The New Murrey and Blue blog

There are some abbey ruins that are as beautiful for the matchless countryside they are set in as for their own splendour. My personal favourite is Llanthony Priory in the Black Mountains, but Melrose Abbey (where Robert the Bruce’s heart was buried) on the River Tweed is actually my third favourite. My close second being Tintern Abbey, on the banks of the River Wye. Superb.

Oddly, I suppose, they all stand on borders that were once very violent and dangerous. But it took rotten old Henry VIII (and his Scottish counterparts) to finally reduce them to their present state.

But this conerns Melrose, about which I can never think without recalling Sir Walter Scott, who lived near Melrose at Abbotsford. Scott wrote about this border country, and I recall being at primary school, aged just eight, and having to learn the following:

“….O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,There never was knight like the young Lochinvar….”

At only just eight? Well, the same teacher thought we should learn Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Aix to Ghent. I’d like to see the parents’ revolt if she tried that with today’s 8-year-olds. At the time, being horse mad, all I really “got” was that Lochinvar had a horse that was the best in all the wide Border. Perhaps he rode past Melrose Abbey. I had such visions of that wonderful horse.

My father always teased me about this poem, and when I was older and going out with my then boyfriend (eventually husband). My father would hear him at the door and yell up to me, “Young Lochinvar’s come out of the west!”

Whatever my little memories, the abbey ruins are well worth visiting today, and you can read more here. And you can read the whole of Lochinvar here.