The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald

The Steel Bonnets - George Fraser MacDonald


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XXIV: Flodden and after. Biographical note on Thomas Dacre

       XXV: The Devil, and Lord Angus

       XXVI: Armstrongs in action

       XXVII: A rope for Black Jock

       XXVIII: The violent peace

       XXIX: The road to Solway Moss. Note on the prisoners of Solway Moss

       XXX: The rough wooing

       XXXI: Wharton and Maxwell

       XXXII: England’s grip broken

       XXXIII: The Debateable Land

       XXXIV: The women’s touch

       XXXV: Queen on the Marches

       XXXVI: The Countess and the reivers

       XXXVII: The last armies

       XXXVIII: Reidswire and Windygyle

       XXXIX: The stirring world of Robert Carey

       XL: “Fyrebrande”

       XLI: Lances to Carlisle

      XLII: The Carleton Brothers

       Part Five: THE MIDDLE SHIRES

       XLIII: Carey’s ride

       XLIV: Breaking the Border

       XLV: Malefactors of the name of Graham

       XLVI: The thieves dauntoned

      XLVII: After the riding

       Appendix I: The Archbishop of Glasgow’s “Monition of Cursing” against the Border reivers

       Appendix II: The ballad of Kinmont Willie

       Bibliography

       Glossary

       Index

       Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      By the Same Author

       Copyright

      About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

       The Border Reivers

      At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham. To anyone familiar with Border history it was one of those historical coincidences which send a little shudder through the mind: in that moment, thousands of miles and centuries in time away from the Debateable Land, the threads came together again; the descendants of three notable Anglo-Scottish Border tribes—families who lived and fought within a few miles of each other on the West Marches in Queen Elizabeth’s time—were standing side by side, and it took very little effort of the imagination to replace the custom-made suits with leather jacks or backs-and-breasts. Only a political commentator would be tactless enough to pursue the resemblance to Border reivers beyond the physical, but there the similarity is strong.

      Lyndon Johnson’s is a face and figure that everyone in Dumfriesshire knows; the lined, leathery Northern head and rangy, rather loose-jointed frame belong to one of the commonest Border types. The only mystery is when the “t” which distinguishes Border Johnstones from the others of the name was dropped from his surname. Billy Graham has frequently advertised his Scottishness, perhaps a little thoughtlessly, since there are more Grahams on the southern side of the line than on the northern, but again, the face is familiar.

      Richard Nixon, however, is the perfect example. The blunt, heavy features, the dark complexion, the burly body, and the whole air of dour hardness are as typical of the Anglo-Scottish frontier as the Roman Wall. Take thirty years off his age and you could put him straight into the front row of the Hawick scrum and hope to keep out of his way. It is difficult to think of any face that would fit better under a steel bonnet.

      None of this, possibly, is capable of definite proof, but one can at least say that the names go with the faces, and that Johnson and Nixon especially are excellent specimens of two distinct but common Border types.

      It seems reasonable to suppose that the people of the Border country have not changed a great deal, physically or characteristically, in four centuries. Although the frontier line still lies between Scot and Englishman, they are now considerably mixed in the racial sense, particularly on the English side. A good half of the people of Carlisle are at least partly Scottish; there are as many Armstrongs and Johnstones as there are Forsters and Hetheringtons. But the racial composition of the Borderland generally has not altered so very much; the Elliots and Fenwicks, Bells and Nixons, Littles and Scotts, Maxwells and Kerrs (and Carrs) are still where they were in the sixteenth century, and although the Border is in many ways an even greater mental barrier than it once was, one can say that both sides together form a distinct and separate cultural and social bloc which is apart from the rest of the British people.

      This is perhaps a personal point of view; it is, nevertheless, being expressed by one who is a Borderer born and raised in spite of his name. And it can always be disputed. On the credit side, there is a Border virtue which in the human scale should outweigh all the rest, and it is simply the ability to endure, unchanging. Perhaps the highest compliment


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