Bog Myrtle & Peat

I left home early to be sure that my foot was first inside the door at Barmannoch. The last light lingered in the trees as I climbed the dyke and crossed the bank towards the old railway. It’s been seventy years since trains have passed this way, and now the line is overgrown with ash and sycamore trees. Badgers undermine the bankings, and the cuttings are coated with hart’s tongue ferns and the stumps of wild strawberry. I followed the line into a mild, dripsy kind of dusk; mist and chimney smoke pooled in the hollow where the town lies, and the land rose homely beyond it. As I turned from the track and climbed a gate for the open fields, a song thrush sang behind me – the first of the coming year. It was a quiet, uncertain sound in the gloom, and nothing like the full-bore richness of March and April. It’s still too soon for that grand performance, but the bird seemed to be saying “not this, but something like it” – and I did feel a sharp prickle of relief that things will soon be well again.

There was a warm welcome in the house when I arrived. I went inside and clapped the dogs, drawing gales of peat smoke into my chest. My host has always been old, but he’s suddenly weakened these last twelve months. He walks with a stick now, and he’s more likely to have food on the front of his shirt. But his house is always warm and comfortable, and it’s not as if a woman never came to love him. He chose to be alone, and if he’s ever doubted that decision, I’ve never heard it said. I told him about the song thrush and he smiled, saying “he won’t be so cocky when the snow comes”, and it’s often held that in the weeks after Christmas “the light gets lighter, but the cold gets colder”. 

We’d chased away the heart of a bottle by eight o’clock at night. It’s only rum in that house; the best of Lang’s Banana, with the cork tossed to the fire at the moment of opening, and the well-known cry “We won’t be needing YOU again”. We laughed, and we told each other the same stories we always tell at Hogmanay. Sometimes I will deliberately steer the conversation towards certain launch-points, knowing how and when particular tales are triggered. It’s only a game, but this time I wanted one story in particular; Tom Laird and the Old Duke, which always makes me laugh. I hear it every year, and I love the way the telling shifts to accommodate the various accents and characters involved. I never met Tom, but he was a good friend to my host for many years. The two men went about together, and if stories of Tom have grown larger since his death, they stem from something true. 

The comedy lies in the interplay between bluff, understated gamekeeper Tom and the haughty, self-important aristocrat. If the telling is to be trusted, the Old Duke began every comment with “I say…”; the accompanying hand gesture is heavy with languor, and the eyes half closed but eyebrows raised as if the speaker’s only waking up. The story is more like a bundle of strands, and there are plenty of punchlines – but my favourite describes a drive at the grouse, when Tom had been assigned to pick up birds shot by the Duke. Following a burst of activity, Tom approached his master for direction, and the Duke replied that he’d only hit a single bird. Without blinking, Tom said “yes sir, you’re improving”. I laugh because I love it, but I love the teller more; the shape of his hands and the punch of his voice; the smell of the drink and the crunch of my glass when it’s placed on the old formica table, which has risen in a wrinkle of dry skins like an onion.

Away from this warmth and in more demanding company, I’ve sometimes told the same story twice – then realising the repeat, I’ve recoiled from the error with embarrassment. We are obsessed with novelty, and laughter often depends upon the quickfire exchange of matching cards. There’s little patience for the groaning, set piece tale – most jokes are cumbersome, and they fall apart when they’re told too often. But there’s an equal and opposite need for the familiar, and it’s no surprise that folk tales are often introduced with a complete summary of everything that’s about to happen. Besides, everybody knows how it’s going to pan out for Cú-chulainn, Beowulf and Prince Pwyll anyway – the outcome is never in question. So having annihilated any notion of suspense, the narrative begins with a different emphasis; you’re free to believe in the characters; in their actions and all the liveliness of mechanisms which whirr and chime in the steady unfurling. What’s more, the teller is also part of the act – and while a good story’s easily spoiled, I could love a shopping list if it was shared carefully.

You’d think we’d get bored of the same conversations at Barmannoch, but that moment’s never come. And I never heard a song thrush sing for the first time in the year and rolled my eyes, thinking “here we go again”.