Border reivers... coming to a village hall near you

GROUPS in Teesdale are being offered free slide presentations about the notorious border reivers.
Retired financial advisor John Watson, who is moving to Lartington, has accumulated more than four decades of knowledge about the raiders who dominated life along the lawless Scottish border for about three centuries.
Mr Watson’s interest in the plundering families and clans began in 1972 when he came across George MacDonald Fraser’s book, The Steel Bonnets, which described the areas where the reivers were active.
He said: “I’ve been motorbiking for a lot of my life and we always used to go up to the border so I knew these places.”
Mr Watson, who also writes and gives talks on poetry, said the reivers were forced to turn to criminality because of, among other things, their inheritance system which saw a father’s land divided equally between all of his sons.
This led, through the generations, to people having small parcels of land that were not viable.
He added: “The only way they could survive was by thieving off each other. That was their way of life, they would raid each other. In the end they hanged them all. It definitely isn’t a boring talk on history.”
The 70-year-old poet and fell-runner achieved local fame when he appeared on the television programme Dales Diary along with a book of poetry he wrote called Pools of Gold. The poems were mostly inspired by Teesdale, which Mr Watson got to know during childhood visits.
Also included in the anthology is a poem about the reivers. Some of the words include:
Torpid bees in dark walls sleep
And salmon cut their redds
When corbies roost in branches bare
And man lays warm in bed
Then nightmares turn from sleep to sight
As from the Bastle walls
The beacons roar and people scream
As hobblers snorting calls
Muffled by the midnight snow
The galloway’s fearsome mount
“Steill” bonneted with “Jak” and Stave
Their raid in blood to count
For in retreat they’d sack and “spoyl”
And pillage farms and land
A rear guard was left to warn
A posse was at hand
Mr Watson’s slide show presentation lasts about 45 minutes and covers a lot of the reivers’ history between the late 13th century and their demise in the early 17th century at the hands of James I.
Any groups interested can contact Mr Watson on 07778 759015.