The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir :: :: University of Virginia Library

What stirs within thee? 'Tis the owl
Nursing amid thy chambers foul
Her impish brood; the nettles rank
Are seeding on thy wild-flower bank;
The hemlock and the dock declare
In rankness dark their mastery there;
And all around thee speaks the sway
Of desolation and decay.
In outlines dark the shadows fall
Of each grotesque and crumbling wall.
Extinguished long hath been the strife
Within thy courts of human life.
The rustic, with averted eye,
At fall of evening hurries by,
And lists to hear, and thinks he hears,
Strange sounds—the offspring of his fears;
And wave of bough, and waters' gleam,
Not what they are, but what they seem
To be, are by the mind believed,
Which seeks not to be undeceived.
Thou scowlest like a spectre vast
Of silent generations past,
And all about thee wears a gloom
Of something sterner than the tomb.

The ruins of the Tower of Ercildoune, once the abode and property of the famous True Thomas, the poet and soothsayer, are still to be seen at a little distance from the village of the same name in Lauderdale, pleasantly situated on the eastern bank of the Leader, which, in pronunciation, has been corrupted into Earlstoun. About the ruins themselves there is nothing peculiar or remarkable, save their authenticated antiquity, and the renown shed upon them as the relics of “Learmonth's high and ancient hall.” Part of the walls, and nearly the whole of the subterranean vaults, yet remain. A stone in the wall of the church of Earlstoun still bears the inscription—

“Auld Rhymer's race
Lies in this place.”

He must have died previous to 1299; for in that year his son resigned the property of his deceased father to the Trinity House of Soltra, as a document testifying this circumstance is preserved in the Advocates' Library. On a beautiful morning in September, “long, long ago,” when I was yet ignorant that any part of the ruins were in existence, they were pointed out to me, and, I need not add, awakened a thousand stirring associations connected with the legends, the superstitions, and the history of the mediæval ages—when nature brought forth “Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,” and social life seemed entirely devoted to “Ladye love, and war, renown, and knightly worth.”

163

For thee, 'tis said, dire forms molest,
That cannot die, or will not rest.

The ruins of the magician's tower are still regarded with a superstitious dread by the neighbouring peasantry; and to hint a doubt to such of their being haunted by “forms that come not from earth or Heaven,” would imply the hardihood and daring scepticism of the Sadducee. No doubt, this awe has greatly added to the desolation and solitude of the place; for the imputed prophecy of Thomas regarding the destruction of his house and home has been literally verified—

“The hare sall kittle on my hearth-stane,
And there will never be a Laird Learmonth again.”

In reference to this topic, Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to the Border Minstrelsy, tells a good story. “The veneration,” he says, “paid to his dwelling-place, even attached itself in some degree to a person who, within the memory of man, chose to set up his residence in the ruins of Learmonth's Tower. The name of this man was Murray, a kind of herbalist, who, by dint of some knowledge of simples, the possession of a musical clock, an electrical machine, and a stuffed alligator, added to a supposed communication with Thomas the Rhymer, lived for many years in very good credit as a wizard.”