I was chatting to a man at a BookWeekScotland event who told me a story of whisky galore. When he was a boy it was discovered that a pipe high up in the rafters of the local distillery had twenty four neat little holes drilled in it. Each was cunningly bunged with chewing gum and impossible to see without close inspection. Subsequently police and excise officers raided many a house in and around the Speyside village early one morning.
Once things had settled down his father took him for a stroll on a moonless night. First they passed through fields of barley then headed uphill till they came to the open moor. Either he pulled too hard or the suction was too strong but when retrieving a bottle from the bog in which it was hidden the string slipped from round the neck and the whisky was accidentally sacrificed, reclaimed by the peaty waters from which it came.
Robin A Crawford 