Covid-19 has changed the way we all see the world and how we interact with it.  Unco is no exception and we are going to take some time to re-consider how to present our authors to the world. 

Bookselling has become particularly difficult - the practicalities of not being able to get to the post office has meant direct sales from online orders have become difficult to fulfil. We've been working with the alternative of delivery direct from printer but that has cost implications all round and makes single book purchases financially expensive. 

The current position through 'the autumn of uncertainty' is that we are not posting out books direct from stock and all books will be sent direct from printers, with a minimum order of 2 books. 

We are probably going to shut the shop after St Andrews Day for a while to take stock (both literally and metaphorically)  We'll be able to direct you to alternative ways of purchasing some of our books until spring 2021 when we hope to re-open.  

So please take the opportunity while its here  to buy books at our best prices during September-November.  The level of support we get this autumn will substantially dictate our plans for 2021.  

Our digital books are still fighting a losing battle against the all-mighty Kindle. There will be changes in this offering next year too, possibly moving to a subscription based model. 

Over the 'winter of re-assessment' we'll be developing the site and the 'unco' concept along new lines always looking for new and innovative ways to promote, advocate and share our 'unco' authors with the world. 
If you have any ideas or feedback of what you'd like to see, or how we might develop unco into a place you want to visit virtually - just leave a comment below! 

 I recently became aware of The Stevenson Way  - a long walk in the footsteps of 'Kidnapped.' 
It appeals to me on many levels, not least because it seems like a real wilderness walk.  In these times when everything is mediated and marketed, such a journey (not one I could ever make) gives me some hope that History, Adventure and Romance in Scotland are not dead.  It also shows what can be done.  Similar adventure walks  could be established in the Galloway hills and countryside of Crockett country. I've been banging on about this for long enough.  Some of the ground work has been done with my works 'Discovering Crockett's Galloway' and I'm simply scunnered by the fact that despite 'Literary Tourism' becoming a 'big thing' in Galloway now, Crockett still seems largely off the map.  
Beyond Galloway, a conversation with ‘a friend I’ve yet to meet’ (Kenny) who is about to embark on The Stevenson Way but has plans for other island adventures, got me thinking about Crockett’s islands Suliscanna and Fiara.  A quick bit of Googling made me realise these are ‘fictional’ renditions – and whetted my interest as to where ‘in reality’ they might be.  The question is… what Scottish islands are they based on? Crockett generally bases his fiction fairly closely on fact.  However, that’s an adventure to come… for now here are the textual references:
Suliscanna is first mentioned in the story ‘The Glistering Beaches’ in Bog,Myrtle and Peat  (1895) and it becomes a main setting in Lochinvar (1897.)
Since Bog Myrtle and Peat is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year it seemed only right to append the story. You  can find it below.  N.B.  Lochinvar (the first Crockett book I read in 1996) is the sequel to Men of the Moss Hags – also celebrating its 125th anniversary.  (More about it in August/September) 
The map below puts me in mind of 'Kidnapped' and comes from the inside of Lochinvar. 
 ​

THE GLISTERING BEACHES
 
For wafts of unforgotten music come,
All unawares, into my lonely room,
To thrill me with the memories of the past--
Sometimes a tender voice from out the gloom,
A light hand on the keys, a shadow cast
Upon a learned tome
That blurs somewhat Alpha and Omega,
A touch upon my shoulder, a pale face,
Upon whose perfect curves the firelight plays,
Or love-lit eyes, the sweetest e'er I saw.
(‘Memory Harvest.’)
 



It was clear morning upon Suliscanna. That lonely rock ran hundreds of feet up into the heavens, and pointed downwards also to the deepest part of the blue. Simeon and Anna were content.
Or, rather, I ought to say Anna and Simeon, and that for a reason which will appear. Simeon was the son of the keeper of the temporary light upon Suliscanna, Anna the daughter of the contractor for the new lighthouse, which had already begun to grow like a tall-shafted tree on its rock foundation at Easdaile Point. Suliscanna was not a large island—in fact, only a mile across the top; but it was quite six or eight in circumference when one followed the ins and outs of the rocky shore. Tremendous cliffs rose to the south and west facing the Atlantic, pierced with caves into which the surf thundered or grumbled, according as the uneasy giant at the bottom of the sea was having a quiet night of it or the contrary. Grassy and bare was the top of the island. There was not a single tree upon it; and, besides the men's construction huts, only a house or two, so white that each shone as far by day as the lighthouse by night.
There was often enough little to do on Suliscanna. At such times, after standing a long time with hands in their pockets, the inhabitants used to have a happy inspiration: ‘Ha, let us go and whitewash the cottages!’ So this peculiarity gave the island an undeniably cheerful appearance, and the passing ships justly envied the residents.
Simeon and Anna were playmates. That is, Anna played with Simeon when she wanted him.
‘Go and knit your sampler, girl!’ Simeon was saying today. ‘What do girls know about boats or birds?’
He was in a bad humour, for Anna had been unbearable in her exactions.
‘Very well,’ replied Anna, tossing her hair; ‘I can get the key of the boat and you can't. I shall take Donald out with me.’
Now, Donald was the second lighthouse-keeper, detested of Simeon. He was grown-up and contemptuous. Also he had whiskers—horrid ugly things, doubtless, but whiskers. So he surrendered at discretion.
‘Go and get the key, then, and we will go round to the white beaches. I'll bring the provisions.’
He would have died any moderately painless death rather than say, ‘The oatcake and water-keg.’
So in a little they met again at the Boat Cove which Providence had placed at the single inlet upon the practicable side of Suliscanna, which could not be seen from either the Laggan Light or the construction cottages. Only the lighter that brought the hewn granite could spy upon it.
‘Mind you sneak past your father, Anna!’ cried Simeon, afar off.
His voice carried clear and lively. But yet higher and clearer rose the reply, spoken slowly to let each word sink well in.
‘Teach-your-grandmother-to-suck-eggs—ducks' eggs!’
What the private sting of the discriminative, only Simeon knew. And evidently he did know very well, for he kicked viciously at a dog belonging to Donald the second keeper—a brute of a dog it was; but, missing the too-well-accustomed cur, he stubbed his toe. He then repeated the multiplication table. For he was an admirable boy and careful of his language.
But, nevertheless, he got the provision out with care and promptitude.
‘Where are you taking all that cake?’ said his mother, who came from Ayrshire and wanted a reason for everything. In the north there is no need for reasons. There everything is either a judgment or a dispensation, according to whether it happens to your neighbour or yourself.
‘I am no' coming hame for ony dinner,’ said Simeon, who adopted a modified dialect to suit his mother. With his father he spoke English only, in a curious sing-song tone but excellent of accent.
Mrs. Lauder—Simeon's mother, that is—accepted the explanation without remark, and Simeon passed out of her department.
‘Mind ye are no' to gang intil the boat!’ she cried after him; but Simeon was apparently too far away to hear.
He looked cautiously up the side of the Laggan Light to see that his father was still polishing at his morning brasses and reflectors along with Donald. Then he ran very swiftly through a little storehouse, and took down a musket from the wall. A powder-flask and some shot completed his outfit; and with a prayer that his father might not see him, Simeon sped to the trysting-stone. As it happened, his father was oblivious and the pilfered gun unseen.
Anna's experience had been quite different. Her procedure was much simpler. She found her father sitting in his office, constructed of rough boards. He frowned continuously at plans of dovetailed stones, and rubbed his head at the side till he was rapidly rubbing it bare.
Anna came in and looked about her.
‘Give me the key of the boat,’ she said without preface. She used from habit, even to her father, the imperative mood affirmative.
Mr. Warburton looked up, smoothed his brow, and began to ask, ‘What are you going to do—?’ But in the midst of his question he thought better of it, acknowledging its uselessness; and, reaching into a little press by his side, he took down a key and handed it to Anna without comment. Anna said only, ‘Thank you, father.’ For we should be polite to our parents when they do as we wish them.
She stood a moment looking back at the bowed figure, which, upon her departure, had resumed the perplexed frown as though it had been a mask. Then she walked briskly down to the boathouse.
Upon the eastern side of Suliscanna there is a beach. It is a rough beach, but landing is just possible. There are cunning little spits of sand in the angles of the stone reaches, and by good steering between the boulders it is just possible to make boat's-way ashore.
‘Row!’ said Anna, after they had pushed the boat off, and began to feel the hoist of the swell. ‘I will steer.’
Simeon obediently took the oars and fell to it. So close in did Anna steer to one point, that, raising her hand, she pulled a few heads of pale sea-pink from a dry cleft as they drew past into the open water and began to climb green and hissing mountains.
Then Anna opened her plans to Simeon.
‘Listen!’ she said. ‘I have been reading in a book of my father's about this place, and there was a strange great bird once on Suliscanna. It has been lost for years, so the book says; and if we could get it, it would be worth a hundred pounds. We are going to seek it.’
‘That is nonsense,’ said Simeon, ‘for you can get a goose here for sixpence, and there is no bird so big that it would be worth the half of a hundred pounds.’
‘Goose yourself, boy,’ said Anna tauntingly. ‘I did not mean to eat, great stupid thing!’
‘What did you mean, then?’ returned Simeon.
‘You island boy, I mean to put in wise folks' museums—where they put all sorts of strange things. I have seen one in London.’
‘Seen a bird worth a hundred pounds?’ Simeon was not taking Anna's statements on trust any more.
‘No, silly—not the bird, but the museum.’
‘Um—you can tell that to Donald; I know better than to believe.’
‘Ah, but this is true,’ said Anna, without anger at the aspersion on her habitual truthfulness. ‘I tell you it is true. You would not believe about the machine-boat that runs by steam, with the smoke coming from it like the spout of our kettle, till I showed you the picture of it in father's book.’
‘I have seen the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown. There are lies in pictures as well as in books!’ said Simeon, stating a great truth.
‘But this bird is called the Great Auk—did you never hear your father tell about that?’
Simeon's face still expressed no small doubt of Anna's good faith. The words conveyed to him no more meaning than if she had said the Great Mogul.
Then Anna remembered.
‘It is called in Scotland the Gare Fowl!’
Simeon was on fire in a moment. He stopped rowing and started up.
‘I have heard of it,’ he said. ‘I know all that there is to know. It was chased somewhere on the northern islands and shot at, and one of them was killed. But did it ever come here?’
‘I have father's book with me, and you shall see!’ Being prepared for scepticism, Anna did not come empty-handed. She pulled a finely bound book out of a satchel-pocket that swung at her side. ‘See here,’ she said; and then she read: ‘After their ill-usage at the islands of Orkney, the Gare Fowl were seen several times by fishermen in the neighbourhood of the Glistering Beaches on the lonely and uninhabited island of Suliscanna. It is supposed that a stray bird may occasionally visit that rock to this day.’
Simeon's eyes almost started from his head.
‘Worth a hundred pounds!’ he said over and over as if to himself.
Anna, who knew the ways of this most doubting of Thomases, pulled a piece of paper from her satchel and passed it to him to read. It related at some length the sale in a London auction-room of a stuffed Great Auk in imperfect condition for one hundred and fifty pounds.
‘That would be pounds sterling!’ said Simeon, who was thinking. He had a suspicion that there might be some quirk about pounds ‘Scots,’ and was trying to explain things clearly to himself.
‘Now, we are going to the Glistering Beaches to look for the Great Auk!’ said Anna as a climax to the great announcement.
The water lappered pleasantly beneath the boat as Simeon deftly drew it over the sea. There is hardly any pleasure like good oarsmanship. In rowing, the human machine works more cleanly and completely than at any other work. Before the children rose two rocky islands, with an opening between, like a birthday cake that has been badly cut in the centre and has had the halves moved a little way apart. This was Stack Canna.
‘Do you think that there would be any chance here?’ said Anna. The splendour of the adventure was taking possession of her mind.
‘Of course there would; but the best chance of all will be at the caves of Rona Wester, for that is near the Glistering Beaches, and the birds would be sure to go there if the people went to seek them at the Beaches.’
‘Has anyone been there?’ asked Anna.
‘Fishers have looked into them from the sea. No one has been in!’ said Simeon briefly.
The tops of the Stack of Canna were curiously white, and Simeon watched the effect over his shoulder as he rowed.
‘Look at the Stack,’ he said, and the eyes of his companion followed his.
‘Is it snow?’ she asked.
‘No; birds—thousands of them. They are nesting. Let us land and get a boat-load to take back.’
But Anna declared that it must not be so. They had come out to hunt the Great Auk, and no meaner bird would they pursue that day.
Nevertheless, they landed, and made spectacles of themselves by groping in the clay soil on the top of the Stack for Petrels' eggs. But they could not dig far enough without spades to get many, and when they did get to the nest, it was hardly worth taking for the sake of the one white egg and the little splattering, oily inmate.
Yet on the wild sea-cinctured Stack, and in that young fresh morning, the children tasted the joy of life; and only the fascinating vision of the unknown habitant of the Glistering Beaches had power to wile them away.
But there before them, a mile and a half round the point of Stack, lay the Beaches. On either side of the smooth sweep of the sands rose mighty cliffs, black as the eye of the midnight and scarred with clefts like battered fortresses. Then at the Beaches themselves, the cliff wall fell back a hundred yards and left room for the daintiest edging of white sand, shining like coral, crumbled down from the pure granite—which at this point had not been overflowed like the rest of the island of Suliscanna by the black lava.
Such a place for play there was not anywhere—neither on Suliscanna nor on any other of the outer Atlantic isles. Low down, by the surf's edge, the wet sands of the Glistering Beaches were delicious for the bare feet to run and be brave and cool upon. The sickle sweep of the bay cut off the Western rollers, and it was almost always calm in there. Only the sea-birds clashed and clanged overhead, and made the eye dizzy to watch their twinkling gyrations.
Then on the greensward there was the smoothest turf, a band of it only—not coarse grass with stalks far apart, as it is on most sea-beaches; but smooth and short as though it had been cropped by a thousand woolly generations. ‘Such a place!’ they both cried. And Anna, who had never been here before, clapped her hands in delight.
‘This is like heaven!’ she sighed, as the prow of the boat grated refreshingly on the sand, and Simeon sprang over with a splash, standing to his mid-thigh in the salt water to pull the boat ashore.
Then Simeon and Anna ran races on the smooth turf. They examined carefully the heaped mounds of shells, mostly broken, for the ‘legs of mutton’ that meant to them love and long life and prosperity. They chose out for luck also the smooth little rose-tinted valves, more exquisite than the fairest lady's finger-nails.
Next they found the spring welling up from an over-flow mound which it had built for itself in the ages it had run untended. Little throbbing grains of sand dimpled in it, and the mound was green to the top; so that Simeon and Anna could sit, one on one side and the other upon the other, and with a farle of cake eat and drink, passing from hand to hand alternate, talking all the time.
It was a divine meal.
‘This is better than having to go to church!’ said Anna.
Simeon stared at her. This was not the Sabbath or a Fast-day. What a day, then, to be speaking about church-going! It was bad enough to have to face the matter when it came.
‘I wonder what we should do if the Great Auk were suddenly to fly out of the rocks up there, and fall splash into the sea,’ he said, to change the subject.
‘The Great Auk does not fly,’ said positive Anna, who had been reading up.
‘What does it do, then?’ said Simeon. ‘No wonder it got killed!’
‘It could only waddle and swim,’ replied Anna.
‘Then I could shoot it easy! I always can when the things can't fly, or will stand still enough.—It is not often they will,’ he added after due consideration.
Many things in creation are exceedingly thoughtless.
Thereupon Simeon took to loading his gun ostentatiously, and Anna moved away. Guns were uncertain things, especially in Simeon's hands, and Anna preferred to examine some of the caves. But when she went to the opening of the nearest, there was something so uncanny, so drippy, so clammy about it, with the little pools of water dimpled with drops from above, and the spume-balls rolled by the wind into the crevices, that she was glad to turn again and fall to gathering the aromatic, hay-scented fennel which nodded on the edges of the grassy slopes.
There was no possibility of getting up or down the cliffs that rose three hundred feet above the Glistering Beaches, for the ledges were hardly enough for the dense population of gannets which squabbled and babbled and elbowed one another on the slippery shelves.
Now and then there would be a fight up there, and white eggs would roll over the edge and splash yellow upon the turf. Wherever the rocks became a little less precipitous, they were fairly lined with the birds and hoary with their whitewash.
After Simeon had charged his gun, the children proceeded to explore the caves, innocently taking each other's hands, and advancing by the light of a candle—which, with flint and steel, they had found in the locker of their boat.
First they had to cross a pool, not deep, but splashy and unpleasant. Then more perilously they made their way along the edges of the water, walking carefully upon the slippery stones, wet with the clammy, contracted breath of the cave. Soon, however, the cavern opened out into a wider and drier place, till they seemed to be fairly under the mass of the island; for the cliffs, rising in three hundred feet of solid rock above their heads, stretched away before them black and grim to the earth's very centre.
Anna cried out, ‘Oh, I cannot breathe! Let us go back!’
But the undaunted Simeon, determined to establish his masculine superiority once for all, denied her plumply.
‘We shall go back none,’ he said, ‘till we have finished this candle.’
So, clasping more tightly her knight-errant's hand, Anna sighed, and resigned herself for once to the unaccustomed pleasure of doing as she was bid.
Deeper and deeper they went into the cleft of the rocks, stopping sometimes to listen, and hearing nothing but the beating of their own hearts when they did so.
There came sometimes, however, mysterious noises, as though the fairy folks were playing pipes in the stony knolls, of which they had both heard often enough. And also by whiles they heard a thing far more awful—a plunge as of a great sea-beast sinking suddenly into deep water.
‘Suppose that it is some sea-monster,’ said Anna with eyes on fire; for the unwonted darkness had changed her, so that she took readily enough her orders from the less imaginative boy—whereas, under the broad light of day, she never dreamed of doing other than giving them.
Once they had a narrow escape. It happened that Simeon was leading and holding Anna by the hand, for they had been steadily climbing upwards for some time. The footing of the cave was of smooth sand, very restful and pleasing to the feet. Simeon was holding up the candle and looking before him, when suddenly his foot went down into nothing. He would have fallen forward, but that Anna, putting all her force into the pull, drew him back. The candle, however, fell from his hand and rolled unharmed to the edge of a well, where it lay still burning.
Simeon seized it, and the two children, kneeling upon the rocky side, looked over into a deep hole, which seemed, so far as the taper would throw its feeble rays downwards, to be quite fathomless.
But at the bottom something rose and fell with a deep roaring sound, as regular as a beast breathing. It had a most terrifying effect to hear that measured roaring deep in the bowels of the earth, and at each respiration to see the suck of the air blow the candle-flame about.
Anna would willingly have gone back, but stout Simeon was resolved and not to be spoken to.
They circled cautiously about the well, and immediately began to descend. The way now lay over rock, fine and regular to the feet as though it had been built and polished by the pyramid-builders of Egypt. There was more air, also, and the cave seemed to be opening out.
At last they came to a glimmer of daylight and a deep and solemn pool. There was a path high above it, and the pool lay beneath black like ink. But they were evidently approaching the sea, for the roar of the breaking swell could distinctly be heard. The pool narrowed till there appeared to be only a round basin of rock, full of the purest water, and beyond a narrow bank of gravel. Then they saw the eye of the sea shining in, and the edge of a white breaker lashing into the mouth of the cave.
But as they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and patiently and pathetically waggle that strange head.
‘It is the Great Auk itself—we have found it!’ said Anna in a hushed whisper.
‘Hold the candle till I kill it with a stone—or, see! with this bit of timber.’
‘Wait!’ said Anna. ‘It looks so old and feeble!’
‘Our hundred pounds,’ said Simeon.
‘It looks exactly like your grandfather,’ said Anna; ‘look at his eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!’
‘Wouldn't I just—for a hundred pounds!’ said Simeon briskly, looking for a larger stone.
‘Don't let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is enough. None shall be so great as we.’
The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place. Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.
Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after him.
The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading right for the North and the Iceland skerries—where, it may be, he abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the island of Suliscanna.
The children reached home very late that night, and were received with varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.

 You can buy Bog Myrtle and Peat HERE  paperback and HERE  as an ebook. 

From Bog Myrtle and Peat: 

THE LAST ANDERSON OF DEESIDE

‘Weel, he's won awa'!’
‘Ay, ay, he is that!’
The minister's funeral was winding slowly out of the little manse loaning. The window-blinds were all down, and their bald whiteness, like sightless eyes looking out of the white-washed walls and the trampled snow, made the Free Church manse of Deeside no cheerful picture that wild New Year's Day. The green gate which had so long hung on one hinge, periodically mended ever since the minister's son broke the other swinging on it the summer of the dry year before he went to college, now swayed forward with a miserably forlorn lurch, as though it too had tried to follow the funeral procession of the man who had shut it carefully the last thing before he went to bed every night for forty years.
Andrew Malcolm, the Glencairn joiner, who was conducting the funeral—if, indeed, Scots funerals can ever be said to be conducted—had given it a too successful push to let the rickety hearse have plenty of sea-room between the granite pillars. It was a long and straggling funeral, silent save for the words that stand at the opening of this tale, which ran up and down the long black files like the irregular fire of skirmishers.
‘Ay, man, he's won awa'!’
‘Ay, ay, he is that!’
This is the Scottish Lowland ‘coronach,’ characteristic and expressive as the wailing of the pipes to the Gael or the keening of women among the wild Eirionach.
‘We are layin' the last o' the auld Andersons o' Deeside amang the mools the day,’ said Saunders M'Quhirr, the farmer of Drumquhat, to his friend Rob Adair of the Mains of Deeside, as they walked sedately together, neither swinging his arms as he would have done on an ordinary day. Saunders had come all the way over Dee Water to follow the far-noted man of God to his rest.
‘There's no siccan men noo as the Andersons o' Deeside,’ said Rob Adair, with a kind of pride and pleasure in his voice. ‘I'm a dale aulder than you, Saunders, an' I mind weel o' the faither o' him that's gane.’ (Rob had in full measure the curious South-country disinclination to speak directly of the dead.)
‘Ay, an angry man he was that day in the '43 when him that's a cauld corp the day, left the kirk an' manse that his faither had pitten him intil only the year afore. For, of coorse, the lairds o' Deeside were the pawtrons o' the pairish; an' when the auld laird's yae son took it intil his head to be a minister, it was in the nature o' things that he should get the pairish.
‘Weel, the laird didna speak to his son for the better part o' twa year; though mony a time he drave by to the Pairish Kirk when his son was haudin' an ootdoor service at the Auld Wa's where the three roads meet. For nae sicht could they get on a' Deeside for kirk or manse, because frae the Dullarg to Craig Ronald a' belanged to the laird. The minister sent the wife an' bairns to a sma' hoose in Cairn Edward, an' lodged himsel' amang sic o' the farmers as werena feared for his faither's factor. Na, an' speak to his son the auld man wadna, for the very dourness o' him. Ay, even though the minister wad say to his faither, 'Faither, wull ye no' speak to yer ain son?' no' ae word wad he answer, but pass him as though he hadna seen him, as muckle as to say—'Nae son o' mine!'
‘But a week or twa after the minister had lost yon twa nice bairns wi' the scarlet fever, his faither an' him forgathered at the fishin'—whaur he had gane, thinkin' to jook the sair thochts that he carried aboot wi' him, puir man. They were baith keen fishers an' graun' at it. The minister was for liftin' his hat to his faither an' gaun by, but the auld man stood still in the middle o' the fit-pad wi' a gey queer look in his face. 'Wattie!' he said, an' for ae blink the minister thocht that his faither was gaun to greet, a thing that he had never seen him do in a' his life. But the auld man didna greet. 'Wattie,' says he to his son, 'hae ye a huik?'
‘Ay, Saunders, that was a' he said, an' the minister juist gied him the huik and some half-dizzen fine flees forbye, an' the twa o' them never said Disruption mair as lang as they leeved.
‘'Ye had better see the factor aboot pittin' up a meetin'-hoose and a decent dwallin', gin ye hae left kirk and manse!' That was a' that the auld laird ever said, as his son gaed up stream and he down.
‘Ay, he's been a sair-tried man in his time, your minister, but he's a' by wi't the day,’ continued Saunders M'Quhirr, as they trudged behind the hearse.
‘Did I ever tell ye, Rob, aboot seem' young Walter—his boy that gaed wrang, ye ken—when I was up in London the year afore last? Na? 'Deed, I telled naebody binna the mistress. It was nae guid story to tell on Deeside!
‘Weel, I was up, as ye ken, at Barnet Fair wi' some winter beasts, so I bade a day or twa in London, doin' what sma' business I had, an' seein' the sichts as weel, for it's no' ilka day that a Deeside body finds themsel's i' London.
‘Ae nicht wha should come in but a Cairn Edward callant that served his time wi' Maxwell in the Advertiser office. He had spoken to me at the show, pleased to see a Gallawa' face, nae doot. And he telled me he was married an' workin' on the Times. An' amang ither things back an' forrit, he telled me that the minister o' Deeside's son was here. 'But,' says he, 'I'm feared that he's comin' to nae guid.' I kenned that the laddie hadna been hame to his faither an' his mither for a maitter o' maybe ten year, so I thocht that I wad like to see the lad for his faither's sake. So in a day or twa I got his address frae the reporter lad, an' fand him after a lang seek doon in a gey queer place no' far frae where Tammas Carlyle leeves, near the water-side. I thocht that there was nae ill bits i' London but i' the East-end; but I learned different.
‘I gaed up the stair o' a wee brick hoose nearly tumlin' doon wi' its ain wecht—a perfect rickle o' brick—an' chappit. A lass opened the door after a wee, no' that ill-lookin', but toosy aboot the heid an' unco shilpit aboot the face.
‘'What do you want?' says she, verra sharp an' clippit in her mainner o' speech.
‘'Does Walter Anderson o' Deeside bide here?' I asked, gey an' plain, as ye ken a body has to speak to thae Englishers that barely can understand their ain language.
‘'What may you want with him?' says she.
‘'I come frae Deeside,' says I—no' that I meaned to lichtly my ain pairish, but I thocht that the lassie micht no' be acquant wi' the name o' Whunnyliggate. 'I come frae Deeside, an' I ken Walter Anderson's faither.'
‘'That's no recommend,' says she. 'The mair's the peety,' says I, 'for he's a daicent man.'
‘So she took ben my name, that I had nae cause to be ashamed o', an' syne she brocht word that I was to step in. So ben I gaed, an' it wasna a far step, eyther, for it was juist ae bit garret room; an' there on a bed in the corner was the minister's laddie, lookin' nae aulder than when he used to swing on the yett an' chase the hens. At the verra first glint I gat o' him I saw that Death had come to him, and come to bide. His countenance was barely o' this earth—sair disjaskit an' no' manlike ava'—mair like a lassie far gane in a decline; but raised-like too, an' wi' a kind o' defiance in it, as if he was darin' the Almichty to His face. O man, Rob, I hope I may never see the like again.’
‘Ay, man, Saunders, ay, ay!’ said Rob Adair, who, being a more demonstrative man than his friend, had been groping in the tail of his ‘blacks’ for the handkerchief that was in his hat. Then Rob forgot, in the pathos of the story, what he was searching for, and walked for a considerable distance with his hand deep in the pocket of his tail-coat.
The farmer of Drumquhat proceeded on his even way.
‘The lassie that I took to be his wife (but I asked nae questions) was awfu' different ben the room wi' him frae what she was wi' me at the door—fleechin' like wi' him to tak' a sup o' soup. An' when I gaed forrit to speak to him on the puir bit bed, she cam' by me like stour, wi' the water happin' off her cheeks, like hail in a simmer thunder-shoo'er.’
‘Puir bit lassockie!’ muttered Rob Adair, who had three daughters of his own at home, as he made another absent-minded and unsuccessful search for his handkerchief. ‘There's a smurr o' rain beginnin' to fa', I think,’ he said, apologetically.
‘An' ye're Sandy MacWhurr frae Drumquhat,' says the puir lad on the bed. 'Are your sugar-plums as guid as ever?'
‘What a quastion to speer on a dying bed, Saunders!’ said Rob.
‘'Deed, ye may say it. Weel, frae that he gaed on talkin' aboot hoo Fred Robson an' him stole the hale o' the Drumquhat plooms ae back-end, an' hoo they gat as far as the horse waterin'-place wi' them when the dogs gat after them. He threepit that it was me that set the dogs on, but I never did that, though I didna conter him. He said that Fred an' him made for the seven-fit march dike, but hadna time to mak' ower it. So there they had to sit on the tap o' a thorn-bush in the meadow on their hunkers, wi' the dogs fair loupin' an' yowlin' to get haud o' them. Then I cam' doon mysel' an' garred them turn every pooch inside oot. He minded, too, that I was for hingin' them baith up by the heels, till what they had etten followed what had been in their pooches. A' this he telled juist as he did when he used to come ower to hae a bar wi' the lassies, in the forenichts after he cam' hame frae the college the first year. But the lad was laughin' a' the time in a way I didna like. It wasna natural—something hard an' frae the teeth oot, as ye micht say—maist peetifu' in a callant like him, wi' the deid-licht shinin' already in the blue een o' him.’
‘D'ye no' mind, Saunders, o' him comin' hame frae the college wi' a hantle o' medals an' prizes?’ said Rob Adair, breaking in as if he felt that he must contribute his share to the memories which shortened, if they did not cheer, their road. ‘His faither was rael prood o' him, though it wasna his way to say muckle. But his mither could talk aboot naething else, an' carriet his picture aboot wi' her a' ower the pairish in her wee black retical basket. Fegs, a gipsy wife gat a saxpence juist for speerin' for a sicht o' it, and cryin', 'Blessings on the laddie's bonny face!'’
‘Weel,’ continued Saunders, imperturbably taking up the thread of his narrative amid the blattering of the snow, ‘I let the lad rin on i' this way for a while, an' then says I, 'Walter, ye dinna ask after yer faither!'
‘'No, I don't,' says he, verra short. 'Nell, gie me the draught.' So wi' that the lassie gied her een a bit quick dab, syne cam' forrit, an' pittin' her airm aneath his heid she gied him a drink. Whatever it was, it quaitened him, an' he lay back tired-like.
‘'Weel,' said I, after a wee, 'Walter, gin ye'll no' speer for yer faither, maybe ye'll speer for yer ain mither?'
‘Walter Anderson turned his heid to the wa'. 'Oh, my mither! my ain mither!' he said, but I could hardly hear him sayin' it. Then more fiercely than he had yet spoken he turned on me an' said, 'Wha sent ye here to torment me before my time?'
 
* * *
‘I saw young Walter juist yince mair in life. I stepped doon to see him the next mornin' when the end was near. He was catchin' and twitchin' at the coverlet, liftin' up his hand an' lookin' at it as though it was somebody else's. It was a black fog outside, an' even in the garret it took him in his throat till he couldna get breath.
‘He motioned for me to sit doon beside him. There was nae chair, so I e'en gat doon on my knees. The lass stood white an' quaite at the far side o' the bed. He turned his een on me, blue an' bonnie as a bairn's; but wi' a licht in them that telled he had eaten o' the tree o' knowledge, and that no' seldom.
‘O Sandy,' he whispered, 'what a mess I've made o't, haven't I? You'll see my mither when ye gang back to Deeside. Tell her it's no' been so bad as it has whiles lookit. Tell her I've aye loved her, even at the warst—an'—an' my faither too!' he said, with a kind o' grip in his words.
‘Walter,' says I, 'I'll pit up a prayer, as I'm on my knees onyway.' I'm no' giftit like some, I ken; but, Robert, I prayed for that laddie gaun afore his Maker as I never prayed afore or since. And when I spak' aboot the forgiein' o' sin, the laddie juist steekit his een an' said 'Amen!'
‘That nicht as the clock was chappin' twal' the lassie cam' to my door (an' the landlady wasna that weel pleased at bein' raised, eyther), an' she askit me to come an' see Walter, for there was naebody else that had kenned him in his guid days. So I took my stave an' my plaid an' gaed my ways wi' her intil the nicht—a' lichtit up wi' lang raws o' gas-lamps, an' awa' doon by the water-side whaur the tide sweels black aneath the brigs. Man, a big lichtit toun at nicht is far mair lanesome than the Dullarg muir when it's black as pit-mirk. When we got to the puir bit hoosie, we fand that the doctor was there afore us. I had gotten him brocht to Walter the nicht afore. But the lassie was nae sooner within the door than she gied an unco-like cry, an' flang hersel' distrackit on the bed. An' there I saw, atween her white airms and her tangled yellow hair, the face o' Walter Anderson, the son o' the manse o' Deeside, lyin' on the pillow wi' the chin tied up in a napkin!
‘Never a sermon like that, Robert Adair!’ said Saunders M'Quhirr solemnly, after he had paused a moment.
Saunders and Robert were now turning off the wind-swept muir-road into the sheltered little avenue which led up to the kirk above the white and icebound Dee Water. The aged gravedigger, bent nearly double, met them where the roads parted. A little farther up the newly elected minister of the parish kirk stood at the manse door, in which Walter Anderson had turned the key forty years ago for conscience' sake.
Very black and sombre looked the silent company of mourners who now drew together about the open grave—a fearsome gash on the white spread of the new-fallen snow. There was no religious service at the minister's grave save that of the deepest silence. Ranked round the coffin, which lay on black bars over the grave-mouth, stood the elders, but no one of them ventured to take the posts of honour at the head and the foot. The minister had left not one of his blood with a right to these positions. He was the last Anderson of Deeside.
‘Preserve us! wha's yon they're pittin' at the fit o' the grave? Wha can it be ava?’ was whispered here and there back in the crowd. ‘It's Jean Grier's boy, I declare—him that the minister took oot o' the puirhoose, and schuled and colleged baith. Weel, that cowes a'! Saw ye ever the like o' that?’
It was to Rob Adair that this good and worthy thought had come. In him more than in any of his fellow-elders the dead man's spirit lived. He had sat under him all his life, and was sappy with his teaching. Some would have murmured had they had time to complain, but no one ventured to say nay to Rob Adair as he pushed the modest, clear-faced youth into the vacant place.
Still the space at the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation. With a swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into the grave.
‘He's there afore his faither,’ said Saunders M'Quhirr.
So sudden and unexpected was the movement, that, though the fall of the cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed through the bowed ranks of the bearers. ‘It was his ain boy Wattie come to lay his faither's heid i' the grave!’ cried Daft Jess, the parish ‘natural,’ in a loud sudden voice from the ‘thruch’ stone near the kirkyaird wall where she stood at gaze.
And there were many there who did not think it impossible.
As the mourners ‘skailed’ slowly away from the kirkyaird in twos and threes, there was wonderment as to who should have the property, for which the late laird and minister had cared so little. There were very various opinions; but one thing was quite universally admitted, that there would be no such easy terms in the matter of rent and arrears as there had been in the time of ‘him that's awa'.’ The snow swept down with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished from each other's sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a great tent of many flapping folds. Grave and quiet is the Scottish funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes but once. On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called mirthful.
So the last Anderson of Deeside, and the best of all their ancient line, was gathered to his fathers in an equal sleep that snowy January morning. There were two inches of snow in the grave when they laid the coffin in. As Saunders said, ‘Afore auld Elec could get him happit, his Maister had hidden him like Moses in a windin'-sheet o' His ain.’ In the morning, when Elec went hirpling into the kirkyaird, he found at the grave-head a bare place which the snow had not covered. Then some remembered that, hurrying by in the rapidly darkening gloaming of the night after the funeral, they had seen some one standing immovable by the minister's grave in the thickly drifting snow. They had wondered why he should stand there on such a bitter night.
There were those who said that it was just the lad Archibald Grier, gone to stand a while by his benefactor's grave.
But Daft Jess was of another opinion.

(This story is posted  in friendship for Pat, and in memory of Sandy. )

The following will hopefully resonate with many writers (and readers) and is reproduced here to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the publication of Crockett's short story collection 'Bog Myrtle and Peat' (1895)  
Republished in 2014 as Volume 15 of the Galloway Collection you can purchase it HERE  in paperback or HERE digitally 

PREFACE 
There is a certain book of mine which no publisher has paid royalty upon, which has never yet been confined in spidery lines upon any paper, a book that is nevertheless the Book of my Youth, of my Love, and of my Heart.
There never was such a book, and in the chill of type certainly there never will be. It has, so far as I know, no title, this unpublished book of mine. For it would need the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds crusted on ivory to set the title of this book.
Mostly I see it in the late night watches, when the twilight verges to the cock-crowing and the universe is silent, stirless, windless, for about the space of one hour. Then the pages of the book are opened a little; and, as one that reads hungrily, hastily, at the bookstall of an impatient vendor a book he cannot buy, so I scan the idylls, the epics, the dramas of the life of man written in words which thrill me as I read. Some are fiercely tender, some yearning and unsatisfying, some bitter in the mouth but afterward sweet in the belly. All are expressed in words so fit and chaste and noble, that each is an immortal poem which would give me deathless fame—could I, alas! but remember.
Then the morning comes, and with the first red I awake to a sense of utter loss and bottomless despair. Once more I have clutched and missed and forgotten. It is gone from me. The imagination of my heart is left unto me desolate. Sometimes indeed when a waking bird—by preference a mavis—sings outside my window, for a little while after I swim upward out of the ocean of sleep, it seems that I might possibly remember one stanza of the deathless words; or even by chance recapture, like the brown speckled thrush, that ‘first fine careless rapture’ of the adorable refrain.
Even when I arise and walk out in the dawn, as is my custom winter and summer, still I have visions of this book of mine, of which I now remember that the mystic name is ‘The Book Sealed.’ Sometimes in these dreams of the morning, as I walk abroad, I find my hands upon the clasps. I touch the binding wax of the seals. When the first rosy fingers of the dawn point upward to the zenith with the sunlight behind them, sanguine like a maid's hand held before a lamp, I catch a farewell glimpse of the hidden pages.
Tales, not poems, are written upon them now. I hear the voices of ‘Them Ones,’ as Irish folk impressively say of the Little People, telling me tales out of the Book Sealed, tales which in the very hearing make a man blush hotly and thrill with hopes mysterious. Such stories as they are! The romances of high young blood, of maidens' winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales for my very own so that the world must listen.
But as the rosy fingers of the morn melt and the broad day fares forth, the vision fades, and I who saw and heard must go and sit down to my plain saltless tale. Once I wrote a book, every word of it, in the open air. It was full of the sweet things of the country, so at least as they seemed to me. I saw the hens nestle sleepily in the holes of the bank-side where the dry dust is, and so I wrote it down. I heard the rain drum on the broad leaves over my head, and I wrote that down also. Day after day I rose and wrote in the dawn, and sometimes I seemed to recapture a leaf or a passing glance of a chapter-heading out of the Book Sealed. It came back to me how the girls were kissed and love was made in the days when the Book Sealed was the Book Open, and when I cared not a jot for anything that was written therein. So as well as I could I wrote these things down in the red dawn. And so till the book was done.
Then the day comes when the book is printed and bound, and when the critics write of it after their kind, things good and things evil. But I that have gathered the fairy gold dare not for my life look again within, lest it should be even as they say, and I should find but withered leaves therein. For the sake of the vision of the breaking day and the incommunicable hope, I shall look no more upon it. But ever with the eternal human expectation, I rise and wait the morning and the final opening of the ‘Book Sealed.’
 
S.R. CROCKETT.

May 9th is J.M.Barrie's 160th birthday. 'live' celebrations were curtailed due to coronavirus but there's some online activity for those who want to commemorate and/or learn more about Barrie.   Click HERE (takes you to the J.M.Barrie Lit Soc site) 
May 9th also sees the launch of the 3rd Volume of the J. M. Barrie Literary Society Journal.

This year's title is 'Man and Boy' and its a bumper edition.  You can buy the paperback edition of the Journal HERE or download the digital one straight away HERE
Earlier Journals and other Barrie works are also available at the J.M.Barrie lLit Soc Collection HERE 

(Please note that because of lockdown all unco books are being sent direct from the printer/distributor and this incurs some extra postage. To defray that, we suggest you order more than one book - our catalogues have more than 100 to choose from, so why not treat yourself for Barrie's birthday?!) 

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of J.M.Barrie's birth the J.M.Barrie Literary Society planned a number of events which have sadly been curtailed by coronavirus.  However, one was held before Lockdown, a collaborative event as part of the Cambridge Science Festival on March 10th.  Here's a recording of Prof Rosalind Ridley and Dr Sarah Green whose topic was: 

J.H.Millar is credited as originating the term 'Kailyard' as a literary phenomenon (or stigma) in his article of April 1895 in The New Review.   It's not entirely true.  However, for over a century the term has been used as a term of offence regarding particular Scottish authors, and some kinds of Scottish literature - and even Scots culture much more broadly.   Over the past quarter of a century there has been a shift towards seeing 'Kailyard' as a critical concept, but the authors damned with the title have still suffered from the slur.  Foremost among these 'unco' authors are J.M.Barrie and S.R.Crockett.   Both of their work is well represented by Society catalogues in the unco Bookstore. 

I've been studying and researching the work of these two authors since the 1990s and while my exploration (and expose) of Kailyard is still incomplete, it seemed right that in this 125th anniversary year, I start  turning over the soil in public.  
​
I'm starting with  'The Offending Article' by J.H.Millar ( with more than a little help from W.E.Henley) and some other contextual articles.   You can download the digital text (PDF format) from the Unco bookstore HERE and it's free if you're a member of the 'unco' community.  Otherwise, it'll  cost you £1.99

Cally Phillips

By Joining the unco community you'll be able to access and share all kinds of digital goodies from our online store! What are you waiting for - TAKE THE UNCO PLEDGE  today.