BEACONS ON THE BORDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 261, 3 November 1932, Page 6

BEACONS ON THE BORDER.

From Greenlaw on Wednesday night our special correspondent sent us a vivid description of the beacons which, saluted the memory of Walter 'Scott on the Border hills (says, "The Times"). He had seen them from beneath the walls of Hume Castle (which once tried to defy Oliver Cromwell); and the remains of that ancient stronghold aTe not many miles from the "shatter'd tower" of Smailholm, which eeemed to little Walter Scott, spending his crippled childhood on his grandfather's farm of Sandyknowe, to be "the .mightiest work of human power," and provided one of the first and strongest of ihis impulses ■towards romance. From Hume Castle the 'beacons could be seen on this side and on that, dotting the "Scott country" as far away as Ettrick Pen, near which other streams flow into the-great waters of this region's poetical memory, and James Hogg twines his Border garland, and Wordsworth laments the death of the minstrel ehepherd who was his first guide to the banks of) Yarrow. The spectacle must have been grand and impressive; and still more impressive perhaps the thought that those fires were no warning of an approaching enemy, no dreadful glare of peel or walled farm or homestead sacked and set on fire by raiders in that wide and lordless and distracted, land, but a flaming tribute to the deathless- memory of one who turned the violence and ferocity of his Border ancestors to creative activity in the arts of peace.

TUI SKi'ddaw saw the fire that burnt on Gaunt's embattled pile, And the red glare on Sklddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle — When Macaulay (who had not read 'Scott's poetry for nothing) broke off his fragment on the Armada, his beacons were drawing near this Border country, and had reached that other and more ancient border, the Roman Wall, which in these later days grows in fascination and in. .interest as more and more of it, between Wallsend on the east and Bownees on the west, past Corbridge and Housesteads, Gilsland, Banks and Brampton, is studied and preserved from decay and destruction. That line of defence saw some fires in its years of greatness—most of them doubtless fixes of death and ruin, but some perhaps* of rejoicing, when good news came from Rome or the savage Picts of the North had been taught a lesson. What tales could Bamborotigh or Dunstanborough or Whitby tell of fires that warned of raids from the North Sea—to be followed by fires that the raiders themselves, had lit? Centuries pass; and here are young Jems Purchess and old John firing the beacon on Rainbarrow because the watchers on Blackdon have fired theirs, and all Dorset believes that "He's come!" and Bonaparte has invaded England. Across the expanse 1 of our history beacon fires leap from point to point; and in the past they have been warning cries at least as often as. they have been shouts of joy or of homage. It was by other lights than these that England within living memory declared and searched out her nightly peril; and it may be that the beacon fire has become too old-fashioned and too clumsy a device for use in time of danger. But the older it is and the deeper rooted in history, the fitter it grows Wbean expression of national joy and pride. Two nations, once bitter enemies, joined together on : Wednesday night to honour the memory of one who did much to bring them together; and the scene of the salute was the borderland between the two countries. Often in the future, let us hope, Great Britain will light beacon fires for joy; but it will be difficult to eurpass, in fitness and in significance, the fiery i splendours of the Walter •Scott centenary.