Skip to content
chevron_left
chevron_right

Jedburgh

Towns & Villages
Jedburgh was once a valuable market town with an excellent trading position between Scotland and England. It was a natural stop off point for many a visitor including Mary Queen of Scots and Robert Burns.

About Jedburgh

On arriving in Jedburgh, Burns sought out a fellow writer, Mr Fair, who was blind. Burns was ostensibly there to receive the Freedom of the Burgh from the magistrates. However his diary is taken up with his annoyance at the wife and sister-in-law of Mr Fair and his captivation for a Miss Rutherford, (Rutherford a beautiful girl, but too far gone woman to expose so much of a fine, swelling bosom.… ) daughter of an ex-solider Captain Rutherford. The elder women repeatedly manage to interrupt his flirtations much to his annoyance, but he does:

“somehow or other got hold of Miss Lindsay's arm - my heart thawed into melting pleasure after being so long frozen up in the Greenland Bay of Indifference amid the noise and nonsense of Edinr… The Poet is a point and a half of being damnably in love.”

Indeed it would seem Miss Rutherford equally enthralled as:
“after some little chit-chat of the tender kind, I presented her with a proof-print of my Nob which she accepted with something more tender than gratitude. She told me many little stories which Miss L had related concerning her and me, with prolonging pleasure - God bless her.”

However Miss Rutherford’s brush with celebrity would not bring her more than her 15 minutes of fame, and three weeks later she was married to an Adam Armstrong.

Jedburgh walking, cycling and driving routes

Highlights

Towns and villages near Jedburgh