The story
Hawick Common Riding in Hawick
Hawick's Common Riding sends hundreds of mounted riders out to the town's historic boundary points each June, led by a young unmarried Cornet chosen annually to carry the town flag. The ceremony commemorates the 1514 Battle of Hornshole, when local youths captured an English raiding party's flag, and features songs specific to Hawick, distinct from neighbouring Border towns' own separate common ridings.
Hawick's Common Riding traces its ceremonial core to an act of horseback boundary-riding that Border towns once used to physically check and defend their common land, a practical necessity in a region with a long history of cross-border raiding that later became a fixed annual ceremony once the original threat had faded.