Note 308 — 185 DICK O THE COW

“The place which is alluded to by Scott was pointed out to me about thirty years since. There then were the remains of a tower which stood on a small plateau where the Dow Sike and the Blaik Grain join the Stanygillburn, a tributary of the Tinnisburn. Some remains of the building may still be traced at the northern angle of the sheepfold of which it forms part. The walls that remain are 4 feet 3 inches thick, and measured on the inside about 6 feet high. They extend about 18 feet 6 inches in one direction and 14 feet in another, forming portions of two sides with the angle of the tower.... There must have been a considerable building of a rude kind.... This place, as the crow flies, is quite two miles and a quarter from Kershope-foot, and by the burn two miles and a half.... The Laird’s Jock’s residence is marked on a sketch map of Liddesdale by Lord Burleigh, drawn when Simon was laird of Mangerton. (Simon, son of Thomas, was laird in 1578–9.) It is also marked at the mouth of the Tinnisburn on a ‘platt’ of the country, of 1590.” R. B. A.