When Common Thift is executed (which is performed upon the stage), Falset (Falsehood), who is also brought forth for punishment, pronounces over him the following eulogy: 

  Waes me for thee, gude Common Thift! 
  Was never man made more honest chift,
  His living for to win: 
  Thair wes not, in all Liddesdail,
  That ky mair craftelly could steil,
  Whar thou hingis on that pin!

Ib. p. 194.

Sir Richard Maitland, incensed at the boldness and impunity of the thieves of Liddesdale in his time, has attacked them with keen iambicks.  His satire, which, I suppose, had very little effect at the time, forms No.  III, of the appendix to this introduction.

The borderers had, in fact, little reason to regard the inland Scots as their fellow subjects, or to respect the power of the crown.  They were frequently resigned, by express compact, to the bloody retaliation of the English, without experiencing any assistance from their prince, and his more immediate subjects.  If they beheld him, it was more frequently in the character of an avenging judge, than of a protecting sovereign.  They were, in truth, during the time of peace, a kind of outcasts, against whom the united powers of England and Scotland were often employed.  Hence, the men of the borders had little attachment to the monarchs, whom they termed, in derision, the kings of Fife and Lothian; provinces which they were not legally entitled to inhabit[34], and which, therefore, they pillaged with as little remorse as if they had belonged to a foreign country.  This strange, precarious, and adventurous mode of life, led by the borderers, was not without its pleasures, and seems, in all probability, hardly so disagreeable to us, as the monotony of regulated society must have been to those, who had been long accustomed to a state of rapine.  Well has it been remarked, by the eloquent Burke, that the shifting tides of fear and hope, the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, alternate famine and feast, of the savage and the robber, after a time render all course of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation and the prospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end of long labour, to the last degree tame, languid, and insipid.  The interesting nature of their exploits may be conceived from the account of Camden.

[Footnote 34:  By act 1587, c. 96, borderers are expelled from the inland counties, unless they can find security for their quiet deportment.]

“What manner of cattle stealers they are, that inhabit these valleys in the marches of both kingdoms, John Lesley, a Scotchman himself, and bishop of Ross, will inform you.  They sally out of their own borders, in the night, in troops, through unfrequented bye-ways, and many intricate windings.  All the day-time, they refresh themselves and their horses in lurking holes they had pitched upon before, till they arrive in the dark at those places they have a design upon.