Author: robinacrawford

Robin Crawford is an author and illustrator, with a particular interest in the culture and natural heritage of Scotland. His first book, ‘Into the Peatlands: A Journey Through the Moorland Year’, was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Highland Book Prize. ‘Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers’ (2020) is a treasury of Scottish Words. His third book ‘The Sound of Many Waters, A Jjourney along the River Tay’ is published in June 2023 by Birlinn. He lives in Auchtermuchty, in Fife.

“In digging a drain through this moss, my servants found, at the depth of about four feet from the surface, a number of ancient Roman silver medals, in great preservation.”

robinacrawfordLeave a comment

“In digging a drain through this moss, my servants found, at the depth of about four feet from the surface, a number of ancient Roman silver medals, in great preservation.”DC078238-8557-4690-ABEC-F9496D8AC775

Among the coins, appropriately enough, some bearing the image of Ceres, the Goddess of Agriculture with stalks of corn in one hand and flaming torch in the other.

 

Box of peaty delights

robinacrawfordLeave a comment

Inside the box of peaty treasures: glacial clay laid down in the ice age from under bogs- grey coloured(Stirling) and red(the Borders); commercially machine cut peat from Aberdeenshire; hand cut domestic peat from the Western Isles and Caithness; hand woven bog grasses; thousand year old silver birch and snail shells preserved in peat; tinder fungus from lagg fen trees; moorland owl pellets; a song thrush’s nest…BC71DAD8-4B58-4B07-9A2C-2537B8F6AC48

Whisky Galore at #BookWeekScot

robinacrawfordLeave a comment

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.F7A83FB2-4B40-44EC-9A56-6383776EEEA8