present railway-station.  Beyond this, there is little about Berwick to tell of its hoary antiquity and its eventful history.  But its red-roofed houses, rising steeply from the left bank of the Tweed, and looking across the tidal river to the villages of Tweedmouth and Spittal, have a picturesqueness of their own, whether they are seen when the lights and shadows of a summer day are playing upon them, or when they are swathed in the white folds of a North Sea haar.

The Berwick people are shrewd, capable, and kindly, and combine many of the good qualities of their Scotch and Northumbrian neighbours.  Their dialect is in some respects akin to the Lowland Scotch, with which it has many words in common; and it has also as a prominent feature that rising intonation, passing sometimes almost into a wail, which one hears all along the eastern Border.  But the great outstanding characteristic of Berwick speech is the burr a rough guttural pronunciation of the letter “i.”  With nothing but the scanty resources of our alphabet to fall back upon, it is quite impossible to represent this peculiarity phonetically, but it was once remarked by a student of Semitic tongues that the sound of the Hebrew letter ’Ayin is as nearly as possible that of the burr, and that, if you want to ascertain the correct Hebrew pronunciation of the name Ba’al, all you have got to do is to ask any Alderman of Berwick to say “Barrel"[6]

[Footnote 6:  Some words are very hard to pronounce with a burr in one’s throat.  Dr. Cairns used to tell that on one occasion, long after he had got well used to the sound of the Berwick speech, he was under the belief that a man with whom he was conversing was talking about a boy until he discovered from the context that his theme was a brewery.]

In 1845 the population of Berwick was between 8000 and 9000.  “It included,” says Dr. MacEwen, “some curious elements.”  Not the least curious and dubious of these was that of the lower class of the old Freemen of the Borough.  These men had an inherited right to the use of lands belonging to the Corporation, which they let; and to a vote at a Parliamentary election, which they sold.  When an election drew near, it was a maxim with both political parties that the Freemen must be conciliated at all costs; and the Freemen, knowing this, were quite prepared to presume on their knowledge.  Once, at an election time, it happened that in the house of a prominent political leader in Berwick a fine roast of beef was turning before the kitchen fire, and was nearly ready for the dinner table, when a Freeman walked in, lifted it from the spit, and carried it off.  No one dared to say him nay, for had he not a vote? and might not that vote turn the election?

At the other end of the social scale were the half-pay officers, the members of neighbouring county families, and the attorneys and doctors, who in some degree constituted the aristocracy of Berwick, and most of whom attended the Episcopalian Parish Church.  The bulk of the shopkeepers and tradesmen, with some of the professional men and a large proportion of the working people, were Dissenters, and were connected with one or other of the half-dozen Presbyterian congregations in the town.  Of these that of which Cairns was the minister was the most influential and the largest, having a membership of about six hundred.