The Border Reivers Put Even The Wild West To Shame

Those of you who have enjoyed relaxing holidays in the counties that lie on both sides of the Scottish borders will already be aware of the turbulent past that has shaped the landscape. From the incredible Roman engineering undertaking that was Hadrian's wall, to the dramatic sight of imposing castles, the lengths that English and Scottish heads of state have gone to in order to gain the upper hand is responsible for a sizeable part of today's modern tourist industry.

Bastle houses were a rough type of fortification

The extraordinary natural beauty and bleakness of some of the border landscape only adds to the impression that this was a part of the country where you had to learn to look after yourself in order to survive.

Students of border history will delight in telling you, however, that the times when this area was at its most lawless was not necessarily when the turmoil was created by king against king, or country against country, but peoples of the same nation fighting against each other.

With life in the border countries being at the very least uncertain, and with your allegiance being made to a distant monarch, it is perhaps easy to understand that you were most likely to gain the security and support that you needed from those people around you that you could trust the most, namely your own family.

The seeds for what became the best part of three hundred years of illegal border activity came from two sources, one as a consequence of the other. The local law of inheritance was known as  “gavelkind”, meaning that upon death, land and possession were divided equally between sons, resulting in the inability of small families to support themselves in what is an inhospitable agricultural area.

Rustling of other people's livestock became increasingly prevalent, and also extended in time to the taking of possessions and holding people to ransom. “Reive” is an early English word that means to rob, leading in turn to the more modern word “ruffian”.

The governments of both sides of the border would generally be tolerant of these circumstances, as the reiver families would act as a first line of defence when there were border scurmishes.  Riding together on a family basis, the reivers were indiscriminate in their raiding, attacking anyone who had no family connection or no powerful protector. Eventually they had the makings of a uniform with helmets and light armour. They travelled wide with reports of fighting as far north as the outskirts of Edinburgh and as far south as Yorkshire. The early winter was a favourite raiding time with longer nights and livestock fat from the summer.

Because of this state of affairs, there sprung up another form of building, the ruins of which are fairly plentiful in the border regions today. These were tower houses, taking a two storey form in what are known as “bastle houses”, and the “peel tower” (or “pele tower”), which were a three storey version. Constructed when time allowed, they were built of stone up to three foot thick, with a roof of stone tiles or slate. The livestock were kept on the ground floor, and the people lived on the upper floor which was reached using a ladder which was then pulled up at night. Natural light and ventilation were allowed only through arrow slits.

Whereas no building is completely “raider-proof” the idea was to make the job considerably harder, to encourage the raiders to seek out easier  targets. They often had small holes in the wall above the front door to pour water out to surpress a fire should one be started.

Slowly but surely, as some sort of  sense came out of disorder, Border Law came into existence, one  delightful rule allowing a disabused person  a six day period to mount a counter-raid to regain his possessions (well it is a step in the right direction!). Both sides of the border were divided into Marches each having a March Warden. Each March had a list of surnames, many of which are familiar to us, and have strong local representation even now, such as Bell, Irvine, Armstrong and Charlton. A roll of such surnames was attached to a statute of 1587 “For the quieting and keping in obiedince of the disorderit subjectis inhabitantis of the borders hielands and Ilis.”

Gradually as things quietened down, often as much by self regulation as any other way, the Reiver period slipped slowly into history, being romanticised by authors such as Sir Walter Scott. Even to this day places such as Hawick hold a Reivers Festival, and the Armstrongs are always quick to point out that the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, is one of their own.