottage, which stood upon the Edrington side of the river; and a little to the west of the cottage, you will find a shadowy row of palm-trees, planted, as tradition testifieth, by the hands of Tibby’s father, old Ned Fowler, of whom many speak until this day.  The locality of the song was known to many; and if any should be inclined to inquire how we became acquainted with the other particulars of our story, we have only to reply, that that belongs to a class of questions to which we do not return an answer.  There is no necessity for a writer of tales taking for his motto—­vitam impendere vero.  Tibby’s parents had the character of being “bien bodies;” and, together with their own savings, and a legacy that had been left them by a relative, they were enabled at their death to leave their daughter in possession of five hundred pounds.  This was esteemed a fortune in those days, and would afford a very respectable foundation for the rearing of one yet.  Tibby, however, was left an orphan, as well as the sole mistress of five hundred pounds, and the proprietor of a neat and well-furnished cottage, with a piece of land adjoining, before she had completed her nineteenth year; and when we add that she had hair like the raven’s wings when the sun glances upon them, cheeks where the lily and the rose seemed to have lent their most delicate hues, and eyes like twin dew-drops glistening beneath a summer moonbeam, with a waist and an arm rounded like a model for a sculptor, it is not to be wondered at that “a’ the lads cam’ wooin’ at her.”  But she had a woman’s heart as well as woman’s beauty and the portion of an heiress.  She found her cottage surrounded, and her path beset, by a herd of grovelling pounds-shillings-and-pence