Michael Scott was at one time, it was said, much embarrassed by a spirit for whom he had to find constant employment, and amongst other work he commanded him to build a dam or other weir across the River Tweed at Kelso.  He completed that in a single night.  Michael next ordered him to divide the summit of the Eildon Hill in three parts; but as this stupendous work was also completed in one night, he was at his wits’ end what work to find him to do next.  At last he bethought himself of a job that would find him constant employment.  He sent him to the seashore and employed him at the hopeless and endless task of making ropes of sand there, which as fast as he made them were washed away by the tides.  The three peaks of Eildon Hill, of nearly equal height, are still to be seen.  Magnificent views are to be obtained from their tops, which Sir Walter Scott often frequented and of which he wrote, “I can stand on the Eildon and point out forty-three places famous in war and in verse.”

Another legend connected with these hills was that in the “Eildon caverns vast” a cave existed where the British King Arthur and his famous Knights of the Round Table lie asleep waiting the blast of the bugle which will recall them from Fairyland to lead the British on to a victory that will ensure a united and glorious Empire.  King Arthur has a number of burial-places of the same character, according to local stories both in England and Wales, and even one in Cheshire at Alderley Edge, close By the “Wizard Inn,” which title refers to the story.

[Illustration:  MELROSE ABBEY.]

Melrose and district has been hallowed by the influence and memory of Sir Walter Scott, who was to Melrose what Shakespeare was to Stratford-on-Avon, and he has invested the old abbey with an additional halo of interest by his “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” a copy of which we saw for the first time at the inn where we called for tea.  We were greatly interested, as it related to the neighbourhood we were about to pass through in particular, and we were quite captivated with its opening lines, which appealed so strongly to wayfarers like ourselves: 

  The way was long, the wind was cold. 
  The Minstrel was infirm and old;
  His wither’d cheek, and tresses gray,
  Seem’d to have known a better day;

  The harp, his sole remaining joy,
  Was carried by an orphan boy. 
  The last of all the Bards was he,
  Who sung of Border chivalry.

We were now nearing the Borders of Scotland and England, where this Border warfare formerly raged for centuries.  The desperadoes engaged in it on the Scottish side were known as Moss-troopers, any of whom when caught by the English were taken to Carlisle and hanged near there at a place called Hairibee.  Those who claimed the “benefit of clergy” were allowed to repeat in Latin the “Miserere mei,” at the beginning of the 51st Psalm, before they were executed, this becoming known as the “neck-verse.”