They scorched the earth, destroyed their own homes and fields, took to the hills and the wilderness with their beasts and all they could move, and carried on the struggle by onfall, ambush, cutting supply lines, and constant harrying.
Unfortunately, to the ordinary people, war and peace were not very different. The trouble with all Anglo-Scottish wars was that no one ever won them; they were always liable to break out again.
Now, in my experience there is only one way to fight a ship, and that is to get below on the side opposite to the enemy and find a snug spot behind a stout bulkhead.
The Border, in a sense, was a bloody buffer state which absorbed the principal horrors of war. With the benefit of hindsight, one could almost say that the social chaos of the frontier was a political necessity.
I’d have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn’t been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary – the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for? In.
Aye, weel, here’s tae us.’ ‘Wha’s like us?’ said McGilvray. ‘Dam’ few,’ said Forbes. ‘And they’re a’ deid,’ I said, completing the ritual. ‘Aw-haw-hey,’ said Daft Bob and we drank.
The 1563 agreement between England and Scotland speaks of “lawfull Trodd with Horn and Hound, with Hue and Cry and all other accustomed manner of fresh pursuit”; according to Scott, this obliged the pursuer to carry a lighted turf on his lance-point, as earnest of open and peaceful intentions.
That guttural, hissing mumble, with all its “Tz” and “zl” and “rr” noises, like a drunk Scotch-Jew having trouble with his false teeth, is something you don’t forget in a hurry. So.
Looking back over sixty-odd years, life is like a piece of string with knots in it, the knots being those moments that live in the mind forever, and the intervals being hazy, half-recalled.
Not for a moment had I been afraid. It is true that whoever would cross the threshold of any world, must leave fear behind him; but, for myself, I could claim no part in its absence. No conscious courage was operant in me; simply, I was not afraid. I neither knew why I was not afraid, nor wherefore I might have been afraid. I feared not even fear – which of all dangers is the most dangerous.
Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.
A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax a tyrant; but there is no refuge from the love of God; that love will, for very love, insist upon the uttermost farthing.
I do not care to argue that I did not fall when Adam fell; for I have fallen many a time, and there is a shadow on my soul which I or another may call a curse; I cannot get rid of a something that always intrudes between my heart and the blue of every sky.
To be fit to receive his word implies being of his kind. No matter how his image may have been defaced in me: the thing defaced is his image, remains his defaced image – an image yet that can hear his word.
When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker: – ‘Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!’ that is a prayer – a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.
The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of man must have been of God first; and it will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being.
Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into anything is a difficulty – perhaps THE difficulty.
Give me a chair and a table, fire enough to keep me from shivering, the few books I like best and writing materials, and I am absolutely content.
I will serve him, and give him all worship, seeing in him the imbodiment of what I would fain become. If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be servant to his nobleness.
I mean, mem, ‘at a blin’ man, like my gran’father, canna ken himsel’ richt, seein’ he canna ken ither fowk richt. It’s by kennin’ ither fowk ‘at ye come to ken yersel, mem – isna’t noo?