A Life in the Hills E-Book

Katharine Stewart

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1024

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Katharine Stewart, who died in 2013, was one of Scotland's best-loved writers on rural life in the Highlands. A Croft in the Hills, her first book, tells the story of how a couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, took over a remote hill croft near Loch Ness and made a living from it. Full of warm personal insights, good humour and a love of living things, it has become a classic and has rarely been out of print since it was first published in 1960. This omnibus gathers A Croft in the Hills together with some of Katharine's later books: A Garden in the Hills, describing a year in the life of her Highland garden; A School in the Hills, a vivid history of the school at Abriachan which eventually became the Stewarts' family home; and The Post in the Hills, which tells the dramatic story of the postal service in the Highlands, from the point of view of Katharine's later role as postmistress of the smallest post office in Scotland, run from the porch of her Abriachan schoolhouse. Each of these books glows with what Neil Gunn described as 'its unusual quality, its brightness and its wisdom'. The omnibus will bring the grace, charm and wisdom of Katharine Stewart's writing to a new generation of readers.

Leseprobe

A LIFE IN THE HILLS

Katharine Stewart was born in 1914 in Reading. Following the Second World War and after a spell running a hotel in Edinburgh she moved with her husband, Sam Stewart, and daughter Hilda, to the croft at Abriachan near Loch Ness, where she began her writing career with A Croft in the Hills. For many years she wrote a weekly column, On the Croft and Country Diary, for the Scotsman, as well as several other books on Highland life including those collected in this Omnibus. Later she trained as a teacher before, on the death of her husband, becoming the local postmistress at Abriachan. She died in 2013 and is survived by her daughter, Hilda.

A LIFE IN THE HILLS

The Katharine Stewart Omnibus

This combined edition first published in 2018 by

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

A Croft in the Hills was first published in 1960 by Oliver and BoydNew editions published by Melven Press in 1979,by Mercat Press in 1991 and by Birlinn Ltd in 2012Text © Katharine Stewart 1960, 1979 and 2012Illustrations copyright © Anne Shortreed 1960

A Garden in the Hills was first published in 1995 by Mercat PressA new edition was published in 2012 by Birlinn LtdText © Katharine Stewart 1995, 2012Illustrations © Anne Shortreed 1995

A School in the Hills was first published in 1996 by Mercat PressText © Katharine Stewart 1996

The Post in the Hills was first published in 1997 by Mercat PressText © Katharine Stewart 1997

The moral right of Katharine Stewart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher

ISBN: 978 1 78027 507 9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Bembo at Birlinn

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

CONTENTS

A CROFT IN THE HILLS

Introduction to the First Edition

Foreword to the First Edition by Neil M. Gunn

Foreword to the Second Edition by Eona MacNicol

I Divine Discontent

II The House on the Hill

III Winter and Rough Weather

IV Cuckoo-snow

V First Harvest

VI Ceilidhs

VII The Piglets Arrive

VIII Five Years A-Growing

IX An Impromptu Holiday

X ‘Grand Lambs!’

XI The Big Gale

XII Shining Morning Face

XIII ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’

XIV A Dinner of Herbs

XV We Wear the Green Willow

XVI A Stormy Christmas

XVII The Still Centre

XVIII The Way Ahead

End Piece

A GARDEN IN THE HILLS

Foreword

In the Beginning …

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

A SCHOOL IN THE HILLS

Preface

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

THE POST IN THE HILLS

Foreword

I Letters from the Highlands

II Early Days

III Shared News

IV Small Post Offices

V The Post in All Weathers

VI A Post Office Library?

VII The Post Goes on Strike

VIII The First Postal Services

IX Mail Buses – a Vital Link

X Visitors from Afar

XI Changes, and the Voting System

XII More Visitors

XIII Supervisors and Surveyors

XIV Read All about It – in the Post Office

XV Love Letters and the Penny Post

XVI The Acceleration of the Mail

XVII Servants of the Public

XVIII William Dochwra and ‘Indian Peter’

XIX Abriachan in the News

XX The Post in the Islands

XXI Electronic Mail

XXII From Bishop Mark to Postmark

XXIII Travelling Post Offices

XXIV The Post at Sea

XXV Keeping in Touch against the Odds

XXVI Problems with Parcels

XXVII The Post Takes to the Air

XXVIII Scarlet Coats and Ragged Trousers

XXIX More Highland Post Offices

XXX Post Office Cats

XXXI The Red Letter-box

XXXII Computers Don’t Bite

XXXIII Links with the Future

Sources of Information

A CROFT IN THE HILLS

TO MY FAMILY

‘All of you with little children . . . take them somehow into the country among green grass and yellow wheat—among trees—by hills and streams, if you wish their highest education, that of the heart and the soul, to be completed.’

Richard Jefferies

INTRODUCTION

to the First Edition

WHY, you may ask, record the simple fact that three people took to the hills and lived quiet lives under a wide sky, among the rock and heather, working with the crops and beasts they could manage to raise there, in order to feed and clothe themselves. There is certainly little room for dramatic highlights in this story of ours. But we heard the singing and we found the gold. And I believe that each small stand taken against the shrill wind of disenchantment which is blowing across the world has more positive human value than many of the assertions being made by science today.

Science says: ‘Here is a stone. It weighs so much. It measures so much. It is so-and-so many years old.’ But a man needs to discover that the stone is strong, so that he can stand on it, and cool, so that he can lay his head against it: that it is beautiful and can be fashioned as an ornament, or hard and can be built into his home.

How does he make these discoveries? With his own eyes, his own wits, his own imagination. His assessment of the stone includes a measuring of his own stature. And as his hand passes over the firm surface his brain is alert, his imagination lit. He is alive.

If the human being is to hold to his identity, he must, somehow or other, keep on making his own discoveries. The tragedy of today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to do so. He is even in danger of becoming a back number, for the powers that would govern his life have found that the machine is, for competitive purposes, so much more efficient and reliable than he is.

When you have lived for a few years in the bare uplands, where life has been precarious from the start, you learn, first, not to panic. Then you are ready to love wholeheartedly what need no longer be feared. You become so deeply involved in the true drama of cherishing life itself that mere attitudes and the pursuit of possessions are discarded as absurd. You discover that under snow there is bread, the secret bread, that sustains.

Panic gone, you can plot a course with steady hand and eye. And, after all, human steadfastness is the only ultimate weapon fit to guarantee survival in a real sense.

That is why I thought it worthwhile to record the process by which three small human beings, completely re-enchanted with their world, found the strength to walk without fear among the astonishing beauty of its wilderness.

I should like to thank Mrs. Anne Shortreed for capturing so delightfully, in line, the spirit of life in the uplands. And my special thanks go to Mr. Neil Gunn, who gave the book his blessing.

KATHARINE STEWART

FOREWORD

to the First Editionby

NEIL M. GUNN

The typescript of this adventure story reached me out of the blue—or very nearly, for the croft is about a thousand feet above Loch Ness: marginal land, hill-top farming, where on a February morning the blue may be vibrant with lark song or obscured by a snow blizzard. This is the oldest of all Highland adventures and will be the last. It is heartening and heart-breaking. Why do people go on thinking they can make a living out of a hill croft? In particular, what drives strangers, not bred in crofting traditions, to make the attempt? This is the story of such an attempt, with all the questions answered, and it is told so well that I find it absorbing.

For the author and her husband see everything with new eyes. They meet their problems as they arise, and they arise daily. Their capacity for work is all but inexhaustible. If I hesitate to use the word heroic it is because there are no heroics in this human record; only day-to-day doings, the facts of life, but, again, facts that spread over into many dimensions, the extra dimensions that give the book its unusual quality, its brightness and its wisdom. For the attitude to life is positive; it somehow contrives to survive the frustrations; and that today is rare. Often, too, this is seen in coloured threads running through the main texture, as in the growing up of their child to school age and her responses to the myriad influences of the natural scene; or in the spontaneous help given by, and to, neighbours at difficult or critical times—the old communal warmth that survives the hazards, or is there because of them.

I commend this book to all those who are interested in such things and may have sometimes wondered if there is any meaning in the ancient notion of ‘a way of life’.

FOREWORD

to the Second Editionby

EONA MACNICOL

It is a great honour for me to be asked to introduce this reprint of A Croft in the Hills. The book gave me great delight when first it appeared, I treasure my copy; and I am happy that now many more readers may enjoy it too.

I am myself of the old stock of Abriachan, the place which the author chose for her brave venture into crofting life, I have therefore the keener interest in it. But I know that through this book, and through the Folk Museum with which she has more recently been associated, Katharine Stewart has illuminated the crofting life not only of Abriachan but of the Highlands of Scotland.

CHAPTER I

DIVINE DISCONTENT

WE had both, since our earliest days, found it difficult to live in a city. Every free half-day or week-end, every summer holiday, had found us making for the nearest patch of country, anywhere where we could breathe and smell the earth and see the sky in great stretches, instead of in tiny squares between the huddled roof-tops.

I shall always remember walking down Oxford Street, during a war-time rush-hour, and finding myself nearly losing my footing among the crowd, because my mind’s eye was fixed on the rim of a steel-blue Highland loch, and I was smelling the scent of the bog-myrtle and hearing the weird, lonely cry of a drifting curlew. Jim, at that time, used to stand, during the brief spells of leisure his exacting job afforded, gazing through the huge, plate-glass windows of his place of work and seeing, beyond the racketing crowd, an oasis very like the one I had wandered into.

Later, we managed to make some sort of a compromise. We lived on the edge of the country and he went off to work at an unearthly hour of the morning, clad in the respectable black coat and hat of the city worker and shod with large, hobnailed boots (which he changed on arrival), for the two-mile walk to the bus. In the evenings I would go to meet him and in still weather I would hear the ring of the hobnails on the road long before he came in sight.

We had a garden; we had trees and the sky in stretches; we grew vegetables; we kept bees and hens and ducks. But the journeys to and from work were exhausting, though Jim would never admit it, and compromises are never really satisfactory. We were chafing against the tether.

Then Jim’s work took him to a small town in the north of Scotland. That was the end; city life is bad enough but small-town life is far worse.

In a city one has, at least, the feeling that there are thousands of kindred spirits about, if one only knew them, folk just as dissatisfied as oneself with the mechanics of living, who know that it is not enough to have acquired some little skill or other, which will enable one to make enough money to buy shelter and clothing and food, so that one may continue to employ one’s skill so as to be able to go on buying shelter and clothing and food, and so on... ad infinitum. In a city there is at least a spark of the divine discontent, an only half-submerged longing to catch a glimpse of the larger design, but in a small town everyone seems so glad of the boundary wall.

By this time our small daughter, Helen, was growing into a sturdy youngster. As I wandered hand in hand with her, back from the shops and along the row of trim villas to our home, I found my mind straying, as it had done years before in London, to some imagined remoteness.

I pictured Helen splashing in a hill-burn in summer, rolling like a young Sheltie in the snow in winter, racing the wind on the moor, gazing at birds and minute creatures among the grasses. ‘Sheer nonsense!’ a small, nagging voice would hiss in my ear. ‘A child needs all the amenities of town life—a good school and lessons in music and dancing, and all the other benefits civilisation has to offer. Without them she’ll only grow into a hopeless misfit.’ But… would she? Wouldn’t it be better for her to have at least a glimpse of the roots of things, not allow her to accept life as she would a shining parcel neatly wrapped in cellophane? Wouldn’t close contact with natural things give her a perspective and a poise she would never lose? I firmly believed it would.

Jim worked long hours; sometimes it was late evening before he reached home, and he would have to leave again in the morning without getting more than a glimpse of Helen. We both knew that it was only half a life we were living.

We had bought, very cheaply, because it was in an appalling state of neglect, a house in a good residential district of the town. We had done it up and found that light paintwork everywhere and the installation of electricity and some additional plumbing transformed it into quite a pleasant place. We tackled the wilderness of a garden and cleared a plot for vegetables. There would be room to keep some hens and even a goat, we decided. We would be able to unearth the beehives we had brought from our southern garden and there were some derelict stable buildings where we thought we could perhaps grow mushrooms.

But there might be objections from the authorities. We still felt hemmed in, particularly as we knew that all our outdoor activities were discreetly observed from behind impeccable net curtains by our distinctly circumspect neighbours! There was no doubt about it, we were getting restless again.

We began to scan the columns of various newspapers, under jobs, houses, houses, jobs. Could we get some sort of a joint post which would allow us to live in open country with security? We made one or two abortive attempts in this direction, and also inspected several smallholdings on the outskirts of the town.

Then we saw it—an advertisement for a seven-roomed house, in a place with an excitingly unfamiliar name, with forty acres of arable land and an outrun on the moor, for the comparatively small sum of five hundred pounds. We got out the map, found the spot and repeated the name out loud, looking wonderingly at each other. Music was sounding in our ears.

Instantly, our minds were made up. It was within quite easy reach; we must see it, just see it, at least.

On Jim’s next free day we got out our old van, packed a picnic, opened the map and set off. Through Inverness we went, and along the shore of Loch Ness, to a point about halfway to Drumnadrochit. There, a small road branched off from the main one. There was no sign-post, just this rough-shod track, pointing skywards. ‘This is it!’ We beamed at each other and put the van sharply at the rise.

We climbed slowly, changing gear every few yards, one eye on the panorama spread out below us, the other on what might emerge round the next blind corner ahead. After about a mile of this tortuous mounting we found ourselves on more or less level ground. Hills rose steeply on either side. There were small fields carved out of the encroaching heather. Croft houses were dotted here and there and there was a school, a tiny post-office and a telephone kiosk.

We made inquiries and found we had another mile or so to go. We came within sight of a small loch, lapping the foot of a shapely hill. It was remarkably like the Oxford Street oasis.

We branched right at this point and the landscape opened out into great distances. Another half-mile and we left the van at the roadside and took, as directed, the footpath through a patch of felled woodland. Then, at last, the roof and chimneys of a dwelling came into view. We stopped at the stile and took a long look at it.

Four-square and very solid it stood, facing just to the east of south, its walls of rough granite and whinstone, its roof of fine blue slate. Beyond it was the steading and in front a line of rowan trees, sure protection against evil spirits, according to Highland lore. A patch of rough grass all round the house was enclosed by a stout netted fence and on either side of the door was a small flower bed.

Round the house and steading was the arable ground and beyond that the moor, rising to the hill-land and to farther and farther hills against the horizon.

It was May and the warmth of the sun was bringing out the scent of the first heath flowers. A small, soft wind out of the west blew on our hands and faces, a bee hummed through the springing grass at our feet. The flanks of the farthest hills were swathed in blue mist.

We saw the good lady of the house. She pointed out the boundaries and we talked of the various possibilities of obtaining a piped water supply. The only well was a good hundred and fifty yards away, and below the level of the house. But she had had a diviner out and her son had started to dig for water at a spot indicated by him, within a stone’s throw of the house. We gazed hopefully into this chasm and agreed that it would be all to the good if water could be found there.

The house was in an excellent state of repair; over the lintel was carved the date 1911. We learnt later that the house was actually built in 1910, but as the mason found it easier to make a 1 than a 0 he engraved the date as 1911! We also learnt later that in former times practically every crofter had a trade at his finger-tips, which he practised along with the working of his croft. This house, like nearly all those in the district, had been slated by the man who was to become our nearest, and very dear, neighbour.

Downstairs were two good-sized rooms, one stone-floored, the other with a new floor of wood. The stone-floored room had originally been the kitchen, but as the cooking was now done in a built-on scullery the range had been removed, the original wide hearth restored and a most attractive chimney-piece of rough, local stone built round it. Off this room was a small bedroom and a door leading to the substantial scullery. Upstairs were two good bedrooms and a box-room with a skylight.

Our experience with our town house had taught us what points to look for in examining property. The walls and wood-work were shabby but the structure was sound and weather-proof. It was the sort of house you could start to live in right away.

The steading was of the usual Highland design—a long, low building divided into three parts—byre, stable and barn—with thick stone walls and a roof of corrugated iron, and like the house it was in excellent repair. Beyond it were the ruins of the ‘black house’ (a small stone cottage, thatched with heather, its walls blackened with peat-reek), which had been the original dwelling on the holding. Opposite the steading, in the shelter of four giant rowans, was a small wooden hen-house.

The fields had been cultivated only spasmodically over the last years, but they had a healthy slope to them, and we knew that it was possible to obtain grants and subsidies for ploughing-up and fertilising such marginal land as this. Only a small area in the one level part of the arable ground was really damp and choked with rushes. We reckoned that a good clearing-out and a repairing of drains would help there. The rough grazing gave promise of a good summer bite for sheep and hardy cattle.

The fencing was patchy, to say the least of it, but we had already noticed on our way through the felled woodland the quantity of quite sound wood that was lying about. Some of it would surely be fit to make into fencing posts, and we knew of an excellent scrap-yard in Inverness where wire could often be picked up very cheaply.

The access road for vehicles was shared by our two immediate neighbours to the east. (In Scotland, as nearly all the glens run roughly east and west, one always goes ‘east’, or goes ‘west’, when visiting neighbours.) We could see that deliveries of heavy goods would have to be made during the drier months, as the road surface was distinctly soft, but it seemed to have a reasonably hard bottom and livestock could be loaded at a fank at the side of the main road.

The only thing that did really worry us a little was the lack of shelter. The woodland, which had formerly broken the force of the wind from all the southerly points of the compass, had been felled during and after the war. The view from the scullery window at the back was superb, but there seemed to be little but the heady air between us and Ben Wyvis which lay, like a great, dozing hound, away to the north.

But it was May-time and one of May’s most glorious efforts in the way of a day—warm and sweet-scented and domed with milky blue. It is difficult on such a day really to visualise the storm and stress of winter.

We walked to the limit of the little property and stood looking down the strath. Several small, white croft houses stood on either side of the burn flowing down its centre. The fields adjoining them looked tidy and well-cultivated. Plumes of smoke rose from squat chimneys. Here and there were the ruins of former houses, where one holding had been incorporated into another. There was, on the whole, a feeling of quiet snugness about the prospect. It seemed incredible that we were standing nearly a thousand feet above sea-level.

Probably an upland area such as this would never have been settled at all had it not been for the clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One certainly shudders to think of the labour that must have gone into the wresting of the small fields from the bog and heather. The dry-stone dykes remain as memorials to those who heaved the mighty stones out of the plough’s way and made the crops sheep- and cattle-proof.

The crofters’ tenacity and innate gift for husbandry had resulted in their being able to maintain their families in health in these surroundings. Could we, who had so little experience, reasonably hope to do the same? We had health and strength and a tremendous appetite for this kind of life; we each had close links with the soil. There were Government schemes of assistance undreamt-of by the older generation of crofters and we could realise a certain amount of capital. We were braced and eager to take the leap.

With Helen staggering ahead of us, a bunch of small, bright heath flowers in her hand, we made our way back to the house. I think the lady in possession must have read her fate in our faces. She gave us tea and we told her, as sops to our conscience, that we would think it over and let her know our decision in a day or two.

Quietly and methodically she told us that there was a postal delivery every day, that an all-purpose van called every Wednesday and another on Saturday, but that, as it was often the early hours of Sunday before this latter one arrived, she preferred to deal with the Wednesday one. Small parcels of meat and fish, she said, could be sent through the post.

We made a mental note of all the information she gave us, thanked her and walked slowly back to the road. We did have a look at another place on the way home, but it was quite out of the question, twice the price and very inaccessible and, as the French have it, it ‘said nothing to us’.

The house on the hill was already making its voice heard. All the way back in the van we listened in silence to what it had to say. It was a supremely honest little place. It hid nothing from us. Its fields had been neglected, its access road was little more than a track, its water supply was altogether unhandy. In winter it was liable to be cut off by impenetrable snow-drifts. But—it offered a challenge. We had enough imagination to visualise its possibilities and most of its impossibilities. Experience had taught us that the worst hardly ever happens, and if it does, it can usually be turned into a best.

Our minds were seething with positive plans. All traces of discontent, however divine, had vanished utterly.

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

WITHIN a week the deed of purchase of the house and land was signed and sealed by us. Occupation was ‘to be arranged’. This meant that the seller would be leaving very shortly and that we should take over in the autumn.

Immediately we set about selling our own house. We knew this would not be difficult as it was now classed as a ‘desirable residence’ and was much sought after, occupying, as it did, a most favoured site in a most favoured neighbourhood. The angels had been on our side after all. Like fools we had rushed to buy it, only wondering by what stroke of luck we had managed to get it so cheaply and easily. Not until after the sale was concluded did we hear the gruesome rumour that the roof was afflicted with dry rot. For several days we were haunted by this nightmare, till a thorough investigation by the builder called in to do the repairs assured us that the rumour was completely ill-founded. There were traces of the activity of woodworm in some of the cupboards but of dry rot there was no sign. So we were able to dispose of our house with the greatest ease and at a considerable profit.

Meantime, we besieged the local offices of the Department of Agriculture and loaded ourselves with pamphlets concerning grants, subsidies and so on. We discovered that we were eligible for a grant of fifty per cent of the cost of an approved scheme of water installation for the house and steading of the croft; that some of the land would qualify for the ploughing-up grant of five pounds an acre and that we could get help with the buying of lime and fertilisers.

We then called at the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, in Inverness, and were told that their expert would come out to take a sample of the soil in the various fields, for analysis, so that the amount of lime needed could be accurately determined, and that he would draw up a complete cropping and stocking programme for us, all this without any sort of fee. Another expert, a lady (later on referred to affectionately as the ‘hen wife’), would come to give us advice on all matters relating to poultry-keeping.

Everyone was most friendly and helpful and charming. Helen would sit on my knee during the various interviews and would almost invariably end up with a peppermint to suck or find herself carried off to the typists’ room, to be beguiled with bangs on the typewriter, when business was not too pressing! All in all, we felt surrounded by a solid wall of encouragement and goodwill.

Once a week we set off early, to spend a long day at the croft. We cleared rubbish from the outbuildings and repaired the garden fence; we prospected for wells and picnicked on the moor, or in the empty living-room if it was wet. We made the acquaintance of our nearest neighbours and began to get the feel of the place.

About this time, a piece of land to the west of our croft came on the market. It had been bought some years previously by an Inverness man, who meant to run Highland cattle on it. His plans had fallen through and he wanted to dispose of the land. As it would give us some sixty additional acres of good rough grazing, we decided to make an offer for it. So, for ninety pounds, it became ours.

The seller wished, however, to retain the mineral rights. This intrigued us. We made inquiries and discovered that when digging a drain he had come on several deposits of blue clay. He had had an expert from London up to examine these and had been told that they might be of commercial value, but only if found in sufficient quantity to justify excavation. Later on we turned up quite a lot of this blue clay when ploughing our own ground. We sent a specimen to the Geological Department of the Edinburgh Museum and the opinion we received on it tallied with that of the London expert. We are still hoping we may find a use for it some day.

In the meantime this addition to our croft land has provided us, in addition to the grand grazing, with a supply of first-class peat—the black, well-seasoned stuff which cuts into hard, stiff blocks and gives a much hotter fire than the brown, crumbly variety.

Another find on this newly acquired land was the ‘golden’ well, so called because of the brilliant marsh-marigolds which grow in the boggy ground all round it. This had always been a death-trap for sheep and other animals. On a hungry spring day, irresistibly attracted by the fresh, green growth, they would plunge into the bog for a bite and get engulfed. During our second summer, after we had lost a ewe lamb in this way, Jim cut a channel for the spring overflow and the ground round about is now quite hard and dry. Could a scheme be devised there is enough water in this source to provide a piped supply for all the crofts lower down the strath.

Our search for water near the house had become almost an obsession. We grudged the expense of laying a long pipe-track from the existing well, even though we should have to bear only half of it ourselves. Some further digging in the hole already begun revealed nothing, not even a trickle. We got in touch with another diviner and watched, goggle-eyed with fascination, while the stick jigged and cavorted in his hands. It seemed there was water here, there and everywhere. At last he selected a spot above the level of the house, whence a supply could gravitate easily to a downstairs tank. Our hopes ran high. The digging started but, after three days’ heavy work, all that we came on was a thin, muddy trickle which would not pass the analyst’s test.

We decided to seek Government approval for a scheme to install a pump at the existing well, which would raise the water to the level of the house. A sample of this water was found to be quite satisfactory and the Department of Agriculture agreed to give us a grant of fifty per cent of the cost of the work.

As the profit on the sale of our town house had been a substantial one, we decided to have some plumbing installed at the croft and to wire the house for electricity. We had been assured that a main supply from the Hydro-Electric Scheme would be available within the next few years. In the meantime the wiring could be connected to a cheap, wind-driven dynamo to provide us with light though not with power.

We looked on this expense as an investment. It would increase the value of the property and it would pay dividends in other ways. Spared the drudgery of incessant water-carrying, we should have more time and energy to give to productive work and I should be able to get quickly through my household chores and be free to take a proper share in the outdoor jobs. The electric wiring we intended to extend to the steading, in part of which we were going to keep hens, on the deep-litter system, with a light to encourage winter egg-production.

It was difficult to find men to tackle the work on the house. Jim was still busy at his job and had only a very limited amount of time and the place was too difficult of access for men to come out daily from Inverness.

Finally we accepted the quite moderate estimates of some young tradesmen, just setting up in business, who would live on the job if we would provide them with the necessaries for camping in the empty house. We gladly agreed and they took up all the bedding, pots, pans, crockery and so on, we could spare, in a lorry, on the day of their preliminary investigation.

There were the usual delays, for material was still difficult to come by. Mid-October came, the time we could spend at the croft grew shorter as the days drew in, and still the main work had not been begun. We were afraid the frosts would set in before the pipe-track was dug.

Jim packed up his job and we decided to move by the first of November. Then the men really got busy. On our last weekly visit we found the place reverberating with hammer-blows and cheerful whistling and shouting and clanking.

The day of our arrival came at last. The removal people had sent too small a van with the result that two journeys had to be made. We had to spend an extra night in town, as it was too late to make the trip ourselves that day.

Next morning, when we reached our destination, we were greeted by the sight of half our worldly goods standing stacked at the roadside. Furniture, books, pictures, pots and pans stood there, looking forlorn in the chill, grey light.

We had arranged with a neighbour to ferry our belongings from the road to the house on his tractor-trailer, as the van could not manage to make the journey to the house with the access road in its wintry state. Luckily this neighbour had had the good sense to cart all the bedding and really perishable stuff along to the house the day before, and the night had been fine, so no irreparable damage was done.

We changed into gum-boots and started right away to rescue the most precious books, as the sky was clouding and rain threatening. At once we were overwhelmed with goodwill. The tractor came lurching into view and strong arms soon had another load secured. Our eastward neighbour appeared at her door as we passed and offered to take charge of Helen for the day, so that we could get on with the work as quickly as possible. They were already firm friends, she and Helen, and we gladly agreed. On arrival at the house we found a roaring fire in the kitchen, more cheery faces and a welcome brew of tea.

All day the tractor plied back and forth with load after load of goods and chattels. There was hammering and singing and mud and plaster everywhere, but by tea-time we had everything under cover and the beds made up, so we fetched Helen from our kindly neighbour. The men brought pail after pail of water from the well and we all ate an enormous meal of ham and eggs. I even managed to give Helen her tub, as usual, before carrying her through the ‘burach’ to the safe oasis of her bed. Then we lit a fire in the great hearth in the living-room and sat round it, all six of us, till our eyelids drooped.

Those were happy days as, slowly, our house began to take shape. The men were up at six and had a fire in the kitchen for me to cook breakfast. After dark they worked on by the light of oil-lamps so as to get done and, as they put it, ‘out of our road’. Secretly, I think they were missing the pub and the cinema of their little home town. Certainly their singing and whistling grew more light-hearted and obstreperous as they kept up their spirits till the time came for their release. But they were good sorts and did their best in what were, for them, difficult and unusual conditions.

We celebrated Helen’s third birthday with a cake I had made weeks before. Our black Labrador presented us with a litter of pedigreed pups. At last the men completed the plumbing and wiring and departed with cheerful waves and ‘rather-you-than-me’ expressions on their faces.

Then Peter, a young friend of ours who was waiting to start a new job, came to help Jim dig the trench for the water pipe. For nearly three weeks they dug, pausing only for meals and fly cups of tea. Sometimes they would be lost to view in the mist, and only the ring of the pick and the scrape of the shovel told us they were still hard at it. But the job was accomplished, though we were still to wait a long time before the water would flow from the tap.

Meantime, I was clearing rubble from around the outside of the house and making a gravel path to the door so that some, at least, of the mud would not be brought inside on the soles of our boots. I got to know the ways of my new oven and I carried water, and more water!

At last, towards the beginning of December, when the house was more or less straight and Peter had departed, with a twinge of regret, I think, that he had to go back to the city treadmill, we felt we were really settled in. That first evening on our own I went out after dark to get some washing-water from the butt by the back door. I stood, kettle in hand, staring at the sky beyond Ben Wyvis. Great pale beams were moving, like searchlights, across the whole northern section of the heavens. I called to Jim and he stood with me, gazing at these incredibly beautiful northern lights. Then we fetched Helen, wrapped her in a big coat, and held her in our arms, while we all three watched the spectacle. Jim and I felt very small and very humble but young Helen gurgled with delight. At once we joined in her response: this was her inheritance, she had recognised it at once. It was the first of the joys she was to discover in and around the house on the hill.

CHAPTER III

WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER

AS though to put us through a lovers’ test our small domain soon took on its most forbidding aspect. We were hardly into December when the first snow came whirling out of the south-west. We woke one morning to find the doors and windows plastered, as though some giant had hurled a vast white pudding at the house.

The first essential was to keep warm. Luckily, we had already got a good stock of logs sawn and split and there were some peats in the barn, left over from the year before, so we could be fairly lavish with fires.

Normally we relied on the kitchen stove for warmth in the daytime and only lit a fire in the living-room in the evening, when we had leisure to sit at it, before bed. But we kept a blaze going in the living-room all that day and, last thing at night, we carried shovelfuls of red embers to the bedroom grate. We put Helen’s cot in our room and unearthed all the spare blankets and so spent quite a snug night.

By next morning the road was blocked with snow-drifts, and it was the day the grocer’s van was due. Over a steaming cup of morning tea I mentally reviewed the contents of the larder. It was not very promising; we had been caught unawares. Having as yet no sources of supply of our own, we were certainly not equipped to ride out a storm.

The first thing to do was to get water. The pump was not yet connected and, if this weather were to continue, it looked as though the chances of our having water in the tap before spring-time would be fairly remote. Jim took a pail and a shovel and went to dig out the well. Then we thawed out the tap on the water-butt and filled a big crock with washing-water. While I prepared a meal with our last tin of meat, Helen, in snow-suit and gum-boots, went out to revel in her first snow and Jim knocked up a sledge.

In the early afternoon we set off, with Helen perched on the sledge, in search of eggs from a neighbour, half a mile down the road. It was heavy going but we returned home in triumph with all the eggs intact. The sky was pure, deep blue and there was a sparkling silence everywhere. Our little house looked more snug and secure than ever in its winter setting and we felt the bonds that linked us to it grow perceptibly stronger.

Jim brought in more logs while I made an enormous dish of scrambled eggs and then we shut the door reluctantly on the stars and drew the supper-table close to the fire.

All that month winter fretted at us. There was little we could do outside but repair fences between the storms, but we carried several fallen tree-trunks down on our shoulders and cut them with a cross-cut saw. On the fine days we would work away at the chopping and splitting till the sky faded to mauve and clear shades of green and gold came up about the setting sun. Every morning, when I opened the door, I would find two outwintered Shetland ponies waiting patiently for their bite of bread. They belonged to a distant neighbour and one day we had taken pity on them and given them some crusts. So every morning, till the spring grass came, they would be there to greet us at the door.

In the evenings we made plans and discussed endlessly the absorbing topics of sheep and cattle, hens and pigs, fertilisers and farm-machinery and crops. This ‘shop’ never grows stale. It has an inexhaustible fascination, perhaps because one has the assurance that one is dealing with fundamentals, perhaps because one knows that there’s always the unpredictable lurking in the background ready to upset the best-laid schemes, perhaps just because it relates to things one instinctively loves. We began to long for the days to lengthen and the air to soften so that we could start putting our plans into operation.

On Christmas morning the plumber arrived to try once more to connect the pump. He had walked the two miles from the bus and was quite tired out when he reached us and amazed at the wintry conditions in our hills. In Inverness, he said, there had been promise of a reasonably mild day and he had had hopes of getting the job done. We have now come to accept this sort of thing. We leave home on a bitter winter’s morning and find spring, with a flush of green in the trees, at Loch Nessside. It’s not the distance of two miles that does it but the rise of close on a thousand feet. There was little he could do, the plumber decided, so he shared our Christmas dinner and set off again to walk to the bus. At dusk we lit the candles on our little Christmas tree and played games with Helen till bed-time.

There was a party for all the children of the district in the village hall, to which we took Helen. We met her future teacher and a dozen or so lively youngsters. There were games and songs and a piper and there was tea and cakes and oranges and sweets. It was a simple little festivity but a very happy one. Everyone asked kindly how we were faring. ‘It can be fearful wild here in the winter’, they said, almost apologising for the climate in their hills. ‘We like it’, we said, and they looked at us out of their clear, shrewd eyes and I think they almost believed us. We began to feel that we nearly belonged.

On New Year’s Eve we sat by the fire talking, as usual, and when midnight came we filled our glasses and slipped upstairs and pledged each other over Helen’s sleeping head. We went down again and got out the black bun and some extra glasses and put fresh logs on the fire. We thought it more than likely we should have a neighbour for a first-foot. Distance would not daunt the people of Abriachan, we were sure, and the night was fine.

We sat till two o’clock, getting drowsier and drowsier. No one came and we went to bed. At about three-thirty we were dragged from the depths of sleep by what sounded like an aeroplane crashed outside the front door. We fumbled our way into heavy coats and staggered out, to find three neighbours clambering off a tractor. There was much handshaking and back-slapping. We poked the fire into a blaze and drank a toast. Later we helped them to remount and stood at the door, watching the tractor lurch off on its way to the next port of call. How the two passengers managed to keep their precarious balance, draped over the rear mudguards, will remain for ever a mystery. But we were immensely cheered by their visit and went back to bed and slept till the middle of the morning.

During the first days of the new year we made many pleasant visits to neighbours. Some we had called on before, but there was one whose house we had never been in. He lived, with his brother and his cousin, in a high fold of the hills to the southwest. Several other families had lived up there at one time, but now only the ruins of their little dwellings are left. Finlay’s place, however, had been completely modernised under the Hill Farming Scheme, and there, in the little house nestled in the shelter of the rock, we found a most heartening welcome. We were given tea before a fine red fire and were shown, with quiet pride, the bathroom, the new scullery with its gleaming sink and hot and cold taps, the enamelled cooking stove, the bright paintwork everywhere.

Later we were told how Finlay’s forebears had been evicted from a place in a fertile glen and had started all over again in this green upland, first building themselves a rough house of stone and thatch, then clearing little fields from the heather. We were also told how the men who now live there had laboured, as boys, before and after school, to make the road which carries cattle-floats these days up to their snug farmstead. We began to understand how it was that the Highlander made such a splendid pioneer in Canada and New Zealand.

Towards the end of January the wind at last got back to its normal westerly quarter and the air became soft and damp again. The plumber returned and our shining new taps at last began to function. It was thrilling to see the water actually flow from them—it was bright green in colour, but somehow that only added to the delight. After a time the piping settled down till there was only a faint tinge of green about the water and it had no ill effect on our stomachs.

The mild spell, unbelievably, continued. There was almost a warmth in the sun and the midges were dancing. Encouraged by this overture we took a spade to the garden plot. It had been neglected for years, but it had a dry-stone wall protecting it from the north and east and we could see its possibilities. In a couple of days we had the turf skimmed off and our spades bit delightedly into the good, black earth.

We began to get very impatient to start the real work of the place. The first essential, we knew, for the growing of crops, was sound fencing. Every afternoon we went up to the old woodland, selected pieces of timber suitable for making into fencing posts and carried them down on our shoulders. We pointed the ends and stuck them to soak in a pail of creosote.

But we realised that it would take weeks to make all that were needed. Our land marched for almost half a mile with Forestry Commission land. This Forestry land was unfenced, pending replanting, and sheep from various airts were roaming over it and finding their way into our fields. On our next trip to Inverness Jim went to see the Forestry people and asked when they meant to fence. To our astonishment and great satisfaction they said that although they did not intend to plant immediately they would put forward the fencing and make a start at it in the early summer. This news cheered us greatly; it really did look as though things were going our way.

We bought a tractor and a single plough. The tractor had a small bogey attachment and during the long weeks we waited for the ground to dry out for ploughing we found this extremely useful for all sorts of carting work. We were able to fetch wood in large quantities, both for fuel and for fencing posts, and load after load of stones for patching the road.

February brought another blizzard and the road was blocked again, but this time we had the larder well stocked. We were learning! By the end of the month the larks were singing. There is perhaps nothing in hill-life so thrilling as the sight and sound of the first returning lark. You go out, on a still February morning, your footsteps ringing on the hard cobbles of the yard. Suddenly, something makes you stop in your tracks and look up. Against the pale blue sky you see two, maybe three, or even four, small brown specks tossing madly in the air. As you look, one detaches itself from the rest, rises in a series of ecstatic leaps and comes slowly down again, its song rippling from its tiny throat. How something so small can let loose such a volume of sound is what amazes you. Soon the others join it and then the whole sky rings with music.

‘The larks are singing!’ Each year we make the announcement to one another. The words are sober enough, but what they convey, it is almost impossible to express. It means that our hills and moors are again fit places for new life, for song and work and laughter, all the things we cling to so passionately, in the name of living. Each year, the rising of the larks has meant a little more to us, as we emerge from one more winter to greet the new season.

After the larks come the peewits. They usually arrive at dusk, and far into the darkening we hear their wild crying. Next morning we go out eagerly to watch them flashing and swooping over the bare, brown fields. Each day after that we listen for the curlews and, when we see them gliding over the moor in the evening light and catch the sound of their call, which seems to come from some other very far-off place, we know that spring is really with us.

By mid-March the upper field in front of the house was ready for ploughing. It was to be sown to oats. The bigger field, below the house, was to carry a crop of oats, undersown with grass, and we were to grow two acres of turnips and half an acre of potatoes. Later on we would put more under grass. We were to work on a five-year rotation.

On this still March morning we could feel the warmth of the sun on our hands and faces. Not only to see the sun, but to feel its warmth, that was what gave a lift to the day! Jim hitched the plough to the tractor and began slowly turning over the sward. I stood watching the work from the door and as soon as the household chores were finished I went out to dig the garden. Helen scampered between field and garden, calling encouragement to each of us. It was a morning none of us will forget.

Of course, winter had not finished with us. The very next day, the wind shifted unaccountably to the east and sleet began to fall. Jim finished ploughing the top field, completely unperturbed by the weather, and in the afternoon he made a start at the lower field. We knew that there were patches of bog here and though we had scythed the rushes and given the drain a preliminary clearing the ground was still treacherous. As dusk was falling the tractor stuck and no amount of manoeuvring would get her clear. We went along to our nearest tractor-owning neighbour, who came willingly to the rescue. It was then that we got our first inkling of what good-neighbourliness can mean in lonely places. Since that day, we have borrowed and lent everything from a loaf of bread to a broody hen and have exchanged services of every kind, from a hand at the dipping to the rescue of a snow-bound truck. We are all faced with the same fundamental problems and we have learnt how utterly dependent we are upon one another in dealing with them.

CHAPTER IV

CUCKOO-SNOW

WE were soon well in the grip of spring fever. In the lengthening evenings we would take a pleasure stroll round the fields after supper, for to stay indoors had become positively irksome. We acquired our first stock—a dozen laying hens, which we bought from a neighbour. We settled them in the stable, in a litter of peat-moss and straw, and began to keep a tally of eggs laid.

About this time it came to our ears that the croft immediately to our east was likely to come up for sale. The man who had bought it, a few years previously, was trying to run it in the time he could spare from another full-time job and it had become a burden to him. There were about fifteen acres of well-fenced arable ground, some more rough grazing, and the croft carried the right to graze sheep on the open hill on the other side of the road, a right shared by four other places in the neighbourhood. There was an excellent steading, with a brand-new corrugated iron roof, and a small wooden bungalow adjoining it, in place of the ruined dwelling house.

We were tempted to acquire this place as it would give a reasonably good access road to our land. Our own very indifferent road came through part of this holding and in the past, we learned, there had been a certain amount of dispute about rights of way and the upkeep of communal gates and fences. We could grow our first crops in the well-fenced fields, thus giving ourselves time to do the other fencing more or less at leisure. We could winter cattle in the steading and keep the one near home for the house-cow and the hens in deep litter. The proposition was certainly attractive—could we scrape the bottom of the barrel? We had still our basic stock to buy.

For several days we looked at the thing from all angles. Then, over a cup of tea at the kitchen fire, on a blustery, wet afternoon, we discussed it with J. F., the owner of the croft. We could have it lock, stock and barrel, he said, it was proving too irksome for him, with his other commitments. The lock we knew about; of barrel there was no sign! But we agreed to examine the stock. This consisted of one cross cow, in milk (she was brown and horned and had a touch of Guernsey about her, her owner said. This was later borne out by the quality of the cream she produced), and four stirks, all hardy crosses, two score sheep, a couple of goats, two dozen hens, a dozen khaki-Campbell ducks and—Charlie, a straw-coloured Highland pony of uncertain age. There was also a cart, a set of harrows, a mower, a turnip-chopper, barn tools, all things we should need and have to spend precious time looking for in the second-hand market. Here they were on the spot. Finally we did a deal and the signing of one more scrap of paper satisfied our land hunger at last.

The animals were in poor shape and we got them cheaply enough. They had had a lean winter of it, but we knew a summer’s grazing could work wonders—and so it proved. We were able to sell the stirks in the autumn for more than twice the amount we paid for them. But in the meantime our immediate problem was to find something to put in their bellies, until such time as the natural herbage had grown sufficiently to satisfy their appetites.

Here, again, our neighbours came to the rescue. Willie Maclean, from over the burn, sent word that we could come