Common Ridings Explained: History, Towns and Traditions

Every summer the Border towns of southern Scotland hand their streets over to the horse. The Common Ridings are among the oldest and largest equestrian events in the world, matched for civic intensity only by Siena's bareback Palio, and for the communities that hold them they are the single biggest date in the year. Hundreds of riders turn out behind an elected principal to trace the boundaries of the town on horseback, in a custom that has run, with interruptions, for roughly five centuries. This guide covers what the Common Ridings are, where they came from, how each town sets its date, and — because most guides skip it — what is actually asked of you and your horse if you want to ride in one.

What Are the Common Ridings?

A common riding, also called a riding of the marches, is an annual ceremony in which a mounted party makes a circuit of a burgh's boundaries. The word "marches" simply means the borders of the town's common land: ground the burgesses held in common for grazing, peat and firewood. Riding them was an inspection, carried out to confirm that no neighbouring landowner had quietly moved a boundary.

The practice survives in around two dozen towns, concentrated in the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway but reaching as far as Edinburgh, Musselburgh, Lanark and Linlithgow. Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the English side of the line, holds its own Riding of the Bounds. What began as estate management is now a week or a fortnight of ceremony, community singing, sports and ride-outs, and the rides themselves have grown far beyond anything the original burgesses would recognise: Selkirk alone fields a cavalcade of 300 to 400 horses.

Two things separate the Common Ridings from an ordinary show or country fair. The first is that they are genuinely equestrian at their core — the ride is the event, not a sideshow. The second is that they belong to the towns. Former residents, known as exiles, plan holidays around them and fly in from Canada, Australia and South Africa to ride.

The History Behind the Common Ridings

The Common Ridings grew out of the 13th and 14th centuries, when the Anglo-Scottish frontier was one of the least governed places in Europe. Understanding that period explains both why the rides began and why the towns are still so protective of them.

Riding the Marches

Before accurate maps, fixed fences and formal property law, a burgh had no reliable way of proving where its land stopped. The answer was to go and look, every year, in company and on horseback. A leading townsman was appointed to ride the marches with a body of supporters, check for encroachment, repair boundary cairns and report back that the circuit had been completed without interruption. That report is still made aloud at the end of the ride in Hawick, Lauder and elsewhere, several hundred years after it stopped being necessary.

The Border Reivers

The same period produced the Border Reivers, the raiding families who worked both sides of the frontier — "reiving" is the old Scots word for robbing. Reiving was mounted work, done fast and at night on small, hardy horses chosen for stamina and sure feet rather than size, and it made a yearly armed inspection of the boundaries a sensible precaution rather than a ceremony. The military horse types of the period, and the way raiding shaped what people bred and rode, are covered in our guide to war horse breeds through history.

The Battle of Flodden

Flodden, in 1513, runs through the festivals like a seam. The Scots defeat cost the Border burghs a generation of men, and several ridings commemorate the aftermath rather than the battle. Selkirk remembers that of the eighty men who left the town, one — Fletcher — came home, carrying a captured English flag; legend has him casting it about his head to show that the rest had been cut down. Hawick looks to the following year, 1514, when the youths left in the town are said to have surprised a raiding party at Hornshole and taken its flag. Both stories are re-enacted annually, and both explain why the flag, rather than the horse, is the object every ceremony turns on.

How a Common Riding Works Today

Every town does it differently, but the shape is broadly shared: elect a principal, entrust them with the town's flag, ride the marches, return the flag unmarked.

The Principal and the Ceremonial Names

Each community elects its principal in the spring — traditionally an unmarried young person of good standing in the town, usually someone who has already served as an attendant to previous principals. The role is a serious commitment of time, and in most towns former principals return each year to act as Right-Hand and Left-Hand supporters. Almost every town has its own name for the job, and getting the name right matters locally:

Bussing the Flag

The burgh flag is the heart of the ceremony. At the colour bussing, held in the town hall on the evening before the main ride, the principal's lass ties ribbons in the town colours to the head of the flagstaff — blue and gold in Hawick, blue and white in Kelso. The gesture consciously echoes a knight's lady fixing her ribbon to his lance. The principal is then charged to ride the marches and bring the flag back "unsullied and unstained", and the return of the flag at the end of the ride is the moment the festival formally closes.

Ride-Outs and the Chase

A Common Riding is not one day. Festival weeks are built around ride-outs to outlying villages, farms and historic sites, which in the larger towns start weeks in advance — Hawick elects its Cornet in early May and then rides out every Tuesday and Saturday until festival week. These are essentially large organised hacks over farmland and open hill, and they are where most of the mileage is done.

The chase is the part spectators remember: a mass gallop uphill over rough ground, several hundred horses deep. Hawick's runs up the Nipknowes to St Leonard's. River fordings are the other set piece — Selkirk fords the Ettrick early on Common Riding morning before climbing to the Three Brethren cairns, the highest point of its ride.

Common Ridings Town by Town

The festivals share a purpose but almost nothing else. A few of the larger ones show the range.

Hawick

The first and largest of the Border Common Ridings, and the longest — the calendar runs from the Cornet's election in early May to the return of the flag in June. Hawick commemorates the Hornshole skirmish of 1514 alongside the ordinary business of riding the marches, and it celebrated its 500th Common Riding in 2014. The set pieces are unusually well preserved: the Snuffin' at Tower Dykeside at six in the morning, when snuff is dispensed from an old horned mull; rum and milk before breakfast; curds and cream at the Hut; the Cornet cutting the sod at the furthest point of the common; and the flag dipped three times in the Coble Pool on the River Teviot to mark an ancient boundary. The ballad "Teribus" is sung throughout. The Mosspaul ride-out is a 24-mile round trip over open moorland and is the most physically demanding day in the calendar.

Selkirk

Selkirk fields one of the largest mounted cavalcades in Europe, with 300 to 400 riders. The Standard Bearer is chosen from eligible young men of the town by the trustees of the Common Riding Trust and introduced on Appointment Night, the last Friday in April. The night before the ride, the Burgh Officer walks the town to "Cry the Burley", giving formal notice that the marches will be ridden. The day itself starts at four in the morning with the flute band, and ends with the Casting of the Colours in the Market Place, where the Royal Burgh Standard Bearer and the standard bearers of the crafts and associations cast their flags in turn, followed by two minutes' silence for the town's war dead.

Langholm

"Langholm's Great Day" has different roots from the Flodden towns: it comes from the settlement of an 18th-century legal dispute that secured common rights, including the digging of peat, within set boundaries, and those boundaries have to be re-marked annually to maintain the rights. It is also the ride that asks most of the horse — the Cornet and his followers gallop up the steep Kirk Wynd and on to the monument on Whita Hill. Langholm carries four emblems: the thistle, the spade, the crown, and the barley banna, which is barley bread nailed to a wooden platter along with a salted herring and a large twai-penny nail. There are three Cryings of the Fair, delivered by a Fair Cryer standing upright on the back of a horse.

Galashiels

The Braw Lads' Gathering was instituted in 1930, which makes it modern by Border standards, and it commemorates several episodes from the town's past rather than one. The best known is the 1503 marriage of James IV to Margaret Tudor, marked by the Mixing of the Roses, where red and white roses are mixed together.

Jedburgh

The Jethart Callant's Festival was founded in 1947, and the first Callant was a rayon mill worker named Charlie McDonald. It runs for a fortnight of ceremonial rides, the most significant being the ride to Redeswire near Carter Bar, site of the Raid of the Redeswire in 1575, where the arrival of the Jedburgh men with the cry "Jethart's here" turned the fight. The Callant also leads the cavalcade to Ferniehurst Castle and halts at the Capon Tree, a survivor of the old Jed Forest. The Jedburgh Border Games date from 1853.

Lauder

Lauder is worth singling out because it commemorates no battle at all — it is a boundary ride and nothing else. The marches were marked by cairns rather than fences, and younger riders filled their pockets with stones to add to each cairn in turn, a practice abandoned when the pockets turned out to contain bottles rather than stones. The ride lapsed for around seventy years and was revived in 1911 for the coronation of George V. The Burgess Cairn is the only one of the original cairns still standing, and a stone is still placed on it each year.

The Smaller and Stranger Ones

• West Linton — the Whipman Play, led by the Whipman, an old Scots word for a carter or carrier. It dates from 1803 and was revived in 1949.
• Annan — the Hole in the Hedge, from a tradition that a boy was pushed through the smithy window to watch for approaching raiders. Each year a local boy is sent through the hedge to mark the spot.
• Kirk Yetholm — the principals carry the names Bari Gadgi and Bari Manushi, reflecting the village's long association with Scotland's Gypsy and Traveller community.
• Eyemouth — a fishing town, so the central figure is the Herring Queen rather than a mounted principal.
• Newcastleton — the Copshaw Riding was only instituted in 1998, proof that the tradition is still being added to rather than merely preserved.
• Edinburgh — the capital revived its own Riding of the Marches, held in September, well after the Border season has finished.

When Do the Common Ridings Take Place?

This is the question that catches most visitors out. There is no central calendar, and the dates move every year, because almost every town fixes its festival by a rule rather than a date — and then adjusts so it does not clash with its neighbours. The season runs from late May to August across the south of Scotland, with Edinburgh's riding extending it into September.

The rules below are the ones the towns work to. They are stable from year to year, so you can use them to work out roughly when a festival will fall long before the committee confirms anything:

Two practical notes. Accommodation in the Border towns sells out months in advance for festival week, and the biggest events bring road closures — limited and signposted, but worth checking if you are driving between towns on the day.

Riding in a Common Riding: What It Actually Takes

Most coverage of the Common Ridings is written for spectators. If you are a rider, the more useful question is whether you and your horse are up to it, and the honest answer is that the standard is higher than people expect. These are not led parades. They are full days of fast work in very large groups over unfenced country, and the committees are strict about who joins.

What the Committees Ask For

Requirements vary between towns, but the common thread across the region is that a rider must be able to demonstrate:

1. Proof of horsemanship and experience, plus insurance.
2. A horse that is hunt fit or event fit — capable of cantering over open country, in a large group, for a full day.
3. The ability to walk, trot, canter and gallop confidently over rough, uneven ground.
4. Smart, suitable riding wear and protective headgear, which is mandatory.
5. Full control of the horse at all times. Marshals, officials and police can require a rider to leave, and persistent breaches can bring a ban.

Head cams are not permitted on ceremonial rides. If you want to take part, the route in is to contact the Common Riding committee for the town directly — not to turn up on the day. Full participation guidance is published by Scotland Starts Here, the South of Scotland tourism body.

Getting a Horse Fit Enough

Ride-out distances run from around 5 miles to 25, and Hawick's Mosspaul day is a 24-mile round trip over moorland. A horse in light hacking work is not ready for that, and the risk of pushing an underprepared horse through a long day at speed is real: exertional rhabdomyolysis, or tying up, is exactly the sort of problem that shows up when fitness has not kept pace with the workload.

Build the work up properly over months rather than weeks. Our 12-week equine fitness plan is a reasonable framework, and the conditioning principles used by endurance horses transfer well, since the demand is similar: sustained work over varied terrain rather than short bursts of intensity. A field hunter type — sensible, sure-footed, fit and unbothered by company — is the profile that suits the job, which is why the towns use the hunt-fit standard as their benchmark.

Temperament Matters More Than Breeding

No breed owns this. What matters is a horse that stays rideable in a galloping group of several hundred, fords rivers without argument, stands still through long ceremonies with bands and crowds, and does not become unmanageable when the ride turns for home. Plenty of otherwise excellent horses cannot do the third and fourth of those. Group work is a specific skill and needs schooling in its own right — the same principles that apply to hacking safely in a group apply here, scaled up considerably.

If you do not have a suitable horse, hiring locally is normal and several Borders yards specialise in it. Expect to be assessed: hirers will want you to ride with them several times before the festival, and will turn riders down. That is a good sign, not an obstacle. The British Horse Society is a useful starting point for road-safety and group-riding guidance before you commit.

Women and the Common Ridings

This comes up often enough to be worth answering directly, and the position differs by town. Hawick is the contested case: women took part until 1931, were excluded thereafter, and were readmitted to certain elements of the festival in 1996 after two local women complained successfully to the Equal Opportunities Commission. Reports of female riders meeting hostility in traditionally male events continued as recently as 2019. Other towns went a different way — Selkirk saw its first female Standard Bearer carry the Ex-Serviceman's flag in 2014, and towns such as Galashiels and Musselburgh elect a lass in her own right rather than as a consort. Women ride in the cavalcades in large numbers throughout the region. If you are planning to take part in a specific ceremony rather than the general ride-out, check with that town's committee.

Watching a Common Riding as a Spectator

You do not need a horse to get the most out of a Common Riding, and spectating is free at almost every event. A few things make the difference between watching from the back of a crowd and actually seeing something.

• Get the programme. The official brochure carries route maps and timings and is usually the only reliable schedule. Bring cash — programmes, parking and refreshments are frequently cash only.
• Pick your spot for the chase or the ford. These are the moments worth travelling for. Local advice on viewing points is generally accurate; follow it.
• Stay behind the ropes and obey the marshals. Marshals are there to keep several hundred horses and a crowd apart, particularly at river crossings. Walkers use the same route as riders.
• Respect farmland. Close gates behind you, keep dogs on a lead, do not block roadways.
• Keep quiet during the ceremonies. Songs, proclamations and acts of remembrance have been cancelled because of disturbance. The singing in particular means a great deal locally.
• Understand what is and is not open. Some dinners and balls are ticketed or reserved for officials, and Exile Nights give preference to those with family ties to the town.

One phrase you will hear all season is "Safe Oot, Safe In" — a wish that riders come home unhurt. It is the closest thing the Common Ridings have to a shared motto, and given the ground these cavalcades cover it is meant literally. If the ridings give you an appetite for the rest of the calendar, our equestrian sports section covers the disciplines the Border towns feed riders into.

Frequently Asked Questions