One of the last Roman historians wrote from Syria in the late AD 400s that a man crossed Hadrian’s Wall in the British Isles only at the peril of his life since the land northward of that edge of the Roman Empire was one of darkness, loathsome things and death.

The historian was specifically writing of Liddesdale—truly a land of mystery, magic and the Sword.

"Mystery" because of the ruins of fortresses of which we know nothing other than their locations and their foundations, the rock-edged circles of the Druid priests and the traces of untold tribes who traveled through this land.

"Magic" because this is the first land which Merlin’s name is attached. His cave, fountain and mountain are all still clearly identifiable on the ground from the early legends of Liddesdale. And magic, also, because he later became the Green Man whose leering face peeks from the carvings of many medieval churches as the workers’ acknowledgement of the unknown unknowables of nature.

And "of the Sword" because of Liddesdale’s location—abutting both the Low Road and the High leading up from England into Scotland, each faithfully tracing out the old Roman military roads—forming the eastern terminus wall of the great valley coming northward through the Cheviot Hills, again out of England but also passing into England when it was the Scots’ turn to invade, burn and pillage. "Of the Sword" because of the region’s great castles that guarded the border for more than a thousand years, because of the Reivers and because of the land’s countless sons and daughters who founded nations, built cities and built the British Empire for the English.

Liddesdale, truly a land of Mystery, Magic and the Sword. –Learn more by contacting us. We are its children. You may be, as well…

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