common riding

English

Alternative forms

• Common Riding, Common-Riding

Noun

common riding (plural common ridings)

1. An annual festival in some Scottish towns, in which people conduct a ceremonial procession around the boundaries of the town in order to delineate the area and check for encroachment by neighbouring landowners.
   • 1898 July, W. E. Wilson, chapter 1514, in The Border Magazine, volume 3, number 30, page 140:

     It was this folk-moot which instituted the common riding and invested it with all the religious ceremonial which primitive religion attached to every event in the life of its votaries.

   • 1906, Alexander Porteous, The Town Council Seals of Scotland, page 145:

     This flag, or at least a copy of it, is said to have been borne at the annual 'common riding' ever since.

   • 2011, Alistair Moffat, “The Borders: A History of the Borders from Earliest Times”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     Because the order of each summer's common ridings is printed on the soul of native Borderers, it can be difficult to find the sequence written down anywhere.

See also

• beat the bounds