Middle Marches in History

Here in the British Isles, the Middle Marches seem to have first been noted by the Romans, though they had long lived in the folk myths of the islanders themselves. Across the seas in Scandinavia they were, as they always had been, found in the mountains and snows inland. Where we now find Germany and Austria, the Middle Marches were mostly in the deep forests that spread across the landscape.

As nations grew and civilisation spread, the Middle Marches moved and narrowed. In the British Isles, they became the savage borders between Scotland and England, England and Wales. They were so feared by the invading Normans that special forces were sent out to subdue the wild northern lands by any means they saw fit. Despite massacres and burnings, wholesale destruction of towns and villages, the Middle Marches in Britain were still wild and feared even eight centuries later.

Germany saw the Middle Marches retreat as the forests were driven back. Like it had in Britain, it shrank to the wilder lands and the most unreachable and hostile places. Without the savagery of the Norman suppression or the military ravages of the early medieval kingdoms, here the Middle Marches were free to hide in the unreachable places like remaining forests, remote valleys, rugged mountains or the Drakenfells of the Rhineland. Even as it had to the west, so the Middle Marches here remained in the cultural mind for centuries. Eight centuries later, Wagner would write one of the great operas about the world of the Marches while within living memory Adolf Hitler would send valuable military units looking for the entrance to Mittlemarch, as the German's called it.

To this very day, those who build the drystone walls across the hills and moors of Northern England always leave gaps in those walls. Small doorways and tunnels are always left through the stone at various places along the wall. Usually, each such gap is placed over some unusual feature in the land - perhaps a small dip in the hillside, perhaps a small hillock in the field. They are left so that the wild folk of the Middle Marches can cross our boundaries easily and not need to disturb the peace of the people living nearby.

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