THE BORDER REIVERS.

[Jim McDougall]

In hopes of keeping this valuable thread going, before continuing writing I went back to read through the content, and realize even more how fascinating this relatively obscure history of Great Britain really is!

To reiterate the identity and character of the 'riding' families, the term rider I think comes from the German 'reiter' (=horseman) and with the Reivers mounted on their maneuverable and hearty ponies, they were incredibly formidable in their raiding (the term reive =raiding).

Reading through the captivating pages of "The Reivers" by Alistair Moffat, 2008, the content literally grabs you as the book is laid out in text with blocked references to key descriptions rather than footnotes or tedious paragraphs.

For example, notes on the long leather, metal studded coats that served as armor, and called 'jack'.......I found that when cut down for mounted wear, it became a 'jacket'. There are countless bits of this kind of information revealing how much of the colorful and intriguing language, terms, nicknames etc came from the culture of these people.

In recent discussions, there has been focus on the swords used by the Reivers, and it is noted that these men had a most 'cosmopolitan' taste in weaponry, certainly from forays into foreign campaigns as mercenaries.
Moffat notes that weapons from Germany and Italy were indeed 'imported' or brought back, and that local armorers often made their own versions of these as well as various armor items etc.

Most often seen were the types of basket style hilts from North Europe known as dusagge or Sinclair which also were influencing English basket hilts. These circulating through these regions became the prototypes for the famed Highland hilts (termed Irish hilts in those times), while some of the Sinclair type versions were deemed 'schiavona' like.

While the Reivers' period effectively ended in 1603 when James IV took the throne, and essentially dismissed the border, now terming the former border lands the 'middle shires'...he took to persecution of these families and harshly prosecuting any 'lawlessness'. However, of course, the Reiver identity remained profoundly intact, and continued in degree regardless.

Returning to weapons discussions, on swords and the 'whinger' term:
From a previous post,
"whineyard, whinyard, or Scottish 'whinger' ..defined by Minsheu (Compendium, 1625) as 'a hanger'.

From: "Hunting Weapons", H.L.Blackmore, 1971, p.14

[Peter Hudson]

Please see https://www.historytoday.com/miscell...-united-states from which I QUOTE" But perhaps the most vivid vignette of the borderers’ enduring influence on America came via George MacDonald Fraser’s description – in his introduction to his study of the border Reivers The Steel Bonnets – of that moment in 1969 when the descendants of ‘three notable Anglo-Scottish Border tribes’ gathered for the US presidential inauguration in Washington DC, with Lyndon Johnson handing over to Richard Nixon in the presence of Billy Graham (while at Cape Canaveral, another descendent of the borderers, Neil Armstrong, prepared himself for the Apollo 11 Space Mission). Johnson with his ‘lined, leathery Northern head and rangy, rather loose-jointed frame’, and Nixon’s ‘blunt, heavy features, the dark complexion, the burly body, and the whole air of dour hardness’ which was, in MacDonald Fraser’s view, ‘as typical of the Anglo-Scottish frontier as the Roman Wall’. "UNQUOTE.

Regards,Peter Hudson.