We copied a
curious inscription from one of the old stones there:
Near this stone we lifeless lie
No more the things of earth to spy,
But we shall leave this dusty bed
When Christ appears to judge the dead.
For He shall come in glory great
And in the air shall have His seat
And call all men before His throne.
Rewarding all as they have done.
We were served with a prodigious breakfast at the inn to match, as we
supposed, the big appetites prevailing in the North, and then we resumed
our walk towards Hawick, meeting on our way the children coming to the
school at Lilliesleaf, some indeed quite a long way from their
destination. In about four miles we reached Hassendean and the River
Teviot, for we were now in Teviot Dale, along which we were to walk,
following the river nearly to its source in the hills above. The old
kirk of Hassendean had been dismantled in 1693, but its burial-ground
continued to be used until 1795, when an ice-flood swept away all
vestiges both of the old kirk and the churchyard. It was of this
disaster that Leyden, the poet and orientalist, who was born in 1775 at
the pretty village of Denholm close by, wrote the following lines:
By fancy wrapt, where tombs are crusted grey,
I seem by moon-illumined graves to stray,
Where now a mouldering pile is faintly seen--
The old deserted church of Hassendean,
Where slept my fathers in their natal clay
Till Teviot waters rolled their bones away.
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