Roxburghshire

Population and Administration.

The population in 1931 was 45,787, and there were 99 persons who spoke Gaelic and English, but none Gaelic only. The principal towns are Hawick (pop. 17,059), Kelso (3,855), Jedburgh (3,057), Melrose (2,052). The county returns a member to parliament with Selkirkshire. Jedburgh, the county town, is a royal burgh, and Hawick, Kelso and Melrose are police burghs. The shires of Roxburgh, Berwick and Selkirk form a sheriffdom, and a resident sheriff-substitute sits at Jedburgh and Hawick. The county is under school-board jurisdiction, and there are secondary schools at Hawick and Jedburgh.

History and Antiquities.

Among the more important re mains of the original inhabitants are the standing stones and circles at Plenderleath between the Kale and Oxnam; on Hownam Steeple, a few miles to the north-west ; and at Midshiels on the Teviot. The stones on Ninestane Rig, near Hermitage Castle, and on Whisgill are supposed to commemorate the Britons of Strath clyde who, under Aidan, were defeated with great slaughter by Ethelfrith, king of Bernicia, at the battle of Degsanstane or Dawstane in 603. There are hill forts in Liddesdale on the Allan, in the "parish of. Oxnam, and on the most easterly of the three Eildons. This last is said to be the largest example of its kind in Scotland. One of the most important and most mysterious of British remains is the Catrail, or Picts' Work Dyke. In its orig inal condition it is supposed to have consisted of a line of double mounds or ramparts, with an intervening ditch 6 ft. broad. It is now far from perfect and in places has disappeared for miles. Beginning at Torwoodlee, north-west of Galashiels, it ran south west to Yarrow church, whence it turned first south and then south-east, following a meandering course to Peel Fell in the Cheviots, a distance of 48 miles.

Roman remains are also of interest. Dere Street crossed the border north of Brownhart Law in the Cheviots, then took a mainly north-western direction across the Kale, Oxnam, Jed and Teviot to Newstead, near Melrose, where it is conjectured to have crossed the Tweed and run up Lauderdale into Haddington shire. Another so-called Roman road is the Wheel Causeway or Causey, a supposed continuation of the Maiden Way which ran from Overburgh in Lancashire to Bewcastle in Cumberland, and so to the Border. It entered Roxburghshire north of Deadwater and went (roughly) north as far as Wolflee, whence its direction becomes a matter of surmise. Of Roman camps the principal appear to have been situated at Cappuck, to the south-east of Jedburgh, and near Newstead, at the base of the Eildons, the alleged site of Trimontium. After the retreat of the Romans the country was occupied by the Britons of Strathclyde in the west and the Bernicians in the east. It was then annexed to Northum bria for over four centuries until it was ceded, along with Lothian, to Scotland in 1018.

David I. constituted it a shire, its ancient county town of Roxburgh (see KELso) forming one of the Court of Four Burghs. The castle of Roxburgh, after changing hands more than once, was captured from the English in 1460 and dismantled. Other towns were repeatedly burned down, and the abbeys of Dryburgh. Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose ultimately ruined in the expedition of the earl of Hertford (the Protector Somerset) in 1544-45. The Border freebooters—of whom the Armstrongs and Elliots were the chief—conducted bloody frays on their own account.

On the union of the crowns the county gradually settled into what was comparatively a state of repose, disturbed to some extent during the Covenanting troubles and, to a much slighter degree, by the Jacobite rebellions.