The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald

to the joint command of an outlaw gang called Sandy’s Bairns; in 1600 he attacked the village of Scotby with 140 riders, burning, taking prisoners and over 100 cattle, and with a last spark of his old bravado, riding on to Carlisle the same evening with some “English disobedients”. They smashed in a few doors at the Rickergate, damaged the bridge chains, took some prisoners, and rode under the Castle wall roaring, “Upon them, upon them, a Dacre, a Dacre, a red bull, a red bull!” which caused some alarm; the citizens stood to arms and the beacon was lit, but presently the raiders retired, no doubt to sober up.

      Next year the old ruffian was operating a protection racket at Scaleby, and doing a little in the way of illicit horse-trading and receiving stolen goods. In 1602 he rode his last foray, probably on Low and High Hesket, south of Carlisle. He was still alive two years later, and his four sons who had helped to get him out of Carlisle Castle in 1596, are frequently named in the later Border raids. But the old robber, full of years and dishonour, probably died in his bed.

      Walter Scott of Harden

      “Auld Wat” of Harden has been represented as the Falstaff of the Borders, a fierce, big-bellied humorous old rascal who is supposed to have passed a haystack on returning from a raid and muttered: “Aye, if ye had fower legs ye wouldnae stand there lang.” A number of Border myths are connected with him, and possibly they have some truth, but the bare facts of his foraying are as follows.

      He and a handful of Elliots stole two mares and a foal from the Gelt in July 1595, and sixty head of cattle from Triermain two months later. In the following year, with the same Elliots, he ran a day foray in Gilsland with 400 men, took 300 cattle, twenty horses, burned twenty houses, “taking and burning [sic] gold money apperrell worth £400” and “mutilating” several persons. Another raid yielded him 300 beasts and the spoil of two houses, worth £100.

      He raided Bellingham in 1597 with more than 300 horse, killed three men, and carried off 400 head, the March being too weak to pursue him. “With shame and grief I speak it,” wrote Eure, “the Scotts went away unfought withall.”

      Auld Wat was a principal in Kinmont Willie’s rescue, and in his preliminary report young Scrope mistakenly credited him with being the actual ring-leader. Yet although he is referred to as Buccleuch’s right-hand man, he does not appear to have been well known south of the frontier. Scrope refers to him as “one Wattie Harden”, and Eure even gave his surname as Elliot. But he was important enough on the Scottish side to have been involved in the Raid of Falkland in 1592, in which the wild Earl of Bothwell tried to capture King James VI;¹