The Debatable Land Quotes

“It was during this savage campaign that some peculiarly outrageous behaviour of the borderers was first recorded by officers on both sides. The carnage would be well under way – the soldiers having orders to kill and to take no prisoners – when some Scottish and English warriors, standing less than a spear’s length from each other, were seen to be engaged in polite conversation. When they noticed the furious eye of a commanding officer, they began to prance about like novices in a fencing school, striking, as it were, only ‘by assent and appointment’. Some of those faux combatants eventually left the battlefield with half a dozen prisoners who seemed quite undismayed by their capture. This was all the more incredible since these men who seemed to be treading the planks of a stage rather than a blood-soaked mire were beyond suspicion of cowardice. These were the English and Scottish borderers whose reputation for martial skill and bravery was second to none.”
― Graham Robb, The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England

“Mail’, from the Old Norse ‘mal’, meant ‘tribute’ or ‘rent’ – which was sometimes paid in meal or grain – while ‘black’ was the common collective noun for cows, bulls and oxen, which were usually black. ‘Grassmail’ was money paid to a landowner for grazing rights; ‘blackmail’ paid for the protection and recovery of cattle.”
― Graham Robb, The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England

“It is one of the joys of studying history that first impressions are always wrong. Truth is proverbially stranger than fiction, but only because no guiding mind has contrived to make it credible.”
― Graham Robb, The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England