The Tweed has always been filled with legend and folklore. Its shifting currents and mist-shrouded banks inspiring tales that blur the line between history and myth. Such as Thomas the Rhymer, whisked away by the Queen of Elfland near the river’s own banks. Beyond this, stories of restless spirits persist. Spectral fishermen, ghostly horsemen, the wraithlike omen-teller Shag or the up-stream water hags, who claim a life each year in exchange for safe fishing. You see the river is a halfway place between worlds. The past never fully disappears and even nowadays, strange occurrences happen.
Speaking of which, in the 1970s-1980s we often visited Berwick as a family. However, one year, when I was probably ten, I stepped beyond this veil, into the rip between worlds and the experience has never left me. It all began quite innocently. Having eaten our sand-grit-egg-and-tomato sandwiches, we meandered around the old fortifications, when near Fisher’s Fort, I stopped to imagine times gone. Suddenly an old woman dressed in fisher-garb and carrying a hand creel, seemed to appear from nowhere. She spoke to me. Gentle and soft, although not in words I understood. Dawdling behind my family as I was, the call from my dad to catch-up, made my head turn, but when I turned back, she was gone. No-one else saw her, no-one but me. But she was as real as anything could be. Gone but not lost, for she still lives on, here in the lockers of my memory.
