The song leads us first, with a
foraging party of English riders, from Bewcastle, an English hold, east
of the Border stream of the Liddel; then through the Armstrong tribe,
on the north bank; then through more Armstrongs north across Tarras
water ("Tarras for the good bull trout"); then north up Ewes water,
that springs from the feet of the changeless green hills and the
pastorum loca vasta, where now only the shepherd or the angler wakens
the cry of the curlews, but where then the Armstrongs were in force.
We ride on, as it were, and look down into the dale of the stripling
Teviot, electro clarior (then held by the Scotts); we descend and ford
"Borthwick's roaring strand," as Leyden sings, though the burn is
usually a purling brook even where it joins Teviot, three miles above
Hawick.
Next we pass across the green waves of moorlands that rise to the
heights over Ettrick (held by the Scotts), whence the foragers of the
song gallop down to "The Fair Dodhead," now a heap of grass-covered
stones, but in their day a peel tower, occupied, ACCORDING TO THE
BALLAD, by one James Telfer.
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