Both Sides the Border | Page 5

had all in
readiness for the preparation of the midday meal, she sat down on a low
stool, by his side.
"I don't see how we ever can have, Mother, until either we conquer
Scotland, or the Scotch shall be our masters. It is not our fault. They are
ever raiding and plundering, and heed not the orders of Douglas, or the
other Lords of the Marches."
"We are almost as bad as they are, Oswald."
"Nay, Mother, we do but try to take back our own; as father well said,
the cattle that were brought in are all English, that have been taken
from us by the Bairds; and we do but pay them back in their own coin.
It makes but little difference whether we are at war or peace. These
reiving caterans are ever on the move. It was but last week that Adam
Gordon and his bands wasted Tynedale, as far as Bellingham; and

carried off, they say, two thousand head of cattle, and slew many of the
people. If we did not cross the border sometimes, and give them a
lesson, they would become so bold that there would be no limit to their
raids."
"That is all true enough, Oswald, but it is hard that we should always
require to be on the watch, and that no one within forty miles of the
border can, at any time, go to sleep with the surety that he will not, ere
morning, hear the raiders knocking at his gate."
"Methinks that it would be dull, were there nought to do but to look
after the cattle," Oswald replied.
It seemed to him, bred up as he had been amid constant forays and
excitements, that the state of things was a normal one; and that it was
natural that a man should need to have his spear ever ready at hand, and
to give or take hard blows.
"Besides," he went on, "though we carry off each others' cattle, and
fetch them home again, we are not bad friends while the truces hold,
save in the case of those who have blood feuds. It was but last week
that Allan Armstrong and his two sisters were staying here with us; and
I promised that, ere long, I would ride across the border and spend a
week with them."
"Yes, but that makes it all the worse. Adam Armstrong married my
sister Elizabeth, whom he first met at Goddington fair; and, indeed,
there are few families, on either side of the border, who have not both
English and Scotch blood in their veins. It is natural we should be
friends, seeing how often we have held Berwick, Roxburgh, and
Dumfries; and how often, in times of peace, Scotchmen come across
the border to trade at the fairs. Why should it not be so, when we speak
the same tongue and, save for the border line, are one people? Though,
indeed, it is different in Kirkcudbright and Wigtown, where they are
Galwegians, and their tongue is scarce understood by the border Scots.
'Tis strange that those on one side of the border, and those on the other,
cannot keep the peace towards each other."

"But save when the kingdoms are at war, Mother, we do keep the peace,
except in the matter of cattle lifting; and bear no enmity towards each
other, save when blood is shed. In wartime each must, of course, fight
for his nation and as his lord orders him. We have wasted Scotland
again and again, from end to end; and they have swept the Northern
Counties well nigh as often.
"I have heard father say that, eight times in the last hundred years, this
hold has been levelled to the ground. It only escaped, last time, because
he built it so strongly of stone that they could not fire it; and it would
have taken them almost as long, to pick it to pieces, as it took him to
build it."
"Yes, that was when you were an infant, Oswald. When we heard the
Scotch army was marching this way, we took refuge with all the cattle
and horses among the Pikes; having first carried out and burnt all the
forage and stores, and leaving nothing that they could set fire to. Your
father has often laughed at the thought of how angry they must have
been, when they found that there was no mischief that they could do;
for, short of a long stay, which they never make, there was no way in
which they could damage it. Ours was the only house that escaped scot
free, for thirty miles round.
"But indeed, 'tis generally but parties of pillagers who trouble this part
of the country, even when they invade England. There is richer booty,