For one cannot run the wheels back upon the tracks of life, nor again be two-and-twenty, and out on the hills (Dark o the Moon)

And so, this year our Crocketteering adventure took place away from the Dungeon hills but nevertheless, in the heart of Crockett country. Like all good adventures, we started out looking for one thing and found something entirely different!

In trying to place the Levellers Camp from The Dark o’ the Moon we caught sight of the back view of Little Duchrae. More pictures HERE. In Crockett’s day Little Duchrae was a single story building. I’ve only seen it as double story, and only from the front aspect. So it was pretty interesting (to me) to see it from the back. Essentially, we got access to the views Crockett would have seen and the landscape he played in as a boy living there.

I got pretty excited about the trees. I wanted to find the tree from ‘Love Among the Beeches’ but I can’t say I did. The trees we found mostly seemed to be oaks. I know that trees grow and fall over 165 years. So I know that most of these trees will not have looked the same to him. But it felt like a connection nonetheless. Taking a combination of my own and Crockett’s imaginations it wasn’t hard to breathe life into many of the descriptions he gives of life around Little Duchrae in all its fictional outpourings.

Over the last 10 years I’ve made an effort to travel through Galloway looking for the places and landscapes Crockett which I have only experienced from my armchair. It’s been a great adventure. First was Little Duchrae, Grenoch Loch and the Black Water o’ Dee, Back Hill o’ the Bush, then further afield to Glenhead, then Loch Enoch and now, full circle via the Levellers Camp to the back of Little Duchrae (Duchrae Bank Woods). There are many other places I’ve been of course: The Memorial at Laurieston, The Grave at Balmaghie, Castle Douglas, Threave and Mossdale to name but a few. There are some places still to be explored – more of the Dungeon Hills (unlikely) and Earlstoun (more likely) – but its been wonderful to have seen so much of Crockett country in the last 10 years. It’s something I never thought I’d do. I’m only sorry it took being in exile from Galloway to make me start (and continue) the adventure into the history and romance of Crockett country.

Ten years after the Galloway Raiders adventure began, I reflect that ‘Crocketteering’ isn’t just about reading. I have found that my love of Crockett’s work continues to provide me with adventures into the history and natural beauty which embody ‘Grey Galloway’. I’ve connected with lots of amazing people over the last decade but in the end it’s the landscape which always steals the show.

We went, we saw, we think we found it! 
In follow up to this post this year’s Galloway Raiders 'birthday' trip (24th September) saw us go in search of Duchrae Bank Woods and the ‘Levellers/Roman Camp’ which is mentioned in The Dark o’ the Moon and Raiderland.

Here’s what we went looking for, described by Crockett:

You might play hide-and-seek about the Camp, which (though marked ‘probably Roman’ in the Survey Map) is no Roman camp at all, but instead only the last fortification of the Levellers in Galloway— those brave but benighted cottiers and crofters who rose in belated rebellion because the lairds shut them out from their poor moorland pasturages and peat-mosses.
Their story is told in that more recent supplement to ‘The Raiders’ entitled ‘The Dark o' the Moon.’ There the record of their deliberations and exploits is in the main truthfully enough given, and the fact is undoubted that they finished their course within their entrenched camp upon the Duchrae bank, defying the king's troops with their home-made pikes and rusty old Covenanting swords.

I’m still not sure if we actually found it (there’s more pictures HERE of what we think is the area) BUT we did come across the back of Little Duchrae on our walk. The excitement then was to experience Crockett’s childhood playground – while the trees may be newer, and/or certainly bigger if they date from 165 years ago – the views, especially the distant views, evoke the sights he grew up with from birth. And that, for me, was pretty exciting.

The following description from Raiderland/Dark o’ the Moon suggests that you can see it from Hollan Isle. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but we used that as a bearing from which to try and reach what we think is the ‘spot’.

'over the trees and hazel bushes of the Hollan Isle… [there is] a view of the entire defences of the Levellers and of the way by which most of them escaped across the fords of the Dee Water, before the final assault by the king's forces.
‘The situation was naturally a strong one—that is, if, as was at the time most likely, it had to be attacked solely by cavalry, or by an irregular force acting without artillery.
‘In front the Grennoch Lane, still and deep with a bottom of treacherous mud swamps, encircled it to the north, while behind was a good mile of broken ground, with frequent marshes and moss-hags. Save where the top of the camp mound was cleared to admit of the scant brushwood tents of the Levellers, the whole position was further covered and defended by a perfect jungle of bramble, whin, thorn, sloe, and hazel, through which paths had been opened in all directions to the best positions of defence.’ (Dark o’the Moon)
Such about the year 1723 was the place where the poor, brave, ignorant cottiers of Galloway made their last stand against the edict which (doubtless in the interests of social progress and the new order of things) drove them from their hillside holdings, their trim patches of cleared land, their scanty rigs of corn high in lirks of the mountain, or in blind ‘hopes’ still more sheltered from the blast.'

[NB Dark o the Moon is set in 1724 as the Levellers last stand happened then at the end of the period of unrest]


Whether we found it or not, we did in our adventure, come across the back view of Little Duchrae. But that’s another story (with pictures, coming soon.) 
Looks like the Levellers got here before us! (ha ha) 

Fresh back from a trip to the Duchrae only to discover there's an event which would be interesting at Glentrool... I can't be there, but it sent me to the archives for some Crockett writing about the area.  There's loads of mentions in his fiction and Chapter 29 of Raiderland is titled Glen Trool... copied out below. ​

RAIDERLAND
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
GLEN TROOL


‘Far hae I wandered and mickle hae I seen!’ But I hold to it that in the world there is nothing much more beautiful and various in its beauty than Glen Trool, from the Mennoch bridge to the highest waters of Glenhead Burn.


Yet just because it is so beautiful and changeful, it is difficult to describe. It does not lend itself to a single impression like Enoch or Loch Dee. There is something homely, cultivated, comfortable even, about its wildness. Yet there is the expectation of the Romantic in the air. As I go upward through the copses, I always glance right and left for a camp like that of Silver Sand upon Rathan shore.


‘When I came in sight of the encampment I usually ran, for there I would see Silver Sand pottering about in front of his bit tent, with a frying-pan or a little black cannikin hung above his fire from three crooked poles in the fashion he had learned from the Gipsies. Whenever I think of Paradise, to this day my mind runs on Gipsy poles, and a clear stream birling down among trees of birk and ash that cower in the hollow of the glen from the south-west wind, and of Silver Sand frying Loch Grannoch trout upon a skirling pan.’ (The Raiders)


Somehow, too, I always think of Trool as first I saw it, tremulous with broad flashing lights, reflected from the great cumulus clouds of a perfect summer day. But Trool has other moods, and her winter face is by no means her least attractive. Listen to Mr. Patrick Heron, who in his younger days knew the district well:--
‘The yellow mist packed itself dense and clammy about us as we advanced. It had a wersh [raw], unkindly feeling about it, and as we rose higher up the water of Trool it hung in fleecy waves and drifts against the brow of the hills. But what I liked least was the awesome darkness of the sky. The mist was almost white against it wherever there was a break, yet itself was dark and lowering. A dismal, uncanny light that I cared not to look upon, pursued us and just enabled us to see.’ (The Raiders)


It is worth while to adventure Trool thus, in the gloom of an oncoming snowstorm. The glen grows all indigo blue, crossed with wisps and streamers of whirling white. Beneath the loch lies black as night in the trough at the bottom of its precipices. You throw a stone down from a projecting arm of roadway, and it is lost to sight long before it reaches the water. Then, to quote Mr. Patrick again--
 ‘The snow flew thicker, but in a curious, uncertain way, as though little breezes were blowing it back from the ground. A flake would fall softly down till it neared the earth, then suddenly reel and swirl, rising again with a tossing motion as when a child blows a feather into the air.
‘As we went along the pale purple branches of the trees grew fuzzy with rime, which thickened till every tree was a wintry image of itself carved in whitest marble.’ (The Raiders)


Here is little change indeed, since the days of the Raiders. Yonder torrent glimmering white before us, whose roaring reaches the ear from far, is the Gairland Burn, and the path up its side is no better than of yore. That little low-lying isle in the water at the head of Trool is called Gale Island unto this day. The whaups still pipe overhead. The peats for winter use are stacked by the wayside, and the birds sing as of old in the fringing brushwood about the little bridges.


Standing above Earl Randolph's bridge I too have seen ‘the morning star burning golden-white in a violet sky.’ But all these things are only truly appreciated by dwellers as distinguished from visitors—which makes me fear that many who come to Trool and the country of the lochs solely for a summer day's jaunt, may return with the impression that I exaggerate the wonders of the Raiders' Country. But it is not so. Any shepherd with an open eye will tell you (or at least can tell you) far more wonderful things concerning it than any I have written.


There are pleasant quarters at ‘The House of the Hill,’ and much may be seen from there. But still, that is twelve good miles from Enoch and the Dungeon of Buchan, and altogether the old fastness keeps its secret well. Only to the stout of heart and the strong of limb is it granted to enter in and take possession.


Now at long and last we are out on the ‘wide good road,’ along which we can set our faces towards Newton-Stewart and Cree Bridge. As of old there are pleasant farm-houses about us, where the cocks are crowing near and far, and the blue reek goes up very friendly into the sunshine—and the name of one of these is still Borgan, ‘not far from a bridge where the waters come down tumbling white.’


Of Newton-Stewart and of Creetown I have little to say. The former is the natural gateway and distributing point for much enchanted ground. It has good hotels, clean streets, and contains one of the most intellectual populations in the south. It was one of the last strongholds of Cameronianism in Galloway, and as a boy I learned much from the minister of Creebridge, the Rev. James Goold. But, to tell the truth, I am never easy in a town, even in a small one. I prefer to be out with Sweetheart on the spinning wheel, or a-foot on the heather with a staff in my hand and a camera on my back. Therefore let us be off! 


‘Soon we are crossing a pleasant land open to the south and the sun, with cornfields blinking in the hazy light, and reaping-machines 'gnarring ' and clicking cheerfully on every slope. Past Ravenshall we go, where the latest Scottish representative of the Chough or Red-legged Crow were, a few years ago, still to be found—a beautiful but unenterprising bird, long since shouldered out of his once wide fields and lordships by the rusty underbred democracy of the Rook. A little streamlet ‘seeps' its way down through the ambient granite. It is sacred to the memory of a good man, who for years carried his drinking-cup in his pocket that he might use it here. It is the very spot. Ah! no more will Sir James Caird, greatest of agriculturists and most lovable of men, pursue his pastoral avocations—'watering his flocks,' as he loved to say, by taking out his guests to taste 'the best water in the Stewartry,' at this favoured well by the wayside.


‘Refreshed by a draught, we mounted again and the long clean street of the Ferry town sinks behind us. We climb up and up till we find ourselves immediately beneath the Creetown railway station, where signals in battle array are flanked against the sky; then down a long descent to the shore levels at Palnure. It is now nearly four in the afternoon, and we pause at the entrance of the long hill road to New Galloway, uncertain whether to attempt it or no. A man drives along in a light spring-cart. Of him we inquire regarding the state of the road.
‘Ye're never thinkin' o' takin' that bairn that lang weary road this nicht?' he asks.
‘It seems that the road is fatally cut up with the carting of wood, that much is a mere moorland track, and the rest of it unridable. This might do for a man, but it will not do for our little Sweetheart at four o'clock of a September day. Therefore we thank our informant, who races us, unsuccessfully but good-humouredly, along the fine level road toward Newton-Stewart, which smokes placidly in its beautiful valley as the goodwives put on the kettles for their 'Four-hours' tea.


‘Here we are just in time to wait half-an-hour for the train —as usual. During this period the Little Maid became exceedingly friendly with every one. She went and interviewed a very affable station-master, hand in hand with whom she paraded the platform as if she had known him intimately all her life.’ (Sweetheart Travellers)


There is, besides, at Newton-Stewart, a lovely walk up to the Parish Kirk of Minnigaff, one of the most picturesquely situated in Galloway. Also the surroundings are kept with much taste and feeling for natural fitness. I do not know who is responsible for this, but whosoever it may be, I make them or him my very respectful compliments. It was not always thus—in so far at least as the clachan is concerned. Minnigaff is now only a pretty, wholly original suburb of Newton-Stewart. But it is far older than its neighbour across the way, and for long resisted the march of improvement. Something like this was its condition at the time of ‘The Levellers.’


 ‘The clachan of Minnigaff,’ writes the chronicler, ‘was certainly one of the most ancient in Galloway, and at that time it resembled nothing so much as a boulder-strewn hillside, with the spaces between the blocks of stone rudely roofed over and thatched with brown heather and yellow oat-straw. A few of these huts had their gables to the road which passed through up the left bank of the Water of Cree, but the greater number were set at any angle, as if showered from a pepper-castor.


‘But whether duly oriented or dispersed at random, every domicile possessed another and often far larger erection before its door. This was the family midden—those edifices which in these latter days wise men have begun to study for what they tell of the life of the folk of bygone ages, but which, when considered contemporaneously and by means of the ordinary senses, are not pleasant objects for prolonged contemplation. These Minnigaff middens, I say, were in nearly every case larger than the parent house, or compound of dwelling and cattle-shed, whose inhabitants, human and bestial, had supplied the materials for its erection. Most of these middens, also, were set like mountainous islands in a sea of liquid green filth, where ducks dabbled and squattered all day, and in which patient calves stood winking the flies from their inflamed eyes, or to all appearance enjoying the coolness and the light aromatic breezes, as much as though they had been chewing the cud knee-deep in some rippling river or lily-bordered lake.


N.B. The Dark o' the Moon (1902) tells this story and is the setting for my Duchrae Bank posts - of which, more to come as soon as the weather turns poor and I spend a day indoors!