3/30/2023 0 Comments Tucked him up like a kipper![]() ![]() In addition to my own notes, I have included the memories of older generations. The two books are companion pieces, and complement each other. It complements the study of "Wirds an' Wark" on a single Auchterless farm that I published in 1987, (2) and broadens out the picture. Much of the material is taken from my notebooks. I was first asked to write about Buchan words by Diane Morgan, then when the "Leopard" came under Charlie Allan, I broadened my remit from words to ways of doing. The contents of this book were compiled for the monthly journal, the "Leopard". None of them ever seemed to think I was a 'deeve' with my questions and my notemaking, and they imparted their knowledge willingly and with pleasure. I am simply putting on record the everyday story of the people I lived and worked with. I am aware that what I am writing about now lies a world away, if not in time, then in the experience of the present generation. Unlike "Craiters", which showed no mercy to its readers and had no glossary, this present volume is a blend of English and the Buchan dialect, and there is a very full word list. ![]() (1) This was in the days before many new folk with new voices had come to take over farms and shops, and bred children whose speech could not fail to modify - and in some degree also be modified by - their fellows at school. To repay my debt to Auchterless and around, I have put it on paper in a volume of short stories, "Craiters", that preserves and presents the speech of the area in the 1940-60 period. I have never tried to discard it, and I use it as a natural means of communication when I can. The dialect I spoke was, and to a good extent still is, a rich one. So an inborn interest began to be given shape. Later on, when I got to know David Murison, editor of the Scottish National Dictionary, I was asked by him to record words, and that led to noting details of what the words referred to. I used my mother's Box Brownie camera at first to record folk, though it had a bad habit of cutting off feet or heads. But though I was interested in the stone circles, 'Picts' houses', hill forts and great buildings of earlier times, my major fascination was with the way folk worked and spoke, and with the people themselves. Later, cycling broadened my horizons and took me to further off places. A visit to Huntly, involving a walk of two or three miles to get there, was a matter of high excitement. I was reared in North-East Scotland, first in the parish of Drumblade, where I started school, and then in Auchterless. ![]()
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