Alexander Leighton

Near where St. Abb stretches, in massive strength, into the sea, still terrible, even in ruins, may be seen the remains of Fast Castle, one of the most interesting in its history—as it is the most fearfully romantic in its situation—of all the mouldering strongholds which are still to be traced among the Borders, like monuments of war, crumbling into nothingness beneath the silent but destroying... more...

THE WIFE OR THE WUDDY. “There was a criminal in a cartAgoing to be hanged—Reprieve to him was granted;The crowd and cart did stand,To see if he would marry a wife,Or, otherwise, choose to die!‘Oh, why should I torment my life?’The victim did reply;‘The bargain’s bad in every part—But a wife’s the worst!—drive on the cart.’” Honest Sir John Falstaff talketh of “minions of the... more...

There is no feeling more strongly or more generally implanted in the human breast, than man's love for the place of his nativity. The shivering Icelander sees a beauty, that renders them pleasant, in his mountains of perpetual snow; and the sunburned Moor discovers a loveliness in his sultry and sandy desert. The scenes of our nativity become implanted on our hearts like the memory of undying... more...

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND. Notwithstanding the shortness of their days, the bitterness of their frosts, and the fury of their storms, December and January are merry months. First comes old Christmas, shaking his hoary locks, belike, in the shape of snow-drift, and laughing, well-pleased, beneath his crown of mistletoe, over the smoking sirloin and the savoury goose. There is... more...

"The black-eyed Judith, fair and tall,Attracted the heir of Riccon Hall.For years and years was Judith known,Queen of a wild world all her own;By Wooler Haugh, by silver Till,By Coldstream Bridge, and Flodden Hill:Until, at length, one morn, when sleetHung frozen round the traveller's feet,By a grey ruin on Tweedside,The creature laid her down and died."—Border Ballad. More than three... more...

THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED. It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or habits of body, that May is a trying month, and we have known what it is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful month, and the... more...

On the banks of the Tweed, and about half a mile above where the Whitadder flows into it on the opposite side, there is a small and singular cave. It is evidently not an excavation formed by nature, but the work of man's hands. To the best of my recollection, it is about ten feet square, and in the midst of it is a pillar or column, hewn out of the old mass, and reaching from the floor to the... more...

The gloom of a boisterous winter evening was settling over one of the wild, inhospitable tracts which lie to the north of the St Lawrence. The earth, far as the eye could reach, was covered, to the depth of many feet, by a continuous sheet of frozen snow; over which the bellying clouds, heavily charged with the materials of a fresh storm, hung in terrible array, fold beyond fold, as they descended on... more...

Ye have heard of the false alarm, (said Roger Goldie,) which, for the space of wellnigh four and twenty hours, filled the counties upon the Border with exceeding great consternation, and at the same time called forth an example of general and devoted heroism, and love of country, such as is nowhere recorded in the annals of any nation upon the face of the globe. Good cause have I to remember it; and... more...

THE DOOM OF SOULIS."They roll'd him up in a sheet of lead—A sheet of lead for a funeral pall;They plunged him in the caldron red,And melted him—lead, and bones, and all."—Leyden. A Gazetteer would inform you that Denholm is a village beautifully situated near the banks of the Teviot, about midway between Jedburgh and Hawick, and in the Parish of Cavers; and perhaps, if of modern... more...