Celebrating Crockett Country
125 years ago this year, with the publication of The Raiders, Galloway saw its first tourist boom. The area became known as 'Crockett Country' and was a popular destination for many years for fans of his work, looking for the places that feature in his Galloway novels and stories. With 2019 also being the 160th anniversary of his birth, I set my mind to the task of working out how to do something suitably commemorative.
Since Crockett is the most quotable of writers, and since his love of the Galloway landscape rings through in his writing, I wanted to make a written tribute. Thus:160 quotes for 160 years. Celebrating Crockett Country was devised.
Why use slates? In the first instance, I have a load of them kicking around following a recent re-roofing. They struck me as organically natural enough to leave in a landscape without being offensive. Secondly, the idea of ‘laying slates’ suggested itself as a creative analogy.
Only once I had embarked upon the task of finding relevant quotes (a job made much easier by the work I’ve already done in the volumes of ‘Discovering Crockett’s Galloway’ ) did I turn to Crockett’s writing for further rationale, at which point I found out that he had a relationship with slates beyond the ordinary:
'There is a huge slate, now deeply sunk in beech-wood, on which, when that beech was young, I used to sit swinging my legs into space and reading every book which I could beg, borrow or steal'.
That sounded like just the encouragement I needed. It's great to think there's an immediate link, and that Crockett understood that slates could be used in creative ways. We are all quite used to the concept of slates in the schoolroom. Crockett mentions them in many contexts as an integral part of his Galloway childhood.
And with Crockett, there’s always romance… 'it was this very girl who thus saw the landscape waver and melt into a grey blur, like a sum on a boy's slate at close of school,' and 'It was all a dream. This tall young lady never swung her feet over a tree branch, sitting on a slate stool.'
Since Crockett is the most quotable of writers, and since his love of the Galloway landscape rings through in his writing, I wanted to make a written tribute. Thus:160 quotes for 160 years. Celebrating Crockett Country was devised.
Why use slates? In the first instance, I have a load of them kicking around following a recent re-roofing. They struck me as organically natural enough to leave in a landscape without being offensive. Secondly, the idea of ‘laying slates’ suggested itself as a creative analogy.
Only once I had embarked upon the task of finding relevant quotes (a job made much easier by the work I’ve already done in the volumes of ‘Discovering Crockett’s Galloway’ ) did I turn to Crockett’s writing for further rationale, at which point I found out that he had a relationship with slates beyond the ordinary:
'There is a huge slate, now deeply sunk in beech-wood, on which, when that beech was young, I used to sit swinging my legs into space and reading every book which I could beg, borrow or steal'.
That sounded like just the encouragement I needed. It's great to think there's an immediate link, and that Crockett understood that slates could be used in creative ways. We are all quite used to the concept of slates in the schoolroom. Crockett mentions them in many contexts as an integral part of his Galloway childhood.
And with Crockett, there’s always romance… 'it was this very girl who thus saw the landscape waver and melt into a grey blur, like a sum on a boy's slate at close of school,' and 'It was all a dream. This tall young lady never swung her feet over a tree branch, sitting on a slate stool.'
Crockett's trademark Scots humour is also in evidence:
'I yince kenned o' a man that washed his face and neck—and him no used to it like. And’ (here the sheriff's officer lowered his voice and spoke very slowly and impressively) ‘that verra day a slate fell aff a roof and killed him dead on the spot!’
And
‘My mither says they gang to be drovers an' packmen, an' mak' sillar like slate stanes!’
Writing on slates has, of course, gone out of fashion in the schoolroom. But it’s a good and familiar medium for writing. And with the magic of acrylic paint pens, it is possible to make the writing waterproof and thus suitable for outdoor slate ‘laying.’ So I embarked upon my project to celebrate Crockett Country. And I hope you will join me by undertaking your own Galloway Adventure this summer. The project is called #GoCrocketteering and offers you the opportunity to 'find' quote slates in the landscape, upload your #SlateSelfie to social media and win free ebooks ,if you Register here.
The very origination of this ‘slate laying’ celebration owes not a little to the modus operandi of Banksy… call this Galloway’s answer to Banksy if you will – Slatesy, perhaps. And who better than Crockett to instantiate this response. All 160 slates will be laid at the Laurieston Memorial at 7pm on Wednesday 26th June, from where local 'slate layers' will pick them up and deposit them in the appropriate locations. If you want to become a slate layer (between June 26th and July 26th please email gallowayraiders@gmail.com for more information).
Cally Phillips
'I yince kenned o' a man that washed his face and neck—and him no used to it like. And’ (here the sheriff's officer lowered his voice and spoke very slowly and impressively) ‘that verra day a slate fell aff a roof and killed him dead on the spot!’
And
‘My mither says they gang to be drovers an' packmen, an' mak' sillar like slate stanes!’
Writing on slates has, of course, gone out of fashion in the schoolroom. But it’s a good and familiar medium for writing. And with the magic of acrylic paint pens, it is possible to make the writing waterproof and thus suitable for outdoor slate ‘laying.’ So I embarked upon my project to celebrate Crockett Country. And I hope you will join me by undertaking your own Galloway Adventure this summer. The project is called #GoCrocketteering and offers you the opportunity to 'find' quote slates in the landscape, upload your #SlateSelfie to social media and win free ebooks ,if you Register here.
The very origination of this ‘slate laying’ celebration owes not a little to the modus operandi of Banksy… call this Galloway’s answer to Banksy if you will – Slatesy, perhaps. And who better than Crockett to instantiate this response. All 160 slates will be laid at the Laurieston Memorial at 7pm on Wednesday 26th June, from where local 'slate layers' will pick them up and deposit them in the appropriate locations. If you want to become a slate layer (between June 26th and July 26th please email gallowayraiders@gmail.com for more information).
Cally Phillips