BURIAL OF EARL HAIG

Taranaki Daily News, 9 February 1928, Page 11

BURIAL OF EARL HAIG

THE FINAL TRIBUTES PAID “CARRY ON WITH LEGION’S WORK.” LADY HAIG MAKES APPEAL. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received Feb. 8, 8.40 p.m.) A.P.A. and Sun. London, Feb. 7. Crowds in a rainstorm watched the entrainment of Earl Haig’s Remains at Edinburgh for burial at Dryburgh Abbey. It was arranged that poppies and ivy grown on the estate should be m readiness for the ceremony. Business was supended in the four adjoining counties to enable the public to join in the final tribute. Thousands stood bare headed reverently lining the route as Earl Haig's coffin, covered with a Union Jack and preceded by a slow pacing border detachment of the British Legion wearing poppies, and accompanied by eight Bemersyde estate hands, was conveyed along- five miles of hilly lanes in a farm cart drawn by two draught horses driven tandem. Ahead of it was a local tenant farmer’s cart laden with wreaths, while Lady Haig, accompanied by relatives, followed the coffin. The last half mile was accomplished afoot. The simplest ceremony marked the laying of the great Field Marshal to rest in the tombs of his fathers. After the interment the choir chanted the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers,” pipes played a requiem and the notes of a bugle rang out sounding the reveille. “Carry on the Legion’s work,” says Lady Haig in a letter of thanks for world-wide expressions of sympathy. “Hold fast to the objectives embodied in the Legion’s charter. The Legion’s work has only begun. My husband lived and died by its ideals.” Labourites have tabled an amendment in the House of Commons to Mr. Baldwin's motion for a memorial to Earl Haig, demanding' that the Select Committee consider the most fitting form of memorial in view of Earl Haig’s known concern for ex-servicemen, their widows and dependants. "IN DRYBURGH'S SOLEMN PILE.” FIT RESTING-PLACE FOR SOLDIER. Scotland is rich in historical associations, and its Borderland is brimmingover with romance and legendary lore, while its many ruins of famous abbeys and castles, relics of far-off stormy times, are picturesque and unrivalled in scenery. The windings of the River Tweed take the traveller into the midst of what is generally called “The Scott Country,” and close into Dryburgh, with its own charming, secluded surroundings, where the ruined Abbey, which already shelters the remains of Sii - Walter Scott, the famous novelist, will also provide the last resting-place for tl»e British Empire’s great soldier, Earl Haig. His tomb will lie open to all the winds that blow: With the noble dead In Dryburgh’s solemn pile. Amid the peer and warrior bold, And mitred abbots, stern and old, Who sleep in cultured aisle. It is a spot to which pilgrims from many climes have wended their way. Indeed, the whole countryside is sacred to the memories of the past. The great author, Sir Walter Scott, was always delighted to be given an opportunity to stand above Bemersyde and look down over the wooded valley of the Tweed, and this self-same scene has often pleased the late Earl Haig, when, resting from the wars, he took a holiday in his boyhood’s country. With such associations it is little wonder that he took a prominent part in his country’s affairs, for the very earth from which he sprang is permeated with the historical associations of his native land. Dryburgh Abbey is a monastic ruin in the extre- -e uth-west of Berwickshire, and lies about a mile and a half off the railway line, which runs between Edinburgh and Carlisle. Truly an association of ancient and modern. Its name has been derived from the Gaelic darach bruach, “oak bank,” in allusion to the fact that the Druids once practised their rites here. The Abbey occupies the spot where, about 522, St. Modan, an Irish culdee, or anchorite, established a sanctuary —a secluded position on a tongue of land washed on three sides by the Tweed. ABBEY FOUNDED BY DAVID I. The Abbey itself was founded in 1150 by David I.—though it has been ascribed to Hugh de Morville, Lord of Lauderdale and Constable of Scotland —and it enjoyed great prosperity until 1322, when it was partially destroyed by the English under Edward 11. It suffered again at the hands of Richard 11. in 1385, and was reduced to ruin during the expedition of the Earl of Hertford in 1545. After the Reformation the estate was erected into a temporal lordship and given in 1604 by James VI. to John Erskin, second Earl of Mar. At a later date it was sold, but reverted to a branch of the Erskines, in 1786, when it was acquired by the eleventh Earl of Buchan. In 1700 the Abbey lands belonged to Thomas Haliburton, Sir Walter Scott’s greatgrandfather, and, but for an extravagant grand-uncle who became bankrupt and had to part with the property, they would have descended tojsir Walter by inheritance. The style of architecture is early English, but the west door and the restored entrance from the nave to the cloisters are fine examples of transitional Norman. Though in various stages of decay, nearly every one of i the monastic buildings is represented by a fragment. Of the cruciform church there remain some of the outer walls, a segment of the choir, the east aisle of the north transept, the stumps of some of the pillars of the nave, the west gable, the south transept, and the adjacent chapel of St. Modan. . The most beautiful of these relics is St. Mary’s aisle of the north transept, and it is here tha“ the body of Earl Haig will be laid in its final resting-place—-a spot that has been the last home ot the Haigs of Bemersyde for many centuries. In the same aisle is the burialplace of the Erskines of Shielhill, and. next to it the tomb of Sir Walter Scott, his wife, his gon, his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockha and his ancestors, the Haliburtons of New ” r ains. ... . On the south side of the church, at a lower level, stand the cleisters, about,

100 ft square, bounded on the west by the dungeons, on the south-west by the cellars and refectory, in the west wall of which is an exquisite ivy-clad rose window, and on the east by the chapter house, on a still lower level. The chapter house, a lofty building with vaulted roof, is the most complete structure of the group, and adjoining it on the south is first the abbot’s parlour and then the library, the three apartments communicating with each other, and constituting the oldest portion of the Abbey. In the grounds are many venerable trees, a yew near the chapter house being at least coeval with the foundation of the Abbey.