They
were driving before them a knot of some forty or fifty cattle, and
three of them led horses carrying heavy burdens. Oswald's quick eye
noticed that four of the horsemen were not carrying their spears.
"They are three short of their number," he said to himself, "and those
four must all be sorely wounded. Well, it might have been worse."
Oswald had been brought up to regard forays and attacks as ordinary
incidents of life. Watch and ward were always kept in the little
fortalice, especially when the nights were dark and misty, for there
was never any saying when a party of Scottish borderers might make an
attack; for the truces, so often concluded between the border wardens,
had but slight effect on the prickers, as the small chieftains on both
sides were called, who maintained a constant state of warfare against
each other.
The Scotch forays were more frequent than those from the English side
of the border; not because the people were more warlike, but because
they were poorer, and depended more entirely upon plunder for their
subsistence. There was but little difference of race between the
peoples on the opposite side of the border. Both were largely of mixed
Danish and Anglo-Saxon blood; for, when William the Conqueror carried
fire and sword through Northumbria, great numbers of the inhabitants
moved north, and settled in the district beyond the reach of the Norman
arms.
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