Happy Birthday S.R.C

24th September 1859 – 16th April 2014

This ebook is available free to Galloway Raiders members in Kindle (mobi) epub and pdf formats exclusively from the Ayton Publishing virtual Bookstore.

An Introduction:

This is the 100th anniversary of the death of Samuel Rutherford Crockett who was born 155 years ago today. In April ‘The Galloway Raiders’ held its first series of commemorative events and now, on his birthday we hold the another set of events for those who want to remember ‘Scotland’s forgotten bestseller.’

In the past five months Crockett has been the centre of attention more than once and is perhaps at last, emerging from the shadows, to become once more, a recognised and recognisable force in Scottish fiction.

It has been a year of firsts and lasts, of joy and sorrow.  On April 16th the newly formed Galloway Raiders held a memorial event at Crockett’s memorial in Laurieston and later that day in Wigtown, Ayton Publishing  launched the 32 volume ‘Galloway Collection’ which represents the first significant republishing of his work since his death and ensures that it is now possible to purchase Crockett’s Galloway based writings in both digital and paperback format.

The Galloway Raiders has affiliated with ‘The Alliance of Literary Societies’ and our membership stands just shy of 100.  We hope it’ll tip over the 100 after Wigtown Book Festival this year!

Crockett was subject of a ‘motion’ in the Scottish Parliament put forward by Galloway MSP Alex Fergusson,  noting the Centenary of S R Crockett, Scottish Novelist— It states; That the Parliament notes the centenary of the death of Samuel Rutherford Crockett, the Scottish novelist, on 16 April 2014;... and commends the Galloway Raiders on marking Crockett’s centenary with a series of events including walks, talks, readings and the launch of the 32-volume, The Galloway Collection, which will bring all of Crockett’s Galloway-based novels back into circulation for the 21st century in e-book and print editions, and considers this to be a most fitting way to commemorate the centenary of the death of S R Crockett, considered one of Scotland’s greatest writers.

And on April 16th - the anniversary, Crockett made it onto radio and TV in Scotland. Willie Johnston filmed for Reporting Scotland at Little Duchrae.

In case you missed it, the BBC report by Willie Johnston, including video and an internet article (Giancarlo Rinaldi) can be found just by cliicking HERE.

The Scottish Review published an article by Catherine Czerkawska reflecting on the events and on Crockett as a writer. You can find this by clicking HERE

Earlier in April a  ‘symposium’ dedicated to his work was held in New Galloway and Prof Ted Cowan spoke at various events across the region.

The Galloway Raiders hosted a ‘fact meets fiction’ virtual tour to tie in with Douglas Civic Week (still available on the website) and the website is being added to constantly, with book of the week and new features and articles appearing monthly.  His work featured in the 3rd Edinburgh eBook festival in August.

Crockett will appear more than once at the Wigtown Book Festival 2014.  This weekend, I will be talking about ‘The Raiders’ in the context of Lowland Classics and will deliver  the keynote McNeillie lecture as well as introducing a  1920’s silent adaptation of his novel ‘Cinderella.’

So things are starting to look good for Crockett once more.  Sadly, though, Islay Murray Donaldson, Crockett’s foremost champion and advocate over the past 40 years died in April, but was pleased to know that once more people were taking an interest in Crockett’s work.  The mantle of Crockett Champion has fallen firmly on my shoulders. I think we’ve made a great start in 2014 and hope that word will continue to spread and many more people will experience the joy of reading Crockett’s work.

Today, on Crockett’s 155th  birthday, a small group of Galloway Raiders will celebrate taking part in a ‘Raiders Ride to Rathan’ in the east of Galloway and a ‘Books and Baking’ event in the west.

For those who cannot be at those events, we have compiled the ‘readings’ into this ebook – available free for all members of The Galloway Raiders – so that you too can get a flavour of Crockett’s Galloway.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading Crockett’s work here and that it will inspire you to read more. There is certainly plenty to choose from, whether your interest is history, adventure and/or romance, or just an interest in the social history of Galloway of times past.

Happy Birthday S.R.Crockett. You have given me many happy hours over the past 20 years and populated my world with many ‘imaginary’ friends from the novels. And this year, you have also been the conduit for me making many new ‘real’ friends through our shared interest in your work.  I’d especially like to mention Tom and Sheila Laird, Ros Nolan, Chris Roberts, Barry and Terri Farley and Robin’s Hogg and Baird for their friendship and support this year. It’s good to know you.

Cally Phillips

24th Sept, 2014.

Raiders Ride to Rathan.

(Auchencairn)

S.R.Crockett was born at Little Duchrae near Laurieston.  He was a bestselling author with more than 70 titles to his name in a literary career that spanned over 20 years and yet today, he is ‘Scotland’s forgotten bestseller.’  A loving son of Galloway, who grew up in Castle Douglas and wrote nearly half of his works about the Galloway countryside and towns, many of his stories also featured the Galloway coast and his best known tale of smuggling ‘The Raiders’ is set right here.

You have to look hard to find Crockett. Here in Auchencairn there is a Crockett Road (and indeed a community garden planted this year in memorial) but the man himself is long forgotten in the sider world,  as are most of his stories. Today we’ve come to revisit

Crockett was a writer of romances. He told fictional stories of the people and places he knew, and because of that he changed the names – but you don’t have to look far to see the merging of fact and fiction in his writing.  For example, he fictionalised Hestan island as Isle Rathan, first in The Raiders and then in several subsequent novels.  Today we’re going to explore some of the fiction and see if we can’t tap in to some of the history, adventure and romance which were Crockett’s trademark.

The tides and time wait for no man, and for us on Crockett’s birthday they are not favourable for a visit onto ‘Rathan’ Island. There are two ways of getting there, both requiring low tide and a couple of hours of time – neither of which we have today.  So today, we’re going to ride to Balcary Bay where we will be able (hopefully) to see ‘Rathan’ island in the distance and sit listening to some of Crockett’s stories as the sun goes down (that most romantic of times)

We’ve chosen cycles as a mode of transport (mentioned in several of Crockett’s later novels) since horses don’t seem to be as much in evidence, but you can visit by car as well – Crockett actually wrote the first car chase in fiction in his 1908  novel ‘Vida’.   It doesn’t matter how we get to Balcary Bay, it’s being there, remembering Crockett, celebrating his birthday in a place he loved, which is the important thing.

Crockett and ‘Rathan’ Island.

Crockett spent a fair amount of time in Auchencairn where he had relatives and so he knew the geography and topography of the area well. But he was a writer of fiction and so you should not expect the places he writes of to ‘be’ the places you can see. You need imagination, and with Crockett, adventure and romance take precedence over strict history (or geography.)

Crockett takes the real ‘Hestan’ Island and the surrounding area and  fictionalises it. He writes of ‘White Horse Bay,’ (a compilation of White Bay and Horse Point?)  and of ‘Craigdarroch,’ (possibly Orchardton?) neither of which can be found on any ‘real’ map, but which are there nonetheless. He writes of Balcary Bay and Red Haven Point which are more easily identifiable.

The first time we come across Rathan Island is in ‘The Raiders’ (1894) but Crockett wrote about it again on and off over the next twenty years and it features in the sequel to ‘The Raiders,’ ‘The Dark o’ the Moon,’  The Dew of Their Youth and the story ‘Fitting of the Peat,’ in ‘Love Idylls’. Rathan also features in the Napoleonic novel ‘The Moss Troopers’ and an early 20th century, near contemporary tale, ‘The Smugglers. ‘

There is a house on Rathan Island, bigger than the cottage building that exists in reality on Hestan. When you imagine Patrick Heron, Patsy Raincy or Paul Wester on Rathan you have to do just that, use your imagination. Crockett’s writing will guide you.  Central to ‘The Raiders’ and ‘Dark o’ the Moon’ are the caves on Rathan Island. There are indeed sea caves on Hestan Island but the ‘real’ caves are not as extensive as those Crockett describes, for the simple reason that he actually used some Irish caves as his ‘fictional’ Rathan caves.

‘Rathan’ is a place of adventure and also of romance.  The ‘couples’ who share romance include: Patrick Heron and May Maxwell (The Raiders) Maxwell Heron and Joyce Faa (Dark o’ the Moon) Isabel McLurg and Adam Home (Fitting of the Peats) Duncan MacAlpine and Irma Maitland (The Dew of Their Youth) Patsy Raincy and Stair Garland(The Moss Troopers) and Paul Wester and Zipporah Katti (The Smugglers) All these novels are now available for purchase as ebooks or paperbacks in new editions from Ayton Publishing Limited.

The two events held feature readings of some of Crockett’s work and we have reproduced it here for those who are not lucky enough to be in Bonnie Gallowa’ on this special day.

From ‘The Raiders’(1894)

Rathan’ Island is always going to be associated with Patrick Heron.  As is the custom in Scotland a man is known by the name of his land and Patrick Heron, while just a ‘bonnet’ laird (owner of little of consequence) is still referred to as ‘Rathan’, or even ‘Laird Rathan’ as is his son after him. The first five chapters of Crockett’s ‘breakthrough’ novel ‘The Raiders’ are set in and around Rathan Island.  Here’s a taste…

It was upon Rathan Head that I first heard their bridle-reins jingling clear. It was ever my custom to walk in the full of the moon at all times of the year. Now the moons of the months are wondrously different: the moon of January, serene among the stars—that of February, wading among chill cloud-banks of snow—of March, dun with the mist of muirburn among the heather—of early April, clean washed by the rains. This was now May, and the moon of May is the loveliest in all the year, for with its brightness comes the scent of flower-buds, and of young green leaves breaking from the quick and breathing earth.

So it was in the height of the moon of May, as I said, that I heard their bridle-reins jingling clear and saw the harness glisten on their backs.

‘Keep far ben in your ain hoose at hame when the Marshalls ride!’ said my father, nodding his head at every third word in a way he had…

…Rathan is but a little isle—indeed only an isle when the tide is flowing. Except in the very slackest of the neaps there is always twice a day a long track of shells and shingle out from the tail of its bank. This track is, moreover, somewhat dangerous, for Solway tide flows swift and the sands are shifting and treacherous. So we went and came for the most part by boat, save when I or some of the lads were venturesome, as afterwards when I got well acquaint with Mary Maxwell...

…It was a black day for me, Patrick Heron, when my father lay a-dying. I remember it was a bask day in early spring. The tide was coming up with a strong drive of east wind wrestling against it, and making a clattering jabble all about the rocks of Rathan.

‘Lift me up, Paitrick,’ said my father, ‘till I see again the bonny tide as it lappers again' the auld toor. It will lapper there mony and mony a day an' me no here to listen. Ilka time ye hear it, laddie, ye'll mind on yer faither that loved to dream to the plashing o't, juist because it was Solway salt water and this his ain auld toor o' the Isle Rathan.’

So I lifted him up according to his word, till through the narrow window set in the thickness of the ancient wall, he could look away to the Mull, which was clear and cold slaty blue that day—for, unless it brings the dirty white fog, the east wind clears all things.

As he looked a great fishing gull turned its head as it soared, making circles in the air, and fell—a straight white streak cutting the cold blue sky of that spring day.

‘Even thus has my life been, Paitrick. I have been most of my time but a great gull diving for herring on an east-windy day. Whiles I hae gotten a bit flounder for my pains, and whiles a rive o' drooned whalp, but o' the rale herrin'—desperate few, man, desperate few.’

‘I hae tried it a' ways, Paitrick, my man, ye ken,’ he would say, for in the long winter forenights when all was snug inside and the winds were trying the doors, he and I did little but talk. He lay many months a-dying. But he was patient, and most anxious that he should give me all his stores of warning and experience before he went from me and Rathan.

After the death of his father, Patrick lives on Rathan with a ‘gang’ of boys. Patrick describes the house at Rathan:

Now I must tell of the kind of house we had on the Isle Rathan. It stood in a snug angle of the bay that curved inward towards the land and looked across some mossy, boggish ground to a range of rugged, heathery mountains, on which there were very many grey boulders, about which the heath and bracken grew deep.

The ancient house of the Herons of Rathan was not large, but it was very high, with only two little doors to back and front—the front one set into the wall and bolted with great bars into the solid rock beneath and above, and into the thickness of the wall at either side. The back door opened not directly, but entered into a passage which led first to a covered well in a kind of cave, where a good spring of water for ever bubbled up with little sand grains dancing in it, and then by a branch passage to an opening among the heather of the isle, which you might search for a summer's day. But unless you knew it of others' knowledge, you would never find it of your own. The windows were very far up the sides, and there were very few of them, as being made for defence in perilous times. Upon the roof there was a flagstaff and so strong a covering of lead and stone flags that it seemed as though another tower might have been founded upon it. The Tower of Rathan stood alone, with its offices, stables, byres, or other appurtenances back under the cliff, the sea on one side of it, and on the other the heathery and rocky isle, with its sheep pastures on the height. Beneath the sea-holly and dry salt plants bloomed blue and pink down near the blatter of the sea.

One thing Rathan and Hestan share is the unpredictability of the tides: Patrick Heron says:

So on this morn in May I rose long before the light, and went out into the cool, damp air of the night. The tide was going back quickly, and it was this which had raised me at such untimeous hours. It has always struck me that when the creation was, and that justly, pronounced very good, sufficient attention was not paid to the matter of the tides. But in a great job like the making of the earth, small points are apt to be mislippened (overlooked). For instance, it would have been a great advantage if the tides at Rathan had been regular in the morning, leaving the nets clear at something like seven o'clock in summer and nine in winter. But I was not consulted at the time, and so the matter rests as at present—a trifle inconveniently for all parties…

…Rathan Island lay in the roughest tumble of the seas. Its southern point took the full sweep of the Solway tides as they rushed and surged upwards to cover the great deadly sands of Barnhourie. From Sea Point, as we named it, the island stretched northward in many rocky steeps and cliffs riddled with caves. For just at this point the softer sandstone you meet with on the Cumberland shore set its nose out of the brine. So the island was more easily worn into sea caves and strange arches, towers and haystacks, all of stone, sitting by themselves out in the tideway for all the world like bairns' playthings.

In these caves, which had many doors and entries, I had played with the tide ever since I was a boy. I knew them all as well as I knew our own back-yard under the cliff.

In Scotland the tradition is for the ‘laird’ to be known by his place. Patrick Heron is but a ‘bonnet’ laird, in other words a man of small means, but Silver Sand respects him enough to call him ‘Rathan’, acknowledging his title to the small Island.

From: ‘The Dark o’ the Moon’ (1902)

The sequel to ‘The Raiders’ is set mostly inland, among the Galloway Hills but there is plenty of coastline and Rathan too. ‘The Raiders’ focussed on Patrick Heron and Silver Sand (aka John Faa) and only the shadow of ‘Black’ Hector Faa was seen.  The Dark o’ the Moon is the story of Patrick Heron’s son Maxwell and introduces us to ‘Black’ Hector – who is one of Crockett’s best villains. Here he is in all his glory, cursing Rathan…

Hector Faa turned about and pointed to where a faint streak of light marked the heather door of the Shiel. ‘Get in there, and you will learn,’ he said, sternly.

Then after his daughter had left him alone the outlaw turned to the south and stretched out his right hand in one of those gestures of defiance such as in these days, only the wild folk of the hill use.

‘A black curse on Rathan—the curse of Deva on the Isle of Rathan! The scorns and the shaming of a woman —the hatred of a man! These shall return tenfold upon hall and acre, upon hearth-stone and roof-tree! A thousand times have I cursed Patrick Heron and his wife—in winter and summer, in bed, board, and estate! In bride-time and bairn-time, in flock and herd have I cursed them! May the day dawn, and that right early, when there shall not be a reeking chimney on their broad lands, and when of their great house of Rathan there remains not so much as one stone upon another—because of the dead that are as coral in the Cave of Blood this day, and the evil despite they and theirs have done the seed of Egypt!’

In ‘The Dark o’ the Moon,’ Hector Faa kidnaps the young Maxwell Heron (Patrick’s son) as an act of revenge. Maxwell tells the story…

‘Hector Faa!’

The name came upon me like a thunder-clap. The twenty-years' outlaw, the daring smuggler, the buccaneer, the almost pirate! He it was who in the days of the Great Hill fighting had carried off my mother from the great cave on Isle Rathan. He it was who, escaping all perils of snow and storm, had found his way to France, and from thence had made shift to avenge himself upon the country which had outcasted him.

For a while the trapped exciseman said nothing, staring upward into the eyes of his enemy from the floor, where he lay bound and helpless.

‘Now,’ said the gypsy, truculently, ‘you have come to the far end of your man-hunting, my brisk lad!’

He stooped down and set his hand on the gold lace upon his captive's shoulder. For Mr. Supervisor Craig was a handsome man, and dressed accordingly. Hector Faa tore the epaulet off by sheer strength. For in those days the higher excisemen were King's officers, and wore such badges of rank.

‘Was it not enough for you to chase me on the high seas when you were in King George's navy, without hunting me with dogs after you got your own snug berth ashore? Better for you, my lad, had you stuck to the salt junk and cask-water yet awhile, than have fallen into Hector Faa's clutches!’

‘I have a wife!’ said the officer of excise, almost meditatively. It was his sole appeal for life.

Hector Faa drew back his hand, and I could see the fingers firm and close, as if to strike.

‘Ay, and so had I!’ he cried, his voice filling the house.

‘Eighteen years ago so had I! But from yon shore I saw the brig in which she sailed sink into blue Solway, and not a soul within her saved!

Smugglers and Romance

Rathan is a place for smugglers but it is also a place for romance. Several couples have connections with Rathan after Patrick Heron and May Maxwell have long gone.

The short story in Love Idylls, called ‘Fitting of the Peat’ sees the romance between Adam Home and Isabel MacLurg blossom and the 18th century story ‘The Dew of Their Youth’ published in 1909 features the romance between Duncan MacAlpine and Irma Maitland and the familiar Crockett locations of ‘Rathan,’ Balcary Bay and Red Haven.

Perhaps the most romantic and exciting story set on Rathan is in ‘The Moss Troopers’ where Patsy Raincy and Stair Garland escape to hide following their marriage. It’s a honeymoon with a difference. Published in 1912, ‘The Moss Troopers’ combines smuggling in the Napoleonic era with romance and adventure.

Here’s their story…

It was nine of the clock when Patsy and Stair stood on the shore of the Isle Rathan of many famous exploits, and watched the lugger with its cargo of three go dancing out on the full current of the Solway ebb.

The two were left alone and the island seemed incredibly small and strange about them—at least to Stair. But Patsy was not in the least put about. She did the honours of the old tower of the Herons. She led the way to where Jean had spread their first meal, and motioned Stair to his place. He sat down like an automaton and looked about him as if he were seeing through a haze. It was a large and pleasant kitchen, stone-floored, with oak furniture as old as the time of Patrick Heron and May Mischief his wife. A bright fire was burning on the old-fashioned hearth, and the room looked cosy enough in spite of the old small-paned windows. It had recently been put into order, and new, bright utensils hung upon the ranges of pins and hooks against the wall.

But Stair's food seemed to choke him, somehow. He felt the imperious need of speech,

‘Oh, Patsy!’ he began—but he got no farther. Patsy was in possession of the field in a moment.

‘Stair,’ she said warningly, as she held up her hand to stop him; ‘Stair, you have never failed me yet. Don't let me trust you in vain. I married you because I had need of you.’

‘Not,’ said Stair, speaking disjointedly, ‘not because you wanted to marry me—not because—you loved me?’

‘Oh, I wanted to marry you! Yes, I wanted that. I needed you to help me to do what I could not do in any other way. But—wait a while. Neither you nor I know what love means yet. I certainly do not. I am too young. Meanwhile, you are the most dependable person in my world. Let love alone for a little. What difference can it make to you and me? Let us help one another, depend one on the other—I have run off with you, and if you are under age I dare say I could be put into prison for that. But that is the way of the Pict woman. What she wants, she takes. I ran away from London. I took you out of prison, and when I had you, I brought you here to live on herrings. I wanted to be rid of princes who pestered me to marry them, of royal dukes who ran away with me, of kind uncles and princesses who thought to make my bed all eiderdown and cotton-wool, my food all rose-leaves and honey!’

‘I understand—I understand,’ said Stair, with a certain fierce determination in his eye, ‘you shall have no cause to regret that you have chosen me as your squire and armour-bearer. I shall not claim more than is my due, and of what that is I have a very small opinion indeed!’

Patsy looked at Stair. He seemed to be understanding —almost too well. There was no need that he should remove himself to so vast a distance. She wanted them to be two comrades—two Crusoes without a man Friday, working harmoniously for the common good of the community. But Stair held out for a position frankly subaltern.

‘If you will tell me what I am to do—you know the place better than I—it is time to do it!’ He was outwardly calm, inwardly raging, as he spoke,

‘There is, thank you, some water to bring in—the spring is within the courtyard. The well-rope has a bucket. Thank you!’

And Patsy was left alone. She thought Stair Garland long in returning. He had, indeed, looked into all the outbuildings, where he discovered a couple of cows that needed to be milked and let out on the dewy pastures for the night, fowls that must be shut up, and in the barn the remains of a once full mow of hay which would make excellent sleeping accommodation.

When he got back Patsy was covering up the fire for the night. She had washed the dishes, and dried them with a dispatch to which Julian Wemyss and he had never attained after months of practice on the Wild of Blairmore.

She listened to the relation of the discoveries he had made out of doors, and agreed when he told her that he must be on hand to drive the cows back to the byre at daybreak. As seen from the sea, there must be nothing to mark the island as inhabited.

‘Remember to lock the door on the inside,’ he said, ‘I shall sleep in the barn that I may be ready for my work in the morning. You will be quite safe here in the tower. Good-night, Patsy!’

And without waiting for a single word he was gone into the darkness. Patsy had pictured something much more idyllic than this. How they would enjoy their first meal! How they would chatter over it like a pair of daws in the same nest. How they would fight their battles over again, Patsy telling all her adventures in London, of the Prince Eitel, the riding of the dukes, the balls and levees—how she had met with Kennedy McClure, and how she had come all the way in the Good Intent to save him. She had her night-rides, her plots and combinations to relate— how this parish would have sent so many, but could not have them up to time—how another set of good lads were terrorised by a wrathful overlord.

From Stair she would sit and listen to the story of the defence of the Bothy on the Wild. She would hear of the Princess's letter to her uncle, how they passed the long dark winter months when the snow blocked all, the coming of spring, the cutting of the dunes by the company of sappers, and the capture. But instead, it was all distant and dry. A ‘Good-night’ such as one might have thrown at a dog—no, he would not throw the word at Whitefoot. For even as she passed the postern window, looking out she saw Stair crossing the court in the direction of the barn, side by side with Whitefoot. The dog's eyes were raised to those of his master in a kind of adoration, and his tail waved triumphantly. As Stair bent to stroke the dog's head. Patsy became conscious of a strange new thing within her.

It was something she had never felt before, though almost any other woman would have diagnosed at once. It was, in fact, nothing less than her first twinge of jealousy.

She chose to forget all the wise precepts by which she had regulated Stair's conduct toward her. She forgot how she had carefully explained to him that all the duties were to be on his side, and all the benefits on hers.

‘He did not even shake hands,’ she thought, looking at the wrist which the Prince and other great gentlemen has so often fervently kissed, ‘and yet he can stop to pat that dog's head!’

Nobody had told Patsy that marriage is a dish that cannot be eaten by one while the other looks on. She had chosen her way. She had carried it through, and now in spite of the luminous explanations which she had given Stair as to their relative positions and duties, he had chosen to misunderstand, and had marched off straight as a ramrod.

And she caught herself murmuring over and over to herself, ‘Stiff-necked and rebellious—stiff-necked and rebellious!’

It was to Stair she referred, but the accompanying stamp of the little foot might possibly have raised doubts as to the correctness of her application, had any been there to see.

Stair Garland slept little that night. He wandered in the cool purple darkness here and there about the island, listening to the curious noises of the birds, complaining vaguely, or calling one to the other from the rocky ledges. He was conscious of the perpetual drumming of the sea in his ears, as the tide ran, jostled in the narrow reaches, and hammered without ceasing on the outer cliffs of the little island.

The pair of cows were company to him. He wondered whence they came and who had placed them there. They did not waste their time, but munched steadily at the lush grasses in the interior meadow of the isle—the hollow palm of its hand, as it were. The problem took his mind for a while off his own miseries.

Some one had been there. Some one had been accustomed to tend and milk them. It could not be his sister Jean, for she could not have been long enough spared from the farm at Glenanmays. Who, then, had provided all that they found waiting for them? The poultry he had penned in darkness, so that their early crowing might not awaken Patsy. She must know. She had prepared all this. She had prepared everything. Even his own delivery from prison, even the great muster of the Bands to override authority and save him, were only little dove-tailings in the scheme which Patsy had designed for her own liberation.

Well, he had nothing to complain of. He had been asked a question, and if he had wished he might have answered ‘No.’ Was he a free man or bound? But having said ‘Yes’ of his own good will, what remained to him but to take up the role which Patsy had reserved for him. It was not remarkably dignified, but—if any fault there were, the fault was his own.

Besides, he would have given the same answer then or any other moment. He had not been taken by surprise. So long as he was Patsy's husband, nobody else could be so also! Why, of course, he would stand by his bargain! What else was he for—he, Diarmid Garland's second son— the head of the bands, the famous defier of the press and the Preventives? Pshaw! What did all that mean to him now—apples of Sodom in the mouth, an exceeding bitter fruit! What a fool he was with his airs! Would he ever have such a chance again, and he to dream of complaining!

Gradually he became conscious of Whitefoot moving, silent as a shadow, beside his master. Once, when Stair stood a long time on the craggy top of the Fell of Rathan, gazing out at the ranged lights on the English side of the firth, he was conscious of a cool, damp nose thrusting its way into his palm, causing him to open his hand by little calculated snout-pushes and burro wings. Whitefoot was sympathetic. Whitefoot felt for the trouble of his master, though he could not understand it, and Whitefoot would not be satisfied till his friend's hand was resting on his head. Even then little heavings and sidelong pushes expressed a desire to be caressed, and when at last Stair's hand ran over his head, across the thick ruff of hair about his neck and passed down his spine, Whitefoot shook with delight and leaped so high that his forepaws were on Stair's shoulders.

‘Down, dog, down!’ said his master, and at the word Whitefoot dropped back on all fours, obedient but content.

It now was past the hour of twelve. The central night stood still. The little chill breeze which ruffles the waves an hour or so in early morning had not yet begun to blow. Stair had been about the House of Rathan half-a-dozen of times. At last he went into the barn and, only removing his coat, he threw himself at length among the straw of which he had made a couch earher in the evening. Whitefoot nuzzled comfortably up against him. He did not mean to sleep. It would soon be morning and there were the cows out in the little meadows. He would only close his eyes for a moment.

It will not be surprising to learn that the next sound he heard was a happy laugh, as Patsy appeared at the open door of the barn with ‘Awake, thou sluggard’ upon her lips.

‘I looked in half-an-hour ago,’ she laughed, ‘and you looked so sweet and peaceful that I went and milked the cows before wakening you.’

‘You milked the cows?’

Patsy nodded her head with its tight cover of curls, all of densest black, shapely and boyish.

‘The milk is in the dairy!’ she said. ‘Concerning what else does my lord please to inquire?’

‘But the two cows?’ he said, hastily getting up and putting on his coat, which he had spread over him, ‘they ought not to be left out all day on the high grass. Cruising sloops of war, and even Preventive men with spy-glasses, might easily see them from the shore.’

‘I had thought of that, my lord,’ said Patsy, ‘I confined them with a good reach of rope behind the old fold which lies hidden out of sight in the hollow of the island. No one can see them there, unless they mount on the cliffs and look down on them from the height of the island. They will be happy there, for the rabbits and gulls have not spoilt the grass.’

Stair stood up beside Patsy in the doorway of the barn. The gate of the yard was open, and they walked slowly towards it, splendid widths of sea and heights of cloudless heaven opening out before them at every step. Instinctively Patsy caught Stair by the arm, gave it a little joyous tug, and cried out, ‘Oh, Stair, was ever anything so beautiful?’

The young man glanced down at her. But her eyes were on the distant, tender blue of the coast about Whitehaven, and the Isle of Man hovering in a mother-of-pearl haze, like a dream-island about to alight. All his instincts told him to clasp her to him and take the consequences. But unfortunately Stair reasoned, which is the wrong method with a woman, especially with such a Pictish daughter of impulse as Patsy Ferris. He remembered what she had said to him the night before, as if that could have any bearing on her mood of today.

But so the chance passed. The fine morning gold was dimmed. They had looked too long. Patsy released his arm and they fell apart.

She remembered it was time to go indoors for breakfast. They went, their eyes averted, lest the other should see the remains of the morning glory. They kept silence also lest the thrill of it should tremble in their voices. But at the sight of the spread table and the homely scents of fried bacon and smoked mutton ham, Patsy became again very human, and set herself down in the place of house-mistress with a ripple of glad laughter.

‘Only think, Stair!’ she cooed low in her throat, ‘here all by ourselves—a breakfast which I have prepared, eggs which I have found, milk which I drew from the cow— (they are two such nice cows. Stair!) and you and Whitefoot sitting opposite! Just ourselves two, Stair. Not a chaperon—not a gouvernante, like the old horror the Princess used to threaten me with. No felt-footed lacqueys always bringing you the wrong thing, no Princess, no Miss Aline even! Oh, I declare I am so glad—that I could— take my breakfast!’

Patsy broke off suddenly, making a wilful anti-climax to her speech, and, as Stair knew very well, not in the least finishing as she had meant to. But her housekeeping pride was aroused. He must eat. She would heap his plate. She had heard him late last night moving about. Had he not slept well? That was why she had let him sleep on this morning, but he must not expect such indulgence every day. He would need to be out and at the net fishing or among the flounders, for though they had plenty for the present in their store-room, they did not know when they might be succoured.

Then Stair put a question he had been thirsting to have answered all night.

‘Whose is this island, and who has given us the right to use all the larder and live-stock?’

Patsy clapped her hands gleefully.

‘Guess!’ she cried— ‘three guesses!’

‘One, wrong—no, not my father! Two, wrong, not Uncle Ju! Three, wrong —not Miss Aline! You made me gasp that time. I thought you could not miss it. We are here on this Island of Rathan as caretakers for Mr. Kennedy McClure. These are his cows. His sheep are on the heuchs yonder, and we have liberty to kill them for mutton when we weary of fish. These are his hens I let out this morning, and he brought Jean here with selected stores to make everything cosy for us!’

‘And why does he do all this?’ Stair inquired. Patsy flung up her head and smiled dazzlingly.

‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘He was great friends with me in London. He made the Good Intent hurry up when I was ready—otherwise you might have stayed a long time in prison. And this is better, eh. Stair?’

‘And your Uncle Julian—Mr. Wemyss? Will they not be harder on him because I have escaped?’

‘You have not escaped—you have been carried off,’ Patsy corrected. ‘So was Uncle Ju. He walked off the step of his verandah, into the arms of Captain Penman and half-a-dozen of the crew of the Good Intent. They seized him and carried him on the Billy Goat, which sailed immediately for parts unknown. But Joseph managed so well and the orders from headquarters were so strict, that the garrison did not even loot the house as they did at Cairn Ferris, that night when you disgraced us all by drawing royal blood at the White Loch. Here are some books which he sent for you—some from the Bothy, and some for me to read. I am not so learned as you, and Joseph chose accordingly. If we have wet days, Stair, we can read all day with our toes to the fire!’

‘And why did not we also go on the Good Intent and so get away from all this trouble?’ Stair inquired.

‘If you wanted Uncle Ju all day telling us what his Princess would have thought, said, and done—I did not. I wanted to be by our own two selves. Besides, if we were to get married, there is no country in the world where it can be done with such willingness and alacrity as at home. Also I have been brought up a good Presbyterian, and a parish minister and his session clerk—well, where in foreign parts will you find the like of Mr. Duff and honest James Fraser? The Good Intent, indeed! I think you are hard to please if you are not content with your present quarters, young man!’

Patsy and Stair live for a short time on Rathan Island, joined by Eben McClure and Stair’s faithful dog Whitefoot, but eventually they are discovered and have to take action.

For half-a-dozen tides each month, three in the middle of each neap, unless there were heavy winds from the south-west. Isle Rathan became a tidal island, and the ridge could be crossed on foot by those who made haste. This was not, however, often attempted, for the tides and currents were exceedingly tricky in these parts.

Eben pointed with his finger to a faint horizontal ridge on the mainland.

‘Do you see anything there, sir?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Stair, anxious to be off to Patsy, ‘some shepherds on the mainland have been making a new sheep-fold, I suppose.’

‘A sheepfold is mostly round, sir,’ said Eben, ‘and if you will notice there are two turf dykes one behind the other. I don't like that. Besides, have you seen anybody working there? I have not. And would herds cover their work so neatly with turf? From here it might be twenty years old—only I know it was not there when I passed that way down to the Orraland Point where I began to swim out.’

Eben and Whitefoot swim to shore to give a message to Stair’s sister for help.

That night, as soon as Patsy said good-night and went up-stairs, Eben made a parcel of his clothes, and at a sign from his master Whitefoot stood ready to plunge in and swim across along with Eben. His collar, duly charged with Jean's letter, was tied in the bundle along with the ex-spy's clothes, and would be put upon him after the moorland winds had dried the mane of hair about his neck.

‘To Jean —you hear, Whitefoot— to Jean!’

And Whitefoot leaped up to lick Stair's face in token of complete understanding.

It was not a long swim, and the pair took the water at the very height of the tide. They would hardly lose any way as they pushed towards the strand beneath the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, which was the nearest point on their road to the old Bridge of Tongland, beyond which Whitefoot knew his trail.

Stair watched them out of sight. They swam silently and evenly into the darkness, and in a quarter of an hour he heard the signal agreed upon—Whitefoot's singing yelp with which he assisted the precentor in starting such minor tunes as Martyrs and Coleshill. Then he turned and went slowly back to the old Tower of Rathan. Patsy's light was not out, and he stood a long while in the courtyard looking at up it.

Many were making sacrifices for Patsy's sake, but none he thought, such great ones as he. Still, so it was nominated in the bond. And, touched by a memory, he took out his Shakespeare and read the ‘Merchant of Venice’ till he fell asleep.

The candle had burned itself out when he awoke. The early rose of a coming day was looking in at the top of the blinds. He heard the rattle of pebbles tossed against the half-closed wooden shutter. He opened, and there, pale as a spectre, stood Eben McClure. His teeth were chattering, so Stair made haste to let him in. He gave him a strong ‘four fingers’ dram of Angouleme brandy, before making him roll himself up in a blanket and lie down in his warm place. Stair would be cook for one morning.

He did not disturb the sleeper when Patsy came down, smiling and happy, with another day of peaceful pleasure before her in their Rath or Isle of the Fairy Folk.

‘Eben McClure needed to send a message to his uncle,’ he said lightly, ‘so he swam across with Whitefoot, and being chilled when he got back, I gave him a dose of spirits and made him go to bed.’

Patsy made no remark. She had accepted Eben as a fixture in their menage, and took no further concern about the matter. But Stair looked out many times at the green trenches closing in the land entrance to the isle, and even as he looked, it seemed that during the night the parallels had crept down a little nearer to high-water mark.

If so, Eben the Spy was right, and for Patsy's sake their precautions had not been taken a moment too soon. The sooner the Good Intent was on the spot the better.

But treachery means that they are captured and taken prisoner at ‘the Battle of the Causeway’

All that day they watched the curving trenches from a little angle of the tower from which a rifle could be brought to bear on the shell causeway. That afternoon seemed everlasting. It was a clear, still twilight, and they did not dine till nearly midnight. If the Good Intent were to send a boat it would be to the back of the island which the tide never left. Indeed, Leg-o'-Mutton Bay was the only spot where a boat could land. There was always deep water there.

At one o'clock Stair saw a ship's lights very far away. It was very doubtful, even supposing that she were the Good Intent, that she could be there in time. But in the crucial hours, Eben the Spy proved himself wonderfully helpful and encouraging. His Uncle Kennedy never promised without keeping his promise. There might be a bit of a skirmish as the men were coming over, but he could warrant that they would be safe on board along with Captain Penman before ever a soldier set his foot on the island. On this he would pledge his life.

In view of all the facts this was not very convincing, but all the same it was distinctly cheering.

The blank night wore to a kind of grey over the sea, though the land was still in deep shadow. Across the grey ran the coils of the black causeway. The light was coming fast now and for the first time Eben lost his equanimity of spirit. He was in haste to have them gone out of the Tower.

‘Take Mrs. Stair down to the landing-place, sir,’ he pleaded, ‘take her to the little cove where the boat will come in. They may be on the shell-track any time now.’

And as he spoke both Stair and he heard and recognised the loud rattle of a ship's anchor chain.

‘There,’ he cried, ‘off with you! There is not a moment to lose. Ah, there they come. But that is only the first of them. I can easily stop these. Out at the back door! The wicket in the wall is open. Keep on through the hollow and you will find the boat ready. Do not wait for me. I have my own life arranged for. Do not fear for me!’

He hustled them out with a haste which left them no time for explanation. The men who were hastening across the causeway had less than a mile to run. It was, however, by no means easy going, and it would take them at least ten good minutes. Stair took Patsy down to the Shell Bay by the safest path, and even before they reached it they could hear the beginning of a fusillade in their rear. The boat from the Good Intent was already on the way, rowed by four sturdy seamen, yet it seemed to them both as though she would never arrive. They looked behind them, expecting every moment to see a rush of men come at them over the crown of the island.

Stair could stand it no longer. He must see what was going on, and he mounted the rough sides of the little heathery knoll called quaintly Ben Rathan. Patsy would not be left behind and he found her at his side. She could, in fact, have been there long before him. But what they saw struck them dumb. In a rough trench at the island end of the shell causeway, and quite clearly evident beneath them in the young light of the morning, were three figures, two of them obviously dummies, but with guns at their shoulders and hats on their shapeless heads. Bounding hither and thither, now along the top of the trench, now rising breast-high to fire was a man so like Stair Garland that Patsy had to look again at the blond giant beside her to make sure. Then they understood.

Stair is captured and has to leave Patsy behind…

The sailors kept calling now from the boat, eagerly, imperiously. It was necessary for them to return. Patsy was placed on board and Stair wished to go back and help to defend the island. He could not leave Eben McClure thus. But Patsy was out on the shingle in a moment. If Stair went back so should she. Eben McClure had given her a letter which, he said, would explain everything. It was only to be read aboard the Good Intent after the anchor was up.

So they put about and in a few minutes they were having their hands wrung off by Captain Penman on his own quarter-deck.

‘I am glad to see you,’ he cried, ‘I thought I heard firing. They must have been pretty close—not much sea-way in your last tack, eh? But come below. You will find everything in my cabin. The owner said most particular that it was to be made all spick and span fox you. Honoured I am to see you again on my ship, Mistress Garland!’

As they turned the corner of Isle Rathan, Stair and Patsy could see that the sham defences had been carried with a rush, and that something lay very still behind the hastily-dug trench. Patsy's keen eyes noted that it was still wearing Stair's bonnet.

She turned and ran below weeping bitterly. ‘Oh, Stair, they do not love you better than I!’ she wailed as she clung passionately to him; ‘no—not though they die for you, and I am only a drag on you. For I love you! I love you—and I too would die for you!’

Her arms were about her husband's neck and her lips were pressed for the first time to his.

‘Dear,’ he answered softly, ‘perhaps you were meant to live for me!’

But this is not quite the end… you’ll need to read the whole book to find out what happens next!

‘The Smugglers ‘published in 1911 tells a near contemporary story of smuggling, which has become a much darker ‘trade’ since the 18th century.  Paul Wester and Zipporah Katti get sucked into an adventure romance that involves human trafficking. The story begins in  ‘Orraland’ the home of Paul Wester. But he is soon embroiled in an adventure to the caves of the Solway Shore line.  This is the story of young love, but also of the love of an older woman Barbara Simpson. It is played out among the shoreline and caves of this coastline including The Dulse cave and Red Haven Howe.

…Meanwhile the lights of the boat winked themselves out away down channel, leaving only Rathan light like a farthing dip straight in the Fair-way, and the reflections from the ironworks about Workington and Beemouth on the Cumberland coast, pulsing upwards like northern lights in a vain attempt to reach the zenith…

…So without a word he stole away to find her. Yet somehow or other his heart was insensibly lightened within him by the familiar atmosphere, the litter about the Doctor’s desk (which it was rank blasphemy to touch), the outlook through the trees upon the distant blue flood of Solway, Rathan Island standing full in the fairway, its rocks fringed with a rim of foam towards the south…

…From this point the story has to do with the journey of the indefatigable Barbara to the Howe of Red Haven. On she went, staff in hand, striding like a herd on the hill, her brows grey and shaggy, only twitching now and then, while her strong features remained fixed and indomitable. She did not long keep upon the high road. She saw the returning tracks of the little horse’s feet, and treasured the fact in her memory, as a count in a future indictment of Paul’s carelessness.

Beyond the high-arched bridge, she made a sharp turn to the right. In the corner of a stonebreaker’s disused square, was a kind of stile—not a visible lovers’ stile with a broad stone on the top from which to sit and admire the view. Though, indeed, from that point the view was fine enough—the nested and nestling village of Orraland, dribbling down from the upper cliff, but the most part of the houses playing hide-and-seek with the narrow green valley, the cattle grazing in the cultivated holms above, and the giant ashes towering up across the Auchen Water, and, farther off, the long curve of the shore—all this was the foreground as seen from the stile. Behind you saw the Solway, the cliffs of Rathan, and the little white speck of the herd’s house thereon, the bottle-green stretch of the Orchardton peninsula, and on clear days the dominating shoulder of Helvellyn and, noblest of all, the clean-cut arrete of Striding Edge. Besides which, all reeking blue, here and there were planted towns and villages, cot-houses and farmhouses a-many—more than Barbara Simpson had time to remark as she cleared the stone dyke with the agility of twenty years, and so took her way through the lush grass of the lower fields on which two generations of the best farmers in the world had made a granary out of the waste flats of Torr.

In the first flush of love Paul and Zip spend some weeks on the coast

It was now permitted to Paul and Zipporah to wander along the shore in the time of the ebb, to sit in the coolness of the Dulse Cave, even to explore the clean delightsomeness of the little sandy inlets, strewn with shells, which are to be found everywhere cutting crescent-wise into the rock barrier of Rathan Isle.

They hunted up a new headquarters every morning, where, with a can of fresh water and a pocketful of biscuits, they established themselves for the day. Here they would wait cheerfully, watching the tide surround the island. Then when the long serpentine back of the causeway had at last been swallowed by the waves, they would give themselves up to the unrestrained delight of having the island absolutely to themselves for six long glorious hours.

To make sure of their isolation they would start off in opposite directions, keeping on the height of the cliff. Then when they met at White Horse Point, Zipporah Katti would fling herself down all panting by Paul’s side. Whereat Paul, in strict fraternal celebration of their promise to belong one to the other till death them did part, would kiss the girl on the lips. Not one nor the other saw any harm in the greeting. It was a natural outburst of gladness in being alone together. The island was their own. They were wild as the seabirds, and as free— for six hours!

It is curious now to recall the extreme simplicity of their occupations and daily entertainments. Paul had a pocket pistol for which abundant ammunition could be procured at the village shop at Orraland. This weapon had on several occasions been confiscated by his uncle, but had always been discovered and restored by Barbara Simpson—with threats infinite and dire, that if ever it should be used within earshot of the Manse, and in especial, of the minister’s study, she would throw it in the tide with her own hand.

Paul would have fired (quite harmlessly, let it be said) upon the swooping gulls and diving terns which shared Rathan Island with them. But Zipporah would have none of any such ruthless slaughter. Paul yielded gracefully, without telling her that he could not have winged one in the course of a long summer’s day, and with all the ammunition in Kelman’s shop at his disposal.

A white stone was placed against the cliff, distances measured, and in the shade they set themselves to hit the target. Paul, who had most practice and perhaps a natural gift, found that he must not be too accurate, or in despair Zipporah Katti would throw down the weapon, declaring that the old pistol did not ‘fire straight.’

And Paul and Zip visit Rathan Island…

Then perhaps they would betake themselves to the ancient tower of Patrick Heron and May Maxwell, still religiously preserved by their descendants. The record of those Rathan Isle adventures they knew by heart. Paul had read them so often that he could recite whole chapters to Zipporah Katti, who had the bad taste to prefer them to any poetry whatsoever— especially the parts about smuggling in the old times before Lazun Palafox.

Presently, under the wide sky of paling afternoon blue, the cliffs of the mainland began to tint themselves with amber and rose. Then the pair, wearied with the heady splendours of the long summer day together, would sit down in the shade, with a field-glass, the chief vanity of the minister, and abstracted without leave by his graceless nephew. Through it they saw wonderful things.

Yonder was the very slab of stone, which, when lifted, gave a landward entrance to the labyrinths of the Dulse Cave. There was the open shelf on the face of the cliff, which they had called the Balcony. They could almost see the place where their elbows had leaned that first night as they watched the stars and listened to the clatter of the waves underneath.

Being young, neither Zipporah Katti nor (still less) Paul Wester knew how happy they were, or how little more of unmixed happiness life would have to give them.

But soon enough it is time to move on with the adventure and to leave Isle Rathan far behind... as we are about to do. Now the readings move to the West of the region, to Wigtown where Galloway Raiders will celebrate at Beltie Books with a Books and Baking event.

Birthday Books and Baking

(Wigtown)

Crockett was brought up on the farm of Little Duchrae by his maternal grandparents, strict Cameronians William and Mary Crockett. The family moved to Castle Douglas when he was six and he stayed there until he won a scholarship to Edinburgh University. He was ordained as a minister in the 1880’s but in 1895 gave up the ministry to pursue a very successful career as a novelist.  He wrote extensively of his childhood in Galloway.

He fictionalised the places and people of his youth, but they are easily recognisable to Galloway natives, or anyone who lives in the area. There is a lot to explore in Crockett’s work – be that social history, pure adventure, tales of derring do or just a glimpse of how Galloway was in years gone by. Crockett writes fiction, but that fiction was always based both on his personal observations and his interpretation of historical fact.  Crockett wrote about the ‘domestic’ detail of rural life and not surprisingly, food features strongly. The basic diet of soda scones, farles of oatcake and the occasional treat such as gingerbread rabbits, populate his stories.  Today we thought it would be a fitting tribute to his birthday, to gather together and read some of his work – as well as eating some of the food which was commonplace in Crockett’s childhood.

Crockett and Baking

Crockett’s first biographer, Malcolm McLachlan Harper (himself the author of two books about Galloway: Rambles in Galloway and The Galloway Bards) wrote this about the young Sam:

‘At the early age of five years Crocket was sent to school at Laurieston village, distant about three and a half miles from the Duchrae. It was a long and lonely walk for such a small boy to travel, morning and afternoon – his only companion being his faithful dog Royal. Prior to this, however, he had not only mastered the alphabet, but was able to read a little. There acquirements were mainly due to the zeal of his mother. The method she adopted to teach her son was not only the most original, but most effective. Oftentimes, when baking the oatcake for the household, she used to draw the A.B.C’s in the mealy dust of the bake-board and then ask her lively little son to name them. When successful he was rewarded by an ‘order of merit’ in the shape of one of the choicest and crispest pieces of the warm oatcake.’  (Harper p 28)

From Kit Kennedy.

Kit Kennedy is a loosely autobiographical novel, a place where fact and fiction mingle. This first reading is when Kit is a small boy around five years old.

‘Kit was secretly thinking how he would spend his bi-weekly penny, which he received from his grandfather each day that Heather Jock's travelling emporium came that way. As he overran the possibilities in his mind, the charms of four farthing biscuits were first of all balanced by the superior toothsomeness of two halfpenny cookies. To this succeeded what might be termed the study of the arts in the shape of gingerbread elephants and rabbits with bulbous currant eyes. These last were delightful to pull to pieces, but the extraction of the fruitage (apparently dry fragments of old boots) was a joy fleeting though acute. Again he would call to mind the extended satisfaction of a penny Cairn Edward loaf, a production of human skill which gave as much crust in proportion to as little bread as has ever yet been compassed by merely human baker.

If Kit were hungry (which happened nine days out of ten) the penny loaf would win the day. But during the season of gooseberries and apples, or when the blackberries were hanging in clusters all along the Dornal Bank and down by the lochside, Kit could afford to treat himself to a daintier gingerbread rabbit or the pennyworth of farthing biscuits which made exactly four bites and no more.

On the morning of this day, the Wednesday after Heather Jock's visit to the house of Kirkoswald, Kit Kennedy was early astir. The problem needed more than usually careful consideration. It was true that it was not likely that he would be very hungry. His grandmother, in conjunction with Betty Landsborough her maid, was known to be meditating the great fortnightly baking of ‘cake.' Now ‘cake' in Scotland does not mean the stolid overladen indigestible pudding-stone compound of Christmas England, but the crisp homely farle of thin oatmeal, kneaded and rolled to the thickness of good blotting paper, and thereafter toasted on an iron ‘girdle’ to such a miracle of fresh ‘crumpiness' that the pen refuses to describe and the mere thought of it secretes appetite.

Now Kit did not steal. Who indeed could be supposed to steal with the approbation and under the instruction of an Elder of the Cameronian Kirk? Sometimes it seemed as if Kit had changed his grandfather's nature. Perhaps the old man felt he must make up to the son for that wherein he had erred in over-severity to the mother. So it chanced that a boy of less than Kit Kennedy's invariably cheerful optimism and sturdy acceptance of the facts of life, would have run a good chance of being spoiled.

But Kit Kennedy was not spoilt. True, he did not steal, but then again he certainly made raids upon the kitchen at intervals. And when his grandmother opened the door of the milk-house, he had even been known to follow close at her back, the soft pads of his bare brown feet making no more sound than a cat's on the stone floor. He would stop when she stopped, turn when she turned, and finally slip out behind her when like a full-canvassed, deep-cargoed ship she went about to lock the door. But Kit did not leave the milk-house alone. He brought a pat of butter or a jug of cream with him, still following stealthily in the wake of that stately caravel. Mistress Matthew Armour.

Then, the raid having been successfully carried out. Kit would right gleefully repair to the seat, on which under the great beech trees sat the Ruling Elder. Upon this, all unreproved, he would deposit his hoard, and his grandfather, an accessory before the fact, would become still further art and part in the crime by condescending to partake of the spoils of war.

‘I wonder ye arena shamed, Matthew Armour,’ his wife would say, ‘an' you at a session meetin' yestreen at the manse, nae farther gane. Forbye next Sabbath day ye will cairry in the communion cups frae the vestry wi' a' the ither elders walkin' ahint ye. And yet ye are aye encouragin' that ill-set loon to plunder and torment your ain married wife— the impident, graceless young reprobate that he is!’

‘Aweel, aweel, wife,’ Matthew Armour would say, tolerantly, ‘I ken that the laddie does me mair guid than I am likely to do him harm.’

‘Matthew, Matthew,’ his wife would persist, shaking her head, ‘mind what ye do. Think, oot o’ whatna pit the laddie has been digged. Ye ought to be stricter wi' him than ever ye were wi' your ain, and ye are the verra reverse. The sun maunna shine ower warm on him, nor a shadow fa' cauld on him. He maunna be reproved nor meddled wi' whatever mischief he does. I bid you bethink yoursel’, Matthew Armour, lest ye reap in heaviness that which ye have sowed sae lichtly wi’ your hand.’

‘Margaret,’ said her husband more seriously, ‘ yince and for a' I hae learned my lesson. That boy has showed to me that the warst bairn is better than the best man.’

Mistress Armour held up her hands in silent protest against such sentiments. Then, feeling that the matter was far beyond her words, and having a life-time's experience of the uselessness of arguing with her husband, she fell back upon her cake-baking, and her proven ability to take it out of Betty Landsborough. Betty,’ she would cry, as she went into the kitchen, ‘ye are but a feather-headed lassie. Ye think o' naething but the vain adornment o' your frail tabernacle, and aiblins what lads will come up the loanin' courtin' ye this nicht. Mind ye, there are mair eternal verities to be considered than lads and bonnets wi' gum-floo'ers. And (in a louder tone, as being more pressing matter for consideration than even the eternal verities) mind the scones on the girdle. Gin ye frizzle them up into fair sole leather, I declare to peace that I will gie ye a daud on the side o' the head that will pit ye by looking at a lad till September fair. Noo, ye hear me, Betty Landsborough.’

Then Mistress Armour, active as at twenty in spite of her sixty-five years, would whisk about quickly with a sense of some unseen presence behind her. Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of a small boy in a tattered pair of knickerbockers with a couple of ravished cakes of oatmeal in his hand, making desperate attempts to keep directly behind her, so as to be out of her line of vision or, alternatively, to reach the outer door before she could take in the situation and rally her forces.

‘O ye blastie!’ she would cry, ‘ye are at it again. And me no done speakin' to your grandfaither aboot your ongangin's! Think shame! I'll gar ye sup sorrow for this. Gin I catch ye ye shall never sit on an easy seat for a month and mair! Lay doon that cake. Wad ye, then?’

As she spoke she made desperate attempts to head him off from the door.

‘Catch him, Betty! There— ye hae him! Oh, the loon!’

Almost Kit had been caught, but the very desperation of his case supplied him with wit.

‘Oh, granny, granny!’ he cried, pointing behind her with a sudden stop and a scared expression on his face ‘there's a fire in the lum.’

‘Save us!’ cried his grandmother; ‘d'ye tell me that? I aye kenned that something wad happen that lum.’

She wheeled about with more alacrity than seemed possible to one so solid of frame and compendious of garmenture. The fire was indeed burning on the hearth and reaching up the ‘lum,’ but only as it had done every baking day since the beginning of the world. Mistress Armour recognised that she had been taken in, and turned with speed to recover her advantage. But naturally she was just a moment too late.

Kit had dived under her uplifted arm, and dodging the amused Betty, who was vainly trying to control her mirth, he had carried off his spoils. He was now well on his way to the seat under the beech trees, breaking off alternate bits for himself and for Royal, his great lolloping red collie as he went.

‘Betty Landsborough, ye are a useless, handless besom. I'se warrant ye are in league with the ill-set young vaigabond. Certes, lass, but ye shall walk at the term. I rede ye tak' your warnin' noo, and never a character will ye get, ye guid-for-naething, ungratefu' besom that ye are!’

Wisely Betty Landsborough made no answer, knowing well that the energetic old lady would forget all about her warning in half an hour, and would, if taxed with it, even deny ever having said such a word.

On such an occasion Mistress Armour cooled gradually. At first she declared that nothing would induce her to keep such a rascal a moment longer about the house—a threat which, so long as Kit's grandfather remained his ally, was knowingly and notoriously empty and vain. Then, alternately, she went on to upbraid the illsetness of Betty, and to remind her of the fact that in the time of trial she had even laughed at her mistress. But as nobody was much affected these manifestations soon ceased, and she confined herself to such propositions as that it was high time the young vaigabond went to school, and that ‘in her young days weans were not spoiled—no, and servants had more respect for their mistresses!’ So it came about that from much dropping the stone was worn away at last, and Kit Kennedy was in good earnest to be sent to school.’

And later, in this second passage, Kit is now about fourteen, and working on a farm.

It had been snowing in the night since Kit lay down, and the snow had sifted in through the open tiles of the farmhouse of Loch Spellanderie. That was nothing. It often did that. But sometimes it rained, and that was worse. Yet Kit Kennedy did not much mind even that. He had a cunning arrangement in old umbrellas and corn-sacks that could beat the rain any day. Snow, in his own words, he did not give a ‘buckie’ for…

… ‘Ye lazy guid-for-naething! Gin ye are no' doon the stairs in three meenits, no' a drap o' porridge or a sup o' milk shall ye get the day!’

So Kit got on his feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself. So that is the way he had to finish his prayers—on his feet, shuffling and dancing a break-down. The angels saw, and smiled. But they took it to the Father, just the same as if Kit Kennedy had been in church. All save one, who dropped something that might have been a pearl and might have been a tear. Then he also went within the inner court, and told that which he had seen.

But to Kit there was nothing to grumble about. He was pleased, if any one was. His clogs did not let in the snow. His coat was rough, but warm. If any one was well off, and knew it, it was Kit Kennedy.

So he came down-stairs, if stairs they could be called that were but the rounds of a ladder. His aunt heard him.

‘Keep awa' frae the kitchen, ye thievin' loon! There's nocht there for ye—takin' the bairns' meat afore they're up!’

But Kit was not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well. Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion. He was taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of ‘farles’ which swung from the black, smoked beam in the corner. Kit had cause to remember the occasion. Ever since, she had cast it up to him. She was a master at casting up, as her husband knew. But Kit was used to it, and he did not care. A thick stick was all that he cared for, and that only for three minutes; but he minded when Mistress MacWalter abused his mother, who was dead.

…Kit was hungry now. It was a long time since supper. Porridge is, no doubt, good feeding; but it vanishes away like the morning cloud, and leaves behind it only an aching void. Kit felt the void, but he could not help it. Instead, however, of dwelling upon it, his mind was full of queer thoughts and funny imaginings. It is a strange thing that the thought of rattling on the ribs of a lazy, sleepy moon with a besom-shank pleased him as much as a plate of porridge and as much milk as he could sup to it. But that was the fact.

Kit went next into the stable to get a lantern. The horses were moving about restlessly, but Kit had nothing to do with them. He went in only to get a lantern. It was on the great wooden corn-crib in the corner. Kit lighted it, and pulled down his cap over his ears.

Then he crossed over to the cattle-sheds. The snow was crisp under foot. His feet went through the light drift which had fallen during the night, and crackled frostily upon the older and harder crust. At the barn, Kit paused to put fresh straw in his iron-shod clogs. Fresh straw every morning in the bottom of one's clogs is a great luxury. It keeps the feet warm. Who can afford a new sole of fleecy wool every morning to his shoe? Kit could, for straw is cheap, and even his aunt did not grudge a handful. Not that it would have mattered if she had.

The cattle rattled their chains in a friendly and companionable way as he crossed the yard, Tyke following a little more sedately than before. Kit's first morning job was to fodder the cattle. He went to the hay-mow and carried a great armful of fodder, filling the manger before the bullocks, and giving each a friendly pat as he went by. Great Jock, the bull in the pen by himself in the corner, pushed a moist nose over the bars, and dribbled upon Kit with slobbering affection. Kit put down his head and pretended to run at him, whereat Jock, whom nobody else dared go near, beamed upon him with the solemn affection of ‘bestial’—his great eyes shining in the light of the lamp with unlovely but genuine affection.

Then came the cows' turn. Kit Kennedy took a milking-pail, which he would have called a luggie, set his knee to Crummie, his favourite, who was munching her fodder, and soon had a warm draught. He pledged her in her own milk, wishing her good health and many happy returns. Then, for his aunt's sake, he carefully wiped the luggie dry, and set it where he had found it. He had got his breakfast—no mean or poor one.

...He went to the kitchen door.

‘Gae'way wi' ye! Hoo daur ye come to my door after what yer wark has been this mornin'?’ cried Mistress MacWalter as soon as she heard him. ‘Aff to the schule wi' ye! Ye get neither bite nor sup in my hoose the day.’

The three MacWalter children were sitting at the table taking their porridge and milk with horn spoons. The ham was skirling and frizzling in the pan. It gave out a good smell, but that did not cost Kit Kennedy a thought. He knew that that was not for the like of him. He would as soon have thought of wearing a white linen shirt or having the lairdship of a barony, as of getting ham to his breakfast. But after his morning's work, he had a sore heart enough to miss his porridge.

But he knew that it was no use to argue with Mistress MacWalter. So he went outside and walked up and down in the snow. He heard the clatter of dishes as the children, Rob, Jock, and Meysie MacWalter, finished their eating, and Meysie set their bowls one within the other and carried them into the back-kitchen to be ready for the washing. Meysie was nearly ten, and was Kit's very good friend. Jock and Rob, on the other hand, ran races who should have most tales to tell of his misdoings at home, and also at the village school.

‘Kit Kennedy, ye scoondrel, come in this meenit an' get the dishes washen afore yer uncle tak's the 'Buik,’ cried Mistress MacWalter, who was a religious woman, and came forward regularly at the half-yearly communion in the kirk of Duntochar. She did not so much grudge Kit his meal of meat, but she had her own theories of punishment. So she called Kit in to wash the dishes from which he had never eaten. Meysie stood beside them, and dried for him, and her little heart was sore. There was something in the bottom of some of them, and this Kit ate quickly and furtively—Meysie keeping a watch that her mother was not coming. The day was now fairly broken, but the sun had not yet risen.

‘Tak' the pot oot an' clean it. Gie the scrapins' to the dogs!’ ordered Mistress MacWalter.

Kit obeyed. Tyke and Tweed followed with their tails over their backs. The white wastes glimmered in the grey of the morning. It was rosy where the sun was going to rise behind the great ridge of Ben Arrow, which looked, smoothly covered with snow as it was, exactly like a gigantic turnip-pit. At the back of the milkhouse Kit set down the pot, and with a horn spoon which he took from his pocket he shared the scraping of the pot equally into three parts, dividing it mathematically by lines drawn up from the bottom. It was a good big pot, and there was a good deal of scrapings, which was lucky for both Tweed and Tyke, as well as good for Kit Kennedy.

Now, this is the way that Kit Kennedy—that kinless loon, without father or mother—won his breakfast.

He had hardly finished and licked his spoon, the dogs sitting on their haunches and watching every rise and fall of the horn, when a well-known voice shrilled through the air—

‘Kit Kennedy, ye lazy, ungrateful hound, come ben to the ‘Buik.’ Ye are no better than the beasts that perish, regairdless baith o' God and man!’

So Kit Kennedy cheerfully went in to prayers and thanksgiving, thinking himself not ill off. He had had his breakfast.

And Tweed and Tyke, the beasts that perish, put their noses into the porridge-pot to see if Kit Kennedy had left anything. There was not so much as a single grain of meal.

Crockett wrote lots of short stories and sketches as well as novels. ‘The Tutor of Curlywee’ from the collection ‘The Stickit Minister’ is set locally and gives an insight into rural life on a number of levels.

The Tutor of Curlywee.

The Minister of Education started to walk across the great moors of the Kells Range so early in the morning that for the first time for twenty years he saw the sun rise. Strong, stalwart, unkempt, John Bradfield, Right Honourable and Minister of the Queen, strode over the Galloway heather in his rough homespun. 'Ursa Major' they called him in the House. His colleagues, festive like schoolboys before the Old Man with the portfolios came in, subscribed to purchase him a brush and comb for his hair, for the jest of the Cabinet Minister is even as the jest of the schoolboy. John Bradfield was sturdy in whatever way you might take him. Only last session he engineered a great measure of popular education through the House of Commons in the face of the antagonism, bitter and unscrupulous, of Her Majesty's Opposition, and the Gallio lukewarmness of his own party. So now there was a ripple of great contentment in the way he shook back locks which at forty-five were as raven black as they had been at twenty-five; and the wind that blew gently over the great billowy expanse of rock and heather smoothed out some of the crafty crows' feet deepening about his eyes.

When he started on a thirty-mile walk over the moors, along the dark purple precipitous slopes above Loch Trool, the glory of summer was melting into the more Scottish splendours of a fast-coming autumn, for the frost had held off long, and then in one night had bitten snell and keen. The birches wept sunshine, and the rowan trees burned red fire.

The Minister of Education loved the great spaces of the Southern uplands, at once wider and eerier than those of the Highlands. There they lie waiting for their laureate. No one has sung of them nor written in authentic rhyme the strange weird names which the mountain tops bandy about among each other, appellations hardly pronounceable to the southron. John Bradfield, however, had enough experience of the dialect of the 'Tykes' of Yorkshire to master the intricacies of the nomenclature of the Galloway uplands. He even understood and could pronounce the famous quatrain: 'The Slock, Milquharker, and Craignine, The Breeshie and Craignaw; Are the five best hills for corklit, That e'er the Star wife saw.'

The Minister of Education hummed this rhyme, which he had learned the night before from his host in the tall tower which stands by the gate of the Ferrytown of Cree. As he made his way with long swingin’ gait over the heather, travelling by compass and the shrewd head which the Creator had given him, he was aware  in old times the rocks and cliffs of the Dungeon of Buchan were kind of moss known a, 'corklit,' used for dyeing, the gathering formed part of the livelihood of the peasantry. About midday he came upon a shepherd's hut which lay in his track. He went briskly up to the door, passing the little pocket-handkerchief of kailyaird which the shepherd had carved out of the ambient heather. The purple bells grew right up to the wall of grey stone dyke which had been built to keep out the deer, or mayhap occasionally to keep them in, when the land was locked with snow, and venison was toothsome.

'Good day to you, mistress,' said the Minister of Education, who prided himself on speaking to every woman in her own tongue.

'And good day to you, sir,' heartily returned the sonsy, rosy-cheeked goodwife, who came to the door, ‘an' blithe I am to see ye. It's no that aften that I see a body at the Back Hoose o' Curlywee.'

John Bradfield soon found himself well entertained— farles of cake, crisp and toothsome, milk from the cow, with golden butter in a lordly dish, cheese from a little round kebbuck, which the mistress of the Back House of Curlywee kept covered up with a napkin to keep it moist.

The goodwife looked her guest all over.

'Ye'll not be an Ayrshireman nae, I'm thinkin'. Ye kind o' favour them in the features, but ye hae the tongue o' the English.'

'My name is John Bradficld, and I come from Yorkshire,' was the reply.

'An' my name's Mistress Glencairn, an' my man Tammas is herd on Curlywee. But he's awa' ower by the Wolf's Slock the day lookin' for some forwandered yowes.'

The Minister of Education, satisfied with the good cheer, bethought himself of the curly heads that he had seen about the door. There was a merry face, brown with the sun, brimful of mischief, looking round the corner of the lintel at that moment. Suddenly the head fell forward and the body tumultuously followed, evidently by some sudden push from behind. The small youth recovered himself and vanished through the door, before his mother had time to do more than say, 'My certes, gin I catch you loons,' as she made a dart with the handle of the besom at the culprit.

For a little John Bradfield was left alone. There were sounds of a brisk castigation outside, as though some one were taking vigorous exercise on tightly stretched corduroy. 'And on the mere the wailing died away!’

'They're good lads eneuch,' said the mistress, entering a little breathless, and with the flush of honest endeavour in her eye, 'but when their faither's oot on the hill they get a wee wild. But as ye see, I try to bring them up in the way that they should go,' she added, setting the broomstick in the corner.

'What a pity,' said the Minister of Education, 'that such bright little fellows should grow up in this lonely spot without an education.'

He was thinking aloud more than speaking to his hostess. The herd's wife of Curlywee looked him over with a kind of pity mingled with contempt.

'Edicated! did ye say? My certes, but my bairns are as weel edicated as onybody's bairns. Juist e'en try them, gin it be your wull, sir, an' aiblins ye'll fin' them no' that far ahint yer ain!’

Going to the door she raised her voice to the telephonic pitch of the Swiss jodel and the Australian 'coo — ee, Jee-mie, Aa-leck, Aa-nie, come ye a' here this meenit!’

The long Galloway vowels lingered on the still air, even after Mistress Glencairn came her ways back again into the house. There was a minute of a great silence outside. Then a scuffle of naked feet, the sough of subdued whispering, a chuckle of interior laughter, and a prolonged scuffling just outside the window.

'Gin ye dinna come ben the hoose an' be douce, you Jeemie, an' Rob, an' Alick, I'll come till ye wi' a stick! Mind ye, your faither 'ill no be lang frae hame the day.'

A file of youngsters entered, hanging their heads, and treading on each other's bare toes to escape being seated next to the formidable visitor.

'Wull it please ye, sir, to try the bairns' learning for yoursel'?’

A Bible was produced, and the three boys and their sister read round in a clear and definite manner, lengthening the vowels it is true, but giving them their proper sound, and clanging their consonants like hammers ringing on anvils.

'Very good!’ said John Bradfield, who knew good reading when he heard it.

From reading they went on to spelling, and the great Bible names were tried in vain. The Minister of Education was glad that he was examiner, and not a member of the class. Hebrew polysyllables and Greek-proper names fell thick and fast to the accurate aim of the boys, to whom this was child's play. History followed, geography, even grammar, maps were exhibited, and the rising astonishment of the Minister of Education kept pace with the quiet complacent pride of the Herd's Wife of Curlywee. The examination found its appropriate climax in the recitation of the 'Shorter Catechism.' Here John Bradfield was out of his depth, a fact instantly detected by the row of sharp examinees. He stumbled over the reading of the questions. He followed the breathless enunciation of that expert in the 'Caritches,' Jamie, with a gasp of astonishment. Jamie was able to say the whole of Effectual Calling in six ticks of the clock, the result sounding to the uninitiated like the prolonged birr of intricate clockwork rapidly running down.

'What is the chief end of man?’ slowly queried the Minister of Education, with his eye on the book.

'Mans-chiefend-glorfyGod-joyim-frever!’ returned Jamie nonchalantly, all in one word, as though some one had asked him what was his name.

The Minister of Education threw down his Catechism.

'That is enough. They have all done well, and better than well. Allow me,' he said, doubtfully turning to his hostess, 'to give them each a trifle.'

'Na, na,' said Mistress Glencairn, 'let them e'en do their work withoot needin' carrots hadden afore their nose like a cuddy. What wad they do wi' siller?’

'Well, you will at least permit me to send them each a book by post—I suppose that you get letters up here occasionally?’

‘'Deed, there's no that muckle correspondence amang us, but when we're ower at the kirk there, yin o' the herds on Lamachan that gangs doon by to see a lass that leeves juist three miles frae the post-office, an' she whiles fetches ocht that there may be for us, an' he gi'es it us at the kirk.'

John Bradfield remembered his letters and telegrams even now entering in a steady stream into his London office and overflowing his ministerial tables, waiting his return—a solemnising thought. He resolved to build a house on the Back Hill of Curlywee, and have his letters brought by way of the kirk and the Lamachan herd's lass that lived three miles from the post-office.

'Oot wi' ye!’ said the mistress briefly, addressing her offspring, and the school scaled with a tumultuous rush, which left a sense of vacancy and silence and empty space about the kitchen.

'And now will you tell me how your children are so well taught?’ said John Bradfield. 'How far are you from a school?’

'Weel, we're sixteen mile frae Newton Stewart, where there's a schule but no road, an' eleven frae the Clatterin' Shaws, where there's a road but no schule.'

'How do you manage then?’ The Minister was anxious to have the mystery solved.

'WE KEEP A TUTOR!’ said the herd's wife of Curlywee, as calmly as though she had been a duchess.

The clock ticked in its shiny mahogany case, like a hammer on an anvil, so still it was. The cat yawned and erected its back. John Bradfield's astonishment kept him silent.

'Keep a tutor,' he muttered; 'this beats all I have ever heard about the anxiety of the Scotch peasantry to have their children educated. We have nothing like this even in Yorkshire.'

Then to his hostess he turned and put another question.

'And, if I am not too bold, how much might your husband get in the year?’

'Tammas Glencairn is a guid man, though he's my man, an' he gets a good wage. He's weel worthy o't. He gets three an' twenty pound in the year, half score o' yowes, a coo's grass, a bow o' meal, a bow o' pitatas, an' as mony peats as he likes to cast, an' win', an' cairt.'

'But how,' said John Bradfield, forgetting his manners in his astonishment, 'in the name of fortune does he manage to get a tutor?’

'He disna keep him. I keep him!’ said Mistress Glencairn with great dignity.

The Minister of Education looked his genuine astonishment this time. Had he come upon an heiress in her own right?

His hostess was mollified by his humbled look.

'Ye see, sir, it's this way,' she said, seating herself opposite to him on a clean-scoured, white wooden chair: ‘there's mair hooses in this neighbourhood than ye wad think. There's the farm hoose o' the Black Craig o' Dee, there's the herd's hoose o' Garrary, the onstead o' Neldricken, the Dungeon o' Buchan—an' a wheen mair that, gin I telled ye the names o', ye wadna be a bit the wiser. Weel, in the simmer time, whan the colleges gang doon, we get yin o' the college lads to come to this quarter. There's some o' them fell fond to come. An' they pit up for three or fower weeks here, an' for three or fower weeks at the Garrary ower by, an' the bairns travels ower to whaur the student lad is bidin', an' gets their learnin'. Then when it's time for the laddie to be gaun his ways back to college, we send him awa' weel buskit wi' muirland claith, an' weel providit wi' butter an' eggs, oatmeal an' cheese, for the comfort o' the wame o' him. Forbye we gather up among oorsels an' bid him guid speed wi' a maitter o' maybe ten or twal' poun' in his pooch. Ari that's the way we keep a tutor!’

The next story is from ‘Raiderland’ (1904)

The Dole of the Thirteen Herrings

A Tale of the Sea-Board Parishes

It was a clause in many Galloway leases even down to the middle of last century (and for aught I know it may extend to the present day) that the tenants were bound to give the laird so many days' ‘peat-leading,’ for the stacking of what was till recently not only the chief but the only ‘fewal’ of Galloway. The conditions of that contract were often curiously minute—the laird on his part undertaking to give the horses such and such feeds of corn—‘good oats’ being generally specified, and to the men ‘bear’ bread (the barley loaves of Scripture) or oat-cakes, so many ‘farles’ of a regulation size, with so many cans of home-brewed beer to wash it down, the same that Mr. Cuninghame of Duchrae found served at dinner by the Drumglass table-maid.

Upon one sea-board Galloway estate the laird, a shrewd man of the snell and grippy sort, had limited his bounty severely to one can of beer, one farle of oat bread, and one large herring. It can be imagined how popular the service of ‘peat-leading’ was among the dwellers upon that estate, who could very well get oat-cake at home, and as many herrings as they liked for ‘kitchen’ thereto. The laird, a man with a hump shoulder and one hand ever in the small of his back, hopped about in a lively manner upon his stick to see that all did their part of the work—and that none had too much to eat. The lady of the house was a proud dame, who considered that tenants —well, should be kept in their places. So one year it was intimated that the refreshment would be served at the backdoor, and that instead of the fash of tables spread upon the green in front of the house, each man should go in person to the housekeeper and draw his ration of oat-cake, herring, and small beer.

Only those who know Scotland, and the intense Scottish pride about small personal affronts, can understand the anger and contempt which this regulation caused among the farmers' sons and even among the cottagers. Only a few availed themselves of the refection, preferring to go hungry rather than suffer the ignominy of the back-door and the housekeeper's dole. Henceforward only the men on the estate and a few ‘day’ carters drew their rations, so that the little hopping laird rubbed his meagre miserly hands at the saving. All the bold farmers' sons and sonsy ploughmen brought their own dinners wrapped in a clean cloth, together with their flasks, and ate and drank somewhat ostentatiously, standing each man by his horse's head in front of the mansion.

But after this had gone on for many years, one day there appeared on the green in front of the house a beggar woman with a brood of hungry children. She had heard of the ‘peat-leading,’ which in Galloway is usually the scene of merrymaking and rude plenty. So, being ‘fremit’ and not knowing her man, she had come as a gleaner, sure of taking up at least one basket full of the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table.

Upon her and her little skirt-clutching swarm descended the laird, as it had been a hawk-beaked bird of prey stooping from a perch. With one pounce, as it were, he was upon the pitiful brood.

‘Gang awa' oot o' this, ye pushionous run-the-countries!’ Such was his salutation. ‘Do ye no ken that I am a Justice o' the Peace, and can commit ye for va-a-grants and thieves! Hungry, are ye? Weel, gang to the Relieving Offisher! Gang to the kirk-session! What for am I cessed in a great sum every year, if it be na to relieve the like o' you? No a single bite nor sup shall ye get here. Aff wi' ye! Oot o' this! Faith, I will set the dowgs on ye!’

This he mingled with many oaths and cursings (for he was a wild man of his tongue) till the blush of shame mounted to the cheeks of his very servants, and as for the young farmers' sons and cottiers within hearing, a black fierce anger burned in their hearts.

But action comes slowly and unreadily to the true Gallovidian. So it was not till the laird had ‘shooed’ the poor woman and her flock off the gravel, and was following them volubly down the road, that one Alexander Barbour left the ranks, flinging the reins of his team to his nearest neighbour.

‘Here, honest woman,’ he cried after the beggar wife, ‘loup into my cairt!’

And with that he began to pile the astonished bairns one by one over the ‘shilbins’ till all were seated in a confused heap in the cart-bottom. The mother was soon beside them.

The laird, too astonished by young Barbour’s action even to curse, glowered blackly at him as he strode away to the back-door of the mansion, where he presently demanded thirteen herrings, thirteen farles of oat-cake, and thirteen glasses of small ale.

The laird, who, almost unconsciously, had followed, asked if he had gone mad, while the housekeeper held up her hands in horror at the mere words.

Then upon these two turned young Alexander Barbour, a man slow to anger but white hot when he got there—of that dour, sober Scottish temper which, once roused, is the most terrible of all.

‘Thirteen years have I led your peats, laird,’ he said, loud and clear that all might hear, ‘and bite nor sup of yours have I not tasted. But every year it has been my right to demand one herring, one farle of cake, and one jug of beer. Well, I take them all now—thirteen herrings, thirteen farles, and thirteen jugs of beer!’

‘It is ridiculous!’ cried the laird. ‘It is rank wastry. Such a thing was never heard of!’

‘Is it in the lease?’ demanded this Daniel so sharply come to judgment.

Then the laird, struck with a sudden pang of coming trouble, could only bow his head. Of a surety it was so nominated in the bond. Every man knew it.

‘Then,’ said Alexander Barbour, turning upon the housekeeper, ‘be quick. There are others waiting. Bring out the provender according to count and tale!’

And they brought it out.

‘Now, lads—the rest o' ye!’ cried Alexander Barbour, jerking his head upwards as a signal, for his arms were full.

And leaving only one or two for a guard upon the horses, all who had refused the back-door and the housekeeper's bounty for themselves, flocked about the porch to demand it for the poor despised of the earth, while the laird hopped about more like a demented crow than ever.

But for him there was no reprieve. For at each objection they turned upon him with the question: ‘Is it so put down in the lease?’

‘Wi' than!’ they cried, with a kind of solemn joy, ‘hoosekeeper, bring oot the bannocks!’

And they brought them out, some drawing four—some seven, and some twenty supplies, till the oat-cakes and the herrings gave out, and they drew the fine wheat-meal scones, the baked bread, the mutton ham, and for beer they had red wine, till a great gladness filled the whole assembly.

Then in the midst of plenty the beggar wife was driven out of the laird's policies upon the king's highway. A place was kept for her in a friendly barn, where she had peace and plenty for many weeks, with her brood and her provender about her.

Also there was no loud scoffing or merriment among that crowd of farmers' sons and peat-leaders, though they had kept the wine and the small beer for themselves. Solemnly they clinked the cannikin and drank the laird's good health in front of his own windows, wishing him, with the fine Scots irony, dry and stern, many returns of the present happy occasion, and, above all, the contented mind of the cheerful giver.

‘He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,’ quoted Alexander Barbour as he lifted the reins, and ‘clicked’ to his horse.

But the laird looked after him with things in his heart which it is fittest not to write. Nor dared he even speak them, for Alexander Barbour was the son of his best tenant, and the value of land was falling.

Which is the story of the Dole of the Thirteen Herrings, and a very true tale.

Crockett’s work ranged across Galloway from east to west, and in the following passage he retells the story of the Wigtown martyrs, in his own inimitable style:

From Men of the Moss Hags (1895)

At Tonskeen also we found Thomas Wilson, brother of our sweet little Margaret. He brought us sad news of her. She had been separated from Maisie and her father after the capture, and taken to Wigtown instead of accompanying them toward Edinburgh.

The lad told us that his sister was now confined in the Thieves' Hole at Wigtown. He told us of her sham trial, and, spite of our sore hearts, he almost made us laugh with his account of the indictment which Winram and Coltran—in their cups, as I presume—had laid against her. Along with our Margaret had been tried her little sister of thirteen named Agnes. Both these young things had been most barbarously treated by the noble judges of Wigtown—Sheriff Davie Graham, Lag, Strachan, and Winram. Worst of all was Davie Graham, for having his hands upon the fines, he desired above all to amerce Gilbert Wilson, the tenant of Glen Vernock in the parish of Peninghame. Gilbert was a man well to do, keeping a good stock both of nolt and sheep upon a large ground, and so the more apt to be fined. He was a quiet, thewless, pleasantly conforming man, that was willing to let his hearing of the curates keep his head. But he could not help his children, as alas! who can? For years he was harassed with having to go to Wigtown every court day. He was near eaten out of house and home with having soldiers constantly quartered upon him. And all because his children had chosen to endure hardship cheerfully for the good cause, and to serve under the blue banner that has the cross upon it—at least so far as young bairns may. So from a child Margaret Wilson had companied with those that spoke and loved the truth. She had spent much of her time, ever since she was a lassie of ten, with my sober Maisie Lennox at the Duchrae. And afterwards, when she grew to be of age when lassies think of the lads, Margaret, for the sake of her faith and for naught else, lived on the wild mountains, in the bogs and caves of the hillsides.

To me Margaret Wilson ever seemed the stillest of quiet maids; but, as our Maisie used to say, she was terribly set in her opinions when once she had taken her stand. Now at eighteen she was grown to a tall maid, with a great blowing mass of lint white hair that shone like gold with the sun on it. Well might she have been spared to be some man's delight, had she not been (as she said when the lads speered her) trysted to another lot. The first party of soldiers to whom she was delivered, pitying her youth, let her go to her own home from the crossing of the water at Cree. But by misadventure she travelled on to the town of Wigtown—where with the little lass Agnes in her hand, she was resting in a friend's house, when drunken Winram, ever keen of scent for an ill-conditioned deed, got track of her being in the town. He sent soldiers to take her on the spot, together with her sister of thirteen years, and bade thrust them into the Thieves' Hole that was in the Tolbooth of Wigtown, where they put only the most notorious malefactors.

All this and more Thomas Wilson told us—how that his sisters and an aged woman were confined there and guarded by most brutal soldiers—yea, had already been doomed to be drowned within the tide mark in a very short space of time—though the day of their death as yet he knew not.

Whereat our brave Maisie Lennox was eager to go down to Wigtown and try for a rescue, if we could raise those that would help us. But we could not suffer her to go, though most ready to adventure ourselves. The good folk of Tonskeen were very willing to let my mother and the maids abide with them; for since the taking of Anton Lennox no soldiers had been seen in the district. And the slaying of wicked Mardrochat had feared the ill-set informing people greatly, so that for a long season there was no more of that.

It seemed strange, yet so it was, that Maisie Lennox, who had seen her father pass, as it were, to his death without a tear, wept constantly for her friend and gossip, Margaret of Glen Vernock.

‘They cannot condemn Margaret. They will not condemn little Margaret!’ she said over and over, as women use.

‘Ay, but condemned her they have!’ said her brother Thomas, ‘for they libel it against her and Agnes that they were guilty of rebellion at Bothwell Brig and Ayrsmoss.’

‘'Tis plainly impossible,’ I said; ‘the judges cannot mean aught to their hurt. Why, at Bothwell, Margaret was but twelve, and little Agnes a paidling bairn of seven years. And as for Ayrsmoss, the poor bairns were never within twenty miles of the place in their lives.’

But Thomas Wilson, a quiet, plainfaced lad, only mistrustfully shook his head.

‘It is even true,’ he said, ‘they mean to make them suffer if they can. But we will hae a thraw at it, to see if we canna break through the Thieves' Hole and draw the lassies forth.’

So it was set for the following night, that we should make the attempt to break the Thieves' Hole. The morrow, when it came, proved to be a clear day and fine overhead, which augured not well for our attempt. We would rather have had the blackest and wildest night for our venture. But we had little time, and so we set off to travel by the road the weary miles to Wigtown. We hid all the afternoon in a wood at Machermore, and laid our plans. It was about eleven of the clock that we went down into Wigtown, with the breaking tools which Thomas had gotten from his father's farm, as we passed down through Peninghame.

At the door of the little hostelry in the town we heard a great rioting and crying, which was, as we understood, the soldiers of Winram and some of Strachan's officers drinking late with the Wigtown lawyers, as was their custom. A big, important-looking man went by us, swaying a little unsteadily. He made a great work with his elbows as he went, working them backward and forward at his sides as though he was oaring a boat. This, Thomas Wilson whispered, was Provost Coltran, going home to his town house, after he and David Graham had had their nightcap together. Very evidently the Provost was carrying his full load. For in the midst of the ill-kept square of Wigtown, where certain tall trees grow, he paused and looked upward among the leaves to where the crows were chattering late among their younglings.

‘Crawin' and splartin' deils,’ he said, shaking one fist up at them, and holding to a tree with the other. ‘I'll hae ye brocht afore the Toon Cooncil and fined—aye, an' a' your goods and gear shall be escheat to the Crown. Blood me gin I dinna, or my name is no Provost Cowtran! David Graham will be glad to hear o' this!’

So saying, he staggered away homeward, there to underlie the ill tongue of his wife for coming home in such a condition—albeit not much worse than was usual with him.

About the Tolbooth it was very quiet, and all was still also in Lag's lodging, whose windows looked down upon it. We got close to the window of the Hole, and crouched to wait for the deepest darkening behind some low ill-smelling sheds, in which pigs were grunting and snoring.

But even at this time of year it is very light at night, and especially in such a place as Wigtown—which sits not among the hills, but as it were on a knowe under a wide arch of sky, making it little and lonely under all that vastness.

Thomas Wilson was to gather a few trusty lads (for there were still such about the place), who should attempt to burn down the door of the Hole. While Wat and I with our crowbars or gellecks, our mallets and chisels, were to try our best with the window. What galled us most was the light in the west, which remained strangely lucid and even, as though the sky itself were shining clear in the midst of the night—a thing which I had never seen in my own hill lands, but often upon the flats of Wigtown.

Our hearts were beating, I warrant, when we stole out to make our attempt. This we did at eleven by the town clock, and there was no better or more kindly darkness to be looked for. It was silent in the Square of Wigtown, save for the crows that Provost Coltran had shaken his fist at. As we stole to the window, which indeed was no more than a hole wide enough, the bars being removed, to allow a man's body to pass through, we heard the praying of the prisoners within. It was the voice of our little Margaret Wilson. When last I heard that voice, it was in sweet and womanly converse with Maisie Lennox, concerning the light matters of which women love to speak, but are immediately silent about when a man comes by—aye, even if that man be their nearest. For this is the nature of woman.

At the first rasp of the chisel, there was silence within, for the prisoners knew well that only friends would try to enter in that way. We could hear the lads piling faggots at the outer door, as had been done once before with great success, when the bars were burnt through within half an hour. But, since the fire would assuredly bring the soldiers, it was put off till we had made our attempt upon the window.

Wat was stronger than I when it came to the forcing aside of the bars, and he it was that set his strength to mine, and with the long iron impelled out of its binding mortar the great central bar. Then after we had broken the lesser one above and below with much less stress, the window lay open. It seemed a practical enough breach. It came my time to mount and enter to see if I could help the women out, an enterprise which needed much caution.

Wat had scaled the roof to see if there was aught there that might be advantageous. I was up and scrambling with my toes against the rough wall, half of my body within, when I heard a scuffle and a sudden cry of warning from the other side of the tower. I heard Wat leap down with a shout, and I would have followed, but I received a mighty push which sent me headlong through the prison window into the Thieves' Hole. Here I sat, very astonished and dazed, with my head having taken the wall, till the door was opened and a figure, booted and spurred, cloaked also from head to heel, came in, and with a lantern bearer behind him, stood looking at us. The two young lassies, Margaret and Agnes, sat in a corner clasping one another's hands, and a very old woman sat near me with her head clasped in her hands. She never looked up so long as I saw her, and seemed to have quite lost both interest and hope.

I knew that the big man with the cloak was the Laird of Lag, for once with my father I had seen him on the street at Kirkcudbright, when he spoke us fairly enough—the matter one of cattle and crops belike.

‘Whom have we here,’ he said, ‘coming so late by the window to see the lassies? Young Whiggie, this is not proper wark; but who may you be?’

I sat and said nothing.

‘Stell him up,’ he said, ‘and let us see what like this breaker of maidens' chambers may be.’

But I stood up of my own accord, with my hand on the prison wall.

Then he appeared to recognise me, for he said sourly:

‘Ye'll be an Earlstoun Gordon, nae doot—ye favour the breed—though there's mair of the lawyer Hope nor the fechtin' Gordon aboot you. I hadna thocht ye had as muckle spunk.’

Then he ordered two soldiers to stand guard over the hole on the outside, and, setting a double guard on the Tolbooth, he cried, ‘Have young Gordon forth to my quarters.’ Which when they did, he entertained himself for several hours telling me how he would send me with the utmost care to Edinburgh, and of the newly imported tortures that would be inflicted on Sandy and myself. He said that Sandy was to be tortured and that he had seen the precept from London with the order.

‘So ye'll juist be in time to try on the new 'boot.' There's a fine braw new-fangled pattern wi' spikes, and I hear that the new thumbikins are excellently persuasive. Faith, they hae widened many a Whig's thrapple already, and made it braw and wide in the swallow!’

Then, adding all the time cup to cup, he fell to cursing me and all our house, not letting even my mother alone, till I said to him:

‘John Graham had not treated a prisoner so. Nor you, Robert Grierson, if you thought that my kinsman Kenmure was at hand to strike his sword through your body—as once he came near doing in the street of Kirkcudbright in the matter of bell of Whiteside!’

Now this (as I knew) was a saying which angered him exceedingly, and he was for having out a file of soldiers and shooting me there and then. But luckily Winram came in to say that the other assailants of the Tolbooth had gotten cleanly off, and that a soldier was invalided with a sword-thrust through and through his shoulder, in which very clearly I recognised Wat's handicraft.

The morning of the eleventh of May came as calm and sweet as the night had been, which had proved so disastrously clear for us. I slept little, as men may guess, thinking on the poor lassies; and sometimes also on the torture in the prison, and the death on the scaffold. For I knew that though there might be delay, there could be no such thing as pardon for one that had carried the standard at Sanquhar, charged the storming fray of Ayrsmoss, and sole of all in Cameron's muster had gotten clear away.

From early morning I could hear on the street the gathering of the folk from the country-side far and near. And then the soldiers came clattering by to their stations, laughing as they went like people going to look upon a show.

‘There are but two of them to be 'pitten doon,' after all,’ I heard one of the soldiers say. ‘Gilbert Wilson has paid a hundred pound to get off his bit lassie Agnes.’

And that was the first intimation I had that only the elder woman, Margaret Lauchlison, whom I had seen in the Thieves' Hole with her head on her hands, and our own sweet Margaret were to be drowned within the flood-mark of the Blednoch.

Black, black day! Would that I could blot it out of my memory. Yet that men in after times may see what weak maids and ailing women bore with constancy in the dark years, I set down that day's doings as I saw them—but briefly, neither altering nor suppressing, because of this matter I cannot bear to write at large. It was but half an hour before the binding of the women that Lag sent for me—in order that I might see the thing which was done, and, as he said, carry the word to Sandy and the rest of the saints at Edinburgh.

And this, as I told him, with all constancy I should be very fond to do.

Now the Blednoch is a slow stream, which ordinarily flows in the deep ditch of its channel, wimpling and twining through the sands of the bay of Wigtown. The banks are but steep slopes of mud, on which if one slips he goes to the bottom with a slide. Up this deep channel the sea comes twice every day, damming back the sluggish stream and brimming the banks at full tide. When Lag's men took me down to the water edge, I saw the two women already tied to stakes set in the ooze of the Blednoch bank. At the sight my heart swelled within me at once sick and hot. Margaret Lauchlison was tethered deepest down, her stake set firm in the bottom and the post rising as high as her head.

Nigh half way up the steep bank stood our little Margaret, loosely reeved to a sunken stob, her hands clasped before her. She still wore the gown that I remember seeing upon her when she dwelt with us among the hills. But even in this pass she was cheerful, and lifting her eyes with a smile she bade me be so likewise, because that for her there was no fear and but a short pain. Also she called me very sweetly ‘William,’ and asked me to commend her to Maisie Lennox—a thing which more than all went to my heart. For it told me by the way she said it, that Maisie and she had talked together of loves and likings, as is all maidens' wont. The women were not tightly tied to the posts, but attached to them with a running rove of rope, by which they could be pulled close to the stakes, or else, at the will of the murderers, drawn up again to the bank, as one might draw a pitcher from a well.

Already was the salt tide water beginning to flow upwards along the Blednoch channel, bearing swirls of foam upon its breast.

Margaret Lauchlison, being an aged woman of eighty years, said no word as the tide rose above her breast, where lowest in the river bed she stood waiting. Her head hung down, and it was not till the water reached her lips that she began to struggle, nor did I see her make so much as a movement. Yet she was determined to die as she had lived, an honest, peaceable, Christian woman of a good confession—not learned, save in the scholarship of God, but therein of high attainment and great experience. And all honour be to her, for even as she determined, so she died.

Then, when some of the soldiers were for fleeching with her to take the Test, Lag cried out (for he ever loved his devil's-broth served hot):

‘Bide ye there! 'Tis needless to speak to the old besom! Let her go quick to hell!’

But Provost Coltran, sober enough this morning, and with other things to think of than the crows, come to the bank edge. And standing where his feet were nearly on a level with our little Margaret's head, he said to her:

‘What see ye down there, Margaret Wilson? What think ye? Can you with constancy suffer the choking of the salt water when it comes to your turn?’

Now, though Coltran was a rude man, and pang full of oaths, he spoke not so unfeelingly. But to him Margaret replied, in a sweet voice that wafted up like the singing of a psalm, from the sweltering pit of pain:

‘I see naught but Christ struggling there in the water in the person of one of His saints!’

Then the Provost came nearer still, and bending down like an elder that gives counsel, said to her, ‘Margaret, ye are young and ken no better. We will give you your life gin ye pray for the King. Will ye say aloud 'God save the King'?’

‘I desire the salvation of all men,’ Margaret said. ‘May God save him an He will!’

Coltran rose with a flush of triumph in his eye. He was none so bad a man, only dazed with drink and bad company.

‘She has said it!’ he cried, and from far and near the people took up the cry ‘She has said it, she has said it!’ And some were glad and some shook their heads for what they counted the dishonour of the submission.

Now, Blednoch sands under Wigtown town were a sight to behold that day. They were black with folk, all in scattering, changing groups. There were many clouds of folk on the sands when the lassies were ‘pitten doon,’ and in every little company there was one praying. Through them patrolled the soldiers in fours, breaking up each little band of worshippers, which dissolved only to come together again as soon as they had passed.

Then the town officer, a cruel and ill-liked man, who never did well afterwards all his days, took his long-hafted halbert, and, standing on the verge of the bank, he set the end of it to Margaret Lauchlison's neck.

‘Bide ye doon there and clep wi' the partans, Margaret, my woman!’ he said, holding her head under water till it hung loose and the life went from it.

The elder woman thus having finished her course with joy, they unrove the nether rope and drew little Margaret up to the bank, exhorting her to cry aloud ‘God save the King!’ and also to pray for him, that she might get her liberty.

For they began to be in fear, knowing that this drowning of women would make a greater stir in the world than much shooting of men.

‘Lord, give him repentance, forgiveness, and, salvation!’ she said fervently and willingly.

But Lag cried out in his great hoarse voice, ‘Out upon the wretch! We want not such oaths nor prayers. Winram, get the Test through her teeth—or down with her again.’

But she steadfastly refused the wicked Test, the oath of sin. As indeed we that loved Scotland and the good way of religion had all learned to do.

‘I cannot forswear my faith. I am one of Christ's children. Let me go to Him!’ she said, being willing to depart, which she held to be far better.

‘Back with her into the water!’ cried Lag. ‘The sooner she will win to hell! 'Tis too good for a rebel like her!’

But Coltran said, ‘Ye are fair to see, Margaret, lass. Think weel, hinny! Hae ye nane that ye love?’

But she answered him not a word, being like one other before her, like a lamb led to the slaughter.

So they tied her again to the stake, where the water was deeper now and lappered on her breast, swirling yellow and foul in oily bubbles.

Her great head coverture of hair—which, had I been her lad, I should have delighted to touch and stroke—now broke from the maiden's snood, and fell into the water. There it floated, making a fair golden shining in the grimy tide, like the halo which is about the sun when he rises. Also her face was as the face of an angel, being turned upward to God.

Then they began to drive the folk from the sands for fear of what they might see—the beauty of the dying maid, and go mad with anger at the sight.

Whereupon, being in extremity, she lifted her voice to sing, calm as though it had been an ordinary Sabbath morning, and she leading the worship at Glen Vernock, as indeed she did very well.

It was the twenty-fifth Psalm she sang, as followeth. And when she that was a pure maid sang of her sins, it went to my heart, thinking on my own greater need.

‘My sins and faults of youth Do Thou, O Lord, forget; After Thy mercies think on me, And for Thy goodness great.’

It was a sweet voice and carried far. But lest it should move the hearts of the people, Lag garred beat the drum. And as the drums began to roll, I saw the first salt wave touch the bonny maiden lips which no man had kissed in the way of love.

Then the guards plucked me by the arm roughly and dragged me away. The drums waxed still louder. But as we went farther away, the voice of the maiden praising God out of the floods of great waters, broke through them, rising clearer, besieging the throne of God and breaking down the hearts of men. I saw the tears hopping down many a rude soldier's cheek.

Nevertheless, they swore incessantly, cursing Lag and Winram back and forth, threatening to shoot them for devils thus to kill young maids and weakly women.

But once again in the pauses of the drums the words of Margaret's song came clear. Forget them shall I never, till I too be on my death-bed, and can remember nothing but ‘The Lord's my Shepherd,’ which every Scot minds on his dying day. These were the words she sang:

‘Turn unto me Thy face, And to me mercy show; Because that I am desolate, And am brought very low.

‘O do Thou keep my soul, Do Thou deliver me; And let me never be ashamed, Because I trust in Thee.’

After the last line there was a break and a silence, and no more—and no more! But after the silence had endured a space, there arose a wailing that went from the hill of Wigtown to the farthest shore of the Cree—the wailing of a whole country-side for a young lass done to death in the flower of her youth, in the untouched grace and favour of her virginity.

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