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    The Hawick Paper


    Mosstroopers still riding high, 100 years on

    Friday, May 22nd, 2020
    Cornet Jed Huggan leads followers up the Nipknowes on the way to Mosspaul in 1960

    In this, the centenary year of the Mosstroopers, president Graeme Hodgins takes a look back at the beginnings of the club and its subsequent achievements through the decades.


    The Ancient Order of Mosstroopers upholds the history and memory of the mosstrooping men of old. Very often crofters owing allegiance to his liege lord, these men had to be ready at all times to arm themselves and spring into the saddle whenever the signal came.

    The mosstroopers of old knew every inch of the surrounding hills and the more numerous humble dwellings scattered throughout them in those times. They knew, too, the many Border peels (lookout towers) that had been built in self defence throughout the region. It was an age in which the people of Scotland and England, dwelling as they did on both sides of the Cheviots, were constantly at feud. Raid and counter-raid, reprisal and counter-reprisal, characterised their lives.

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