One of the favorite games of the Scottish borderers was to meet, ostensibly to play football, but in reality to plan and execute a raid southward, with a view to incendiarism and the theft of butcher’s meat on the hoof. Was it from this Scotch precedent that in the sport of American college football--the first game being that between Rutgers and Princeton in 1870, for which we subscribed in student days--was borrowed the violence which makes the rough-and-tumble scuffle so fascinating to the “fans” of to-day? Be this as it may, the earlier Scottish football games, which made bullhide rather than pigskin their chief goal, were broken up in Queen Elizabeth’s time. After a Scottish king had mounted the English throne, border lawlessness became henceforth intolerable. It had lasted long enough, and after 1605 was put down with ruthless energy. Those shires in both England and Scotland, which had formerly been the border counties and so often given up to the ravages of the moss troopers, were named by King James, in 1603, “the Middle Shires of Great Britain.” By means of a band of mounted police, twenty-five in number, led by Sir William Cranstoun, murderers and robbers were speedily brought to justice. In one year thirty-two persons were hanged, fifteen banished, and over one hundred and forty named as fugitive outlaws. This list was next year increased and their names were hung up at the market crosses and on the doors of parish churches. Over two hundred and sixty were nominated as persons to be pursued with hue and cry, wherever they were found. The nests of outlawry were thus broken up and the houses of thieving families were searched for stolen goods. Cranstoun, the Samson of the new age, carried off the gates of the Philistines from the Gaza of moss and heatherland. Their iron portals, which had so long barred the entrance of civilization, were removed and dragged away to be turned into plough irons. Thus the work went on. Is it any wonder that, of all the States of the American Union, Pennsylvania, so largely settled by the Scots, has handled most wisely, efficiently, and with least loss of property, life, or limb, the turbulent foreign elements within her gates? Her superb body of mounted police, the envy of other States, is but a modern quotation from this page of Scottish history. The system is the creation of descendants of Scotsmen who settled the western third of the Keystone State. Set one expert to foil another! It is inspiring to note what names of ancestors, of those who are to-day most godly and respected people, having brave sons and lovely daughters, are found in these courts of justice in the time of King James, of Bible translation time. So far is this true that one calls to mind the rhyme of our own poet, John G. Saxe, concerning those who are warned not to study genealogy too eagerly, lest “your boasted line May end in a loop of stronger twine, That plagued some worthy relation.”