SCOTTISH MEMORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 3, 4 January 1941, Page 11

SCOTTISH MEMORIES

"In Scotland I remember how, when the fisherfolk had come home and had had their evening meal, they used to sit around the peat fire (there is always a peat fire in Scotland) mending their nets, or knitting—the men were surprisingly good at knitting—and telling us legends. There were stories of the strong men of the clans, of wild fights, of tyrants put down, and always the subject of the Battle of Bannockburn cropped up. These fisherfolk had an intense love of their country and their eyes would glow and their hands cease working as they told us of how we won one of the greatest battles in Scottish history. There is still a story circulating in one village of how an English visitor remarked that the English had had the best of the day. An elder of the local church had risen up and had ejected the protesting visitor from the hut.

"After the tales were finished one of the women would bring forward bowls of steaming 'brase,' the English porridge, and bannocks. And we would sit before the blazing fire with the smell of the sea around us and the smell of the peat in our nostils, while outside the wind blew and rain pelted down. And presently we would begin to. drowse and imagine strange things in our sleepy state.

"One night I had almost fallen asleep, and was imagining the Brownies (the household fairies of the Scots) had been paying me a visit when I awoke with a start. Outside a very bad storm was raging, and I can still remember how the vivid flashes of lightning lit up the hut and how the thunder growled." —From "GREY OWL" (14). City.