Before dealing in detail with the stirring stories of Border history and
legend, to retell which is the purpose of this book, we will first
inquire--What is it that settles exactly the position of the border-line
between two countries? To find the answer we must think what happens
when a country is invaded.
If the invaders are stronger than the people whom they attack, they go
on thrusting back their foes till these reach some strong position
where, by the aid of mountain, river, or marsh, they are able, at any
rate for a time, to hold their own. Thus, a border-line is always
determined by some natural feature of the country which gives the
defenders an advantage.
The attackers will not always operate from the same locality, and the
defenders will not always fall back in the same direction; the two
sides, also, will vary in power from time to time. For these reasons a
border-line, especially in the old fighting days, was often altered.
When the Romans invaded Britain they gradually conquered the southern
part of it, but they could not subdue the wilder north; one of their
boundary lines was drawn from the Solway to the Tyne; then they fought
their way further north and their next definite boundary was a line
running from the Forth to the Clyde. Along each of these boundaries they
built a great wall, and to this day parts of these Roman walls remain.
But it is worth noting that neither of these wall border-lines stands
upon the present border, one being all in England and the other all in
Scotland.
When the Romans left Britain, called back to defend their own native
land from invasion, there followed a brief period for which we have no
definite record of events in this island. This is the period of King
Arthur, and none can say how much is true in the Arthurian legends.
But history begins to become clear again about the time that the Angles
came in their ships across the North Sea, bent on conquest. They landed
on all the natural harbours of the east coast, driving the Britons back
and taking the land for themselves. The fact that they landed on the
East and drove the Britons westward, leads us to think that sooner or
later a boundary would have been formed dividing the island into the
east side (for the Angles) and the west side (for the Britons).
Now that is exactly what did happen. The border-lines were nowhere like
the present ones. The northern kingdom of the Angles reached to the
Forth, where these people founded Edinburgh (Edwin's burgh). On the
west the Britons had sway in Cornwall (Corn-Walles), Wales, Cumbria
(which stretched from the Mersey to the Solway), and Strathclyde (from
the Solway to the Clyde). North of the Forth was the country of the
Picts; while the Scots were a race recently come from Ireland, and they
only owned what we now call Argyleshire, and the islands lying near to
it. Not one inch of the present Border was at that day in the
border-line!
Of the various races that lay round about where the Border now is, the
Northumbrians seemed at first to be the strongest. The capital of their
kingdom was Bamburgh, a place still famous for its castle, though to-day
it is not important enough to have a railway station! But it still
looks very picturesque on the wild coast, with the Farne Islands, the
first seat of Northumbrian Christianity, in the near distance.
Ambition had much to do with the downfall of Northumbria. The famous
King Eadbert would not rest content till he had scaled Dumbarton, the
capital of Strathclyde. This was to his career what the march to Moscow
was to Napoleon's, for, though Eadbert got safely to Dumbarton (756) his
army was cut to pieces in getting back again. The Northumbrians seem to
have lost some of their northern lands, for they moved their capital
further south, to the old Roman city of Corbridge which stood on the
Tyne just where the delightful country town of that name stands to-day.
In 844 a king of the Scots, named Kenneth MacAlpin, became (we don't
quite know how) king of the Picts also, joining two strong races under
one ruler, and thus was powerful enough to give great trouble to the
weakened kingdom of Northumbria. He several times led his army through
Lothian, the district belonging to the Angles between the Forth and the
Tweed, but was never quite able to conquer it. It is important to
remember that up to that date Lothian had never belonged to Scotland.
The appearance of the Danes added to the confusion of those restless
days. For some few years it was doubtful whether Scot, Dane, or Angle
would get the best of it in Northumbria. But at last the genius of
Athelstan of Wessex revived the power of the Angles over the whole of
that large part of the island which they had settled, right up to the
Forth itself. Edinburgh was still English in 957, and the border-line
was still very far from the present one. But there was no longer a king
of Northumbria; only an earl, who was subject to the will of the
West-Saxon kings.
This fact of the dominance of the West Saxons, whose capital was far to
the south at Winchester, must have added to the weakness of the
Northumbrian border. By the year 963 the Scots had conquered Edinburgh,
and it was now never again to return to English rule. Before very long
the whole of Lothian had passed under Scottish control; but it was not
yet held to be part of Scotland. Nor must it be thought that this
conquest of Lothian fixed the border-line in its present position, for
the king of the Scots was at that time ruler over Cumberland, which had
never yet been English and was all that was left of the old British
kingdom of Cumbria.
Frontier wars with varying successes between Scot, Angle, and Dane mark
the stormy history of this time. The power of Cnut held back the Scotch
attempts upon Nothumberland; but during a lull in the wars the grand-son
of the Scottish king married the sister of Earl Siward, and received as
her dowry twelve towns in the valley of the Tyne, an astonishingly
imprudent arrangement.
At the time of the battle of Hastings, the earldom of Northumberland was
so far distant from Winchester as to be somewhat out of the control of
the King of England; the power of the Scottish kings threatened it; they
held twelve towns in Tynedale, and Cumberland was a part of Scotland.
The Northumbrians refused to accept William the Conqueror as their king;
and had they been able to make good their refusal, they must sooner or
later have been conquered by the Scots, and the border-line between
England and Scotland would then most probably have been formed by the
Tees, the mountain boundary of Westmoreland, and Morecambe Bay.
But William was not a king to be played with. He reduced Northumberland
to subjection and carried his army into Scotland as far as the river
Tay, where he forced the King of Scotland to admit that he, William, was
his overlord.
Notwithstanding this humiliation, when King William returned to
Winchester, the Scots several times went back to their favourite
amusement of raiding unhappy Northumberland.
One of these invasions took place in the reign of William Rufus (1093),
who went north in person. He doubtless recognised the fact that owing
to the Scots possessing Cumberland they were in the strong position of
being able to attack Northumberland on two sides. He took Cumberland by
force of arms, and thus for the first time it became a part of England
(the word "Cumberland" means the land of the Cumbrians or Welsh, a Saxon
form of the Welsh word Cymry).
Rufus rebuilt the strong fortress of Carlisle to defend his new border
at its weakest corner. For the most part this border is excellently
protected by the natural rampart of the wild Cheviot Hills, and is in
every way as good a border as could be devised. It runs in a fairly
straight line from south-west to north-east, across a narrow part of the
island.
But although this border-line proved to be a permanent one, it must not
be thought that it remained undisputed. The times were rough, and hardy
fighting folk lived on the Border. They had many grounds for quarrel,
and took advantage of them all. For one thing, the exact boundary of
North Cumberland was never quite defined till 1552; up to which year
there was a tract of land between the rivers Esk and Sark, which was
claimed by both countries, and therefore called the "Debateable Land."
Then the Scots maintained that they were overlords of Northumberland,
while the English kings cherished the notion that they were overlords of
the whole island of Britain, and the wild spirits on both sides were
always ready to fight.
Out of this fighting spirit sprung the stirring history of the Border,
which forms the theme of the deathless Ballads, the stories of which it
is now our purpose to retell.