Curling being played in Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’ and on Lake of Mentieth beside Flanders Moss. A ‘bonspiel’ (the word is Flemish) happens rarely and only when the ice freezes enough to support a large number of curlers to play in a tournament.
“There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
Dickens, ‘Pickwick Papers’
From Burntisland on the north shore of the Firth of Forth the December dawn tries-unsuccessfully- to rekindle the passions of the passing twelve month’s flames. Across the water, among the embers of the year, faint pulses of the Edinburgh streetlights will soon extinguish and die. I think of another burnt island, the dying glow across the Minch after the Vikings had razed all the trees on Lewis- an inferno that drove generations of people to dig peat to warm their winter homes and to the shore for flotsam timber for their roofs.
The Fords of Frew were an important crossing point over the River Forth. A passage between Highlands and Lowlands that has played a vital role in Scotland’s history. Lying south of the great morass of Flanders Moss its significance has been forgotten by the draining of these boglands for agriculture over the past two hundred and fifty years but for centuries, millenia, it was vital bridging point between cultures. From Bronze Age to Jacobites many warriors have passed over the narrow half-land.
When the Picts invaded the lands of their southern rivals the Strathclyde Britons they most likely crossed into their territory via the Fords making for their enemy’s fort at Dumbarton on the Clyde but as the Welsh ‘Chronicle of the Princes’ relates :
‘750 years was the age of Christ when there was a battle between the Britons and the Picts, in the field of Maesydawc. And the Britons slew Talorcan, king of the Picts.’
Mac an t-Sronaich was a mysterious bogey-man who was outlawed on the wild Lewis moors. Little is known about him. Some say he was a serial killer called Alexander Stronach from the mainland who took refuge on the island in the early 19th C. For years he supposedly preyed on people, sheep and cattle murdering and killing, becoming a figure of fear to many yet no police or court records exist to confirm any of these stories. Real or imagined the threat of Mac An t-Sronaich has haunted many a child and adult since. Countless tales about him have been passed down through the generations. There is hardly a cave or ruined sheiling on the moors from Uig to Ness and Tolsta which is not said to have housed him. One such cave where he was supposed to have hidden can even today inspire fear- I just about jumped out of my skin when the bulging devil-eyes of a black faced sheep suddenly appeared out of its darkness. It is said that he was eventually captured and taken to Inverness for trial. After the passing of the death sentence he was asked if he had any regrets to which he replied:
“ I regret drowning a child and not murdering a minister.”
At today’s -9 degrees even wet bogs become solid.
Frosty mosses.
Long before the internet small coastal steamships called ‘puffers’ and ‘vics’ would supply Scotland’s remote peatland communities with everything from cast iron stoves to coal. Ross and Marshall with their distinctive company flag named their ships after different forms of light.
New scrapage scheme. http://www.cne-siar.gov.uk/recycling/recyclingvehicles.asp
“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.”
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.
Robin A Crawford 