A Galloway writer

It's a poor wee steading, and as you walk up the rough track from the road it comes into view on the hillside - long, low and commanding a pretty scrubby looking piece of land around it. Little Duchrae near Balmaghie in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.

On 24 September 1859 an illegitimate bairn was born to a farmservant here - and was raised within the family. The boy was clever, did well at the local school and in time went to Edinburgh University to study Divinity. He became a Free Church minister and served in Penicuik, but he always pursued his talents for writing stories. In due course he abandoned the ministry to concentrate on his novel writing, and he became a prolific member of the "kail-yard" school of writing, homey sorts of stories that were great at capturing the characters of this little gem of an area of Scotland.

His name was Samuel Rutherford Crockett He died in the South of France in 1914 - and after a delay occasioned by a somewhat large difficulty in Europe in that year - his body was buried in the parish kirkyard at Balmaghie.

I have had this book as long as I can remember. As I said previously on this forum my father was a staunch Gallovidian - by adoption if not by birth - and I am sure that he brought this home. Crockett's most famous book is probably The Raiders, set on a fictional Isle Rathan - which is in fact Hestan Island. As a boy I used to holiday on a headland looking towards Hestan. And there, in the evening I read The Raiders (in the perfect setting) and my first introduction to Crockett.

It is redolent of a way of life in Galloway which has mainly gone. But I can read it and recapture a little of that dear, gentle place. And be happy at the memory.