Travel broadens the mind

​Transport changed significantly during Crockett's lifetime and this is reflected in his writing.  As I have written elsewhere, he was born in the age of the railways, with which he had strong family connections.
 
Yet he excels in showing us the slower pace of life.  In his youth he walked, and rode in carts. His characters roam the hills and glens over many a mile no matter the weather or the ground underfoot.
 
Sweetheart Travellers describes several cycling adventures in the Glenkens which the adult Crockett took with his firstborn daughter Maisie (Sweetheart) on a Humber Beeston Tricycle. And later in Sweethearts at Home he observes the passage of time noting that his daughter ‘is now ‘nineteen and tall. She would be the death of her poor father (and of the machine) at the very first hill. Now she rides a ‘free-wheel’ of her own’.
 
If his childhood was marked by the coming of railways, his adulthood was marked by the  advent of the car.  Crockett writes extensively about the perils of the new fangled motorised transport in Sweethearts at Home, reminiscing about ‘When the Roads Were Sweet, Safe and Silent.’  He observes:
‘Then we had the world to ourselves, save for a red farm cart or so. Then there were no motor-cars, no motor-buses, no clappering insolent monocycles! It was in some wise the rider's age of gold. The country still lay waste and sweet and silent about him. The ignoble ‘toot-toot’ and rhinoceros snort of the pursuing monster was unknown...
...Get out of the way, all you mean little people!’ was not yet the commonest of highway sounds. The green hedgerows were not hidden under a grey dust veil. The Trossachs, the Highlands, the English lakes, and our own fair Galloway roads were not splashed with the iridescent fragrance of petrol. Ah, we took Time by the forelock... in those old days when the hawthorn was untainted and the wayside honeysuckles still gave forth a good smell.’
 
It’s safe to say Crockett is not a fan of the car. He concludes:
‘I love my friends who are tied to these chariot wheels. But I fear for them. Temptation is great. Easy is the descent of Avernus, aided by a smart chauffeur, who wants to give you ‘the value of your money’ in speed and the survival of the fittest: id est, of himself and you!
Better, far better, to take pack on back, pilgrim staff in hand, and then—to the woods and the hills with Sweetheart and me, where never ‘teuf-teuf’ can be heard, nor petrol perfume the land.’

Despite (or perhaps because of) his aversion to this mode of transport, Crockett writes the first car chase in fiction. His 1907 novel Vida– The Iron Laird of Kirktown, features a chase from St John’s Town of Dalry to Newton Stewart across the Galloway moors. It precedes Buchan’s Thirty Nine Steps chase (over remarkably similar ground) by a decade. Buchan’s chase is better known simply because The Thirty Nine Steps is better known than Vida. But if you want a great Galloway car chase – turn to Crockett.  He evokes the wonder and danger of the motor car in the Galloway landscape thus:
‘I ran the Mercedes at his, as if to pass, and I could see his head already ducking low to avoid the bullet. Then I manoeuvered to take him behind at full speed, in which case I would have thrown him high in the air even if I had not exploded both cars. But the Mercedes ran little risk because of its great size and weight. So pleased was I with this play that the solitary house called Clatteringshaws came too soon in sight. He looked anxiously at the dyke, at the little garden, at the shark backs of purplish-grey rock. But no one came out at the noise of our racing wheels. With a yell I rushed him, and in a moment we were past and out on the moor again. ‘Yes, I played with him as a cat does with a mouse, now surging along as if to end him, and anon drawing slowly off. But a mile or two further there is a curious dip in the road down which we raced. A tall obelisk doubtless set there in memory of some great fighter of times long past-perhaps the Black George of Galloway-crowned a little heather mount to the right...

...‘I could see the yellow French car slacken speed as it took the hill opposite. On the contrary the weight of my Mercedes carried her to the top with unabated force. He needed fuel, too, and was beginning to know it. Before me I saw the wide country spread to a horizon of low whale-backed ridges with the rocks I have spoken of (called 'clints'), all about-a dreary place, but fit for my work-that which the little cold hands of Katarina on my wrists called me to do. There was also a long ditch showing black among the turfy heather, all gashed into deep cracks and proper for my purpose as if it had been made so...

...‘Then because it was time to end I caused the heavy Mercedes to sweep up abreast of the lighter French car, from the right side. It was a narrow way. Fair on the chassis a little before the rear wheel I struck, and our weight and force turned the yellow car over into a little ravine.’


In Crockett’s childhood it was the red farm cart that provided transport for his family as they travelled from Duchrae to the Cameronian Kirk in Castle Douglas on Sundays. He describes it in In A Galloway Herd:
‘The ‘Buik’ being over, the red cart rattled to the door to convey such of the church-goers as were not able to walk all the weary miles to the Cameronian kirk in Cairn Edward. The stalwart, long-legged sons had cut across a shorter way by the Big Hoose and the Deeside kirk… The clean red farm cart rattled into the town of Cairn Edward at five minutes past eleven… Times had not been good of late, and for some years, indeed, ever since the imposition of the tax on light-wheeled vehicles, the ‘tax-cart’ had slumbered wheelless in the back of the peat-shed, and the Drumquhat folk had driven a well-cleaned, heavy wheeled cart both to kirk and market.’
 
The young Walter, and we assume the young Sam Crockett, ‘nominally accompanied the cart, and occasionally he had seated himself on the clean straw which filled its bottom; but most of the time this was far too fatiguing an occupation for him. On the plea of walking up the hills, he ranged about on either side of the highway, scenting the ground like a young collie. He even gathered flowers when his ‘grandfather’ was not looking,’
 
Walking long distances was common in Crockett’s day. He observes: ‘As characters, I do not think that any in all Galloway impressed my boyish mind so much as the three Laurieston old maids, Mary, Jennie, and Jean M'Haffie. I have written of them time and again.
... They trudged fourteen miles every Sabbath day, with their dresses ‘feat and snod’ and their linen like the very snow, to listen to the gospel preached according to their consciences. They were all the smallest of women, but their hearts were great.’
 
If you are interested in the history (and history of transport) in the Glenkens there is much to be gleaned about turnpikes and farm carts in A Galloway Herd. Saunders M’Quhirr, brings Wattie’s mother back from London on the red cart in a chapter titled ‘The Serpent in Paradise’ where he describes the drive back to Laurieston in some detail.
‘One of the turnpikes led westward to the ferry over the Dee Water, through rocky glens and by gleaming hill tarns, while the other continued over the moors and by the loch-side to the village of Whinnyliggate. A stone's throw before the meeting of the roads was a little bridge over an insignificant but irresponsible brook—a burn which executed the most astonishing cuttings and curves.’
 
Descriptions of The Green Dook in The Banner of Blue, and road mending in Kit Kennedy offer more insights into the Glenkens of Crockett’s era.
 
The byways of the Glenkens may seem unremarkable if you whizz past in a car. Look through Crockett’s eyes however and you will see an entirely different place and pace – as he draws you into the Glenkens of a hundred and fifty years ago. While the roads have been upgraded extensively, if you get out in the countryside on foot or by bike, with Crockett as your guide you will have an entirely different experience.
 
Cally Phillips

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