Editing Border reivers (section)

== In literature ==
[[File:Crossing the Tweed on Braw Lad's Day, Galashiels.jpg|thumb|left|Skills of horsemanship are kept alive in the Borders: fording the [[River Tweed]] on Braw Lad's Day, [[Galashiels]] 2011.]]
[[File:Galashiels Reiver Statue 02.JPG|thumb|upright|Reiver statue at Galashiels]]

The reivers were romanticised by writers such as [[Sir Walter Scott]] (''[[Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border]]''), although he also used the term [[Moss-trooper]], which refers to seventeenth-century borderland brigands. Scott was himself a native of the borders, writing down histories which had been passed on in folk tradition or ballad.

English poet [[William Wordsworth]]'s verse play ''The Borderers'' features border reivers (but does not use this term).<ref>{{cite web |last1=Scott |first1=Paul |title=William Wordsworth: The Borderers |url=https://www.romanticpoets.org/public_html/p5/criticism/ww_borderers.htm |website=Poets of the Romantic Period |access-date=15 April 2020}}</ref>

The stories of legendary border reivers like [[Kinmont Willie Armstrong]] were often retold in folk-song as Border ballads. There are also local legends, such as the "Dish of Spurs" which would be served to a border chieftain of the Charltons to remind him that the larder was empty and it was time to raid again. Scottish author [[Nigel Tranter]] revisited these themes in his historical and contemporary novels. Scottish Border poet, and Australian bush balladeer, [[William Henry Ogilvie|Will H. Ogilvie]] (1869–1963) wrote several poems about the reivers, including "The reiver's heart" (1903), "The raiders" (1904), "Whaup o' the rede: a ballad of the border raiders" (1909), "[[Kirkhope Tower]]" (1913), and "Ho! for the blades of Harden". ''[[The Steel Bonnets]]'' (1971) by [[George MacDonald Fraser]] (1925–2008) describes life in the Anglo-Scottish border [[marches]] in the heyday of the border reivers.