JOHN BOWER. 121
Our guide through Melrose was Mr. John Bower, quite an original character, and somewhat of an artist, who interspersed his services with anecdotes, to which his broad Scotch dialect imparted additional interest. He is the same person whom Washington Irving characterizes as " the showman of Melrose. He was loud in his praises of the affability of Sir Walter Scott, giving life to his narrations by using the present tense.
- He 11 come here sometimes/ said he, with great
folks in his company, and the first I 11 know of it is hearing his voice calling out Johnny ! Johnny Bower ! and when I go out, I ra sure to be greeted with a joke or a pleasant word. He 11 stand and crack and laugh wi me, just like an auld wife, and to thmk that of a man that has sich an awfu knowledge o history. "
Johnny Bower spoke with enthusiasm of his favorite hero, and requested us to sit on the stone seat, where he used to rest, when fatigued with walking about on his lame limb, to exhibit the favorite abbey to his numerous guests. " It was all a trick," said he, " the getting him to be buried at Dryburgh. This was the place. Everybody knows that he cam here sax times and mair to his ance visiting the Dryburgh ruin."
On pointing out the marble slab, which covers the dust of Alexander the Second, some remark was made about the period of his accession, to which Johnny Bower, as he called himself, responded in two lines from Marmion :
��" A clerk might tell what years have flown Since Alexander filled the throne."
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