History
the tradition of common riding dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries, during the continual land border wars both with England and against other clans. It was a tribal custom to plunder and thieve cattle, known as reiving (the ancient Celtic word for robbing), and commonplace amongst the major Borders families. In these lawless and battle-strewn times, it became the practise of the day for the local lord to appoint a leading townsperson, who would then ride the clan's boundaries, or "marches", to protect their common lands and prevent encroachment by neighbouring landlords and their peoples.
Long after they ceased to be essential, the ridings continued in commemoration of local legend, history and tradition.
Read more about this topic: Common Riding
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)