Editing Border reivers (section)

==The etymology of "Border Reiver"==
''Reive'', a noun meaning raid, comes from the Middle English (Scots) ''reifen.'' The verb ''reave'' meaning "plunder, rob", a closely related word, comes from the [[Middle English]] ''reven''. There also exists a [[Northumbrian English|Northumbrian]] and [[Scots language|Scots]] verb ''reifen''. All three derive from [[Old English]] ''rēafian'' which means "to rob, plunder, pillage".<ref>Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 'reive' verb [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Reiver merriam-webster.com]</ref> Variants of these words were used in the Borders in the later Middle Ages.{{sfn|Neville|1998|p=77}} The corresponding verb in Dutch is "(be)roven", and "(be)rauben" in German.

The earliest use of the combined term "border reiver" appears to be by [[Sir Walter Scott]] in his anthology ''[[Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border]]''.<ref>Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Edinburgh, 1849 ed.), volume 1, [https://archive.org/details/minstrelsyofscot01scot/page/401 p. 401]</ref> George Ridpath (1716?–1772), the author of posthumously published ''The Border-History of England and Scotland, deduced from the earliest times to the union of the two crowns'' (London, 1776), referred not to 'border reivers' but only to ''banditti''.<ref>Ridpath, The Border-History of England and Scotland (London, 1776), [https://archive.org/details/borderhistoryofe00ridpuoft/page/n709 p. 696]</ref>