Battle Valleys
A Portrait of the Border

'Every valley has its battle, and every stream its song' Walter Scott
For three hundred years the reivers' country of the Border was an enclave between England and Scotland with its own laws, its own ethics, and an economy based on theft, blackmail and kidnapping for ransom. Over moorland and bog, through the passes of Cheviot and the fords of the Tyne, the reivers rode 60 miles in an autumn night. A skirmish at dawn with lances and the long-shafted Jedburgh axe; then back again with the stolen cows, with the smoke of burning thatch behind them.
This book explores in words and photographs the beauty of the Border - on both the English and Scottish sides - where the memory of those terrible centuries lingers on. As well as its battle, every valley boasts its 'bastle' or fortified farmhouse, its pele tower or grim border fortress.
Award-winning writer and local resident Ronald Turnbull transports the reader in history and pictures through Ettrick and Yarrow, Liddesdale and Redesdale, Teviot and Tweed. Along the big rivers, thickets of hogweed spring tall as reivers' lances, and the fields are splashed with lurid gorse. Above are bleak moorlands, and the wild, high Cheviot hills.

Introduction

22 Scottish West March

30 The Debateable Lands

40 English West March

50 Scottish Middle March

58 Cheviot Hills

74 English Middle March

82 Scottish East March: The Merse

92 English East March

98 Looking Back Along The Border

106 Further Reading

112 Acknowledgments

112 Index