Edinburgh Detours

The riding is the marches is not a re-enactment of anything. It is (where still practiced in Border burghs) a traditional annual event to patrol the marches (boundaries) of the town. The marches were typically beyond the built up area of the burgh and demarcated the limits of the common lands of the burgh (the common good). Such lands were extensive and granted by the Royal Charters establishing Royal Burghs. As such they are Scotland oldest form of community landownership but whose governance has been left to either and die. These Royal Charters remain as extant legal instruments as do the Royal Burghs themselves (though with the exception of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow they no longer have any local government). Such a patrol was a political necessity to ensure that no encroachment had taken place onto the towns lands by neighbouring lairds. If folk like Duke of Buccleuch could appropriate land within a Royal Burgh, it could be feued and superiorities sold to create new enfranchised electors (male property owners). Such practices were common place. So where are Edinburgh’s boundaries? Where are its common lands? Where is any of the true history, politics and legal geography in this event. Do people attending even know what any of this is meant to be about?