I mention the fact here because it shows how great events are decided by trifles. Scholars, of course, won’t have it so. Policies, they say, and the subtly laid schemes of statesmen, are what influenc...
About him, and that all the signs were that he
Before serious Anglo-Scottish political differences began, there was a north-south dispute over the manner in which priestly heads should be shaved.
Dark, wiry soldier at the first bed was cleaning his rifle, hauling the pull-through along the barrel. ‘Not like that,’ said Bennet-Bruce. ‘Pull it straight out, not at an angle, or you’ll wear away t...
This myth called bravery, which is half-panic, half-lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.
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 su...
I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough t...
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.
It wasn't that I'd grown any braver as I got older - the reverse if anything
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...
Other March law offences included truce-breaking, attacking castles, impeding a Warden, importing wool, and a delightful local custom known as bauchling and reproaching. This meant publicly vilifying...
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...
Now, look you here, Sekundar, says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.Sir Alexander. if you please, says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chas...
Just a decent resolve to do a government’s first duty: to protect its people, whatever the cost.
The guard house of the bloodiest valley in Britain. One is not surprised to learn that an early owner was boiled alive by impatient neighbours; there is a menace about the massive walls, about the rai...
The fatal privilege. It enshrined the right to recover one’s property by force, and in practice to deal with the thieves out of hand. A trod might lawfully be made at any time within six days after th...
The English general was less concerned for the moment with what he was going to do in Scotland than with the problem of actually getting his army there in working order. His main worry was a shortage...
The Border reivers were aggressive, ruthless, violent people, notoriously quick on the draw, ready and occasionally eager to kill in action, when life or property or honour were at stake. They were a...
On occasion they were cut down in cold blood or hanged on the spot; in the saying of the Border, which has passed into the language, they had been taken red-hand, which was in the deede doinge, and th...
Ga’n git ‘em, marras! Remember Arroyo!Booger Arroyo! roared Grandarse, and the corporal pulled himself up into a sitting position, and as we swung past he was trying to sing, in a harsh unmusical croa...
Showing 41 to 60 of 75 results