70 
north, forming the border counties. The Sark, Esk, Liddel, 
Kershope, Till, and Tweed being the favourite battle-ground of 
the clans, and thence to the Tyne, Irthing, Eden, and Solway, the 
chief raiding ground of the Scotch. 
The border wars, which raged for more than a thousand years 
after the Romans left, were of a three-fold character—national, 
feudal, and agrarian. The national wars left several mementoes 
in the form of huge fortresses, such as those of Carlisle, Newcastle, 
and Berwick-on-Tweed. 
The feudal wars left as ¢eir legacy an immense number of 
castles, like so many watchdogs, scattered all over the north, such 
as Naworth, Penrith, Cockermouth, Egremont, Brough, Brougham, 
Kendal, Appleby, Scaleby, Chipchase, Warkworth, Alnwick, Bam- 
burgh, Thirlwall, Featherstone, Bellister, and many others on this 
side of the borders, to say nothing of those on the opposite 
border. 
The mementoes of agrarianism are not so numerous. Being 
less massive and solid, many of them have vanished, or become 
converted into ordinary dwellings, and are not recognised except 
by the practised eye of the archeologist or antiquarian. They 
were usually called fe/es, and took the form of castles, towers, 
houses, and garths. 
The pele castles were similar to the feudal castles, but smaller, 
and less massive, with a large fold for cattle and sheep. The pele 
towers were a combination of castle, fold, and watch tower. The 
pele houses were composed of two immense rooms, one above 
another, parted by huge oaken beams laid from wall to wall, and 
battened together with thick oaken boards. The walls were from 
four to nine feet thick, with one door only sufficiently large to 
admit the small border cattle. The doors were backed with 
beams laid across them—each end inserted into the wall, The 
windows were high, and so small that a man could not enter. The 
roofs were flags, fastened to oaken beams by wooden pegs or 
sheep-shank bones. Whten the watchers gave the signal that the 
raiders were astir, all the live stock were driven into the lower 
room, the people taking refuge in the upper room, ascending by an 
