a small corner of ‘The Peatlands’. 

Of All That Ends’ by Gunter Grass p.75/8

From ‘How and where we will be laid to rest.’

In this late essay Grass is describing the preparations he and his wife are making for their funerals and burial.

“…Over the course of time no longer ours, all would decay, the box and its contents. Only bones large and small, the ribs, and the skull might remain, unlike the bodies buried in the bog in Schleswig-Holstein, now placed on show under glass in the Schloss Gottorf Museum. Those bones turned soft; you could still see tissue, skin and knotted hair, as well as bits of clothing, relics of a ghastly prehistoric Age, of scientific value, eagerly sought as fodder for bog-bodies stories, like the one of a young girl whose face was covered with a strip of cloth in punishment for some atrocity that could scarcely be imagined.”

Peat spade/curlew

Peat bog/cotton buds

Rannoch brindled beauty moth 

When you put your foot it, if it doesn’t drown you, it makes you feel like a complete arse. 

The bird’s nest is in the cold Sutherland hearth. Peatland people betrayed by those who owed them a duty of care.

 

 

Out on the moss the cuckoo’s favourite food is the hairy caterpillar. The gut of the cuckoo is so full of these caterpillars that it is like a furry purse. 

“…The nest of the curlew / is in the bubbling peat-moss…” from a traditional Highland song, quoted by @JimHunter22 in ‘The Other Side of Sorrow’ @BirlinnBooks 

Cutting, catching, throwing: rhythms and patterns at the Mayday peatbank.