The Cheviot

Cheviot is the highest hill on the Border.. its top is a perfect bog, in some places quite impassable from the accumulation of water, which finds its way through numerous deep sykes to the sides of the hill. Mackenzie says this bog or lough, was so firmly frozen at Midsummer a few years ago, that a person walked over it.

There are two heaps of stones on the top of Cheviot, the one called the Easter and the other the Wester Cairn. Persons ascending the hill from the east generally find it difficult to reach the Wester Cairn, except in very dry weather.

On the north-west side of Cheviot there is a deep chasm, called the Hen Hole, in which there is frequently to be seen a snow egg at Midsummer. There is a tradition, that a party of hunters, when chasing a roe upon Cheviot, were wiled by the fairies into the Hen Hole, and could never again find their way out.

There is a small cavern in the face of the highest cliff on the right bank of the ravine [of Hens Hole / Hell Hole], still accessible, we believe, to the venturesome, though dangerously so; and into this it is said that one of the early hunting Percies, along with some of his hounds, went and never returned. He and the hounds, if we may credit the legend, still lie in the cavern, bound by a magic spell - not dead, but fast asleep, and only to be released by a blast of a hunting horn, blown by some one as brave as ever Hotspur was, and more fortunate.