k, near Jedburgh, at
Lyne in Peeblesshire, and Newstead at the base of the Eildons--the
undoubted Roman Trimontium--with the roads known as Watling Street
and the Wheel Causeway are the chief memorials of a singularly historic
Occupation. Following the withdrawal of the Roman legions the district
became the arena of constant warfare between Picts and Scots and
Britons, until the sixth century, when it appears again in history as a
kingdom of the Saxon Heptarchy under the name of Bernicia, and occupied
by a colony of Angles and Saxons from the Low Countries of the
Continent, the progenitors of the English-speaking race. Ida the Good
governed Bernicia, having for his capital the proud rock-fortress of
Bibbanburgh (so named from his queen Bibba), the modern Bamborough. In
the following century Bernicia was combined with Deira, its southern
neighbour (corresponding to Yorkshire) to form the powerful kingdom of
Northumbria, extending, as Brigantia had done, from the Humber to the
Forth. For the next three or four hundred years the story of the Border
was little more than a wild record of lawlessness and bloodshed. It had
grown to be a kind of happy hunting-ground for every hostile tribe
within fighting distance, and for some even who were drawn from long
distances, like the Danes, the latest of the invading hordes. But there
is nothing of importance to narrate at this period. From a monarchy,
Northumbria fell to the level of an Earldom in 954, and in 1018, the
Scots, consolidated to some extent under Malcolm II., crushed the Angles
of Northumbria in a great victory at Carham-on-Tweed (near Coldstream),
of which the result was the cession to Scotland of the district known as
Lothian--the land lying between the Tweed and Forth. Thus at the dawn
of the 11th century we have the Tweed constituting the virtual boundary
between the two countries. Cumberland, to be sure, was for a time Scots
territory, but this the intrepid Rufus wrested back in 1092. So that by
the close of that century the Border line appears to have taken the
quite natural course of delimitation--the Tweed, the Cheviots, and the
Solway, though it was not till as late as 1222 that a commission of both
countries was appointed to adjust the final demarcation.

THE CHRISTIANIZING OF THE BORDER

It would be interesting to know precisely when and how the light of the
Christian faith first penetrated the Border Country, but neither the
time nor the manner can be asce