The Borders.

[BIAD]

With the current manner that history is presented, it may be interesting to some that the border between
England & Scotland wasn't quite what the bland Historians of today say it was. Humans takings sides in a
particular quarrel isn't always black-and-white, there are grey areas where fellowship can be cultivated
and the realisation that blood is thicker than water becomes a credo.







Awaiting a fourth video!

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Huh, this is really interesting history I did not know.

[BIAD]

That's the problem, what really happens in a world of humans and what is wished for in a false
cyber-world! But oddly enough, this mutual situation of the past isn't an isolated case...

[Ninurta]

Although it's not in the same series, here's another video regarding the Birder Reivers:



It's true that several of the reiver families ended up in Appalachia - of the family names mentioned, I recognize several as local names here. And the mindsets of the Appalachian mountaineers has close parallels to the mindset described of the reivers in the videos. We don't, for example, shy away from a feud that may carry on for generations. I've seen blood drawn here over the mere insinuation by one man that another might not be entirely truthful.

What are called here the "Scotch-Irish" came into these mountains by traveling down the Great Valley of Virginia and then just vanishing into the wilderness to get away from the English who generally lived nearer the coast. I reckon there was still, at that period of time, some fresh bad blood between the two.

The only branch of my own that I have been definitively able to trace to that general area is the McElwaines. They were from Ayrshire, and held lands at Thomaston, Attaquin, and Grimmet. I don't know that they were Borderers - I'm not sure if that area qualifes as the borders, although I will note that so far, none of the family names mentioned in the videos begins with a "Mc" or "Mac" as theirs does. The map briefly shown in the video above would indicate they were not - it seems to terminate the Borders at the southern border of Ayrshire.

So, probably not -  @"Gordi" is closer to the situation, and would know better than I.

They were, however, apparently a rough bunch whether Borderers or not. I've read old court records that mention them getting in trouble for riding off in "steel bonnets and jacks" intent on doing harm - sometimes with the Campbells, sometimes against them... I reckon it depended on who had pissed off whom the day before. One I read a court record on was said to have been "cooling his heels in the caitchpoole (no idea what a "caitchpoole" is) in Maybole" when he was beset by some opposing ruffians, 4 of whom he dispatched with a sword he just happened to have at hand, according to the court records, before making his escape from the situation. he was 13 years old at the time.

Flash forward a couple of hundred years, and one of his descendants in America, a "Tunis Mucklewaine", was employed as an "indian spy" in the settlements around Tygart's Valley in what is now West Virginia. He ran a route of about 60 miles round trip looking for signs of indian incursions into the settlements to warn the settlements of impending attacks. That one was 14 years old when that service started.

Those MCElwaines were "Scotch-Irish" by virtue of having originated in Scotland, but were transported to the Plantations in Northern Ireland, for somehow being troublesome, where they spent about a hundred years before moving on to America. So, Scottish and Irish by way of the Plantations.

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[Ninurta]

That's the problem, what really happens in a world of humans and what is wished for in a false
cyber-world! But oddly enough, this mutual situation of the past isn't an isolated case...

I can verify at least part of this video, and that would lend credence to the rest, to my mind.

I was, for 4 or 5 years, a Customer Service Manager for Frontier Communications. That is without a doubt a crap company, but I digress.

Frontier covers at least a part of the Navajo Res, and some of that coverage is around Shiprock. When folks there would have a problem they needed to have fixed, they would call in to create a service order, but ran into trouble because there are no house numbers there. There was no address to send a service man to in order to fix the malfunction.

That caused no end of frustration to both Frontier and the Navajo that lived there. I found a way around it, because I come from a place where directions did not involve addresses when I was growing up - directions were more like "the second lane on the left past the old rusting combine sitting in the corner of the field" more like that than say, a house number.

So I would just get good solid directions for the service men off of landmarks.

Other folks seemed to have problems with that, so I had a lot of Navajo calls escalated to me.

But I gotta tell ya, I have a real hankering for one of those res "smash burgers", and I'm so far away...

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