The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Social Life of the Boi'ders, 307
in the collection— " Lord Soulis," and the " Cout of Keeldar."
In all his poetr>' there is the same under-current of home
feeling, and in his fine ode to an Indian coin he tells us :
" Sweet visions haunt m)- waking dreams
Of Teviot loved while still a child :
Of castled rocks, stupendous piled
R}- Esk or Eden's classic wave
When loves of }'outh and friendship smiled."
—
To all Borderers Leyden's memory is especially dear
from the circumstances of his early life, and his early death ;
and Scott who, with his instinctive knowledge of human
nature and kindly judgment of it, saw behind the rough
exterior, the generous qualities of the man and took him to
his heart, has expressed the feeling prevalent in the district
regarding him, in referring to Corrievreckan in the Lord of
the Isles, the scene of one of Leyden's beautiful ballads :
" His bright and brief career is o'er,
And mute his tuneful strains ;
Quenched is his lamp of varied lore.
That lov'd the light of song to pour.
A distant and a deadly shore
"
Here Leyden cold remains !
Just about the time Leyden was closing his brief career
in a distant land, another man equally distinguished in
border literature was coming into notice. This was Allan
Cunningham, who derived from his father, an eager collector
of every tale, ballad and legend connected with his native
country, his antiquarian tastes, and from his mother his
poetical temperament. Born at Blackwood in 1785, at two
years of age his family removed to Dalswinton, a village
only a few miles from Dumfries, where there was much to
encourage the development of the lad's poetical talent. In
his youth the memory of Burns was still fresh, and the echo
of his songs had not died awa\-. Erom his father's house
he could almost see the farm on which the poet had
laboured, the walk by the riverside under the shadows of
whose trees he meditated some of his sweetest verses.