Highly readable and entertaining popular history of the border reivers on either side of the Scottish/English border and particularly it's height and decline during and immediatey after the Elizabethan years. The lawman and the lawless, with often little water beteen them, battle it out, chasing each other up and down mountains after cattle and sheep and horses. Raids, kidnappings, blackmail, murders, and the unique and strange and terrible culture that made these things a way of life superbly surveyed and evoked by Fraser with all the character and personality that goes with it.