One of the favorite games of the Scottish borderers was to meet, ostensibly to play football, but in reality to plan and execute a raid southward, with a view to incendiarism and the theft of butcher’s meat on the hoof. Was it from this Scotch precedent that in the sport of American college football—the first game being that between Rutgers and Princeton in 1870, for which we subscribed in student days—was borrowed the violence which makes the rough-and-tumble scuffle so fascinating to the “fans” of to-day? Be this as it may, the earlier Scottish football games, which made bullhide rather than pigskin their chief goal, were broken up in Queen Elizabeth’s time.
After a Scottish king had mounted the English throne, border lawlessness became henceforth intolerable. It had lasted long enough, and after 1605 was put down with ruthless energy. Those shires in both England and Scotland, which had formerly been the border counties and so often given up to the ravages of the moss troopers, were named by King James, in 1603, “the Middle Shires of Great Britain.” By means of a band of mounted police, twenty-five in number, led by Sir William Cranstoun, murderers and robbers were speedily brought to justice. In one year thirty-two persons were hanged, fifteen banished, and over one hundred and forty named as fugitive outlaws. This list was next year increased and their names were hung up at the market crosses and on the doors of parish churches. Over two hundred and sixty were nominated as persons to be pursued with hue and cry, wherever they were found. The nests of outlawry were thus broken up and the houses of thieving families were searched for stolen goods. Cranstoun, the Samson of the new age, carried off the gates of the Philistines from the Gaza of moss and heatherland. Their iron portals, which had so long barred the entrance of civilization, were removed and dragged away to be turned into plough irons. Thus the work went on.
Is it any wonder that, of all the States of the American Union, Pennsylvania, so largely settled by the Scots, has handled most wisely, efficiently, and with least loss of property, life, or limb, the turbulent foreign elements within her gates? Her superb body of mounted police, the envy of other States, is but a modern quotation from this page of Scottish history. The system is the creation of descendants of Scotsmen who settled the western third of the Keystone State. Set one expert to foil another!
It is inspiring to note what names of ancestors, of those who are to-day most godly and respected people, having brave sons and lovely daughters, are found in these courts of justice in the time of King James, of Bible translation time. So far is this true that one calls to mind the rhyme of our own poet, John G. Saxe, concerning those who are warned not to study genealogy too eagerly, lest
“your boasted line
May end in a loop of stronger twine,
That plagued some worthy relation.”
Yet, let us not be afraid of being descended from the Maxwells, Johnstons, Jardines, Elliots, Armstrongs, Scotts, Kerrs, Buccleughs, Nevilles, or whom not or what not of these days, now so transfigured in romance. History and science both agree that if we go back far enough, no race was once lower than that to which each of us belongs, whether Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, or Aryan of any sort.
It was and is necessary, for poet, novelist, dramatist, and maker of moving-picture films, to show that these illustrious persons, who were villains in the eye of the law in one age and heroes of romance in another, should be like those in the condition that our Prescott the historian desired his heroes to be—under the ground at least two hundred years. By that time they are cooled off and their passions reduced to the ordinary temperature of graveyard dust. Their faults have been left in the haze of oblivion, while their merits take on a glamour that comes only from the past. In the “distance that robes the mountain in its azure hue” both persons and events can be transfigured in poem, song, and story.
Think of the last of the desert chivalries and enthusiasms—our cowboys—a century or two hence! Behold how, even in the Hub of the Universe, the street rioters active in the Boston “Massacre” have their artistic monument! What is a crime in one generation becomes something to be gloried in, when success is won! With the multitude, the end ever justifies the means. The accepted history of almost all wars is that written by the victors. The beaten foe is always in the wrong. “Whatever is, is right.” All, save the few starry spirits of mankind, say this.