Henry Scott Riddell
The Author of Scotland
Yet
Poet and Freemason.
Henry
Scott Riddell the son of a shepherd was born at Sorbie in
Dumfriesshire on the 23rd September 1798. At the age of
two, the family moved to Langshawburn in a remote part of
Eskdalemuir where his father farmed for several years. It was here
during his early years that he met James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.
Hogg was 26 years older than Henry and the impression he made on the
young boy was electric and never diminished throughout his entire
life. Hogg would recite his poems to the young lad, and although
unable to read, Henry could repeat many of Hogg’s poems from
beginning to end. Riddell said of this period in his life;
“……. one whom I have
good reason to remember -- the Ettrick Shepherd…… This was about the
time when Hogg began to write, or at least to publish: as I can
remember from the circumstance of my being able to repeat the most
part of the pieces in his first publication by hearing them read by
others before I could read them myself.”
Riddell and Hogg’s
friendship became very close as the former reached his adult years,
Hogg called him, “his assistant and successor,” and
considered himself to be Henry Scott Riddell’s mentor and confidant,
such as Sir Walter Scott was his. When the Ettrick Shepherd died,
Riddell composed ‘The Bard’s Elegy’ to his memory, little knowing
that words from it would later be inscribed on a monumental plaque
above the entrance door at his Teviotdale cottage.
“Yet sleep, gentle
bard, for though silent for ever
The harp in the hall
of the chieftain is hung,
No time from the
mem’ry of mankind shall sever
The tales that it
told and the strains that it sung.”
Henry Scott Riddell’s
education was haphazard during the formative years of his childhood,
as during the summer months his employment was that of an apprentice
shepherd. Sometimes in the winters he would attend school,
occasionally as a boarder, but when the distance to a school was too
great his father would hire a person to come to the house to give
schooling to the family. The lessons amounted to reading, writing
and arithmetic in which he would admit himself was no better or
worse than any others, indeed he states that he ‘loved the
football better than the spelling-book.’ When he had acquired
what was considered to be a ‘sufficient education,’ for a person of
his station, and although still only a boy, it became time to leave
his parents and set out on his own. He began employment at Glencotha
in Pebbleshire as an assistant shepherd, where he remained for a
year, and during this time he began to show an aspiration to compose
verses, and the realisation of the need of a better education began
to cultivate in his mind.
On the death of his father
in 1817, with the little money he had saved along with that left to
him by his father, Henry Scott Riddell determined to accomplish a
regular education, in order to qualify him for entering University,
attended the parish school at Biggar Lanarkshire, and whilst at that
school, Riddell was a contributor to the ‘Clydesdale Magazine,’ It
was during this period at Biggar, he met Eliza Clark the daughter of
a Biggar merchant, and as Dr. James Brydon wrote of the union, “A
fresh life was breathed into his poetic being. Love lifted his
strains to a higher level than they had yet attained, and such
exquisite lays as the ‘Crook and Plaid’ and ‘The Wild Glen sae
green’ were the immediate outcome,” Eliza would later become his
wife.
I winna
lo’e the laddie that ca’s the cart and pleugh,
Though
he should own that tender love that’s only felt by few,
For he
that has this bosom a’ to fondest love betrayed,
Is
faithfu’ shepherd laddie that wears the crook and plaid;
For
he’s aye true to his lassie – he’s aye true to his lassie,
Who
wears the crook and plaid.
On the completion of his
schooling at Biggar, Riddell entered student life at Edinburgh
University, where his college course lasted until 1830, which
included a final year at St. Andrews. He attended classes
faithfully, studied hard, continued to write poetry and was
befriended by Professor Wilson, who considered him to be a poet in
the order of Hogg and in 1825 published one of his songs, ‘When
the glen all is still,’ in Noctes Ambrosiana. Professor
John Wilson was the celebrated Christopher North. Riddell visited
the Professor frequently at his house, where he was introduced to
some of the society of Edinburgh, and it was during these years
attending the University he was introduced into Freemasonry.
Henry Scott Riddell is
silent in his memoirs about his introduction into Freemasonry, but
his progression into the order is not surprising given the city in
which he lived and the circle of friends he made during his stay in
Edinburgh, and so, on the 3rd of December 1827, Riddell
was initiated into Lodge St. David No.36.
In 1830 he finished his
University course and became a licentiate of the Church of Scotland,
and the following year he was elected the chaplain of Lodge St.
David, a position he fulfilled until 1836 and published his first
collection, called, ‘Songs of the Ark and other poems,’
In the year 1831, Riddell
moved in with his brother at Teviothead, Roxburghshire, and it was
during this period that Henry Scott Riddell wrote his most famous
song, ‘Scotland Yet.’ He would later relay to Dr. Brydon this
account on how he came to write it, ‘It was beautiful morning
after a wild tempestuous night. The winds were stilled, the deep
azure sky was cloudless, the flooded burns were glancing to the sun,
everything looked fresh and beautiful, all nature seemed to rejoice.
The poet’s heart glowed within him with exultation and patriotic
guide.’
Gae bring my
guid auld harp ance mair,
Gae bring it
free and fast,
For I maun
sing anither sang,
Ere a’ my
glee be past;
And trow ye
as I sing my lads,
The burden
o’t shall be,
Auld
Scotland's howes and Scotland's knowes,
And
Scotland's hills for me!
I'll drink a
cup to Scotland yet,
Wi a' the
honours three!
Not long after moving to
Teviothead he became the successor to the minister who had died.
When he was appointed as the preacher for the parish there was no
house provided with the post, and was unable to find any suitable
accommodation nearer than the town of Hawick, which was nine miles
away. Frequently Henry would walk this distance to attend to his
church during storms, and on one occasion he conducted the service
with water pouring off him onto the Bible, and running over his
shoes and forming a puddle on the pulpit floor. After the service,
Henry would have to walk the same distance home again! The Duke of
Buccleuch paid the stipend of the ministers of Teviothead, and as
Henry had decided to wed, the Duke commissioned a house a Teviothead
to be built, the house he would live in for the rest of his life.
Henry Scott Riddell married
Eliza, the girl he had met fourteen years previous in Biggar, with
whom he would have two sons, he said himself of this union; “In
the hope of soon obtaining a permanent and comfortable settlement at
Teviothead, I had ventured to make my own, by way of marriage, her
who had in heart been mine through all my college years, and who for
my sake had, in the course of these, rejected wealth and high
standing in life.”
The year was 1833, and he
entered into his duties as minister at Teviothead with his wife
beside him with a passion and enthusiasm for his life and position.
He must have still travelled on occasion to Edinburgh on business
and to meet with old friends, for in 1838 he was elected as Bard of
Lodge St. David, a position he held until 1840, when Henry would
succumb to an attack of the mind which would see him being admitted
into the Crighton Royal Asylum for the insane at Dumfries!
In 1841, after many years
of tending to the needs of his parishioners, Henry Scott Riddell was
the victim of an unfounded and malicious report that had been
circulated which caused him so much distress and anguish that his
mind became deranged and he suffered from delusions and became
terror-stricken. During his time in the asylum, Henry became
isolated and withdrew into his own world and for a long time he was
filled with depression and despair. He told the physician treating
him during this period of ‘two parallel currents of thought which
seemed to run constancy through his mind, one of despondency, the
other of bright imaginings, which shaped themselves into couplets or
verses.’ Brydon says that he still continued to compose during
this period in the institution, one of which has this mournful and
poignant beginning,
‘The harp so loved awakes
no more,
Eventually, Henry Scott
Riddell recovered, and in 1844 returned to Teviothead, but he never
returned to his charge as minister at Caerlanrig church. With the
kindness of the Duke of Buccleuch, he was permitted to remain at the
cottage built for him rent free for life and was granted an income
almost equivalent to that which he previously earned as minister.
For the rest of his days,
Henry Scott Riddell lived a quiet life, and became somewhat of a
recluse; he wrote his biography in 1854 and rarely ventured far from
his adored border countryside. It was probably around this time that
he affiliated to the Hawick Lodge, No.111 a Lodge in which he would
become the Bard, an office he took great delight in and visited the
Lodge on numerous occasions until his death. He would give lectures
on behalf on some charitable body, interested himself in local
archaeological excavations, supported the Hawick Archæological
Society, and in 1859 was publicly presented at Hawick with an Irish
Harp, an instrument which he loved to play. He translated into
lowland Scotch, in 1855 and 1857 respectively, St. Matthew and the
Psalms of David, the latter for Prince Lucien Bonaparte. And still
his creative pen continued to poor forth muses of an extraordinary
beauty, of the Border Hills, the glens and streams which gave him
his inspiration.
On the 30th of
July 1870, Henry Scott Riddell died after a short illness, and three
days after surrounded by family, friends and admirers from near and
far, the Bard of Teviotdale was laid to rest in;
‘Yon
churchyard that lonely is lying
Beneath the
deep greenwood by Teviot’s wild strand.’
In 1871 the
year after Riddell’s death, Dr. James Brydon of Hawick produced two
volumes entitled, ‘’The Poetical Works of Henry Scott Riddell,’ and
describes him thus; “All I ever saw of him called for admiration.
He was a noble, a good, and a lovable man, devoid of arrogance,
living in humility, at peace with all God’s creatures, and ever
striving to act up to the teachings of the golden rule. He was a
most agreeable companion, and gifted conversationalist. He was a
genius and a poet.”
Three
years after his death in 1874 on a hillside some nine miles south of
Hawick on the A7 overlooking Teviothead church, a 13ft high cairn
known locally as the Colterscleuch Monument was erected to the
memory of Henry Scott Riddell, and here the brethren of the mystic
tie have gathered in tribute to him ever since. For well over 100
hundred years, brethren of Lodge St. David No.36, Edinburgh and the
Hawick Lodge No.111 have assembled each year close to the
anniversary of his death to pay homage to this remarkable border
poet and freemason. After a service in Riddell’s church and the
laying of a wreath on his grave, the brethren take the gentle climb
to the cairn, and surrounded by the soft rolling hills of the Border
countryside, an oration is given about his life, poems are recited,
‘”Scotland Yet” sung and a toast drunk to the author of Scotland
Yet, the bard of Teviotdale and Freemason, Brother Henry Scott
Riddell.
Bro. J. Stewart Donaldson.
Lodge Stirling Royal Arch No.76 and The Hawick Lodge No.111.
Sources;
Hawick Archaelogical Society – proceedings 1898.
The
Poetical Works of Henry Scott Riddell – James Brydon MD. 1871
The
History of Hawick Lodge 111 – PM A. Burgon. 1994
A
Hawick Word Book – Douglas Scott. Version 2012.
