Hawick Common-Riding

The first, and best attended, of the Common-Ridings of the Scottish border towns took place in Hawick last week and the guide book that said these festivals are one of Britain’s best-kept secrets is probably right. Without going into all the details, the Common Ridings are centuries-old re-enactments of the horseback patrol of town boundaries that were undertaken more than four hundred years ago by towns on the Scottish-English border, to give the Scots early warning of attacks from their neighbour. The statue of a young man on horseback (known as ‘The Horse’) that stands in the centre of Hawick […]

