From Convivial Caledonia, Inns and Taverns of Scotland, and Some Famous People Who Have Frequented Them, by Robert Kempt, London: Chapman and Hall, LD., 1893; pp. 105-113.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD AND TIBBIE SHIEL.
The mighty minstrel breathes no more,
’Mid moulderin ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow
Has closed the Shepherd-Poet’s eyes.
. . . . .
Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother?
From sunshine to the sunless land!
WORDSWORTH.
THE last of the race of Scotch landladies of the old school who enjoyed more than local fame was Mrs. Richardson, familiarly known far beyond the border counties as Tibbie Shiel. Who has visited the Vale of Yarrow and lone St. Mary’s Loch, without taking his ease in that cosiest of retreats, St. Mary’s Cottage? And who can forget that kindest of hostesses and worthiest of women, Tibbie? She had 106 known in her time Sir Walter Scott, Sir David Brewster, Christopher North, (who makes the cottage the scene of one of the “Noctes,”) De Quincey, Hogg, Lockhart, Aytoun, Allan Cunningham, Scott Riddell, Glassford Bell, Robert Chambers, Russel of the Scotsman, and, in later days, Robert Louis Stevenson, and scores of other notabilities, who, in angling excursions, or in other ways spending a holiday, have sojourned under her roof and partaken of her “very best.”
For ’twas her crowning glory to have known
Genius, and lived and moved and had her being
Within the spell by its enchantments thrown,
And seen in all the warmth of mortal seeing,
Men of sovereign stamp, of Natures own decreeing.
Tibbie was particularly acquainted with James Hogg, having been in her youth a servant of his mother, and Tibbie’s opinion of the Shepherd, according to the testimony of the late Dr. Russell, of Yarrow Manse, was that he was “a gey sensible man for a’ the nonsense he wrat.” Reference is made to him in a work little known, we imagine — the life of James Wilson of 107 Woodville, by Dr. James Hamilton, published in 1859. James Wilson who was a brother of Christopher North, writes to a friend: — “I was glad to receive your letter this morning with its miscellaneous intelligence. Poor Hogg! the last day I spent with him was at Tibbie’s on St. Mary’s Loch. His hand was very unsteady till he had gone three times from the sitting-room to the kitchen, taking each time a caulker of whisky, which actually seemed to strengthen him for the time, but, I suppose, in the long run, and continued as it was from day to day, was his destruction.” That Hogg was all his life a convivial man is true enough. “Bring in the loch, woman,” was his startling command to Tibbie, one morning, after a night’s carousal in the cottage. He delighted to meet his friends and regale them with his songs sung by himself, a treat of no ordinary kind, as these friends have testified. He died in 1835, aged 63, and his monument stands on a green knowe, a short distance from and in full 108 view of Tibbie’s cottage. At the unveiling of the monument in 1860, we well remember Sheriff Glassford Bell, who presided, reminding his audience, as a strange circumstance, that Hogg, though born only eleven years after Burns, had so completely lived out of the world as a young man, that he never even heard of the great poet until a year after his death. And yet they had lived in adjoining counties. The Ayrshire Ploughman and the Ettrick Shepherd were born on the same day of the month, and it is not without interest that the latter’s first attempt at verse writing was in the year the former died. By a curious coincidence too, the monument on the banks of the Doon to Robert Burns, and that in the Vale of Yarrow to James Hogg, were both completed just a quarter of a century after the demise of the respective poets. With true prophetic vision Christopher North addresses Hogg in the Noctes” for April, 1824, “My beloved Shepherd, some half century hence, your effigy will be on some 109 bonny green knowe in the Forest, with its honest face looking across St. Mary’s Loch, and up towards the Grey Mare’s Tail, while by moonlight all your own fairies will weave a dance round its pedestal.” The prediction received almost literal fulfillment.
“Not as a record he lacketh a stone —
We pay a light debt to the singer we’ve known,
Proof that our love for his name has not flown.”
We glean some interesting particulars concerning Mrs. Richardson and her family, from an article in the “Southern Reporter” (Selkirk), of the 17th November, 1892. The writer, Mr. Robert Cochrane, states that the husband of Tibbie Shiel was a Westmorland man, employed by Lord Napier in the humble capacity of a mole-catcher. Through the interest of his employer, Richardson became tenant of the then thatched cottage, built in 1823, at the head of St. Mary’s Loch. Tibbie Shiel, who was born in Ettrick in 1782, died here on the 23rd July, 1878, in the 96th year of her age. Her husband 110 had long predeceased her, for he died 1st March, 1824, aged 38 years. Both are buried in Ettrick Churchyard, near by the Ettrick Shepherd, and four or five of their children rest there also. The house, by-the-way, had been enlarged; thatch gave place to slate, and a wooden porch had been added. We can see the outlines yet of the old doorway, and the harled wall in front, which entered the kitchen parlour. No more welcome sight could greet the pilgrim down the Megget, or from Moffatdale, or from Ettrick by Tushielaw, than this humble place of entertainment.
Dr. James Russell of Yarrow, who knew Tibbie well, described her as a sagacious woman, gifted with a large amount of common sense, and a fund of dry, quiet humour, and at the same time deeply religious. At his own request, she attended Hogg on his deathbed. She spent fifty-four years of her life here. She was one of the celebrities of the Forest for the last half-century, says Dr. 111 Russell,” and where or when shall we find her like? No longer can we look on her venerable form, in the old arm-chair, or receive the kindly greeting that awaited us. No longer can we listen to the fireside talk, rich with the reminiscences of the eminent men who in former days gathered round it, or the racy anecdotes of their holiday life and recreations. A quiet, almost queenly, dignity of manner checked any flippancy and familiarity of speech or impropriety of conduct that might be attempted by some thoughtless stranger; she was the mistress of her own house.” And she permitted no infringement of the Sabbath; clergymen of all denominations were particularly welcome to her, and had to conduct family worship; all the guests in the house were expected to attend.
Mrs. Richardson had survived Scott for the long period of forty-six years, and the Shepherd for forty-three years; Allan Cunningham, born a couple of years after Tibbie, predeceased her thirty-six years. 112 Christopher North, her junior by three years, passed away twenty-four years before her, as did also Gibson Lockhart, who was born ten years after her. De Quincey, born the same year as Wilson, had been in his grave nineteen years, and Aytoun, who came into the world thirty-one years after Tibbie, had been dead thirteen years in 1878. So that she long survived that brilliant galaxy of Edinburgh men of letters who had “many a time and oft” regaled themselves under her homely roof.
William Richardson, the eldest son of this excellent woman and hostess, succeeded her in the “bit wren’s nest,” as Wilson christened the cottage, which he conducted for fifteen years when his very sudden death happened “on the roadside,” in November last year, at the age of 77. William Richardson is said to have been a man of remarkable shrewdness and intelligence, possessing not a little of his mother’s strength of will. With a singularly tenacious memory he seemed to 113 forget nothing that he had ever read or seen. He had a capital knowledge of the flora and fauna of the district, and no man was better versed than he in Border-lore and antiquity. Mr. Richardson had many reminiscences of the remarkable men who used to frequent the cottage. It is to be hoped that some of these recollections have been “made a note of” and preserved. To visitors he was wont to point out with pride the cleuch near his cottage where James Renwick, the last of the Scottish martyrs, preached his last sermon, and, to special favourites, the landlord would exhibit a cast of the features of the Ettrick Shepherd, taken after death, and said to be a remarkably faithful representation. Altogether William Richardson was a man of sterling character, and most marked individuality, and a type of a class which is fast dying out.