Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. POOR AND LAWLESS. " Mountainous and strange is the country, And the people rough and savage." have seen that the feeling of hatred to the English which prevailed on the Scottish Borders was due to some extent to the memory of the wrongs which the Borderers had suffered at the hands of their hereditary enemies. That this feeling had something to do with the existence and development of the reiving system, must be apparent to every student of history and of human nature. It was the most natural thing in the world that the dwellers on the Scottish Border' should seek to retaliate ; and as the forces at their command were seldom powerful enough to justify their engaging in open warfare, they resorted to the only other method of revenge which held out to them any hope of success. But while this aspect of the situation ought to be kept prominently in view, there are other factors of the problem which must not be overlooked. In the Middle Ages the district of country known as the Borders must have presented a very different appearance from what it does at the close of the century. The Merse, which is now, for the most part, in a high state of cultivation, and capable of bearing the finest crops, was then in a comparatively poor condition, looked at from an agricultural point of view. The soil in many places was thin, poor, and marshy. Drainage was unknown, and the benefits accruing from the rotation of crops, and the system of feeding the soil with artificial manures, so familiar in these days of high farming, were then very inadequately appreciated. Perhaps an exception to this statement ought to be made in favour of the land held and cultivated by the great religious houses, such as Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso. The tenants on these lands enjoyed special privileges an...