Border Ghost Stories

Ghosts of the Anglo-Scottish border, written by a man who had spent his life collecting its ballads: reivers who ride after death, a piper, a drowned man at a ford, the gray figure that walks a peel tower. Pease was a Northumbrian who wrote the Border's history as well as its tales; his stories keep the ballads' flat tone, which is what makes them work. Fifty-six plates of lochs, sheepfolds and fishing boats by painters including Horatio McCulloch and David Cox carry the same weather and solitude that fill these border tales.