I assure your ladyship that this caravan attended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil, and really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups of Callot upon their march."[26] The place thus bought for 4000_l._,--half of which, according to Scott's bad and sanguine habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half raised on the security of a poem at the moment of sale wholly unwritten, and not completed even when he removed to Abbotsford--"Rokeby"-- became only too much of an idol for the rest of Scott's life.

Mr.Lockhart admits that before the crash came he had invested 29,000_l._ in the purchase of land alone.

But at this time only the kernel of the subsequent estate was bought, in the shape of a hundred acres or rather more, part of which ran along the shores of the Tweed--"a beautiful river flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by birches and alders." There was also a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a pond so dirty that it had hitherto given the name of "Clarty Hole" to the place itself.

Scott renamed the place from the adjoining ford which was just above the confluence of the Gala with the Tweed.

He chose the name of Abbotsford because the land had formerly all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose,--the ruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from many parts of the little property.