A curious new series of blogs exploring the daft, the curious, and the quietly brilliant questions of the Anglo-Scottish Borders.
By Fenwick McKie
Borders writer & chronic asker of awkward questions
Every place has stories.
Ours — between the Tweed, the Cheviots and the long shadow of the Middle March — has more than most.
Old stone.
Old quarrels.
Old habits that refuse to die.
And woven through all of it are the questions folk mutter in pubs, in lay-bys, on hill walks, or over the fence while pretending to check their sheep — questions they think are too daft to ask aloud.
Things like:
- Why don’t we speak French?
- Did the Vikings really leave Lindisfarne in ruins?
- Why are Border hills dotted with tiny churches?
- Were monks ever warm?
- Why do our villages look like they’ve moved uphill and downhill several times?
- Could a reiver outrun a horse?
- Why does every ruin come with at least one ghost?
These are the questions I’ve always asked — out loud, which seems to alarm people — and this series is my attempt to answer them.
Not with dry academic footnotes (though the history’s sound),
but with humour, common sense, and a healthy dose of Borders realism.
Each post takes one question and follows wherever it leads:
part history, part folklore, part observation, part mischief — always rooted in the land on both sides of the Tweed.
If you live here, you’ll recognise the places.
If you don’t, you’ll recognise the people.
The Borders has a way of being universal.
New questions are welcome — in fact, they’re encouraged.
There’s no such thing as a daft one, only the ones nobody’s asked yet.