Baby memories of Galloway

Samuel Rutherford Crockett was a very popular author more than 100 years ago with his books eagerly devoured by readers. But he is almost forgotten today.

Here he describes two of his memories as a baby at the family farm at Little Duchrae, off the road between Laurieston and New Galloway, on the east bank of Loch Ken. Crockett was born on 24 September 1859.

“The farm I know best is also the loveliest for situation. It lies nestled in green holm crofts. The purple moors ring it half round, north and south. To the eastward pinewoods once stood ranked and ready like battalions clad in indigo and Lincoln green against the rising sun – that is, till one fell year when the woodmen swarmed all along the slopes and the ring of axes was heard everywhere.

“The earliest scent I can remember is that of fresh pine chips, among which my mother laid me while she and her brothers gathered “kindling” among the yet unfallen giants. To young to talk, I had to be carried pick-a-back to the wood. But I can remember with a strange clearness the broad spread of the moor beneath over which we had come, the warmth of the shawl in which I was wrapped and the dreamy scent of the newly-cut fir chips in which they had left me nested – above all, I recall a certain bit of blue sky that looked down at me with so friendly a wink, as a white racing cloud passed high overhead.

“Such is the first beginning that I remember of that outdoor life, to which ever since my eyes have kept themselves wide-open. Of indoor things only one is earlier.

“It was a warm harvest-day – early September, most likely – all the family out at the oats, following the slow sweep of the scythe or the crisper crop of the reaping hook. Silence in the little kitchen of the Duchrae! Only my grandmother padding softly about in her list slippers (or hoshens), baking farles of cake on the “girdle,” the round plate of iron described by Froissart. The door and windows were open, and without there spread that silence in comparison with which the hush of a kirkyard is almost company – the silence of a Scottish farmyard in the first burst of harvest.

“And I – what was I doing? I know not, but this I do know – that I came to myself lying under the hood of an old worm-eaten cradle of a worn plum-colour, staring at my own bare toes which I had set up on the bar at cradle foot.

“These two memories, out-of-door and in-door, have stood out clear an distinct all my life, and so so now. Nor could I have been told of them afterwards, for there was nothing in either which concerns any but myself.”

[pages 20-21] Crockett, S.R. Raiderland, All About Grey Galloway. 1904. Hodder and Stoughton, London.