As we were in the Borders I thought a spot of D E Stevenson tourism would be in order! We made a detour to visit St Mary's Loch, on our journey from St Boswell's to Moffat.
D E Stevenson writes about St Mary's Loch in her novel Anna and Her Daughters.
The weather was wonderful for the time of year, dry, warm and sunny. One especially fine day....we took the bus to St Mary's Loch. I had heard about the loch and had read Wordsworth's poem but it was even more beautiful than I had expected, and a great deal bigger. It lay surrounded by hills and it was so clear and so still that every tree and rock was reflected in the water....the only sounds were the gentle lapping of the water on the shore and the trickle of the numerous little burns.
This is one of my favourite Stevenson novels, and it's set in a fictionalised Moffat. In the novel Moffat is re-imagined as Ryddleton.
Wordsworth visited on a Scottish tour in 1814 and wrote Yarrow Revisited:
...a silvery current flows
With uncontrolled meanderings;
Nor have these eyes by greener hills
Been soothed, in all my wanderings.
And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake
Is visibly delighted;
For not a feature of those hills
Is in the mirror slighted.
A blue sky bends o'er Yarrow vale,
Save where that pearly whiteness
Is round the rising sun diffused,
A tender hazy brightness;
Mild dawn of promise! that excludes
All profitless dejection;
Though not unwilling here to admit
A pensive recollection....
Between St Mary's Loch and the Loch of the Lowes, stands the imposing statue of the Scottish poet James Hogg. James Hogg lived from 1770 to 21 November 1835. Commonly referred to as The Ettrick Shepherd, he was a poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English and who became one of the most unlikely literary figures ever to emerge from Scotland.
Stevenson lived in Moffat for thirty three years, and wrote many of her books in this pretty little town. The town features in many of her novels, as do the villages and small towns in the vicinity. Our journey took us through Lamington, a village which I am sure lent its name to the titular character Bel Lamington. I'm always amused by the village Silverburn which I assume inspired Copper Stream in Miss Buncle's Book. D E Stevenson references are all around you, in this part of Scotland!
