Wee Scotch Whisky Tales Read Free Page B

Accounts speak of how heavily armed the smugglers were, carrying cudgels, swords and pistols. The whisky convoy was accompanied by dogs, which would have been excellent as lookouts, picking up the sound and scent of any unwelcome persons along the way. The journey from the Cabrach or Glenlivet to the Mearns, Strathmore or the Laigh o’ Moray, was one that occupied two or three days’ or (as often as not) nights’ walking for the smugglers. Stealth was at least as important for the smugglers as speed, and they utilised the little-frequented whisky roads through and over the mountains.
    One ‘Whisky Road’ started in the Braes o’ Glenlivet and went over the Ladder Hills by Ladderfoot, thence descending to Bellabeg on Donside. From Bellabeg the convoy would then have moved, by night, through the populated district of Cromar, before arriving at Aboyne and starting the next stage of their journey over the Fungle Road the following day. Formerly called the Cattrin Road, named from its reiver (catteran) days, this was an established drove road which the smugglers followed over the hill to Tarfside in Glenesk.
    Thereafter, the law-abiding drovers followed the North Esk to Fettercairn and then to market. But the smugglers walked their ponies another route south, through the less-frequented Clash of Wirren to Glen Lethnot, and then south by Bridgend to the track which went between the Brown and White Caterthuns (Iron Age hill-forts), from which vantage point (and splendid camp) they waited for night to fall, to descend upon Brechin. A place thereabouts is called ‘Donald’s Bed’, where a murdered exciseman lay for 20 years before discovery – showing that at least one of the law-enforcers number had been, regrettably, wise to the smugglers’ secret route.
    THE DE’IL TAK THE EXCISEMAN
    Whatever problems they encountered on the ‘Whisky Roads’, the smugglers knew none that compared with the terrors of the gauger, or exciseman. After the ’45, soldiers were stationed at places like Braemar and Corgarff castles, as a counter-insurgency measure against an expected further Jacobite rising. However, once the residual Jacobites were hunted down the soldiery became primarily involved in excise duties, aiding the excisemen in their thankless struggles. The gauger’s was an unpopular and dangerous job, and it is not surprising that many excisemen took the easy option and turned a blind eye to smuggling. However, professional pride and the bounties attendant upon seizure of contraband, provoked many into actions of incredible heroism.
    But the battles were not always won by the gaugers, as is recorded in the ballad
The Battle of Corrymuckloch
, which describes an encounter that took place around 1820 between some smugglers and excisemen supported by soldiers of the Royal Scots Greys. The contraband had come to Glen Quoich in Perthshire when the smugglers were accosted by the armed soldiery. Using sticks – and stones from a dyke for missiles – they put the soldiers (‘the beardies’) to flight and captured the exciseman. The poem makes clear that the soldiers were equipped with firearms, but also that they declined to use them when faced with resolute opposition, indicating perhaps a certain lack of enthusiasm for their task.
    Then Donald and his men drew up and Donald gied command And aa the arms poor Donald had was a stick in ilka hand An when poor Donald’s men drew up a guid stane dyke was at their back Sae when their sticks tae prunach went, wi stanes they made attack.
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    But Donald and his men stuck fast an garr’d the beardies quit the field The gauger he was thumped weel afore his pride would lat him yield Then Donald’s men they aa cried oot, ‘Ye nasty filthy gauger loon If ye come back ye’ll ne’er win haim, tae see yer Ouchterarder Toon.’
    Sometimes the gaugers simply, and wisely, declined combat. The Revd Thomas Guthrie wrote that as a boy in Brechin in the early years of the 19th century, the sight of