DRYBURGH ABBEY

Evening Star, Issue 19781, 3 February 1928, Page 4

DRYBURGH ABBEY

HISTORIC BURIAL PLACE LAST RESTING PLAGE OF LORD HAIG (British Official News.) Press Association—By Wireless—Cupyrighi RUGBY, February 2. (Received February 3, at 12.30 p.xn.) It is announced to-day that the remains of Lord Haig will be interred in the family vault at Dryburgh Abbey in Scotland on Tuesday. Dryburgh Abbey is near Bemersyde House, the late Field-Marshal’s home. The vault of the Haigs is next to the burial jd ace of Sir Walter Scott. After the funeral service in Westminster Abbey to-morrow the coffin will be entrained for Edinburgh, arriving in the Scottish capital about midnight. It will be received by General Sir William Peyton (General Officer Commanding Scotland) and his staff. Two squadrons of the Scots Greys and the Pipe Band of the Cameron Highlanders will be in attend- 1 ance. Members of the British Legion will bear the coffin to the gun carriage, and the procession will march through the city to St. Giles’s Cathedral, where the body will lie in state until Monday. It will be conveyed to Dryburgh Abbey. It is announced by the War Office that Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson lias been forbidden by his doctor to act as a pall bearer at the Westminster service, and that his place will be taken by General Lord Cavan. Among the messages of condolence received to-day by the Foreign Secretary was one from the Brazilian Government. LADY HAiG LONDON, February 2. (Received February 3, at noon.) Lady Haig, wearing a Flanders poppy, knelt for half an hour in silent devotion in the morning in front of the coffin. A few minutes afterwards a party of Scottish Borderers took over the guard. Meanwhile another queue waited outside. The earliest arrivals included crippled ex-servicemen, nurses, and Chelsea pensioners. AN ARMY ORDER IMPERISHABLE MEMORY AHD GLORIOUS EXAMPLE RUGBY, February 2. (Received February 3, at 12.30 p.m.) The following army order was issued this evening:—• The Army Council, on the melancholy occasion of the death of Field-Marshal Earl desires to place on record its sense of the heavy loss which the army and the Empire have sustained. The late field-marshal had already served in many campaigns with great distinction, and had held high appointments, where he had had opportunities of training troops whom he subsequently commanded in the Great War as commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. He bore through four long years the heaviest burden which has ever been carried by a British soldier in the history of the Empire, He - led the forces of Empire to victory, and placed his countrymen under a debt of gratitude which is tully acknowledged now, and' the council is persuaded, will be no less fully recognised by succeeding generations. Always studious of the welfare of the troops under his command in the field, since the war he had devoted without stint his time and his great energy to promoting the interests of those who had risked their employment, their health, and their lives in the service of the King. He has left to the army an imperishable memory and to the Empire a glorious example. THE HAIGS OF BEMERSYDE Bemersyde, the ancient stronghold oi the Haigs, stands on an elevated rocky bluff overhanging one of the most beautiful readies of the I weed. Situated in the parish of Mertoun, m the western extremity of that division of Berwickshire known as the Mersc, it is about three miles east of Melrose and one mile north of Dryburgh Abbey; and its lands are half-embraced on their western and south-western boundary by a magnificent curvature of the classic river. The stream here flows, summer and winter, in a lull, deep current, coming down between richly-wooded banks—those on the north abrupt and precipitous, and shagged with oak and birch and hawthorn to the waters’ edge. On the opposite bank, and all but surrounded by a circular bend of the river, is the shrine-forsaken promontory of Melrose, the spot on which the Saxon disciples of Aidan, more than I.2UU years ago, uplifted the sacred symbols of Christianity. . , Turner, the painter, when he visited Scotland in the autumn of 1831 lor the purpose of making drawings to illustrate the scenery of Sir Walter Scott’s poems, was taken by Scott to Bemersyde. Its antiquity—John Russell tells us in ‘ The Haigs of Bemersyde ’—was not the sole claim which Bemersyde had upon Scott’s affections and veneration. For “ there was rhat attaching to the place which could not fail, in one so constituted, not only to awaken'* his interest, but to stir Ins imagination. Round the Haig family and their old ancestral home the fanciful superstitions of the district had thrown a veil of mingled mystery and wonder, and not a peasant or a peasant’s child but could repeat the prophetic utterance of Thomas the Rhymer; “Tide what may betyde, Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde. - This prediction, which had floated in various forms about the borders for some hundreds of years, wis sufficient in the popular belief to ensure, as it had already for many long centuries ensured, the stability and permanency of tlie house of Bemersyde. Sir Walter Scott himself remarked in 1817, when visiting Bemersyde with. Washington Irving: “There seemed to him almost a wizard spell hanging over it, in consequence of the prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, in which in his young days «Wst potently believed.*

The older portion of Bemersydc House, which, with more or loss of necessary change in its fabric, lias been occupied by the Haigs for more than seven centuries, consists of a tall, narrow, castellated tower, finished with high crow-stepped gables in the style of the latter half of the sixteenth century, and is similar in size and appearance to the neighboring fortress or Smailholm. The upper portion underwent considerable modification about 1690. Again, in 1796, a small building in modern stylo was added to the east end of the tower, and a large wing was built on the west side in 1859; but the old tower is still in use equally with the new portion. It is surrounded by a “ brotherhood of ancient trees,” stately beeches and tall elms, in whoso windy tops the kindly rooks have long established a clamorous colony. On the greensward in I rout in a singular tree—of that long-lived species, the Spanish chestnut —with a great, ruggecl, warty trunk, surmounted by a twisted crown of black and gnarled houghs, on which even the greenery ol June has a faded look. Ibis is me covin tree—that is, the _ company oi trysting tree—beneath which in bygone times it was the habit ol the bosom ible old lairds to meet and bid welcome to their guests. It is said by tradition to be as old as the bouse itself, and to have been planted at its foundation; and in reality' it looks as if it had stood there through the suns and snows of a thousand years. Its position still serves to indicate the place of the old gateway or barbican that led in ancient times to the tower within the walls; though the walls themselves, with the usual outbuildings and offices which fortified places contained, were removed over 200 years ago, and in their stead is now a green lawn, broken up into flower plots and bounded by a line of magnificent old hollies and yews. Of the hundreds of forts and castles which once existed on the Scottish side of the Border, and whose ruins still excite the wonder and curiosity of the antiquary, Bemersydc is the only one that is still inhabited as a manorial residence, and inhibited. too, by the family that were its original founders. This singular tenacity of possession, existing as far hack as into the twelfth century, would in any circumstances be remarkable, and in the present instance is all the more so when we bear in mind that its locality is in the very centre of that district of Scotland which for more than three hundred years was the battleground of two hostile nationalities, as well as the scene ol almost never-ceasing internal conflict, rapine, and dissension. This phenomenon in Border history is not more striking than it is suggestive, connecting us of the twentieth century with that far-away time when as yet the boundary line between England and Scotland was undetermined; when, instead of Scottish and English we were Saxon and Celt and Norman; and when David the First was but laying the foundation stones of splendid religious edifices whose crumbling ruins we view to-day. It is a “far cry' from Scotland in the twelfth, to Scotland in the twentieth century. In truth, Bemersyde is a fitting home fo r the “ Foremost Captain of our Time.’.’