Who were the Border Reivers...

By the 16th century, hundreds of years of conflict between Scotland and England had turned the borderland between the two countries into a place familiar with turmoil and warfare, where livelihoods were hard won and easily lost. The people who dwelt amongst these vales and hills – the Douglas’s, Elliot's, the Scotts, Kerrs, Turnbulls, Armstrongs and other ‘riding families’ – had learned to give allegiance only to those they could depend upon: their own kinsmen, and had turned to cattle thieving and plunder – against their English neighbours and each other – to gain wealth and power. It was a time of raid and reprisal, blackmail and bloodfeud, which bred resourceful and ruthless men, men who became known as the Border Reiver.

A Festival of Fire and Steel:

• It can be too easy to romanticise the reivers’ exploits and the violence they enacted with arms and with arson. But fire and steel were not only basic elements of the reivers’ way of life, they also defined the spirit of the people that lived it: a fiery pride and passion and a steel-like courage and determination in their actions.
• Hawick lies at the heart of reiver country, in what was known as the Scottish Middle March, and this festival not only brings to life some of the region’s turbulent history but also evokes the spirit of the reivers and celebrates its legacy in our culture and traditions.