Stories Of The Scottish Border-Part 1 With Intro- No Music

Tonight's sleep story will be Stories of the Scottish Border by Mr.

And Mrs.

William Platt.

The Stories of the Scottish Border is a historical collection of ballads and narratives written in the early 20th century.

This work delves into the rich tapestry of legends,

Conflicts,

And tales from the borderlands between England and Scotland,

Highlighting the fierce and romantic spirit of its inhabitants.

Before we begin tonight's reading,

Be sure to get comfortable adjusting your sheets and your pillows,

Adjusting the room's temperature and lights.

As you get cozy in,

Take a deep breath in through your nose and a nice long exhale out of your mouth.

Stories of the Scottish Border by Mr.

And Mrs.

William Platt Introduction In liquid murmurs,

Yarrow sings,

A reminiscent tune.

Bygone autumn,

Bygone springs,

Many a leafy June.

No more the morning,

Vacant gleam,

Upon the silent hills.

Far back years were years of dream,

Now peace the valley fills.

No more the rivers down the vale,

On raid and foray ride.

No more is heard the widow's wail,

Or those whose biding died.

On morning dams,

With all its joys,

Then from the meadows rise.

A hundred throbbing hearts to voice,

Their anthems to the skies.

When noontide sleeps,

Where bracken waves,

Their shadows yet grow long.

No sound awakes,

The echoes save,

The Yarrow's pensive song.

And when the eve,

With calm delight,

Tokes night and nigh.

Beneath the first star's tender light,

Is heard the Owlet's cry.

While Yarrow's liquid cadence swells,

From meadow,

Moor,

And hill.

At moor or noon,

Or eve there dwells,

A mournful memory still.

W.

Peterson Character of the Borders A district called the Borders,

Is one of the most interesting and great.

It consists of a part of England that is nearest Scotland,

And a part of Scotland that is nearest England,

Mainly the counties of Northumberland,

Cumberland,

Berkwickshire,

Berkshire,

And Dumpershire.

The country is a very picturesque and highly romantic area.

It abounds in great rolling breezy hills,

With swift streamlets or burtons running down their sides to swell the rushing rivers.

No part of our island has more beautiful valleys than those of the Borders.

This bold,

Rough district,

Well adapted to defense,

And situated also just where the island of Great Britain is almost at its narrowest,

Became,

After many a struggle,

A boundary between England and Scotland.

The character of the country ensuited the rearing of hardy moorland sheep and cattle.

Its inhabitants were therefore tough,

Open-air race of men,

Strong,

Strapping for clothes,

Fearless riders,

Always ready for an adventure,

Especially if meant to fight.

In those days of Border strife,

There was hardly such a thing as international justice.

That is to say,

The people of one nation were not very particular as to what they did to people of another nation.

Therefore,

These bold,

Hardy Bordermen,

Englishmen and Scot alike,

Were fond of creeping across the boundary to steal the cattle of their neighbors.

Men devoted to such raids were called Freeboosters or Moss Troopers,

The name Moss being given to the North Country to boggy tracks that lie about the hillsides.

So it happened that the Border was in a perpetual state of petty warfare,

Conducted,

It is true,

With a certain amount of goodwill and a rough approach to chivalry.

And with the concurrence of powerful Borderland nobles,

Both nations often played an important part therein.

At times these raids developed into complete warlike expeditions,

Where a fierce noble or even a king did some reckless game to play.

Hence,

Among the ballads which give us so vivid an account of Border strife,

We find descriptions not only of the minor doings of the Jurassic sheep-stealers,

But also of pitched battles such as Chevy Chase and Thelmadan Hill.

The Union of England and Scotland in 1603 naturally put an end to all the former excuses for raiding and therefore terminated the true Freebooters period.

After this,

Despite one or two belated attempts,

Such as Elliot's Big Raid in 1611,

Sheep-stealing ceased to be looked upon as an honorable calling and became mere thieving.

The men who would have raided another's farms in 1602 became friendly neighbors after the Border Commission of 1605.

There had been little malice in their former Freebooting,

Both sides were one race and they had the pleasure of finding that their lands went greatly in value in consequence of the Border peace.

Today,

The Border presents scenes of peaceful cattle farming,

But romance is still in the air.

It hangs about fine breezy moorlands and beautiful dales and is seen clearly in the faces of the healthy Border folk.

A holiday at any Border farm would prove a most enjoyable one.

There are wonderful Roman remains,

For here it was the Romans built their walls,

Their castles on the Border barrens.

The views are wide and grand,

The river valleys are unmatched for beauty,

And delightful wildflowers are plenty.

Teeth among which are foxgloves,

Giant wild canterberry bells,

The handsome North Country wild geranium,

Several interesting kinds of wild orchids,

And a variety of others too numerous to mention.

Last,

If not least,

It is often possible in the evenings to see the farmer's son engaging in friendly wrestling in the meadows.

When we can realize these great manly fellows are of the same vigorous race that kept the Borderlands alive centuries ago.

Exploring in detail the stirring stories of Border history and legends to retell which is the purpose of this book,

We will first inquire what is it that settles exactly the position of the Borderline between two countries.

To find the answer,

We must first think of 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 or time to hold their own.

Thus,

A Borderline is always determined by some natural feature of the country which gives the defenders an advantage.

The attackers will not always operate in the same locality,

And the defenders will always fall back in the same direction.

Two sides also will vary in power from time to time.

For these reasons,

The Borderline,

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 until their next definite boundary was a line running from the Forth to the Clyde.

Along each of these boundaries,

They built a great wall.

To this day,

Part of these Roman walls remain,

But it is worth noting that neither of these wall borderlines stands upon the present border,

One being all in England and the other all in Scotland.

When the Romans left Britain,

While back to defend their own native land from invasion,

They were followed a brief period to 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 at the time that the Angles came in their ships across the North Sea in this confrontation.

They landed on all the natural harbors 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 of the Angles and the west side of the Britons.

Now,

That is exactly what did happen.

The borderlines were nowhere like the present ones.

The northern kingdom of the Angles reached to the forth,

Where these founded Vimbur,

Middenwindsburg.

In the west,

The Britons had Sway and Cornwall,

Cornwallis,

Wales,

Cumbria,

Which stretched from the Merseys to the Solway and the Strathclyde,

And the Solway to Clyde.

North of the forth was the country of the Picts.

The Scots were a race recently come from Ireland,

And they only owned what we now call Angleshire,

And the islands lying near to it,

With one inch of the present border,

Was at that day on the borderline.

As the various races lay around where the border is now,

Northumbrian seemed at first to be the strongest.

The capital of their kingdom was Vimbur,

A place still famous for its castles,

But today it is not important enough to have a railway station.

But it is still very picturesque on the Wild Coast,

The foreign island,

The first seat of Northumbrian Christianity in the near distance.

The ambition had much to do with the downfall of Northumbria.

Famous King Edward did not rest content until he had scaled Dumbarton,

The capital of Strathclyde.

This was to his career what the march to Moscow was for Napoleon.

For though Edward brought safely to Dumbarton in 1756,

His army was cut to pieces in getting back again.

The Northumbrians seemed to have lost some of their Northland.

They moved their capital further south,

To the old Roman city of Hornburg,

Which stood on the Thyme,

Just where the delightful country town of that name stands today.

In 844,

King of the Scots,

Named Kenneth that Alpine,

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 armies through Lorthian,

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,

To date,

Lorthian 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 their Scot,

Dane,

Angle would get the best of Northumbria,

But at last the genus of Alpistan,

The West,

Revived the power of the Angles over the whole,

That part of the island of which they had settled,

Right up to the Forth itself.

Edinburgh was still English in 957,

And the borderline was still very far from the present one.

There was no longer a King of Northumbria,

Only an Earl,

Who was subject to the will of the West Saxon kings.

As a fact of the dominance of the West Saxons,

Its capital was far beneath the Winchesters,

Which must have added to the weakness of the Northumbrian border.

By the year 963,

The Scots had conquered Edinburgh,

And was now never again to return to English rule.

Before the very loss,

The Lorthian fold had passed under Scottish control,

But it was not yet to be a part of Scotland,

Nor must it be thought that this conquest would Lorthian fix the borderline in its present position,

For the King of the Scots at that time was ruler over Cumberland,

Which had never been English,

And was all that was left of the old British kingdom of Cumbria.

Frontier wars with varying successes between Scots,

Angle,

And Dane marked the stormy history of this time.

The power of the Cunt held the Scottish attempts upon Northumberland,

But during a lull in the wars,

The grandson of the Scottish King married the sister of Earl Stinward,

And received her dowry twelve pounds in the valley of the time,

An astonishingly imprudent arrangement.

At the time of the Battle of Hastings,

Grolden and Northumbria,

So far distant from Winchester,

Was to be somewhat out of control of the King of England.

The power of the Scottish King threatened it.

He had twelve towns,

And Tyndale and Cumberland was a part of Scotland.

The Northumberlands refused to accept William the Conqueror as their king,

But when they had been able to make good of their refusal,

They must sooner or later have been conquered by the Scots,

And the borderline between England and Scotland would then most probably have been formed by the Thames,

The mountain boundary of Westmoreland,

And Northumbria there.

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 was William.

He was overlord.

Notwithstanding his humiliation,

King William returned to Winchester.

The Scots several times went back to their favorite amusement of raiding unhappy Northumberland.

One of these invasions took place in the reign of William Rufus in 1093,

Who went north in person.

He doubtless recognized the fact that owing to the Scots possessing Cumberland,

They were once in a strong position to be able to attack Northumberland on both sides.

He took Cumberland by force of arms,

And thus for the first time became a part of England.

The word Cumberland means land of the Cumbrians or Welsh,

The Saxon form of the Welsh word Cymru.

Rufus rebuilt the strong fortress of Carlisle to defend his new border at its weakest point.

For the most part,

This border was excellently protected by the natural ramparts of the wild Chevet's Hills,

And in every way was a good border as could be devised.

It runs in a fairly straight line from southwest to northeast across a narrow part of the island,

But although this borderline proved to be a permanent one,

It must not be thought that it remained undisputed.

Times were rough,

And a 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 Northumberland was never quite defined until 1552,

Into which year there was a tract of land between Rivers Mess and Stark,

Which was claimed by both countries,

And therefore called the Bates of Oak Land.

When the Scots obtained,

They were the overlords of Northumberland.

While the English kings cherished the notion,

They were the overlords.

The whole isle of Britain,

And the wild spirit from both sides,

Were ready to fight.

A lot of this fighting spirit sprung from 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.

Part 3.

What the Border Names Tell Us Many a name holds a meaning wrapped up within itself like a nut in its shell.

For instance,

Edinburgh is a Saxon name,

Edwin's Borough,

And the world tells us that this noble city,

Through now the capital of Scotland,

Was originally founded and belonged to a Saxon king of Northumbria.

The Highlanders,

In their own dialect language,

Called it Dundin.

This is the same signification as Edinburgh.

Like most Gaelic names,

It is arranged in reverse order,

So that which is an English name is generally put together.

Dun means borough.

Dundin is Edwin.

This is the same Dun we have in Dundee,

Which means the borough on the Tay,

Which can be translated as Tayborough.

Dumbarton means the borough Britain,

And teaches us another notable lesson,

Namely how far north in the old times the British influence extended.

For British in this case means Welsh.

Nowadays we associate the Welsh with Wales only.

Formerly there must have been a numerous common colony of Welsh in Scotland,

Whose the name Dumbarton testifies.

There are also many Scottish family names.

The great name of Wallace itself,

For instance,

Suggests an origin for Wallace is merely a corrupt form of the word Welsh,

Which proves that the great national hero was of Welsh stature.

In Cumberland,

Cymru Island,

Came the name of the Welsh,

Cymru as they called themselves.

The country of Cumberland did not really belong to the English until the time of William Rufus.

The first syllable,

Carlisle,

Denotes a Celtic fortified town and must be compared with the first syllable,

Carnarvon.

The presence of the Roman wall is shown in many names in Northumberland,

Such as Wall Send,

Wall Town,

Wall Ridge,

Heaven on the Wall,

Wall Houses,

And Thorough Wall.

For a very interesting instance of what a name tells us,

We may leave the border for a moment and consider how the northernmost part of Scotland is called Sutherland.

It must have been so named by the people in Alkney,

Shetland Isles of a different race of the Scots.

That is,

Norse settlers in those islands.

With regard to certain names,

While many stop and think Oliphant,

It's merely a form of elephant and was originally an allusion to a big name,

Early ancestor.

Grant,

Which has the same name as brand,

Must also have been once applied to one of those who was giant in size.

The phrasers somehow got their name from the French word for strawberry,

Fraise.

Odd-looking cycremgor means simply a scrimmager or scrimmisher.

Turnbull recalls one who turned the bull,

And a bull dating.

The well-known Gladstones or Gladstone has nothing to do with glad,

But is from the word glide,

The old word for kite,

And commemorates some stone where the birds frequent.

Buchlech is from a killing of the pup,

And a culvish or ravine.

The Christian names of the borders are full of life and local color and differ much from the southern England.

Quatram is the Norse form of patron.

Nigel,

Form of kneel.

Yellin is Julian.

Ringin,

Form of kneel.

This was a general custom to abbreviate Christian names or to use them in a diminutive form,

As it consistently practiced the names of these border colors.

Hobbie stands for Halbert,

A fine old name which not be confused with Albert.

Dandy or dandrine is Andrew.

Quickie is Pecker.

Lambie is Lambert.

Lenny is Leonard.

Adam comes in the familiar form,

Quickie.

Christian becomes Christy.

Gilbert becomes Gooby.

Another peculiarity of the ballad is the regular reoccurrence of such phrases as the lanyard's jock,

The laird's wait,

The ring hen's watch,

Etc.

These expressions mean John,

The son of the laird,

Walter,

The son of the laird,

Walter,

The son of ring hen or knee hen.

The little town of Bamberg has two striking features.

The great castle on its stern rock and the wild coastline at its feet were dashed with storms of the sea.

Today,

It is not important enough to have a railway station of its own,

Yet once it was the capital of the great Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.

Its original name was Bedbenberg,

Also called after Queen Bebba.

Of its Saxon fortress,

Hardly a trace remains,

The present building being partly the old Norman castle that prepares an addition of a later date.

Ancient Pyle has its strength,

Dignity,

And grandeur that accords well with its truly noble situation.

The North Saxons,

In choosing such a spot for their capital,

Set a very evident desire to keep in touch with the sea.

Over the sea they had come,

And over the sea they would both become friends and enemies.

If any meeting of both friend and foe has taken place at Bedbenberg,

Perhaps the fiercest of enemies was Ragnar of the Hairy Breeches,

A famous Viking who plundered,

Ravaged,

And burnt without mercy.

These Vikings,

Powerful men,

And fearless sea rovers were a standing terror in Northumbria.

Men with frames and muscles strong as iron at both home and in the sea,

And on the battlefield,

Bare-haired,

Blue-eyed men,

Guarded by helmet,

Breastplate,

And shield,

Armed with heavy weapons,

Because at that date the art of the smith was not equal to making them sharp,

Light,

And strong at once.

So these mighty warriors hewed their way through that field of battle with great strokes,

And when their foes fled in terror,

The Vikings took back their ships and all the treasures they could find,

And away they went across the sea again.

But with their fierceness,

They loved poetry,

Wild war poetry,

Most of it,

And they loved their strong,

Brave women.

Ragnar was a thorough Viking.

He loved writing and his handsome wife and the battle songs he made.

But the Saxons had no cause to love him,

And when his ships ran around near Garo,

They bound him and cast him into the snakes and watched him slowly die.

The Vikings had no fear of death.

They sang as he lay there,

Of his life and his deeds,

The great vanquishments he had given to the wolves and the vultures,

And the fierce battles he had won,

Spreading the terrors of his name from the Orkneys to the Mediterranean,

Of his beautiful wife and strong sons and how they would avenge him,

And of how Woden,

The lord of the warriors,

Was calling to him in his hall.

Many a battle had been fought on that wild coast since Ragnar died.

Much history had been thereabouts,

And many legends have attached themselves to Bamberg.

Like most famous places,

It had its own special dragon,

The Lely Worm,

The loathsome serpent of the ancient valley.

For seven miles east and seven miles west and seven miles north and south,

The blade of grass where corn would grow so venomous was her mouth.

And yet,

When the gallant knight gave her this his three,

He changed at once into a beautiful lady.

Despite its castles,

Battles,

And legends,

Bamberg slowly declined in importance.

It was the capital of Northumbria that had once been the chief towns in England,

But the gallant Northumbria of the Saxons was more open to enemies than any other part of the country.

Numbrians were on the west and Scots on the north,

And this was,

Of all Saxon kingdoms,

Most exposed to the ravages of the Danes.

From the capital of a kingdom became the capital of a country,

Bambergshire,

Returning two members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I.

But it grew of less and less importance till at last it was known only to the student of history.

It shared this fate with a clandestine farm called Holy Island,

Once the Cantonbury of the North,

On whose rocky shore still stands the ruins of the fine North Cathedral,

Norman Cathedral,

In which took the place of the old Saxon one.

Linsen Farm and Bamberg neighbors,

Divided only by a narrow belt of sea,

Two names that conjure up vivid pictures of romantic history.

Yet suddenly,

Early in the 19th century,

A great deed of a splendor heroine lent new glory to a wild,

Sea-girt town.

Grace Darling was born in Bamberg in 1817 in a cottage on the south side of the village street and can still be seen today.

Her father became keeper of the lighthouse and limestone,

A rocky islet five miles from the coast,

Guarding ships from the dangerous foreign islands.

A group of iron-bound rocks where seabirds dwelt.

In the early morning of September 7,

1838,

During the raging of a most terrible storm,

He heard the cracks of his ship dashed upon the rocks with anguished cries.

As soon as dawn enabled them to see,

The girl and her father made out the dark outline of the wreck,

The miserable forms of mariners crouching on the rocks from which the rising tide would sweep them inevitably to death.

With superb heroism,

Grace and her father pushed their small boat into the furious waters.

And after strenuous and dauntless efforts,

Always at the peril of their own lives,

They saved the whole ship's company,

Blind souls and all.

So fierce was the storm that it was three days before the boat dared to take them from the blank stone to the mainland.

The roar of apparition,

Which greeted her from the whole country,

Found her as modest as she was brave.

But for all her courage,

This noble girl was not strong.

She died four years later and lies buried at Bangor within the sands of the sea.

And the blank stone is known today as Grace Darling's Island.

The tomb of the brave girl arouses sweeter memories in the frowning fortress of Bangor.