Writer's Gramps

 To finish this Western Isles trilogy, there is the story of Allan-a-Sop, Allan of the Straw, so named because he was born on a bed of straw to an unmarried woman. His father was a chief of some kind who was already married and wanted nothing to do with the child. The mother was a beauty and managed to marry when Alan was a boy . His stepfather disliked the attention his mother paid to the lad, probably increased because she didn't produce an heir for the step father. Allan left 'home' as soon as he could and joined a group of Swedish pirates, then active in the area. (The Swedish connection to Scotland, especially it sea routes is largely ignored but played a part in later, Jacobite, rebellions.) On one visit to his 'Home', Allan's mother had seen his ship coming and had some  bannocks on the girdle when she was called away. His step father called Allan into the kitchen, took the bannocks, still hot, put them in Allan's hands and closed his hands on them, s...

  This blog is supposed to be a kind of sounding board for story ideas. I might use the ideas, or someone else might. I’ve been asked if I’m worried the ideas might be stolen but I’ve found the things I share grow and the more I talk ideas the more ideas there are. Anyway, let’s take Sir Walter Scott’s story of the MacLeods and the MacDonalds on Eigg I mentioned two blogs ago. Suppose the insult to, Fiona, the young woman on the island was no insult but a jealous report by one of the Eiggies, Angus, a big lad. The girl is the daughter of someone important the jealous chap wants to have but she’s formed an immediate bond with Ian MacLeod, love at first sight, if you like. Ian and brother Calum are tied and set adrift but manage to manoeuvre the boat to land and report the incident. The MacLeod chief wants revenge. Ian tries to intervene but is brushed aside. When the MacDonalds go into the cave Fiona, for some reason stays outside, maybe hoping to talk to Ian. She goess to a place I...

 I'm going to add a bit to James V1 but first let me say that while Neil Oliver dismisses the 1820 uprising as a minor event, its significance is in the extent of the unrest it signalled. It simmered all the way across the industrial belt of Scotland, from Fie to south Ayrshire. That's what made it a setting for Bubbles in the Cauldron. Anyway, back to Jimmy, His Majesty felt the Western Isles might be subdued by arranging to have people from the other side of Scotland there. The people who were arranging this exercise were called, most appropriately, undertakers, and organised a settlement of Fife natives at Stornoway. The islanders were so busy fighting ewach other that things went well to begin with but, in a lull, Torquil MacLeod took exception to the strangers and slaughtered most of them - as usual, in the snow. One woman with a baby escaped and was quietly dying in the Forest of Fannig when a Hebridean noticed them and took pity on the bairn. He killed his pony, gutted i...

It’s two hundred years since the last armed insurrection on mainland Britain, the setting for Bubbles in the Cauldron, which is just released by Amazon under the name of Graham Dalton. The uprising was the dying spasm of the industrial unrest caused by the introduction of machines in factories, which in turn was the result of the improvement in communication created by the canals. The canals made it possible for the people of Glasgow and Manchester to buy items made elsewhere, cheaper than could be produced in the cottages locally, that increased the demand for goods produced in the most efficient situation and encouraged the opening of factories. The people moved to the cities and formed groups to protest, even take up arms, against working conditions. All very well, but what if you are deaf, or a Highlander, and everyone suspects you of being on the ‘other’ side?  Strange times make strange friends and there was no ‘stranger’ time than 1820 in Scotland. http://sullatoberdalton.co...

   I want to write a bit of the kind of nonsense I’d like to write. What type of piece it is I don’t know but here is a sample – It’s about Maid Marion and Marion is her family name so she is really the maid Marion, Sybil Marion. - I got so annoyed at the sheriff chap from Nottingham always wanting to take me for a drink that I invented this outlaw called Robin Hood to give him something else to think about. I’d thought of all kinds of names but settled on Robin, it could be feminine after all. Anyway, somehow word got around and these chaps started coming, John, who is tall and dark and handsome and so strong. I love it when he takes me in his arms and carries me across a stream but I can’t let him see I’m enjoying it, or he’ll get too familiar. Then there’s the Friar who brings lovely liqueurs they make in the monastery but I have to be careful with those because I start to giggle after two or three. After the name, there was the costume to design and I’ve never been too k...

The first place I looked in studying the Stuart kings of Britain was in Sir Walter Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather". It was written for his twelve-year-old grandson and not only makes easy reading but is written by a master story teller.  Here is a sample:-  "James's (VI and 1st) reign of Scotland was marked with so many circumstances of difficulty ... compelled to conduct himself with the strictest attention to the rules of prudence ... he could not even give an entertainment without begging poultry and venison from some of his more wealthy subjects; and his wardrobe was so ill furnished, that he was obliged to request the loan of a pair of silk hose from the Earl of Mar, that he might be suitably appareled to receive the Spanish ambassador." Now imagine this man being thrust into the pomp and ceremony of the English court, where he was head of the church rather than harangued by ministers of the Kirk, and cease to wonder why he wanted to make Scotland'...