MELROSE, a police burgh and parish of Roxburghshire, Scotland. Pop. (1931), 2,052. It lies on the right bank of the Tweed, 37+ m. S.E. of Edinburgh, by the L.N.E. railway. The name is derived from the Celtic maol ros, "bare moor," and the town figures in Sir Walter Scott's Abbot and Monastery as "Kennaquhair." Owing to the beauty of its situation between the Eildons and the Tweed, the literary and historical associations of the district, and the famous ruins of Melrose abbey, the town has become a holiday resort. There is a hydropathic establish ment on Skirmish hill, a name which commemorates the faction fight on July 25, 1526, in which the Scotts defeated the Douglases and Kers. Trade is almost wholly agricultural. The market cross, dated 1642, but probably much older, stands in the triangular market place. Across the river are Gattonside, with orchards, and Allerly, the home of Sir David Brewster from 1827 till his death in 1868.
The original Columban monastery, colonized from Lindisfarne, was founded in the 7th century at Old Melrose, about 21- m. to the east, in the loop of a bend of the Tweed. It was burned by Kenneth Macalpine in 839 during the wars between Scot and Saxon, and, though rebuilt, was deserted in the middle of the 11th century. The chapel, dedicated to St. Cuthbert, continued to at tract pilgrims, but the building was finally destroyed by English invaders. Meanwhile in 1136 David I. founded an abbey dedi cated to the Virgin, a little higher up the Tweed, the first Cister cian settlement in Scotland, with monks from Rievaulx in York shire. Lying in the direct road from England, the abbey was frequently assaulted and in 1322 was destroyed by Edward II. Rebuilt, largely by means of a gift of Robert Bruce, it was nearly burned down in 1385 by Richard II. Erected once more, it was
reduced to ruin by the earl of Hertford (afterwards the Protector Somerset) in 1545. Later the Reformers dismantled much of what was left. The adaptation of part of the nave to the purposes of a parish church and the use of the building as a quarry did further damage.
The ruins, then the property of the duke of Buccleuch, were presented to the nation in 1918. Of the conventual buildings apart from the church nothing has survived but a fragment of the cloister with a richly-carved round-headed doorway and some tine arcading. The cruciform abbey is in the Decorated and Per pendicular styles, with pronounced French influence, due proba bly to the master mason John Morow, or Morreau, who, accord ing to an inscription on the south transept wall, was born in Paris. The remains include part of the nave, the transepts, the chancel and choir, two piers of the tower and the roof of the east end. Sir Walter Scott has immortalized the east window, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, but the south window with its flowing tracery is even finer. The heart of Robert Bruce was buried at the high altar, and in the chancel are many historic tombs.
The muniments of the abbacy, preserved in the archives of the earl of Morton, were edited by Cosmo Innes for the Bannatyne Club and published in 1837 under the title of Liber sancte Marie de Metros. Among the documents is one of the earliest specimens of the Scots dialect. The Chronica de Mailros, preserved among the Cotton mss., was printed at Oxford in 1684 by William Fulman and by the Banna tyne Club in 1835 under the editorship of John Stevenson.