Teribus ye teri odin

Teribus ye teri odin or teribus an teriodin (Scots pronunciation: [ˈtirɪbəs ən ˌtiri ˈodɪn]) is popularly believed to have been the war cry of the men of Hawick at the Battle of Flodden,[1] and has been preserved in the traditions of the town.

Attempts have been made to connect the phrase teribus an teriodin with the names of the Scandinavian and Norse gods, Tyr and Odin from the Old English Tȳr hæbbe ūs, ġe Tȳr ġe Ōðinn "Tyr keep us, both Tyr and Odin", an unlikely explanation since the gods' names are given in their Old Norse forms, not the Old English Tīw and Wōden and the normal phonological development would not result in the modern pronunciation, apart from that, the survival of a supposed Old English sentence in its near original form for more than 700 years is barely conceivable.

[3] Charles Mackay described the ballad, of which these mysterious words form the burden, is one of patriotic "defence and defiance" against foreign invaders and suggested that the phrase is a corruption, or phonetic rendering, of the Scottish Gaelic "Tìr a buaidh, 's tìr a dìon" meaning "Land of victory and land of defence".

It has also been suggested that the phrase is a series of vocables imitating the sound of a march played on drums and bagpipes.

[7] The full version of the Border ballad written by James Hogg in 1819 (not James Hogg, "The Ettrick Shepherd", with the same name),[8] which replaced an earlier one by Arthur Balbirnie used a generation earlier,[9][10] is still sung at the Hawick Common Riding in June of every year.