[Text at top of page transcribed as part of 31 May entry]
Dull morning + a wet afternoon. Saw a few town cases walking + left at 12 for a cycle run. Called for Jessie Boyd1 + then went to Melrose, Leaderfoot, Smailholm, Mellerstain, Middlethird, Greenlaw, Choicelee2, Westruther + Lauder. Took my tea beyond Middlethird. Near Greenlaw it began to rain + I nearly returned [?]. It was very wet before Polwarth but faired after Choicelee. Kept fair till before Lauder + was wet all the way home. I was soaked through. Got hot bath. W. + S. [whisky & soda ?], dined + went down to Elmpark with a trout which Johnny Murray sent me. Mrs Simpson3 + her son’s fiancée there4. The latter is a daughter of Tom Hamilton my “Graceful Consort”5.
1 Jessie Milne Brack Boyd (1867-1961), of Faldonside, plantswoman and gardener
2 Middlethird, Gordon, grid reference NGR NT678,435, and Choicelee, Langton (Gavinton), NT746511 – Dr Muir has done a longish loop into Berwickshire almost reaching Duns but turning off at Choicelee towards Westruther on what is now the B6456
3 Margaret ‘Maggie’ Simpson née Watson (1857-1939), sister of Mrs Agnes Mackintosh née Watson of Elm Park, Selkirk
4 John Watson Simpson (d.1929), M.B., son of Margaret Simpson (above) who married, 1921, Helen Gladys Hamilton (1890-1984); she was the daughter of Thomas Hamilton (1843-1918), M.B., F.R.C.S.E., surgeon and general practitioner, born Edinburgh and brother of Robert Hamilton (about 1843-1234), M.A. Oxon, Advocate of the Scottish Bar and Sheriff Substitute Of Midlothian
5 The Editor reads this as Graceful Consort, the most likely reference being to a duet from Haydn’s oratorio ‘The Creation’, but the allusion is not obvious in this context except to say that Dr Muir must have been a near contemporary of Hamilton’s at medical school
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/23, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1920]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 