The Popping Stone.
rum that I learned the cost of my bargain—being the forfeiture of a bottle of wine at dinner. A number of “sales,” I was told, were effected during the season, and the article was always offered to new-comers, who, in three cases out of four, readily “bid” for it, and thus found occasion for paying their footing. A circuitous ramble brought us to a small ancient-looking house with a steep thatched roof at the foot of the hill on which the hotel stands. This is the Mumps Ha’ of “Guy Mannering.” Scott’s description tallies with it precisely:
The alehouse, for it was no better, was situated in the bottom of a deep dell, through which trilled a small rivulet. It was shaded by a large ash tree, &c.
The buxom but treacherous Meg, the landlady of Scott’s story, is drawn from one Margaret Carrick, whose gravestone, the inscription nearly obliterated, being headed Mumps Hall, I found lying face downwards in the churchyard of Upper Denton, near Burdoswald.
Returning to the Shaws we wiled away the time till dinner at quoits, being not a little entertained by the apparition of a meek old man 
The Piper.who played the Northumbrian pipes to the good old tunes of “Fenwick o’ Bywell,” “Kittle her Chin with a Barley Straw,” “Caller Fair,” “Wylam awa’,” “Penton loaning,” &c. &c., attended by a dog, who, squatted on his haunches, howled a dismal accompaniment. Next morning, my companion and I resumed our pilgrimage, getting a hearty cheer from the company of the hotel who were assembled at the door to bid us good speed. Descending the hill, our conversation ran upon Scott and his association with the scene we had just left, and whose masterly touches have given an additional charm to its natural beauties. Besides the passages in “Guy Mannering,” there is much in the story of “St. Ronan’s Well,” that has evidently been inspired by Gilsland recollections. It was in the prime of youth and at the dawn of his poetical career when he first became acquainted with the place, and he may well have looked back to it as the scene of some of his happiest hours. Here were penned the verses
TO A LADY WITH FLOWERS FROM THE ROMAN WALL.
Take these flowers, which, purple waving,
On the ruined rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving,
Rome’s imperial standards flew.
Warriors from the breach of danger
Pluck no longer laurels there,
But they yield the passing stranger
Wild-flower wreaths for beauties’ hair.
