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 impo...
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...
Any gang of politicos is like the eighth circle of Hell, but the American breed is specially awful because they take it seriously and believe it matters;
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
It wasn't that I'd grown any braver as I got older - the reverse if anything
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...
Before serious Anglo-Scottish political differences began, there was a north-south dispute over the manner in which priestly heads should be shaved.
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.
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...
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...
Oh, the holy satisfaction of the godly—when it comes to delight in cruelty I’m just a child compared to them
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...
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.
It’s always the same before the shooting begins—the hostesses go into a frenzy of gaiety, and all the spongers and civilians crawl out of the wainscoting braying with good fellowship because thank God...