Wolves and Monsters

Scotland's top-knot

When this blog appears I shall be nowhere near any electrical device capable of displaying it. I shall be right up in Scotland’s top-knot and while I’m up there, intend to visit Morag. She’s Nessie’s little known sister, who keeps herself to herself in Britain’s deepest stretch of inland water, Loch Morar. The most reported sighting of her was in 1969 when two local men ran into her, literally, while messing about in a boat. One of them hit her with an oar and the other fired his rifle at her— whereupon Morag sank beneath the water and I’m not surprised.

The men described her as being brown with rough skin, nine meters (thirty feet) long and having three dorsal humps. They said her head was thirty centimetres (a foot) wide and she held it forty-six centimetres (18 inches) out of the water— until they so rudely interrupted her.

The most recent sighting of Morag was in 2013, by two holiday-makers, who claimed to have seen her three times in two days. If I’m lucky enough to meet her, I shan’t offer her violence or even take her picture— I shall try to interest her in a copy of my Odin’s Monster. My monster isn’t one of Morag’s relatives— though perhaps I should consider writing about one of them. I don’t really know why I haven’t written about a kelpie that transforms itself into a long-backed horse, lures people into riding it and then carries them into deep, cold water and eats them. The legend has definite appeal. But so many monsters, so little time…

Odin's Monster by Susan Price

The monster in Odin’s Monster is a ‘Sending.’ This is an Icelandic concept of monster-ness, because the book is loosely based on an Icelandic legend, Thorgeir’s Bull. The wizard, Thorgeir, was supposed to have lived in the 1800s but I moved it back in time and set it during the Viking Age because, well, I like the Viking Age.

A 'sending' was created by a witch or wizard in a bad mood. At its simplest, the witch or wizard murdered someone, in order to enslave their ghost and ‘send’ it against whoever it was they had a grudge against. Hence the name, ‘sending.’ I used this idea again, in another book, ‘The Ghost Wife.’ Once created, a sending like this could plague a whole family for generations.

The sending or monster in Odin’s Monster, is a kind of super-sending. It’s the dead body of a bull that’s stuffed full of other ghosts— of a man, a woman, a child, an eagle, a bear and others. The monster can appear as any of the ghosts trapped inside it. It can fly like an eagle, roar like a bear, speak with a woman’s voice. In the original legend, Thorgeir is a kind of

stalker with magical powers, which is a frightening thought. He creates his bull to torment the woman who’s turned him down. And her family. For generations.

The Ghost Wife

One detail of the legend that I liked is that, although the bull was said to be ‘devoted’ to Thorgeir, if it ever failed in a task he’d set it, then it rushed home and attacked him instead, sometimes even trying to kill him. I used this in my own story: ‘This is the difficulty of making Sendings. Once you’ve made them, they aren’t easy to control.’

Instead of tormenting a woman, I have my wizard, Kveldulf Witch, torment a story-teller named Thord Cat. He wants Thord Cat to tell the story of his life, of all his murders and double-dealings, of which he's very proud.

But Thord Cat dislikes the witch and refuses the commission. (The pay's rotten anyway.) Appalled by this cheek, Kveldulf calls on his god, Odin, to help him in creating the monster and he sends it against Thord Cat, to try and force him to do what Kveldulf wants. Every time the Sending arrives at the farmstead in one of its guises, it demands that Thord Cat tell its master’s story. On ‘the third time of asking’, if he refuses, it will kill him.

This story for 8 to 11 year olds was first published by A & C Black in 1986, so long ago that I can't believe it. Over the years I’ve had a lot of fun reading the story aloud to children in schools. I still do. It never fails to have them leaning forward in their seats, with open mouths and wide eyes. After Thord Cat’s second refusal, the sending, in its woman shape, says, “Next time I come horned.” I always break off there and say, “If you want to know how it ends, you must read the rest yourselves.”

This usually brings on groans and pleas for just a hint of how it ends, a clue… Teachers have sometimes had children write their own ending for the story before they read it to them.

The Wolf's Footprint by Susan Price

My indie best-seller, by a long way, is The Wolf’s Footprint, which is aimed at a similar age-group. So I thought I should unleash my sending again and send it out into the world, coupled with Wolf’s Footprint. I got my brother, Andrew, to do some new illustrations for Monster in exchange for a cut of the overwhelming riches which will doubtless flood in as soon as it goes on sale.

I put together the cover of Odin's Monster, using one of Andrew’s illustrations. The cover’s okay, but I will probably tweak it a little, now I’ve held an actual copy in my hand. I have a couple of other back-list books written for a similar age-group, which I aim re-issue this year.

In the meantime, I’ve just heard that Kate Stilitz’s brilliant musical version of The Wolf’s Footprint is to be staged again, at Tiverton Primary in London— and I shall be going to see it. Looking forward to that enormously.

The Wolf Pack (in Kate Stilitz's production)

Odin's Monster






         The Wolf's Footprint

Crofting, Seaweed and Iodine

Crofters in the Highlands and islands of Scotland have always had a hard life. Even now, although crofting may be a more rewarding way of life, in many ways, than banking or sales, it’s by no means easy.

In a past stretching back into pre-history, crofters supplied almost all their own needs by their own labour: building and maintaining their steading, raising animals to provide meat, milk and wool, making their own clothes and making or repairing their own tools. They grew oats and vegetables but also fished and gathered wild food.

Almost always, a crofter had to pay rent to the owner of the land they farmed, and that rent had to be paid in hard money. Cash was often needed to supply a few needs they could not make, catch or grow for themselves: a little tobacco, perhaps or raisins and spices for Christmas.

One way to earn money was to drive their cattle to the markets where the highest prices were paid. Another, which I learned about when I researched my book The Drover’s Dogs, was to burn kelp.

Kelp, wikimedia, By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

Kelp is a large and fast-growing seaweed which forms thick kelp forests around rocky coasts. It had been gathered for centuries. Crofters carried it from the beaches on their backs in tall baskets— a heavy load, often carried up steep, hazardous cliff paths. It was spread on fields as fertiliser.

There was also a tradition of burning the kelp to ash and mixing the ash with fat to make an ointment. Because of kelp's high concentration of iodine, it was a quite effective antiseptic.

With the rise of industry, iodine became a far more valuable commodity. It was used in glass-making and pottery as a colouring agent. The cloth trade needed it for bleaching linen. Soap makers used it to turn soap from messy goo into the hard blocks which customers favoured. Iodine was also used in the production of the cleaning agent, soda.

It was easier to import kelp from Europe than to fetch it from the far more remote Scottish Highlands and islands, but European kelp was heavily taxed. So agents made difficult journeys north, offering to buy all the iodine the crofters could produce. Kelp was harvested in Ireland too.

A crofting family would build a kiln. These varied considerably: some were built above ground, somewhat resembling an oven. Others were simple pits. Some, if the crofters could afford it, had an iron grid laid above the pit, on which the kelp was placed and burned.

Kelp was gathered throughout the year, especially in the winter after storms, which tore it from the rocks and washed it up. The seaweed was spread to dry and then piled into stacks, in kelp-ricks which were thatched with heather to keep it dry.

Burning started in June, while the men of the crofting family might be away on a drove. The dried kelp was piled on the iron grid over the pit and set alight.

Crofters burning kelp in Stronsay - Glens of Antrim Historical Society

As the kelp burned to ash, the oil from it dripped into the pit. The smell of the burning seaweed was, it seems, exceptionally powerful and pungent and carried for miles. If you can recall the rank stink of exposed estuary mud on a hot day, imagine that burning and, it seems, you will have a faint idea of the stench.

The end result was a pit full of thick, stinking oil which cooled to a rock-hard substance of greyish, purplish blue. If allowed to go cold, it had to be chipped and chiselled out of the pit, so the burners tried to dig it out before it was completely cold, while it was still easier to work. The iodine blocks were heavy and it was hard, stinking work.

Agents bought these blocks and paid good money for them— though in some parts of Scotland, all the money from the trade went to the local laird. Who did none of the work.

But for those who did profit from this hard, dirty, stinking labour, it was another source of ready cash and for about fifty years, roughly between 1780 and 1830, business was good.

However, in the 1820s, the tax on European seaweed was reduced, and the tax on salt  abolished. This made it much cheaper to import seaweed from Europe and much cheaper to make soda from salt than from kelp. These decisions, made in a southern parliament on behalf of southern industries, destroyed the kelp industry of the Highlands and islands.

It also contributed to depopulation of the Highlands because, at the same time, the droving trade was being killed by railways and landlords were raising the rents of crofts. Caught between rising rents and falling profits, many Highlanders left for Canada and America – where, in dreams, they beheld the Hebrides.

After 1830, demand for iodine from Scotland rose again as industry began producing aniline dyes and photographic plates. The seaweed from Europe was no longer enough, and agents once more came to the Highlands. But the industry was never again as strong as it had been, since so many of the people who would once have collected and burned the kelp had left the crofting life - either by choice or eviction.

This gave me an ending to my book The Drover’s Dogs, whose narrator is a Scot telling his Canadian children how he was rescued by two herd dogs and 'brought home' to Mull.

The Drover's Dogs by Susan Price

The ending rose partly from my own research and partly from the research my Scots partner did into his own family. He had a special interest in Drover's Dogs, since he helped me follow the old drove road to Mull, told me of the 'bondage,' the young hero escapes and also painted the cover picture! (And he doesn't like what I've done with it.) Since a branch of his own family had gone to Canada and become quite wealthy farmers, he was quite keen that the family in the book did too.

So I gave him the ending he wanted, to make up for what I did to his painting

Find The Drover's Dogs on Amazon.

 

 

The Lion and the Unicorn: Scotland and England Tussle

The Union Jack

         
 Scotland votes on the 18th.
          By next Saturday we shall know whether our flag is the Union or Disunion Jack. 

The Disunion Jack

          It 's one of the most exciting political stooshies for many a long year. If I had a vote, I'm still not sure how I'd use it.

          Of the people I know, the one most vehemently opposed to Scottish Independence is a Scot, my partner. He doesn't have a vote either, because he's lived in England - and other parts of the world - for at least half his life. In his opinion, voting 'yes' is the worst, most stupid thing Scotland could do. It will be a disaster. Business will leave, money will leave, talent will leave. The economy will crash. Instead of being proudly independent, the Scots will be begging England to save them. Again.
         He's as proud as the next Scot of Scotland's many achievements but, he says, there has to be some realism - 'they should stop dreaming of Bonnie Prince bloody Charlie.' The union only came about in the first place, he says, because of the Darien Scheme, a hare-brained venture which almost wrecked Scotland's economy. England saved Scotland's bacon then, and has done so since (though hardly from simple kindness, it has to be said.) England built Scotland's modern road system, invested in Scotland's economy, is paying for their free universities and prescriptions.
          'England has been amazingly patient,' says Davy. If the Scots flounce off, maybe England won't be so patient when - at some time in the future - they want to creep back again. Presumably the English will then get a vote on whether or not to rejoin with the Jocks (though, personally, I wouldn't bet on our leaders allowing us a say) - and the English will blow a long, loud raspberry.
          So says Davy.

They're fighting for that crown again...

          Davy's brother Jim, when I was talking with him on Barra earlier this year, had quite a different take. 'We are not fools or children,' Jim said. 'We have oil, and gas, we have IT industries and a thriving export trade in whisky, and we can manage our economy perfectly well, thank you very much! - And we're sick and tired of being governed by public-school educated Tory Little-Englanders we never voted for. At every election for the past 30 years, Scotland has voted solidly to the left, and ended up with Tories or Tories-Lite in government. Do you call that representation? Do you call that a democracy?'
          And, oh lord, I can identify with that!

          Furthermore, Jim said, politics in the UK have become stale, moribund. Election turnouts are low, and results massively unrepresentative, because most people know their votes won't make any difference. So they've stopped caring.
          This is very true. I can no longer bring myself to vote for Labour, and would have to have a gun to my head before I would vote Lib-Dem (Tories in sheep's clothing) or (spit) Tory.
          I would vote Green, since their manifesto is broadly what I want - but in my consitituency, if I vote Green, I'm simply wasting my vote. So I've been effectively disenfranchised. But is there any likelihood of proportional representation being introduced any time soon? - No, because it doesn't suit either Labour or Tories, and never mind what the voters want.

          According to Jim, this disenfranchisement is what Scottish Independence is about. By leaving England, they would be doing England a huge favour - by delivering to Westminster's arse the biggest boot it's felt in many long, self-satisfied, cosy, careerist years spent cuddled up to multi-national Big Business.
          Scottish Independence, says Jim, would force a big shake-up in British politics.

          I can see it. Wales would want independence. Cornwall, Yorkshire, Northumbria - if Scotland can manage its own affairs, why would the rest of Britain continue to suffer being ruled by Tories they never voted for?
          Britain might become a federation of small states, each governing itself, but sending representatives to a larger, federal council. My cousin, living in Switzerland, admires the system, and says it works very well, with fewer extremes than in Britain, and far more checks and balances.
          I like the sound of all this - but have to admit that there is a part of me that always wants to see the apple-cart kicked over and the apples rolling about everywhere

          Davy hoots in derision at all Jim's arguments. The vote will be, 'No,' he insists. The Scots have too much good sense to be carried away by all that skirling in the heather stuff - and they have too much to lose.
          Jim says Independence for Scotland is the best thing that could happen for our future.
          Davy says it will bring sorrow to generations yet unborn.

          It all makes me think of the words of Dorothy Rowe, the psychologist. (I paraphrase):

         'Every action has consequences. Some of the consequences are foreseen and some are unforeseen.
          'Of the foreseen consequences, some will be predicted to be good, and some will be predicted to be bad.
          'Some of the predicted good consequences will, in the event, turn out to be bad.
          'Some of the predicted bad consequences will, in the event, turn out to be good.

          'Of the unforeseen consequences, some will be immediately experienced as good, and some as bad

                        'Some of those immediately experienced as bad will turn out to be good in the end.

         'Some immediately experienced as good will, in time, turn out to be bad.'

          So it goes.
          This time next week, we'll know whether the lion has had its bum kicked, or the unicorn has had its horn bent.
          Either way, I don't think anyone will be handing round brown bread or plum cake.

The Union Jack Photo: LA(Phot) Simmo Simpson/MOD [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons
The lion and unicorn from the James' Bible, and the nursery rhyme illustration, are public domain, from Project Gutenburg, through wiki commons.


 

Sticking to Knitting - Some Thoughts on Brooks Newland

          Last week, I opened my newspaper and read

A knitter, not a sneering Tory

that the Tory 'Minister for Civil Society' (whatever the hell that means), a person by the name of Brooks Newmark, has had the bald audacity to tell British charities to 'stick to their knitting' and 'keep out of politics.'
          Obviously, he's never heard that 'everything is political.' A strange omission for one in his line of taking money from the public purse.
          It's an interesting phrase, that  - 'stick to your knitting.' Shall we unpack it? Who does he think knits? Who can he mean?
          I doubt that he's thinking of the fishermen and whalers of the Orkneys and Shetlands, who spent such spare time as they had on board knitting and embroidering, to produce warm clothing for themselves and for sale. Which makes knitting and embroidery the pastime of tough, independent, self-reliant men who would have little time or sympathy for a soft, southern,Tory minister.

Taking a break from knitting

          No, I don't imagine he's thinking of those crofters. Do you suppose that, when he says, 'stick to your knitting' he's thinking of women? Perhaps the kind of women whom he imagines, with his limited, dated Tory imagination, staffing charities. In Newmark's tiny, rigid mind, Oxfam and Shelter, among others, are staffed entirely by dear little old ladies with too much time on their hands, who while it away by knitting, and who, in the minister's words, should concentrate on that and on 'helping others,' and not worry their dear little blue-rinsed heads with politics. Aah, bless.

          Newmark, dear readers, is an example of the people the Tories rule us with. Is it any wonder the Scots want to leave?

          Lisa Nandy, shadow minister for that thing, 'civil society,' said, Newmark's remarks are '...patronising and...deeply offensive at a time when charities are picking up the pieces from this government's awful, unfair policies...'

         Newmark, we can only suppose, is also deeply ignorant of the role charities have always played, both in politics and 'civil society.' 

         There was a time when we had no other government except that by the rich, land-owning, factory-owning, selfish elite, who governed entirely in their own interest. (Some might argue - not me, good lord, but some - that Newmark and his party continue to represent these people, and to manage affairs for their benefit.)
         In the past, the Tory Party, most of them, couldn't see any problem with children crawling under dangerous, working machinery to clean it, or spending all their daylight hours three miles underground in pits. They sentimentalised childhood while the children of the poor were prostituted and worked to death.
         The Tory Party, most of them, couldn't see anything wrong with slavery - well, it made them rich, didn't it? Built them beautiful homes. It was good for trade.
         Most of the Tory Party saw nothing wrong (and they were looking in the other direction anyway) with burning Scottish crofters out of their homes and sending them off to starve by the seashore, while the landlords replaced them with sheep. After all, these inland crofters could easily learn to fish, couldn't they? Nothing to it - they only had to buy a boat. Idleness, that was their problem, said the land-owning elite, unable to move for servants.

Should have stuck to his knitting...

         Captain Coram had to beg his friends for money, and set up a charity to prevent abandoned babies being left to starve in gutters. Government had been leaving them to die for years - and would have gone on letting them die if it hadn't been for Captain Coram.
         It goes on and on - shocking prison conditions, appalling working and housing conditions for the poor, starvation wages, under-age prostitution, lack of education, homelessness... All things which the comfortable, complacent, selfish political elite did nothing to alter until they were goaded and prodded into action by charities. Which is another name for a minority of determined, incensed people getting on and doing themselves what government refuses to acknowledge as a problem or do anything about.
          Some of those determined, honourable people have always been women. Some of them may even have knitted. I'm not sure that Coram, or Shaftesbury, or Barnardo was either female or a knitter.

          Oxfam, Shelter and all those other 'political' charities are continuing a proud and honourable tradition by opposing, among other things, zero-hours contracts and benefit cuts.
          (These cuts having been imposed with ever greater severity because of a banking crisis brought about by greedy bankers who exploited the freedom from pesky regulations given to them, originally, by the Tory Party. Rather in the manner of giving a fox freedom in a chicken house.
          (After the crash, the bankers are rewarded with rescue and bonuses, while the poor are penalised for doing the work which supports the rich, greedy bankers.)

         The ghastly Newmark later back-pedalled hard, saying that he'd 'only' meant that charities should keep out of 'party politics.' A phrase without meaning except for weasels. Where does 'party politics' end and 'everything is political' begin?
          "They [charities] have an important role to play in helping to shape government policy," said the ghastly homonculus, continuing his vein of pompous condescension. "...they have a right to campaign (why, thank you!) but should stay out of... party politics."

          I would like Newmark to answer this question: Why should they stay out of party politics? Or any other kind of politics?
           Since everything is political, and politics is the way we order our communities, and decide the laws we live our everyday lives by, then the people who make up charities have as much right to take part in politics, even party politics, as the very wealthy American Newmark does. Indeed, they have a duty to take part in 'party politics.'

         Another question for him: What, exactly, does he think 'free speech' means?

                Think of those charity workers - knitting needles flashing away as they work on the front-line of civil society, where things are a little less civil than in Westminster. Now and again, I think it's fair to say, they witness, up close, the cruel and unfair effects of the policies concocted by such as Newmark.

         When that happens, it might be argued that those knitting charity workers - pinnies, blue-rinses and all - have a duty to lay their knitting and tea-pots aside and report what they see to the rest of our civil society - to speak up and make people aware of what is going on.

          Just as, in the past, people spoke up about the injustice of slavery, and workhouses, and the Clearances.
         
          As a party politician and a servant of civil society, it might be thought that Newmark should humbly thank the charities for doing work that his government should be doing, and for calling attention to his government's - well, shall we be polite and say, his government's 'mistakes'? Because it's not possible, is it, that, for instance, something as unfair as zero-hours contracts would have been allowed, except by mistake?
          It couldn't be that the Tory Party represents people who benefit from zero-hours contracts, and therefore resent charities objecting to them? - What? I won't believe it of them. 
          It's not as if the Tory Party, which Newmark works for of his own free will, was ever involved in anything, er, less than fair and just and of benefit to all, is it? (Opposition to the founding of the NHS, dismantling of the NHS, Poll Tax, Bedroom Tax, destruction of unions, selling off and destruction of state-owned assets, opposition to working conditions reform, Tolpuddle Martyrs, heavier taxation for the poor...)
          So far, Newmark has not humbly apologised to charities, or thanked them for their honesty - or for doing more to protect members of our 'civil society' than the Tories have done.
          But then, he's a Tory.
          Expect nothing from a pig but a grunt.
          Pigs, though, are nice.

Photograph of knitter: Thomas Quine, Wikimedia Commons.

Game of Seven: The Two Dogs

The 'Game of Seven' seems to be the latest craze among

literary bloggers, and it's quite fun.
          The idea is that you take your work in progress, go to the seventh page, count seven lines down, and then quote the next seven lines (more or less.)
          So here goes:-

            “You stay there,” Mrs. Thomson said, “until my husband gets home. He’ll know what to do with you.”

            Mind that she did not ask me into the kitchen. I was to stand in the yard until her husband came home, and he would know what to do with me – as if I was some new tool. I was to stand outside and eat in the yard, like the rest of the farm’s livestock. I was not good enough to step into the kitchen.

           That was the start of the worst time of my life. I had hard times in later years: hard living and hard work. But there has never yet been a time worse than that.

          This isn't exactly a work-in-progress. It's more a work-with-agent.
         The narrator is Sandy and, at the age of 10, he had just been bonded, by his mother, to work for the Thomsons until he is twenty-one.
          The book tells the story of his mistreatment, and how he runs away to home. His mother orders him back to the farm. She doesn't have the money to repay his bond.
           But the bad treatment grows worse, so Sandy runs away. He is breaking his bond, and has also taken carrots and oats from the stable, so he has stolen food too. He knows that he could be hung for theft, if caught.

Wikimedia Commons: Jean-Louis Petermann

           He falls in with two drove dogs, who provide protection and company. They are making their way home, alone, after the end of a drove. Sandy, with nowhere else to go, decides to follow the dogs to wherever they're going. Together with the dogs, he walks across Scotland to its West coast - and then follows the dogs further, to the Hebrides.
         Secretly he hopes that the dogs will lead him to a new home, even though he mistrusts everyone.

           A few publishers have already seen it and rejected it. The consensus seems to be that the story is too slow, and too old-fashioned. The fact that it's being told by a man to his children, makes it less exciting.
        They're right - and publishing is a business, and there's no reason why they should publish something they don't think will sell and make them a profit. But I had to write the story as I felt it should be.
          As I worked on it, I considered, and rejected, ways to make the story more exciting. I could have had the boy hotly pursued by the authorities, or vengefully pursued by the farmer - but I didn't feel that either would be realistic, or historically accurate.

          At the time the story is set - roughly 1800 - there was no official police force. To have the boy hunted and arrested, the authorities in each district would have to have been contacted, with a description, by letter. They would then have had to consider it worth the time and effort to search for, and arrest, a ten year old boy. Even if this had been done, I couldn't imagine the hunt being pursued with enough vigour to make the story exciting.
          To lead the hunt himself, the farmer would have had to leave the work of his farm - even though he has little idea of where the boy has gone - and ride for miles, asking for him. I thought it more likely that the farmer would go to the boy's home and, if he didn't find him there, would make a few local enquiries, and then give up. (The farmer does reappear, vengefully, towards the end of the book.)

Not a keeper...

         For me, the story is not about a chase, and whether or not the boy will be caught. It's about resilience. It's also about getting up and walking away from a bad situation - about having to courage to gamble that the devil you don't know may be better than the devil you do. (I've never been convinced by the view that just because a devil is familiar, you should stick by him. Go and find another.)
         It's about the young hero coming to the realisation that just because these people have treated him badly, it doesn't mean that all people will always do so (which is a notion that traps many adults in misery, so a lesson worth learning early, I think.)
       Here, the boy is trudging through the hills above Oban, when he hears the hoofbeats of ponies coming up behind him.

'The Handsome Drover' by Heywood Hardy

     I glanced back and saw a couple of men coming along on two tough little ponies. By their clothes, I thought them drovers, on their way home from market...

     Not so long before, I would have run from the path and hidden from those men, but now I was bolder. I turned back to my road, taking no notice of the riders.

     I thought they would go by, taking no more notice of me than I took of them. Instead they came up beside me, and slowed. The nearest rider spoke to me, in Gaelic. It meant no more to me than the bird twitter all around.

     I looked up and saw a man looking down at me from the pony’s back. He wore a thick tweed coat, and a tweed cap pulled down low, and a bright red scarf wrapped around his neck.. all sparkling with drops of rain caught on the wool. His beard and moustache were thick and curly, both grey and dark, so I couldn’t see much of his face, except for his blue eyes and big yellowish teeth.

     I looked away and carried on walking. I thought he would think me dumb or stupid. I thought he would soon be tired of yapping at me in Gaelic, and would kick up his pony and ride on.

     Instead, after waiting a while for an answer, he said, in English, “The laddie with the doggies!"

     I looked up in surprise then.

     He laughed, and coughed, with deep, rumbling sounds. "Aha!" he said. "English! Everywhere we hear tell of the laddie with the doggies."

     I wanted to run away and hide then. I felt caught out, and trapped. But we were in a steep-sided gulley and they were on horses. I wouldn’t be able to run far before they caught me.

     "Don't you run, don't run!" said the man with the red scarf. "Look at doggies!"

     I did. Spot and Patch were trotting alongside me, but they were looking up at the men on the horses. Their tongues hung out over their teeth, and their tails wagged.

     “The doggies ken us well,” said Red Scarf. “We ken the man of them."

     The other man had a pipe in his mouth. He laughed around it, and it wagged as he said, “That we do!”

     “You know their owner?” I said.

     Red Scarf laughed. "You can talk, so you can! Aye, I

'Waiting for Master' - by Edward Robert Smythe

ken their owner. He’s cried Lachlan Maclean... What might you be cried, laddie?”

     “None of your business,” I said.

     "A strange name for a laddie," Red Scarf said. “Hector, have ever you heard of a laddie called ‘None Of Your Business’ before now?”

     The man with the pipe laughed, and I scowled at them both, my shoulders hunched up and my bottom lip stuck out.

     Red Scarf’s pony still plodded beside me. "Is it that Lachlan’s doggies have looked after you well, None Of Your Business?”

     Oh, how I hated him. "I have no stolen them!" I said. Those dogs were worth far more than the oats and carrots and sacks I had stolen. I would have been hung three times over for stealing them.

     "No, no, indeed," he said. "We never thought you had stolen them. We were wondering if, maybe, the doggies had stolen you?"

     His pipe-smoking friend laughed again.

     I could think of nothing to say, but trudged on in silence, refusing to look at them. If I ignored them, I thought, they would be bored and would ride past.

     But they let their horses slow to a dawdle. I looked up and was startled to find Red Scarf watching me. His eyes were very blue among his brown wrinkles.

     "You must leave them thieving doggies," Red Scarf said. "They will lead you into bad ways." He drew up his horse. I saw that another track joined ours just at that place. It led away downhill. “We go this way, None Of Your Business,” Red Scarf said. “We are going to pay a visit to my sister who married a man from here. Leave them bad, thieving doggies to tend their own business and come along with us. My sister will stuff you like a goose for Christmas."

     That was a wonderful, tempting thought. Food and plenty of it – and a warm, dry place to sleep. I hesitated, I admit.

     But no doubt this man’s sister would be glad of a boy she could set to work, and feed on scraps, and belt for no reason at all.

     "Come on lad!" Red Scarf said, and Pipe-Smoker laughed again.

     I looked at Spot and Patch. They were trotting away down the main track. They were clever — they knew which way I should be going. Spot looked over his shoulder at me... I turned my back on the riders and walked after the dogs.

     "Lad!" Red Scarf called after me.

     I turned and walked backwards, so I could keep an eye on him, and run away if he came after me.

     "Lad." He made his pony walk towards me. “One night in a house will no hurt."

     Spot and Patch came trotting back to me. They sat down beside me, but Spot looked from me to the main track, making it very clear that he wanted to be getting on. "Clear off,” I said to Red Scarf. I told you, in those days, I was a hard little nut. I hadn’t any manners.

     Red Scarf nodded to himself and felt in the pocket at his belt. He took out a coin and offered it to me, leaning down from his saddle.

     “I don’t want your money,” I said. I knew that people always want something in return when they give you money...

     "I was not giving the money to you," he said. "It's for the doggies." He threw the coin and it landed on the hard trodden earth of the track. Both dogs trotted over and sniffed at it, as if they really thought it was meant for them.

     "Be so kind as to look after it for them,” Red Scarf said. “God go with you. I will look for you in — " He said something that I didn’t understand — but I didn’t think I would ever see him again, so it didn’t matter.

          My agent says there are a few publishers to see the book yet, before we give up. But it's quite possible that I shall be publishing it myself.

 

'The Shepherd's dog' by Howitt

     Anyone interested in the old droving trade, or in Border Collies, might enjoy this site - The Border Collie Museum