Drumelzier

[1] Alternatively, it has been suggested that the village may be named after Meldred, a sixth-century petty king or chieftain who features in literary accounts of post-Roman Britain and may have had his power base at Tinnis Castle.

Only a few walls of the old fortalice remained when it was visited by Francis Grose in 1790; it was used as a redoubt or citadel by the Lords of Tweedie and passed to the Hays family by marriage.

The remains indicate a rectangular castle with curtain-walls that enclosed a courtyard with a tower-house at the south corner; circular towers were located at the north and west angles.

[8] In local tradition it is here, that Merlin, the great wizard of Arthurian legend, was imprisoned inside a riverbank tree by the enchantress Morgan le Fay.

'Myrddin Wyllt', 'Merlinus Caledonensis' or 'Merlin Sylvestris'[10] (c. 540 – c. 584) is a figure in Brythonic medieval legends, regarded as a prophet, madman, pagan and a prototype for the composite representation of Merlin in Arthurian romance.

In Welsh legend Merlin is said to have been born in Carmarthen, South Wales, which a popular but false folk etymology claims is named after the bard; Celticist A.O.H.

The Merlin of the 12th century manuscript Vita Merlini Silvestris (Cotton Titus A xix) was originally called Lailoken, a warrior so traumatised by the scale of the slaughter he witnesses at the Battle of Arfderydd (Arthuret) in 573 that he retreats to the Great Wood of Caledon, where he lives as a wild man.

During negotiations over his release, Lailoken draws attention to a leaf caught in the queen's wimple which he claims is evidence of an assignation with her lover in the king's garden.

Lailoken secures his release, but the queen takes revenge on him for revealing her affair by arranging to have him ambushed and killed by a gang of shepherds.

It is said that he was chased off a cliff by shepherds where he tripped and fell, impaled himself on a fishing rod on the sea bed and died with his head under the water.

[15] The very day that James VI of Scotland and I of England was crowned the prophecy was fulfilled, with the River Tweed bursting its banks and meeting with the Powsail Burn at Merlin's Grave, something it had not done before and has not done since.

A local tradition tells of a Baron of Drumelzier returning from a long involvement in the Crusades to find his wife nursing a baby.