Grey Mare's Tail, a splendid waterfall on the north-eastern verge of Moffat parish, NE Dumfriesshire, formed midway by the Tail Burn, which, running 1³/8 mile south-east-by-southward out of Loch Skene (1700 feet), falls, after a total descent of 920 feet, into Moffat Water at a point 10 miles NE of Moffat town and 1¼ mile SE of Birkhill Inn. Its volume is trivial in time of drought, but very considerable after heavy rains; it is so flanked and overhung by wild and gloomy scenery as to possess imposing interest in its mere surroundings; it rushes in one unbroken column over a stupendous precipice of rocks, with aggregate descent of 350 feet, between lofty, mural, rocky hills; and whenever in considerable volume, it has the form of a cataract lashed into foam by obstructions, and rendered of a greyish tint by intermixing glimpses of the background of dark rock. A short distance below it is a hollow space called the Giant's Grave; and a spot at a high elevation on one of its sides, and reached by a footpath, overlooks both the entire waterfall itself and the stream rushing away from its foot. Any spectator on that spot, like the palmer in Sir Walter Scott's Marmion-

Just on the edge, straining his ken.
May view the bottom of the den.
where deep, deep down, and far within,
Toils with the rocks the roaring linn;
Then, issuing forth one foamy wave,
and wheeling round the Giant's Grave,
white as the snowy charger's tail.
rives down the Pass of Moffatdaie.

A footpath leads up to the pool into which the waterfall plunges.—Ord. Sur., sh. 16, 1864.

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)