The stone here is fine limestone and easily worked.  This makes Hob’s task more a matter of selection than masonry. He has only to topple the walls of other men’s houses to find the material he needs. 

Their boys, Sim and Tam, drag blocks from the heaps that were recently the farmhouses of Maguire tenants.  Hob hefts the stones into the panniers of their three ponies, balancing the loads and ensuring no one beast is overloaded.

These lowlands along the Western shore of Lower Lough Erne are lush and green compared to their inland plot above Liddesdale.  Most of the Maguire tenants have gone West into Connaught, though many still linger on the higher ground, waiting in vain for this inundation of Scots and English to subside.  The Undertaker rents them land at his pleasure – and profit – for there are not enough Scots and Irish to till his 2000 acre portion.

Some of the English might go back: soft types, lured by cheap rents but spoiled by soft living but Maggie, Hob and their likes – Elliotts, Armstrongs, Croziers and Grahams – have nowhere to go back to.  Their Marches are now Great Britain’s  Middle Shires.  Though the killing is far from over, the Border which informed their spirit is abolished by an accident of Royal birth and Hob has been lucky, so far, to avoid lynching.

Although the King’s ordinance insisted that anyone harbouring broken men must be punished that writ does not apply to Undertakers like Lord Abercorn. His agent knew well enough what Hob Elliott was and seemed all the more enthusiastic to have him, and his cousin Sam, sign the 21 year lease to 100 acres in Derryvullan.  The arms and armour Hob had to hide in Liddesdale are a condition of his tenancy:  a hagbut and a lance always at their place though Hob has more than that stored away. Their rent is six English pounds a year, a side of mutton, half a stone of butter and two dozen eggs.

When they first arrived, Maggie, Hob and the boys squatted in an abandoned cottage. Hob focussed on assessing the lay of the land, getting a crop in the ground and cattle on the pastures.  The beasts do well on the rich pasturage and demand less effort in draining or ploughing, though the need to buy the beasts, rather than just stealing them, still rankles with Hob.

In the beginning, there were supposed to be no Irish on the lowlands here in Fermanagh at all.  The Hamiltons, Archdalls and Coles ambition was to clear the place of Gaels and Catholics.  Farther West, the few English planters are outnumbered 100 to 1 or more.  But even here, in Fermanagh the Hamiltons and their ilk would have no one to labour on the land without their Irish tenants. No-one except the planters themselves and many of them had leased too big an acreage for one family to cultivate, let alone improve. 

In the second year, Hob found two Irish boys to help around the place.  They sleep in a hovel not far from the cottage but they eat with the family. They have no manners and no Scots.

  Now, with the second harvest in, Hob’s attention has to improving their accommodation.  This autumn, he is pillaging the abandoned buildings on their farm for stone and wood and what little furniture the Irish left, dragging it back to build strong walls of his own.  Next year or the year after, Maggie hopes, he will put on a second storey with windows.  For this winter, a defensible ground floor with a weatherproof roof will do.

Maggie listens to the sound of steel on stone by the low wall and the deemie singing out in Irish farther off. She watches Hob approach with four panniers of dressed stone. This year, they have taken on another 3 Irish. The man, Phelim O Suilivan, knows a little Scots and so can take instruction and communicate it to the other four.  He is no mason but knows the country here abouts.

“Dia duit, Phelim,” Hob says.

The fellow looks up over the tier of stone he is levelling.

“Dia duit, a dhuine uasail.”

The walls are almost at head-hieght now.  Apart from a narrow doorway, only slits penetrate the walls, wide enough to fire a bow or a hagbut through.

“Good work.  I brought more stone.”

“Maith…Good.”

Phelim’s boy is mixing mortar.

“Cabhair an ceann seo lena clocha, buachaill[1].”

The boy, Seumas, is thin and pale, barefoot and the rag that was his liene is filthy.  Twigs and stotts of hardening mortar snag in his thick dark hair.  He plods across to where Hob waits with the ponies.   One by one, Hob settles the ponies on the grass and releases the panniers, tipping the weathered stones onto the sward at either side.

“You.  Move.  Stones.  Athair.  Yes?”

The boy smears snot with the sleeve of his sark then crouches to carry the stones, one at a time, towards the foot of the wall while Hob leads the ponies to the stream, hobbles them and leaves them to drink.

The singing rises from the wicker house near the cottage.  Inside, the little Irish girl is churning butter.  Maggie is trying to follow the girl’s meaningless song, companionable to the rhythm of the plungers.

The girl falls silent as Hob enters.  The shed smells of fresh milk in wooden pails and thickened cream skimmed ready for the churn.

They left Liddesdale in 1604. 

Cranstoun’s soldiers made her watch as they strung up Strip-em Jock and Will the Dancer, holding back their women and children when they begged to hang on their men’s legs to speed their passing. The bodies hung from the branches of the oak outside Hartsgarth.  No-one dared cut them down till the troopers were well out of sight.

Hob was in the ferns somewhere.  He should have followed Buccleugh to the Low Countries the year before.  There was no knowing who was on the Captain’s list or if there was a list or who informed the list.  The Horse Garrison simply roamed Liddesdale, ransacking houses and burning farms, hanging some and ignoring others.

They had hung Will of Hartsgarth in February along with Martin’s Oye, Sim Armstrong of Mangerton and Sim of Whitehaugh.  All their weapons, jacks and steel bonnets were confiscated. No man could own a decent horse.  A man seen holding a pistol would have his right hand struck off before they hung him.

The English Queen^[i] had been dead for a week by the time word reached Liddesdale as gossip from Carlisle where the English Warden had proclaimed Jamie, King of Scotland, England and Ireland.

In the midst of the lambing, Hob and his brethren could not contain their glee.  For all the travails of the previous decades, Border Law insists there is, in such moments, no law, no sovereign, no power in the Marches except in numbers and steel. Abandoning their yows to their own devices, the Elliots donned their jacks and marmions, hefted lances and holstered pistols and set off down the swire to Hartsgarth.^[ii] There, sure as day, Will Elliot^[iii] was waiting.

“Lancy Dodd,” was all Hobb said as he hugged her.  But that was clear enough.

Glee.  Yes.  But foreboding. The world was running out of time and this Union they expected could not stand – though they all knew that it would stand and Liddesdale folk could not stand in its way.

She watched him ride away down the Thief’s Sike then had to make her choice.  Hartsgarth or Lariston? Maggie Scott or Maggie Kidd? 

She told Clem’s Archie to mind the beasts and led Sim and Jock to Hartsgarth Tower.  It was closer to the border.  Closer to news.  And any remedy the Warden sought for Will’s attempt would more likely fall on his wife’s house at Lariston than his mistress’ in Hartsgarth.  Besides, Maggie Kidd was better company and Sim was pals with her boy, Gibbie.

The tower at Hartsgarth was well enough provisioned, its iron gates locked tight though there were only women and young boys inside with a few crossbows.  Even old men had mounted their garrons and set off on the ride, sensing it might be the last. 

For three nights, Maggie Kidd and Maggie Elliot and Marion Armstrong and Besse Crosier kept a long vigil, remembering the wildness of the times and the fine linen and brocaded dresses their men brought them back from Tynedale, Eskdale, Teviotdale and Penrith in years past.  The glow on their men after a successful raid. The lust and the relief.

On the fourth day, a girl shouted news of their return and Maggie rushed to the second floor window in the tower.  From the ledge, she could see the riders straggling return down from the Steele.  She counted a score and ten – the same as rode out. Weary perhaps but not disconsolate. Two score kine and twice as many sheep.  A good raid.

It was a bright Spring Day with tumbling clouds.

The riders forded the Hermitage and trotted up the sward to the rash of cottages about the tower. Maggie raced down the steps and out onto the grass. 

Will led the riders. She spotted Hob, ten yards back, riding close to Sweet-Milk.  Old Burn-the-Braes nodded as he passed. Sweet-Milk was keeling over in his saddle so that only Hob’s grip on his arm kept him upright.  The front of Sweet-Milk’s jack was bloodied and torn.

“Yer back.”

She gripped the bridle of Hob’s garron.  The horse was hot, exhausted from the trot.

“Are they far ahin ye?”

“I doubt it, lass.  We made oor point,” Hob said.  “Help me wi Sweet-Milk.  He took a bullet.”

Dismounting, Hob and Archie’s Dand helped the old man from the saddle.  Sweet-Milk groaned as they lowered him to his feet. His saddle was wet and sticky with his blood.

“A busy night?”

“A busy week,” he said.

“Lancy?”

“Aye.”

Maggie wasn’t sure she understood the feud between Hob’s folk and the Dods. Or why, in the years she had known Hob, it had been Lancy that had been the focus of Hob’s grievance.  It would have been easier if it had simply been numerical:  an Elliot for a Dod, a Dod for an Elliot.  But for Hob it had to be Lancy.  No other Dod would do.

“So that’s over then?”

“Lancy’s gone.  Aye.”

“And you?”

“Help me with him.”

They sat Sweet-Milk down, his back leaning against the wall of the tower.  She unbuttoned his jack and peeled back his sark, picked off the clump of wool the men had pressed into the wound. It was already festering.”

“Och, Archie!”

“Whit?”

The wound stank.  Shreds of wool and leather from his jack were embedded in the purpling flesh.

“Is the ba still in there?”

“Aye.”

“I’ll heat some iron,” she said, “Bit you an the boys ur gonnae hae tae haud him an prise it oot.”

“Fair dos,” Hob said.

Inside the tower, Maggie Elliott and Will were already fucking like a pair of youngsters, her shouts echoing against the stone walls. Wee Jock cocked her a wry look.

“Nae a cheep!” Maggie said. “Help me.”

She pressed an iron into the fire and, wrapping its handle in a clout, held it till its tip glowed red. “Speir yer faither gif they’re ready yet?”

Jock was back in a moment.  She hurried with the heated iron out of the gate.  Hob’s pals were holding Sweet-Milk down on the grass as Hob’s dirk prised the ball from the wound.  As it popped free, Maggie crammed the hot iron into the wound and Sweet-Milk screamed, his old body wraxing and straining like a gelded horse.

Carefully, Maggie seared the rottenness from the edges of the wound.  By then Sweet-Milk was unconscious. 

“Whit noo?” she asked.

Hob offered her a trinket.

They had known things would be hard after the Busy Week but they never thought a Scottish King would be so harsh on his own side of the Border.  So many good men were hanged or drowned or banished. Big men, leaders like Will Elliot and Sim Armstrong, who in past times would have been fined or exiled for a while in Fife, were tried and shown no clemency.  Only a token few were tolerated, bound over to keep the peace as the Horse Garrison roamed the braes murdering without trial any man they found in violation of their new ordinances.  It is easy to hide sword and pistol up on the moss.  Attitudes are more difficult to conceal.

© John Bolland 2026

[1] Help this one with his stones, boy.

[i] Elizabeth 1

[ii] Towers (Hartsgarth +) of Elwald, Ellot, Elliot – Gorrenberry

[iii] The Border Elliots and the Family of Minto by George Francis Scott Elliot – Books on Google Play