Gathering of the Clan

A warm Hunter Welcome to a new member of the Clan Association:

 Graham Guest, Bookham, Surrey 

*   BOOKSHELF   *

The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser

HarperCollins £9.99. ISBN 0 00 272746 3

ROBERT HUNTER, our Clan Officer, mentions this outstanding work in his column on page 3. George MacDonald Fraser is best known for his scintillating series of comic Flashman novels, fiction based on the supposed later life of the bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and a vivid memoir of his wartime service in the Far East with the Border Regiment, QuarteredSafeOut Here. This revised edition of The Steel Bonnets is a monumental achievement in making sense and some sort of order about the turbulent times between 1503 and 1603 when the reivers raided and feuded throughout the Borders.

Left : The Reiver

"It is necessary, I feel," writes George, "to try to understand the Border reivers, and if not to excuse what they did, at least to see why they did it. And among all this, to try to see what it must have been like to be a wife or a mother making a home on the Marches."

He points out that it was not a simple case of Scot versus Englishman. The Reivers killed and robbed their fellow Scots and English as readily as they raided across the frontier. Alliances were made and swiftly broken, and blood kinship and intermarriage further tangled the internecine web. The wardens of the Marches struggled to maintain some semblance of law and order and tried to catch and punish the numerous wrongdoers, but it was largely a futile effort. And, speaking again of the wives and mothers living at that time, when provisions ran low, the fact was conveyed to the head of the household by his spurs being served on his plate at the table, an indication that some more riding and reiving were necessary.

George threads a fascinating path through the bloody maze of Border history, describing the riding families, the hard men, the loose men and the broken men, supreme guerrilla fighters whose exploits gave words like bereave and blackmail to the English language and whose territory was often the site of pitched battles between the Scottish and English thrones. He notes that Hunters were "living under" the Nixons of Liddesdale or associated with them in riding terms along with Thomsons and Glendennings. There were also Hunters on the English side of the line in the Middle March.

The reiving century ended when James VI of Scotland came to the English throne. George remarks that the Borders now are a peaceful place, except when men bearing the old Border surnames knock pieces out of each other in the scrums and rucks of the Border rugby clubs. Those same surnames have gone around the world: it was an Armstrong who was the first man on the moon and a Nixon who was president of the United States until Watergate and, George comments, it's "difficult to think of any face that would fit better under a steel bonnet". A Graham headed the first major postwar evangelical movement, a Scott provided the foundation of Scotland's literature, a Kerr was one of the most accomplished and beautiful film actresses and an Eliot became an icon of poetry.

There is a video, Debatable Lands - In Search of the Border Reivers (Striding Edge) and a detailed map, in Search of the Border Reivers (Ordinance Survey), both inspired by The Steel Bonnets. George shares the commentary on the video with Eric Robson, who has another good Border surname.

Clan Hunter Association U.K.

Clan Chief:

Madam Pauline Natalie Hunter of Hunterston

and of that Ilk, 30th Laird

Officers:

Clan Officer: Robert Hunter

Membership Secretary: Anne S. Hunter

Treasurer: A.H. Gardner

Newsletter Editor: Nigel Hunter

Hon Genealogist/Historian: Brian Stanley Hunter

Chaplain:

Rev. Alastair G. Hunter

Council:

A.H. Gardner     Nigel Hunter

Gordon Hunter   Robert Hunter

Anne S. Hunter

James Hunter-Blair

Brian Stanley Hunter