Soon after leaving Innerleithen we could see Traquair House towering above the trees by which it was surrounded.  Traquair was said to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland.  Sir Walter Scott knew it well, it being quite near to Ashiestiel, where he wrote “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “Marmion,” and “The Lady of the Lake.”  It was one of the prototypes of “Tully Veolan” in his Waverley.  There was no abode in Scotland more quaint and curious than Traquair House, for it was turreted, walled, buttressed, windowed, and loopholed, all as in the days of old.  Within were preserved many relics of the storied past and also of royalty.  Here was the bed on which Queen Mary slept in 1566; here also the oaken cradle of the infant King James VI.  The library was rich in valuable and rare books and MSS. and service books of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries in beautiful penmanship upon fine vellum.  The magnificent avenue was grass-grown, the gates had not been opened for many years, while the pillars of the gateway were adorned with two huge bears standing erect and bearing the motto:  “Judge Nocht.”  Magnificent woods adorned the grounds, remains of the once-famous forest of Ettrick, said to be the old classical forest of Caledon of the days of King Arthur.

Here was also Flora Hill, with its beautiful woods, where Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, lays the scene of his exquisite poem “Kilmeny” in the Queen’s Wake, where—­

  Bonnie Kilmeny gae’d up the Glen,
  But it wisna to meet Duneira’s men, etc.

Through beautiful scenery we continued alongside the Tweed, and noticed that even the rooks could not do without breakfast, for they were busy in a potato field.  We were amused to see them fly away on our approach, some of them with potatoes in their mouths, and, like other thieves, looking quite guilty.

Presently we came to a solitary fisherman standing knee-deep in the river, with whom we had a short conversation.  He said he was fishing for salmon, which ascended the river from Berwick about that time of the year and returned in May.  We were rather amused at his mentioning the return journey, as from the frantic efforts he was making to catch the fish he was doing his best to prevent them from coming back again.  He told us he had been fishing there since daylight that morning, and had caught nothing.  By way of sympathy my brother told him a story of two young men who walked sixteen miles over the hills to fish in a stream.  They stayed that night at the nearest inn, and started out very early the next morning.  When they got back to the hotel at night they wrote the following verse in the visitors’ book: 

  Hickory dickory dock! 
  We began at six o’clock,
  We fished till night without a bite. 
  Hickory dickory dock!

This was a description, he said, of real fishermen’s luck, but whether the absence of the “bite” referred to the fishermen or to the fish was not quite clear.  It had been known to apply to both.