By a process of elimination one comes to see how _esprit de corps_ seems most surely generated by the wont of standing shoulder to shoulder against a common foe. Even the shifty baron, “Lucanus an Apulus anceps,” whose feudal allegiance dovetailed into both kingdoms, that professional warrior who “signed on,” now with the northern, now with the southern team, might well grow keen on a side for which he had won a goal, and bitter against the ex-comrades who by fair or foul play had come best out of a hot scrimmage. Heartier would be the animosity of bonnet-lairds and yeomen, between whom lifting of cattle and harrying of homes were points in the game. Then even grooms and gillies, with nothing to lose, dutifully fell into the way of fighting for their salt, when fighting with somebody came almost as natural to men and boys as to collie dogs. So the generations beat one another into neighbourly hatred and national pride; till the Border clans half forgot their feuds in a larger sentiment of patriotism; and what was once an adventurous exercise, rose to be a fierce struggle for independence. The Borderers were the “forwards” of this international sport, on whose fields and strongholds became most hotly forged the differences in which they played the part of [Illustration: THE BASS ROCK, FIRTH OF FORTH, OFF THE COAST OF HADDINGTONSHIRE] hammer and of anvil by turns. Here, it is said, between neighbours of the same blood, survive least faintly the national resentments that may still flash up between drunken hinds at a fair. Hardly a nook here has not been blackened and bloodstained, hardly a stream but has often run red in centuries of waxing and waning strife whose fiery gleams are long faded into pensive memories, and its ballad chronicles, that once “stirred the heart like a trumpet,” can now be sung or said to general applause of the most refined audiences, whether in London or Edinburgh.