Common Ridings are vital part of Scottish Borders traditions

Before I start, however, I suspect like most historians and history writers in Scotland I am grieving for the loss of one of our number, Alex Salmond. For he was a historian himself, a graduate in mediaeval history and economics from St Andrews University.

He remained passionate about Scottish history all his life and was a great supporter of historians. I know, because he told me, that he and his wife Moira were regular readers of my columns in The National and Sunday National, and it was he who persuaded me to write about his birthplace of Linlithgow in my recent series on the ancient towns of Scotland. “No’ bad” was his verdict on my efforts, about as great a compliment as I have ever had.

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His death at the weekend is itself a moment in Scottish history, and when the history of our times comes to be written after the passing of 50 years – Sir Walter Scott said history could only be written after that interval of time – Alex Salmond will be seen as a towering figure in the progress to independence.

Sadly he did not live to see the regaining of our independence – he was always specific about that term – and I suspect I will not do so either, but it will happen one day and Alex will eventually be judged, I believe, as the harbinger of independence.

He once talked to me at length and very persuasively about the “lost” ancient kingdoms of Scotland, and so my next series will be dedicated to him. I intend to write about those kingdoms, specifically Dalriada of the Scoti, the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, Strathclyde of the Britons, Galloway, and the Norse kingdom that comprised Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Caithness and the Isle of Man.

It will not be easy because contemporary Scottish records of those ancient kingdoms just do not exist and what we know is usually derived from English and Irish chronicles or deduced from archaeology – fortunately we have some of the best archaeologists in the world working in Scotland these days, and we are learning more about ancient Scotland all the time.

For now, it’s back to the Borders, then, and the ancient towns that were all in existence before the Reformation and which have survived to this day. As I have previously shown, their number does not include the lost fortress town of Roxburgh, of which only a small remnant exists.

Nor am I going to dwell too much on the fate of the great abbeys that stood at Kelso, Melrose, Dryburgh and Jedburgh because it is almost painful to do so.

Suffice to say they were all destroyed by the English while the Reformation eventually finished them as religious “businesses”. They now stand as impressive ruins, massively mute reminders of the importance of the Scottish Borders as a region.

Indeed, in the course of my researches over the past ten weeks I have formed the opinion that, with the exception of Edinburgh and Glasgow and their environs, the Scottish Borders has been the most important region in Scottish history, certainly in mediaeval times and the Middle Ages.

No Borders, no Scotland, is how I have come to view this lovely part of our country, for centuries so war torn and so vital to stopping an English takeover of our nation.

Today for reasons of space I will be concentrating on “pen portraits” of the major ancient towns in alphabetical order – Duns, Earlston, Galashiels, Hawick, Jedburgh, Kelso, Melrose and Selkirk, plus one village, West Linton, for no other reason than that I used to live there. I have already written about Peebles earlier in the series. Apologies to residents of other towns and villages, but I have to draw a line somewhere.

The town of Duns in the ancient county of Berwickshire was previously known as Dunse. It existed from at least the early 12th century and may have been created by one of those Norman knights imported by King David I to help him alter Scotland.

It grew up around a “dun” – a hill, possibly with a fort. The name was recorded in a charter of 1150 witnessed by Hugo de Duns and there was certainly a church in the settlement as the name of its priest, Patrick, is recorded in 1165.

Blessed John Duns Scotus (below) was born in the town in 1265 or 1266 and as I have previously written he went on to become one of the greatest of all theologians. King Robert the Bruce gave the land of Duns to his nephew Randolph, Earl of Moray, and around 1320 he built Duns Castle, the original keep of which is preserved in the current castle.

Duns became an official burgh in 1489 when King James IV issued a charter stating “we do ordain appoint and constitute the Town of Duns with the pertinents thereof lying within our Sheriffdom of Berwick, a free Burgh of Barony forever”.

With Berwick itself moved into England, Duns became the recognised county town of Berwickshire. It was razed to the ground by the English invaders during the “Rough Wooing” of 1545 and the modern town is based on the rebuilding in the late 16th century.

Earlston is intriguing as a prehistoric settlement possibly of the Votadini tribe who were recorded in Roman times.

Signs of cave dwelling and a standing stone – most usually a product of the Picts but perhaps pre-dating even them – show that Earlston, also known as Yerlston, might well have been the earliest settlement in the Borders. It was certainly in existence by the 12th century as a tower was built which became the residence of Thomas of Ercildoune, Thomas the Rhymer (c1220-c1298) who also featured earlier in this series.

The town grew under the patronage of the earls of March and Dunbar, and had a church by 1250. Earlston seems to have survived the predations of the English but not the insults of neighbouring people, who called laziness and indolence “Yerslton Fever”, a derogatory name surely not earned by the good people of the town.

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Galashiels – often simply known as “Gala” – qualifies as ancient because the town really started as a collection of “shiels” or huts by the Gala Water used by people going to and from Melrose Abbey.

Much earlier remains of Iron Age fortifications and a later broch have been found, destroyed by the Romans in the 2nd century CE.

Galashiels’s Common Riding featuring the Braw Lad and Braw Lass is a modern retelling of the ancient story of how the men of the town rode out to defend their land from (mostly) English invasion.

In 1337, a party of English soldiers were picking wild plums near the town when the folk of Galashiels caught and killed them all, hence the sour plums in the town’s banner. The town’s later development was very much based on the textiles industry, but the trade in that commodity began in the early Middle Ages.

Hawaick’s very name indicates its ancient origin, derived from Old English for “enclosed farm” and first recorded in 1167. It was a lesser town in the ancient county of Roxburghshire until Roxburgh itself all but disappeared in the 16th century. Evidence of prehistoric settlement has been found around the town, most notably a Pictish carving of a salmon-like fish.

Like so many of Scotland’s ancient towns, Hawick grew up around a castle, the remains of which can be found at the Motte in the town, suggesting it was a motte-and-bailey castle. Hawick also had an early church.

The town first came to prominence in 1342 during a dispute about the sheriffdom of Teviotdale. Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie was officially the sheriff, but William Douglas, Lord of Liddesdale, disputed the title. While the official sheriff was holding court in Hawick, Douglas abducted Ramsay and held him at Hermitage Castle until the unfortunate man died, probably of starvation.

Hawick's Common Riding – featuring the Cornet, a young, unmarried, local man who becomes the central figure of the events – is by tradition the first of the Borders’ Common Ridings each year. It commemorates an incident at Hornshole near the town in 1514, the year after Flodden in which many of the men of Hawick were killed.

Learning that an English raiding party had camped at Hornshole, the youth of Hawick rode out and surprised the invaders, capturing their pennant. This is re-created each year in the Riding.

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Hawick officially became a burgh in 1537 and its later textile industry was very much based on tweed cloth, though that name does not derive from the river but from a miscommunication with England over the word “twill”.

Jedburgh was in existence as a settlement even before the Romans came and made it one of their outposts. Often referred to as Jedhart or Jeddart, it takes its name from the Jed Water and like many ancient towns it grew up around a religious institution which was extant before 850CE when its church was mentioned in a charter from the monks of Lindisfarne.

King David I upgraded that church to a priory and it later became a magnificent abbey around which the town developed. The Abbey was the scene of King Alexander III’s fateful marriage to Yolande de Dreux in 1285. David I also built a castle at Jedburgh and it became a garrison for English occupation until 1307 when Sir James Douglas captured it for Robert the Bruce. The castle was destroyed in 1409 and the Abbey was burned by the English in 1523.

Kelso owed its early significance as a settlement of strategic importance at the confluence of the rivers Teviot and Tweed. It was a tiny hamlet until the building of Kelso Abbey at the insistence of King David I in 1128. His brother King Alexander I had imported Tironensian monks into the area before David made Kelso a personal project and endowed the Abbey.

Thanks largely to the skills of the monks, the town developed into a prime example of a mediaeval settlement growing around a religious institution, and its early history is entirely entwined with that of the Abbey and the town and castle of Roxburgh directly across the Tweed.

The township was very much in the shadow of Roxburgh until that town all but disappeared in the mid-15th century, but Kelso Abbey thrived and the town grew in importance, becoming a regular haunt of the kings of Scotland.

The town was fought over by Scottish and English armies until finally the Rough Wooing saw Kelso Abbey torched and the town devastated by the Earl of Hertford and his forces in 1545. The Reformation ended the Abbey’s working life but the town was already established as a market town and survived.

Melrose Abbey’s history has been frequently alluded to in this series, and suffice to say the town grew up around the Abbey which was founded by King David I.

There had been a monastery east of the town from the 6th or 7th century and the town entered history when it was mentioned as Magilros in the Venerable Bede’s Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Selkirk’s Common Riding has already been mentioned, dating from the time of Flodden, but the town is much older, and was the site of the first abbey in the Borders.

Again the town developed alongside the Abbey even after the monks moved to Kelso, and it was near Selkirk that Sir William Wallace was made Guardian of Scotland in 1297.

The Battle of Philiphaugh at Selkirk in 1645 ended the Scottish rising in support of King Charles I. James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, lost the battle, the last of many major conflicts in the Scottish Borders which thankfully is now a peaceable region, except perhaps when the various rugby clubs play each other – but that is a different and much later story.