I was interested to see Jim Carroll cite George MacDonald Fraser's "Steel Bonnets", which I have recently re- read, as a background text for the border ballads. Conversely, the ballads themselves dramatise the human aspects of the historical record.
Singing them I feel like a time traveller, moving back 400 years and getting into the mindset, the devil-may -care fatalistic attitude and ambiguous morality of the border reiver.

It helps that living in Cumbria I know the territory. I have cycled that lonely road past Askerton and Bewcastle and over the Kershope Burn into Scotland; I've stood on the stump of the Armstrong Tower at Mangerton which figures in at least four ballads. And on a beautiful autumn morning I looked south to the lakeland fells from the Gallows hill at "Harribee" in Carlisle with the chill realisation that this was the last view seen be so many, like Hobbie Noble who ended their days there.

All this has become part of my inner landscape, the cinematic backscene in my mind's eye when I am performing the ballads. The trick I am still working on is how to communicate this to an audience who may not know the border country and its history.
Richard Hardaker