Think of a man dressed in a loose-cut shirt or leather jacket with horizontal, fringed seams running across the chest and onto the upper sleeves. The shirt narrows to a belted waist, and its wearer sports a broad-brimmed hat and either leather-stocking gaiters or boots that reach high up the leg. Quite probably, he has a weapon with him.If you think this sounds like a backwoodsman from the American frontier of yesteryear, you would be right. But the frontier that gave birth to his costume was not the Appalachian backcountry of the 18th century, nor yet the cow-punching plains that lured men forth as America’s frontier marched westward. No, the frontiers that gave rise to his costume were the borders of England and Scotland and the disputed lands of Ulster. The costume came to America in the 1700s along with a quarter of a million immigrants who left the Borders and Northern Ireland for a better life.

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Their homelands edge the Irish Sea. They are hilly, often bleak, and while the valleys offer pasturage for sheep or hardy cattle, the cold wet winds blowing from the Atlantic make them a poor place to grow wheat. Barley and oats are the grains of the region; cabbage, turnips and other vegetables that tolerate cold and wet are its crops.

Throughout recorded history, acquiring sufficient land to raise a family here has been difficult, and for centuries national and religious differences compounded the problem.One ancient witness to long-established border disputes is Hadrian’s Wall, built between ad 122 and 126 by Emperor Hadrian to mark the outer limit of the Roman Empire (see ‘Timeline, January 2006). Scotland was beyond the imperial domain, but the Scots frequently raided the lands south of the wall, and when the Romans left in the 5th century, the borderlands became chaotic, with both Scots and English fielding armies to battle for strategic outposts and to seize the land and cattle. These battles were not just fought lord against laird, earl against thane, but family against family–and never more fiercely than when the families in question were royal.

From 1040 to 1745 every English monarch but three suffered either a Scottish invasion or invaded Scotland in turn. Indeed, the Borders were called the debatable lands because both English and Scots monarchs claimed them. Border towns such as Carlisle, Newcastle and Berwick were constantly devastated, and their townspeople cruelly slaughtered. For example, England’s King John tortured the burghers of Berwick to death in 1215, and set fire to the houses of the town. Again in 1286, Edward I captured the city and killed every man of military age, earning himself the nickname Hammer of the Scots. A few years later in 1297, the Scottish national hero William Wallace flayed the English officers captured when he invaded Cumberland. In 1314 Edward II tried to follow in the footsteps of his father, only to have his armies defeated at Bannockburn. The victorious armies of Robert the Bruce then raped and pillaged through northern England and Ireland. Payback time came when Edward III ascended the throne in 1327 and ravaged the Scottish lowlands as far north as Edinburgh.

Every savage act was remembered, and both sides took vengeance eagerly. While the Scots shone the glory of national pride on their victories, the English kings gave special powers to northern counties so they could defend themselves without waiting for London’s approval. Thus, northern lords ruled like mini-kings–an effect recorded in Shakespeare’s history plays in which the Dukes of Northumberland are usually make-or-break allies of unreliable loyalty. Macbeth is equally revealing in its depiction of the murderous ambition unleashed over the accession to the Scottish throne, which was not necessarily inherited by the eldest son but by whichever family member proved himself the most ruthless. As Shakespeare shows, during times when the Scots were thus distracted, English armies generally decided to march over the border.

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