Winter shelter in the lee of a glacial boulder, Rannoch Moor.

Ice on glacial clay. This clay, dredged up from under a bog was laid down at the end of the last ice age.

peat strata.

“The wife brought out a basin of water. The man lifted three live embers from the fire and dropped them one by one from the tongs into the water, with small hissings and wisps of steam. Then he washed his hands and face in the singed water. His wife went through the same lustration. The three children dipped hands and faces and lifted them steaming…”

from ‘The Laird’s Son’ in ‘Winter Tales’ by George Mackay Brown, Polygon, 2010.

How much of this year will you preserve in your memory?Peat to a depth of approximately 1mm is formed each year. It preserves within its strata a register of footprints, pollens, spade marks, carbons, caterpillars, abandoned cars, lost hats and life lived on Scotland’s peatlands. It has been the goal of this year of daily bog blogs to do the same.

Snow/Peat.

Perfect weather to start reading the peated beginning to my jolabokaflod gift, ‘Winter Tales’ by George MacKay Brown.

“…The dowie dichis war all donk and wait,
The law vallis floodit all with spait.
The plane stretis and every hie way
Full of fluschis, dubbis, myre and clay,
Laggerit leys wallowit fernis schew,
Broun muris kithit their wissinyt mossy hewe.”

Lines From ‘Eneados: The Prologue of the Sevynt Buik.
Gavin Douglas (c1471-1522)

Approximate English translation runs:

The dismal ditches were all dank and wet,
The low valley flooded all with spate.
The plain streets and very highway,
Full of marshes, boggy pools, mire and clay,
In mired pastures shrivelled ferns show,
Brown moors showed their wizened mossy hue.

 

‘Mountain’ (1982) by Sigurdur Gudmundsson. Culture House, Reykjavik.

Obsessed? I can’t help it if the St.Stephan’s Day biscuits are stacked like slabs of peat.