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.
England was a menace to Scotland because Scotland was, by its separate existence, a constant anxiety to England.
And my good lord, for your honors better satisfaction, that it was not so barbarouslie nor butcherlie don as you thinck it to be, it should seeme your honor hath bene wrongfullie enformed, in sayinge he was cutt in manye peeces, after his deathe – for if he had bene cutt in many peces, he could not a lived till the next morninge, which themselves reported he did – which shewes he was not cutt in verie many peeces!
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 that one can pay to the people of the Anglo-Scottish frontier is to remark that, in spite of everything, they are still there.
Out of the historic tangle, there certainly emerged among English kings a belief that they had, traditionally, some kind of superiority over the Scottish king, and no doubt a feeling that for the sake of political security and unity – one might say almost of tidiness – it would be better if Scotland were under English control, or at best, added to England. This attitude can be charitably seen as politically realistic, or at the other extreme, as megalomaniac; it is all in the point of view.
Now Malcolm was back again, but he came once too often, and was killed at Alnwick in 1093.
And then peace broke out. It seems surprising, in view of what had been and what would one day follow, but there now began an era of tranquillity between England and Scotland, and consequently along the Border, which was to endure almost uninterrupted for nearly two hundred years.
The golden age, of Scotland, of Anglo-Scottish harmony, and of the Border country, ended when King Alexander III of Scotland fell over a cliff in 1286. Few stumbles – if indeed His Majesty was not pushed – have been more important than that one.
One thing the war ensured; whatever treaties might be made and truces agreed at the top, however often a state of official peace existed, there was never again to be quiet along the frontier while England and Scotland remained politically separate countries.
People who have suffered every hardship and atrocity, and who have every reason to fear that they will suffer them again, may submit tamely, or they may fight for survival. The English and Scots of the frontier were not tame folk.
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.
Some human faults are military virtues, like stupidity, and arrogance, and narrow-mindedness.
It’s a great thing, prayer. Nobody answers, but at least it stops you from thinking.