We went up through a green archway to a hill-top which had been kept clear of trees when the woods were planted. From it we looked away across the loch and the cultivated lands, with the peat-reek of the village rising blue from its whitewashed ‘lums’ between us and the far north hills. (The Loves of Miss Anne)
 
When we look at a natural landscape, we often assume it has always looked this way. In the case of trees and forests of course, this is seldom the case. While trees can live hundreds of years, plantations come and go and forests are ‘managed’.  The Glenkens is no different.  Crockett mentions trees frequently in his novels and stories and draws pictures for the imagination of how the landscape looked in the area, throughout history. 
 
‘There are many woods of pine and oak about the Duchrae; and we went through one of them to an ancient moat-hill or place of defence on a hillside, with a ditch about it of three or four yards wideness, which overlooked the narrow pack road by the water's edge.’ (Men of the Moss Hags)
 
Inevitably, Crockett describes the landscape as he experienced it himself, so that in some of his historic novels he is speculative. However, in his Covenanting novel Men of the Moss Hags he singles out a tree you can still find today at Earlstoun Castle.  The Earlstoun Oak is sanctuary for Sandy Gordon. Crockett tells us:
 
‘Sandy has betaken himself to his great oak on the border of the policies, where with his skill in forest craft he had built himself a platform among the solidest masses of the leaves. There he abode during the day, with a watch set on the Tod Hill and another on the White Hill above the wood of Barskeoch. Only at the even, when all things were quiet, would he venture to slip down and mix with us about the fire. But he swung himself swiftly back again to his tree by a rope, if any of the dragoons were to be heard of in the neighbourhood…
 
...My mother stood on the step and waved me off with no tear in her eye; and even poor Jean Hamilton, from the window whence she could see the great oak where my brother, her husband, was in hiding, caused a kerchief to show white against the grey wall of Earlstoun.’
 
Through his description of historic trees, Crockett helps us reach back into the past.  
 
In his 18th century novel The Loves of Miss Anne,  Crockett draws us a picture of the age of ‘improvement’. Here he takes a controversial position, suggesting that the cutting down of trees constitutes an act of vandalism against nature.
 
‘once when Sir Tempest had need of money and called on my father to mark the worth of a thousand pounds of trees the forester cried out, ‘I canna! Oh, I canna! It wad break my heart to see them comin' doon! And to ken that it was me that had condemned them to dee!’
But when Sir Tempest took council with another, even the Cairn Edward [Castle Douglas] wood-merchant, and when the two went to and fro with a pot of red paint among my father's choicest growths, it is said that the old man wept aloud.
 ‘Rayther than that should happen,’ he declared, breaking in upon them, ‘I will e'en mark them mysel’. But send that man awa' or I will no be responsible for the bill-hook in my richt hand!’
The man was sent away, and when he came back my father had marked (as the wood-merchant said) ‘a lot of rubbage hardly worth burnin', though guid eneuch doubtless for pit props.’
...so complete did the tyranny of my father over the Grennoch woods become, that the nominal master thereof in his later years hardly dared to step aside from the path to cut himself a walking-stick, without asking permission of his chief forester!’
 
Crockett’s use of Galloway dialect here supports his sympathetic position, poignantly illustrating the relationship between the local man and his natural world - threatened by the man of commerce and money. In the process he reveals many small but fascinating details of social history.
 
Above all we see that MacTaggart knows trees as his friends and nurtures them thus:
‘In the woods my father talked all the time to himself in quick runs of soliloquy, thus: ‘He will no do, this yin! He's no drivin' his roots far eneuch under! The first big wind frae the west, a pickle snaw on his airms, and he'll be whammelt—ay, sirs, whammelt! I'm speakin'. Even though he's whisperin' in pride of leaves and spreadin' himsel' like a green bay-tree!’
 
Crockett reminds us of the transience of all natural things:
‘Perhaps it was of a fine young fir he was thus delivering himself, shaped like a graceful pyramid. But sure enough the wind came, and the snow, and together they beat upon that fir, and the place that knew it once now knows it no more for ever. It underwent the whirring saw years before its time, even as my father had said.
 
I think Crockett more than gives Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders a run for its money in The Loves of Miss Anne.  His figurative conclusion: ‘A man is like a tree,' says I, ‘and the heart o' man is deceitfu' abune everything and desperately rotten!' Man, I could smell yon yin a mile aff!’ strikes home clearly in the context of the story.  Equally powerful is: ‘he would none of my sympathy, shaking off my hand as if it had been a leaf fallen from a tree.’
 
We hear Crockett’s own voice most clearly through his narrative voice:
‘There was the world of birds and shy wild tree-dwellers, of rustling leaves also, of far-descending roots steeped in moisture and hidden in the rich red earth, of tall clean trunks, smooth all round save on the north side, where the moss clings and the lichen protects it from the winter blast—and then above, high in the garish sunshine, the final coronal of leaves. In such a world I loved to dream, sitting hushed, immovable as one of the grey oak stems.’
 
In ‘EPILOGUE: In Praise of Galloway’  (Bog Myrtle and Peat, 1894) Crockett removes man entirely from the story, focussing instead on the relationship between the birds and the woodland as the world transforms from night to dawn.  It is poignant and humorous in equal measure.
 
Crockett’s many descriptions of the Duchrae woods allow us to see the area accurately as it was in his own childhood.  An inveterate climber – he boasted of climbing the walls of Threave and in later life he climbed in the Swiss Alps - his descriptions of climbing trees in his works always ring true. In the story ‘Love Among the Beech Leaves’ from Love Idylls   a young Rab Christie (surely a version of Crockett)  indulges in some youthful lovemaking – and reading – up a tree.
 
‘’There were three great beeches standing in the old courtyard, making a dream of rustling leaves, and sprinkling a pleasant shade over the great iron bar to which the horses were yoked when the mill was to be set agoing. As she passed under the trees something fell at her feet, narrowly missing her head. Bess MacAndrew sprang her own length aside, with a shrill cry. There was something moving among the leaves, and that which had fallen at her feet was a book.
From overhead came the voice of the new loon.
‘Lassie fetch me up that book. It'll save me comin' doom’
‘I daresay,’ said Bess. ‘Come doon and get the book. It'll save me comin' up.’
‘Verra weel,’ said crafty Rab, ‘I can do withoot it; but it's juist graund up here!’
‘What are ye doin' there?’ continued Bess, standing on tiptoe and peering up. She could see nothing, however, except a pair of legs waving in the air. It was certainly very mysterious and attractive.
'I can see Criffel an' the three Cairnsmores, an' the dominie at the schule, an' a' the boys playin' 'Steal the Bonnets'! Oh, it's graund!’
‘I wish I could see!’ said Bess MacAndrew wistfully.
‘There's made a bonny seat up here where ye can sit and swing, and the wind rocks ye, an' the leaves birl aboot ye and tell ye stories, an' ye can sit an' read—splendid stories—ghosts and murders and fairies an'…’
‘I'm comin' up,’ said Bess.
‘Wi, than!’ said the invisible in the tree; ‘fetch the book wi ye!
Soon Rab and Bess were seated side by side far up in the great beech tree. Rab had fixed a slate in a curious but perfectly safe position between two thick branches. 
 
The trees of Crockett’s Glenkens are beeches, oaks and hazel rather than the fir plantations we are more familiar with today. They evoke nature’s majesty rather than commercial possibility.  Yet we are reminded of the transience of the natural world through mention of The Bogle Thorn. The tree fell victim to the road straightening alongside of the A762.  A photograph exists, but it is also immortalised in fiction through ‘The Little Green Man’ (Sweethearts At Home). 
 
Crockett valued the trees and woodlands of the Glenkens and his writing allows us to see nature as it was in times gone by. What the eye cannot see, the imagination can still enjoy. 
 
Cally Phillips

‘They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a mighty rain upon the hills.’
 
Crockett, like all Glenkens natives, knew the firm relationship between the hills and the lowland rivers.  He often writes about rivers and lanes, and the floods they carry into communities. For those who are unfamiliar with the term ‘lane’, Crockett describes it thus, in the context of Laurieston (fictionalised as Whinnyliggate) in The Loves of Miss Anne:
 
‘To this day there is a ‘lane’ which cuts the village in two about the middle. Now in Galloway this is not a woodland walk, but a slow, sleepy, peaty stream’.
 
The Glenkens lanes Crockett writes about are the Cooran, Eglin, Dee, Duchrae and Grenoch.  (Also spelled Grennoch or Grannoch). These all feed into the River Dee.
 
The Cooran Lane is perhaps the most famous (and dangerous).  It sits by the Silver Flowe and plays a large part in The Raiders.  The novel’s hero Patrick Heron observes:
 
‘It is not for any man to venture lightly at nightfall, or even in broad daylight, among the links of the Cooran, as it saunters its way through the silver flow of Buchan. The old royal fastness keeps its secret well.’
The Eglin lane is also described in The Raiders as a waymarker towards Cave Macaterick in the Dungeon hills:  ‘As in the days of the Covenant, however, the way to it is still by the side of a burn which they call the Eglin Lane, a long bare water, slow and peaty, but with some trout of size in it.’
 
While in the non fictional Raiderland Crockett describes Dee lane thus:
 
‘you will find the quaintest and most delicious bridge across the narrows of Woodhall Loch, just where the Lane of Dee runs down to feed the Black Water of Dee through a paradise of pebbly shallows and reedy pools. Still black stretches they are also, all abloom with the loveliest white water-lilies anchored in lee of beds of blonde meadowsweet and red willow-herb.
Such a heavenly place for a boy to spend his youth in!’
 
And from childhood memory he also recalls how: ‘the Lane of Duchrae, beginning its course towards the Black Water, went soughing and murmuring over the slippery pebbles just as it had been wont to do a good quarter-century before.’
 
In the historical Men of the Moss Hags, he gives a clear description of Grenoch Lane:
 
‘we came to the place that is called the Moat of the Duchrae Bank, and found much people already gathered there. It is a very lonely place on the edge of a beautiful and still water, called the Lane of Grenoch. In the midst of the water, and immediately opposite to the moat, there is an island, called the Hollan Isle, full of coverts and hiding-places among hazel bushes, which grow there in thick matted copses. Beyond that again there are only the moors and the mountains for thirty miles. The country all about is lairy and boggy, impossible for horses to ride; while over to the eastward a little, the main road passes to Kells and Carsphairn, but out of sight behind the shoulder of the hill.’
 
In The Dark o’ the Moon this is the designated site of the Levellers camp:
 ‘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.’
 
More descriptions of the local flora and fauna at Grenoch Lane are found in The Lilac Sunbonnet:
 
‘Loch Grannoch stretched away three miles to the south, basking in alternate blue and white, as cloud and sky mirrored themselves upon it. The first broad rush of the ling was climbing the slopes of the Crae Hill above — a pale lavender near the loch-side, deepening to crimson on the dryer slopes where the heath-bells grew shorter and thicker together. The wimpling lane slid as silently away from the sleeping loch as though it were eloping and feared to awake an angry parent. The whole range of hill and wood and water was drenched in sunshine. Silence clothed it like a garment — save only for the dark of the shadow under the bridge.’
 
In this novel, the ploughman Ebie Farrish appreciates his natural surroundings;
‘He stood long looking into the Lane water, which glided beneath the bridge and away down to the Dee without a sound.’Ebie knows that all that water has to go somewhere. 
 
While there is a raw beauty in Crockett’s description of the lanes and lochs, he also knows the perilous power of water in flood.  ‘The Lammas Preaching’ (in The Stickit Minister) is a humorous story of a minister from the Machars who sets out to preach in the Glenkens.  The narrator sets the scene:
‘The burns were running red with the mighty July rain when Douglas Maclellan started over the meadows and moors to preach his sermon at the farmtown of Cauldshaws. He had thanked the Lord that morning in his opening prayer for 'the bounteous rain wherewith He had seen meet to refresh His weary heritage.'
 
The minister does not appreciate the ferocity of nature, unlike the character (another) Ebie who is detailed to guide him to his pulpit.  On the journey, this Ebie frequently tries to reason with Maclellan, to no avail.  At one point, Maclellan
‘stepped into a deep hole, and his text was suddenly shut within him by the gurgle of moss water in his throat. His arms rose above the surface like the black spars of a windmill. But Ebie Kirgan sculled himself swiftly out, swimming with his shoeless feet, and pushed the minister before him to the further bank—the water gushing out of rents in his clothes as easily as out of the gills of a fish.
The minister stood with unshaken confidence on the bank. He ran peat water like a spout in a thunder plump, and black rivulets of dye were trickling from under his hat down his brow and dripping from the end of his nose.’
 
The minister, confusing pride for trust in his maker, sets himself as greater than nature and refuses to see reason. Crockett clearly mocks him when Ebie,rebuffed time and again observes:
 
'He canna ken what a ‘Skyreburn warnin'’ is— he'll be thinkin' it's some bit Machars burn that the laddies set their whurlie mills in. But he'll turn richt eneuch when he sees Skyreburn roarin' reed in a Lammas flood, I'm thinkin'!’
 
Eventually, nature triumphs. Crockett’s story teaches the minister a lesson about the role of nature in the order of things.  One might interpret it simply as ‘pride goes before a fall’, though for those with greater knowledge of Biblical texts, Crockett offers a more sophisticated interpretation.
 
While ‘The Lammas Preaching’ is high on humour,  ‘The Two Humorists’  is anything but funny. Although Crockett’s narrator wryly observes:  ‘The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake,’ the moral dilemma faced by Nathan during a terrible stormy night is far from amusing. Crockett uses the weather figuratively, allowing the intensity of the flood to reflect Nathan’s own internal struggle:
 
‘Leaving a lighted candle on the table, he opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. The wind met him like a wall. The rain assailed his cheeks and stunned his ears like a volley of bullets. For a full minute he stood exposed to the broad fury of the tempest, slashed by the driving sleet, beaten and deafened into bewilderment by a turmoil of buffeting gusts.’
 
In the process, we are treated to a powerful description of the full force of nature:
‘...ordinarily a clear little rivulet, running lucidly brown and pleasantly at prattle over a pebbly bed... in spite of its apparent innocence, Whinnyliggate Lane was a stream of a dangerous reputation... when the rains descended and the floods came, it sometimes chanced that the inhabitants of the village awoke to find that their prattling babe had become a giant, and that the burn, which the night before had scarce covered the pebbles in its bed, was now roaring wide and strong, thirty feet from bank to bank, crumbling their garden walls, and even threatening with destruction the sacred Midtoon Brig itself.’
 
As well as the lanes, Crockett frequently writes about The Black Water of Dee, which he knew from childhood. It features in the supernatural story ‘A Cry Across the Black Water’ (Bog Myrtle and Peat). Set around Loch Ken and Rhonehouse, the story is evocative of Tennyson and Millais.
 
Like the lanes which feed into it, the Dee flows in and out of many of his stories and novels. The significance of this natural feature of the Glenkens landscape can thus be experienced by readers throughout his Galloway works.
 
Cally Phillips 

Dry stane dykes are still a well loved feature of the Glenkens but their historic significance is often overlooked or under appreciated.  In Crockett’s writing they often represent barriers; social, emotional and psychological as well as physical. As part of the school board ‘revolution’, in ‘The March Dyke’, Crockett describes the locals who ‘gathered outside and roosted on the dyke by dozens, all with long faces and cutty pipes.’
 
There is also a dyke at the quoiting green in ‘That Popish parson fellow’ where:
‘Towards sundown Rob...leaned his arms on a dyke and attended to the points of the game with the air of a past master. Tam Galletly was ringing in the clanking disks, each fair on the pin. Then Pate Miller with his next quoit would ‘raise him oot o' that!’ It was a fine level game, point about, and evens between times. At least twenty miners, mostly shankers, were cheering on their favourites, and the noise was like a menagerie at the time of feeding.’
If you are looking for small detail about Galloway’s social history, Crockett has much to offer.
‘...Muckle Rob said never a word. But he slowly took his arms off the dyke and stepped over into the field. He strode forward towards the rinks... went solemnly to the tee, and kicked out the steel pins at the end of the rink to the back of which the signal paper was tucked. He sent the quoits spinning on their rims into the distant hedge.’
And Crockett is master of the humorous delivery.
 
The historic and socio-political importance of Glenkens dykes is explored in The Dark o’ the Moon, a novel exploring The Galloway Levellers uprising of 1724.  The Galloway Glens Landscape Project exemplar dyke at Kelton Hill pays tribute to the Leveller’s revolt.  In the chapter ‘The Levellers in Council’, Crockett fictionalises the uprising, siting it further north at ‘The Roman Camp’ in Duchrae Woods; attributing a radical speech to the legendary gypsy ‘Blind’ Harry Polwart.  Crockett’s version is presented in good Gallowa’ dialect:
‘We will gang and speak them fair. We will offer to pay ony reasonable sum for the pasturage o' oor kye on the green slopes o' the Bennan, and tell the laird that gin he winna steer us frae the bit plots o' grund that were oor faithers' afore us we will be his faithfu' servants, as in former times.’
After Harry’s rousing speech the plan is set:
‘This very night we will begin our work, and if by the morrow’s morn there remains a stone upon a stone in all the enclosure dykes of Merrick, may I Harry Polwart be hanged for a thief in front o' the Castle o' Kirkcudbright!’
And so: ‘they stood at the place where the campaign was to begin. The Earl's dry-stone dyke stretched away east and west, looming up under the clouded moon vast as the Great Wall of China—though, indeed, it was in no place much more than six feet high.
In silence the Levellers took their places...’
Crockett provides an evocative, closely observed description of the dyke coming down:
‘The huge, sky-mounting ridge of newly built dykes, not yet settled down on its foundations, swayed a moment uncertainly. A few stones toppled over upon the feet of the attacking force, and then with a slow, majestic bend, almost like that of a breaking wave, a furlong of it fell over in one piece, with a far-resounding crash, and lo! the green hill-side again stretched from horizon to horizon unbroken under the moon.’
 
With the final result achieved: ‘Every obnoxious dyke was flat on all the southern estates, and in many cases the landlords patrolled their policies with armed train-bands of their own raising to keep even their park walls intact.’
 
Dykes also have a political aspect in the story ‘Vernor the Traitor’ described during: ‘the wildest times that we had ever had in Galloway—sudden marches during the night, moorland houses searched, half a dozen poor, ignorant, praying lads turned out, some to get their quietus at the dyke-back with a charge of powder and a musket-bullet, the rest to go stringing away to Edinburgh on the backs of sorry nags, their feet tied under the bellies of their horses.’
This reference is to ‘The Killing Times’, about which Crockett wrote extensively.
 
In Crockett’s 19th century Glenkens dykes are also places where poachers leave game and personal disputes are played out. Crockett (in narrative form as one of his finest Glenkens characters, Alec McQuhirr) describes an encounter between Saunders McQuhirr and Peter Chrystie:
‘My father did not answer in words. It was not indeed a time for more words. Instead, he strode forward to the march-dyke and gripped the farmer of Nether Neuk by the neck, who screamed like a throttled hen in the grasp of the executioner… So, with a little jerk of his arm, he sent his opponent flying lightly off the dyke-top, and I heard him fall with a splash into a pool of dirty water on the other side in which the sheep had been washed for months.’
 
While dykes act as barriers in violent disputes, they have another less obvious, figurative significance in Crockett’s stories.   ‘Jumping the dyke’ is an expression still known among Galloway locals. Crockett’s contemporary English readership would miss the sexual reference. On numerous occasions in Crockett’s stories young men and women meet at dykes.  This gave him a coded way to write about what was termed ‘backend o’ the byre’ activities.
 
Lads’ Love offers many examples.  The hero, Alec McQuhirr recounts: ‘early one summer evening I leaped cautiously over the march-dyke from the Hill of Drumquhat, where, theoretically at least, I was engaged in ‘looking the sheep’—that is, numbering them and seeing that none had strayed, fallen into moss-holes, ‘gone visiting,’ or been troubled with ‘mawks.’ I had, however, on this occasion committed the entire flock wholesale to a kind Providence, and now I made my way down the dyke-side to the well of Nether Neuk… Here I waited, with my legs hanging down over the kerb.’
 
Alec’s intention is a love tryst with Nance Chrystie. The orchard dyke affords an appropriate context for the temptation of the lassies. Once again Alec shows off his prowess:
‘Lightly I vaulted over the dyke, without disturbing a single stone (for in those days I was very quick on my feet) and stole like a shadow to the unlicensed entrance.’
But all does not go as he plans as he is confronted by three sisters who tease him.  
‘Goodness me,’ said Nance, ‘what are you doing there, Alec? Laddies like you should be in their bed’s hours and hours since.’
‘He's comed to get you to help him wi’ his lessons for the college, Nance!’ said the Hempie.
‘Ahint the orchard-dyke—wi' you for a tutor, mair like,’ retorted Nance.
 
In Lad’s Love Alec is frequently lurking around dykes with amorous intent. Crockett gives plenty of close detail which works both literally and figuratively: ‘For a long time I stood, fixed and silent, leaning against the rough stones of the dyke, waiting for my love's window to light up…  I withdrew quickly over the dyke and slipped down the orchard hedge till I could see the house of Nether Neuk loom up like a fortalice, behind its beech-trees and the few domed haystacks which were all that remained of last year's crop.’
 
Dykes are part of the history, adventure and definitely the romance of Crockett’s Galloway. In the 18th century Loves of Miss Anne the heroine is described: ‘There was a wildwood grace about my young mistress, and when she moved it was as one who had been used to take the burns in her stride. She gathered her skirts and sprang easily over the crumbling dykes. And if she accepted a hand at a stile, it was for quite another reason than that she needed assistance.’
 
And in ‘The March Dyke, a romance is played out around a dyke.
‘Duncan looked round. Some one was standing by the rough stone dyke within a dozen yards of his summer-seat. It was Grace Hutchison.
Duncan went towards the dyke, taking off his cap as he went—a new cap.
So they stood there, the wall of rough hill-stones between them, but looking into one another's eyes.’
At first meeting the dyke is between them. But as they kiss: ‘the dyke proved too narrow, and in one swift electric touch their old world flew into flinders.
The stone dyke was not any longer between. Duncan Rowallan had overleaped it and stood by the side of Grace Hutchison.’
Crockett’s skill is in close observation, writing powerful descriptions of the natural landscape of the Glenkens, including its dykes. This allows us to see them as he did, be that as historic sites of violence, neighbour disputes, romance or nostalgic memory: ‘On my daily journeyings I often come across the old man of Nether Neuk...  I see him still ambulating querulously about the backs of bieldy dykes and hirpling over the road-side fields. I hear out of the summer woods and spring copses the weary pipe of his ancient refrain.’
 
I hope that after reading Crockett you may never look (or overlook) a Galloway dyke in the same way again!
 
Cally Phillips

'Now the moons of the months are wondrously different...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.’ (The Raiders)


​At the start of his most famous work Crockett observes: ‘It was ever my custom to walk in the full of the moon at all times of the year.’ While he waxes lyrical about the specific features of each monthly moon, he is also interested in describing its absence, that time known as the dark of the moon. Indeed, this was initially his preferred title for The Raiders but he was dissuaded by his publisher who thought it would be too obscure to engage potential readers.  The dark o’ the moon refers to the period just after the new moon each month, when the skies are darkest. These were the best times for smugglers to be abroad. And smugglers are key to many of Crockett’s works.  By 1902 when his fame assured massive readerships, he published the sequel to The Raiders and his title The Dark o’ the Moon went unchallenged.
Smuggling, kidnapping and gypsies feature in both novels. In The Raiders, the kidnapping of heroine May Mischief takes place under the full moon,  while her rescue and the escape takes place on a moonless night.
 ‘It was indeed an uncanny night. The wind shrieked overhead, passing above us in a constant screaming yell, that sometimes sharpened like a whistle and anon dulled into a roar. There was no moon, but the storm-clouds had thinned and anon the mists lifted.’
 
In The Dark o’ the Moon there is another kidnap, and another escape. This time hero  Maxwell Heron (son of the hero and heroine of The Raiders), also escapes from the Dungeon hills led by Blind Harry in the black of the night.  The stumbling, dangerous journey is described in great detail until –  ‘the first breaking of the blackness  -not dawn, but the false dawn that looks out of the windows of the east for a moment to see what kind of morning it is and then forthwith goes back to bed again.’ …
 
They finally arrive, at daybreak at a place ‘out of the very heart of the wilds… where…  the heather grew right up to the door on all sides. The name of the place was Craigencailzie and there was a well-marked trace from it across the waste to the great Irish drove road which runs by the New Town of Galloway to Dumfries.’   Crockett’s natural description of the Galloway hills is equally powerful during day and night, whether the moon is full or absent.
 
Some of us are night owls and some of us early birds. Crockett’s writing features descriptions of day, night and the transition between, of which he writes:   ‘ I never miss a sunrise, if I can help it - though, truth to tell, I would hardly go across the room to see a sunset. Which, of course, is a matter of temperament - and partly temper.’  
 
As well as describing the times of the day, he is masterful in his descriptions of the Galloway weather. Anyone who knows the Glenkens is well aware of how quickly the weather can change, and how extreme it can be.  The Loves of Miss Anne is an example where his powerful description of a thunderstorm matches the event itself.   Nothing and no one is spared, as shepherd Dan Mowatt, his dogs and sheep are caught out in a terrible storm: 
 
‘And at that very moment, the whole world beneath them, hitherto shrouded in the milky bluish mist, lighted up into flame. Fire circled them—enclosed them. A white jagged bomb, from which ran streams of infinite brightness, seemed to burst within a few yards... The universe was filled with the astonishing clangour of the thunder, as if the mountains were indeed falling upon one another in anger…
... the rain descended. Not in drops as in the lower world, but as it falls upon the utmost hills, where the rivers are bred, and in storm-time the streams thunder down, gaining as they go, till ere they reach the valleys they have become mighty torrents.
It ‘rained hale water,’ as they say vigorously in Scotland. It fell as if the very windows of heaven, shut since the days of Noah, had been set wide open on purpose.’
 
Crockett stays with this storm, right to the (in this case) bitter end.
 
‘The thunder growled gradually farther and farther away. The bluish glimmer faded out of the air. The lightning came less frequently. The ewes began to rise and shake themselves, bleating questioningly, as they did when they wanted to be let out of the ‘ree’ in the mornings. As the thunder sank into silence Dan could hear, nearer and more powerful, the roar of the many waters tearing the sides of the mountain into gullies and ravines.
Beneath him the clouds sank away, trailing themselves to this side and that in long banks of woolly vapour. A glint of sunshine, sole wandering in the void of whirling mist, lighted the dismal scene.’
 In this story the shepherd has lost more than sheep. Crockett is a nature writer, invariably writes of the power of nature and he appreciates all its colours and moods.  While he evokes romance, he always balances it with a realism that allows us even all these years afterwards, to gain a true picture of the landscape of Galloway, and especially, his heartland, the Glenkens.
 
Cally Phillips

​Dogs appear in many of Crockett’s Galloway novels and he writes about them with humour and deep understanding. He is clearly a dog-lover and appreciates the significant relationship between dog and man in the farming community. How a man treats a dog, and how he relates to a dog, is seen to be indicative of his character. That said, Crockett is not sentimental in his portrayal of dogs even though there is much humour to be had when a dog is in the scene. Like the human characters Crockett writes about, the dogs often have hard lives and come to sticky ends.
 
In The Black Douglas we encounter what might be a wolfhound, but is presented as a werewolf. Another ‘big’ dog that we come across is in The Raiders and is Silver Sand’s own wolfhound, known as Quharrie. This dog may well have been the template for Crockett’s contemporary Arthur Conan Doyle’s own Hound of the Baskervilles.
 
The young Patrick Heron describes his meeting with Silver Sand’s dog:
‘Silver Sand introduced me to Quharrie— that terrible dog—making him tender me a great paw in a manner absurdly solemn, which made me kin and blood-brother to him all the days of my life. And I have received many a gift which I have found less useful, as you shall hear.’


Most often the dogs found in Crockett’s stories are collies, ranging from pure sheep dogs to those of more dubious parentage. They are usually given familiar names and we encounter a number of incarnations of Tweed, Trusty, Tyke, Yarrow and Royal in various stories.
 
In Rose of the Wilderness, Tweed and Tusker show their skills as sheepdogs.  In The Loves of Miss Anne, Dan Weir’s sheepdogs Talla and Kilter stand guard during the storm when he abandons the flock and get struck by lightening for their pains.  It is a poignant description:
‘They were still and stiff—both of them stricken by the lightning. But first they had brought in the ewes and the lambs— when the shepherd himself had deserted them, brought them where they would be safe from the storm, from the torrents that seamed the mountains every way and from the terror that would have scattered them hither and thither over the waste.’
 
In The Moss Troopers the aptly named collie Whitefoot is skilled far beyond that of a sheepdog and is central to the subterfuge. He carries messages between Stair Garland and Patsy, and is faithful unto death.
 
In The Banner of Blue, Anton Macmillan’s dogs are described with humour for their wisdom, and the descriptions ring true for anyone who has owned a collie (or two).
‘When Anton appeared in the little yard where were his thatched byre and the tiny ‘office houses’ which his own hands had built out of the granite boulders of Bennangour there in the midst were his collies Tod and Tyke—with Messan the novice aforesaid, now grown wiser and vacuating the hearth of his own proper initiative without application of the force majeure…
...Is he going to the kirk or is he not going to the kirk? Tyke and Tod cocked their wise heads and thought. You can easily see a good collie think. No professor does it more obviously when asked a question in class.’

Crockett shows dogs to be a vital part of the working rural community and as valued companions to his boy heroes.   For example: ‘Kit Kennedy admired his mother above anything on earth—and loved her too, almost as much as his red dog Trusty.’
 
‘... as surely as the Wednesday and Saturday came round Kit would be found at play on the heights of the Craigs, rolling heathery wildernesses with the most fascinating nooks and corners, hiding-places and rocky watch-towers, that could possibly be imagined by the mind of boy. Here with Royal and Tweed, his satellite dogs. Kit kept his vigil, and was always the first to discern, far down the dusty road, the advent of Heather Jock and his donkey. ‘ Kit Kennedy has a whole chapter devoted to Kit and Royal playing truant which is an absolute tour de force of Crockett’s writing skills.

Crockett writes about real dogs from real experience, with a compelling humour. Dogs especially play a large part in the anarchy and chaos of the life of a boy. Crazy, the collie in The Dew of Their Youth is companion to Duncan and described as ‘our rough, red house-collie Crazy’  His shortcomings are ably described when Duncan and his grandmother go to visit ‘The Great House.’
‘After she had duly lectured the Widow Tolmie, she bade her in all amity ‘Good-day,’ and started to reform Crazy, who had been gyrating furiously across her path, trying apparently to bite his tail out by the roots. Crazy was, it appeared, a useless, good-for-nothing beast, a disgrace to a decent Elder’s house, and I was ordered to stone him home.’
The boy narrator sees it differently and continues:
‘ Crazy was my friend, my companion, my joy. Stone Crazy! It was not to be thought of. He would certainly consider it some new kind of game and run barking after the missiles.’

Crockett’s dogs are familiars in the kirk and the schoolroom as well as out on the hills. In The Stickit Minister, schoolmaster Duncan Duncanson is himself a victim of the figurative ‘black dog’ of depression. This manifests itself in violence at the arrival of Andrew Tait’s dog who: ‘in the height of the turmoil a great brown head presented itself at the door. It was the head of big red 'Trusty' the half-collie half-St.Bernard which sometimes accompanied Andrew Tait to the school, and played about outside till that youth got free of his bondage, when the pair went joyously homewards…
Trusty never was much of a scholar, in spite of so long frequenting the village academy.’

Another Royal features in ‘A Minister’s Day’. The young Wattie debates the question of whether dog’s have souls with the minister Richard Cameron, and makes a good account of himself.
‘Well,’ continued the minister, ‘would you not like to be a herd like Him, and look after men and not sheep?’
‘Sheep need to be lookit after as weel,’ said Walter.
‘But sheep have no souls to be saved!’ said Richard Cameron.
‘Dowgs hae!’ asserted Walter stoutly.
‘What makes you say so?’ said the minister indulgently. He was out for a holiday.
‘Because, if my dowg Royal hasna a soul, there's a heap o' fowk gangs to the kirk withoot!’
‘What does Royal do that makes you think that he has a soul?’ asked the minister.
‘Weel, for ae thing, he gangs to the kirk every Sabbath, and lies in the passage, an' he'll no as muckle as snack at a flee that lichts on his nose—a thing he's verra fond o' on a week day. An' if it's no' yersel' that's preachin', my gran'faither says that he'll rise an' gang oot till the sermon's by.’
The minister felt keenly the implied compliment.’

This story is re-told and expanded upon in A Galloway Herd where as well as Royal we are introduced to Yarrow and Donald the sheep. Donald also features in Kit Kennedy especially in the famous ‘roup’ scene.  Another Yarrow features in Love Idylls in the story ‘Fitting of the Peats’ where he is Bell McLurg’s trusted but half-blind collie.

Generally dogs are regarded as important by Crockett’s characters, but in Lads’ Love we see a darker side. Rab Anderson’s poaching dogs are called ‘You’ and ‘You there’ which evidences how little importance he gives them, despite the fact that without them he wouldn’t be in business. But there is worse to come. Rab Anderson is also known to steal dogs, holding them to ransom and drowning them if their owners do not cough up. As Wattie Anderson finds out in A Galloway Herd, kidnapping is not just reserved for people.

Dick, the terrier in Cinderella is less likeable than collies. He belongs to Hester’s cousin Tom and is a manifestation of the cruelty visited by the boy on his cousin. Tom sets Dick on Hester’s cat Fluffy. It is a shocking scene:
‘Catch her — this way — at her, Dick! You've got her! Hist —good dog! Sick her then!’
... Hester, with a wild fear suddenly taking possession of her soul, ran at full speed round the greenhouse, past the sun-dial, and there on the narrow ledge of a fence to which she had sprung from the window-sill of the potting-house stood Fluffy her own Fluffy, every hair on end with pain and anger, and her tail well-nigh as thick as her body. She was mewing piteously and flicking an ear that had been bitten through by the yapping fox-terrier which still leaped and snapped below. A drop or two of blood had distilled down and flecked Fluffy's delicate pearl-coloured fur.’
 
Despite this one act of cruelty, if you love dogs you will find many in Crockett’s stories to entertain you.  His descriptions are accurate, funny and sometimes painfully poignant.
 
Cally Phillips
January 2023