Riding the Lanark marches

Lanark rode its marches every year on the day after the last Wednesday of May, old style, which fell early in June. In the morning boys paraded the town with drum and fife, and newcomers were ducked in a pool of the Mouse Water while groping for a march stone. Some four hundred men and boys then cut great boughs of birch in the woods of Jerviswood and Cleghorn and carried them through the streets like a moving forest. At noon the magistrates and burgesses rode round the march stones, a race was run on the moor for a pair of spurs, and the day ended in feasting. The day is still kept in Lanark as Lanimer Day, on the Thursday between the sixth and twelfth of June.