Ye needna ask whae Rob Roy is, the reiving lifter that he is--God forgie me!
Half a century or more before that event, this opinion had been formed of the reiving clans by their quieter and more thoughtful neighbours, as is manifest from the biting allusions of Sir David Lyndsay and Sir Richard Maitland.
Thieving is not right unless it's done under cover of law, which these reiving lads to the South seem to take small account of.
And my father had pleased old Crabbe, some other day I will tell you how, and also how long these bottles were concealed under ground, to save them from thereiving Southron.
It is true their reiving partook now somewhat more of the nature of horse-stealing pure and simple.
Presumably the fortune was not great, and even in the old reiving days no Rutherfurd ever rolled in wealth.
Percival Reed would have to get his leave, or it was all up with reivingin Redesdale.
Which of us would not have been a reiver in the old reiving days?
The Scotts and Kers and Elliots--names intimately associated with Border reiving in all its phases--have long held a foremost place in the political and social life of the country.
And his reiving was carried on in no paltry or insignificant fashion.
In a history of Border reiving such side-lights as the ballads afford may be profitably utilized.
Reiving was therefore one of the most exciting and hazardous of occupations, demanding on the part of those engaged in it, a strong arm and a dauntless spirit.
As might be expected, the existence of such an extraordinary phenomenon as Border reiving did not escape the attention of the Church.
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.
Reiving was only one of the many ways in which the Borderers sought to enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbours in the opposite March.
He had evidently, from what we learn of him, inherited all the reiving tendencies of his race.
Such an incident shows that Kinmont and his friends were in a position to set the constituted authorities at defiance, and conduct their reiving "without let or hindrance.
The Elliots and Scotts of thereiving days, got at Bewcastle by riding down Liddel water, crossing it at the Kershope burn ford, and then robbing all and sundry through some four miles.
But Willie lived in degenerate days; the times were out of joint, and reiving as a profession had gone out of fashion.
Accordingly, when in 1409 the men of Teviotdale, fierce progenitors of the more modern reiving Border Elliots and Scotts, wiping out the English garrison, retook the castle, they at once set about its final destruction.
