Executed Soldier

[roughdiamond]

A mate from work (Irvine) who's a Teuchter (Highlander) told me there was a story printed in a Scottish writers book about life in the Aberdeenshire area during WW1, the names were fictitious but the stories were based on fact.

One that was told was about a Soldier from Laurencekirk who was home on leave and discovered all the trees on his farm had been cut down for the Military and as a result the fertile topsoil had been lost destroying it's crop growing properties.

As a result when he returned to France he refused to Soldier and was eventually executed.

Irvine who was brought up in the area was told as a child that the story was true and that it was common knowledge in Laurencekirk who the man was although the name in the book was different, anyone heard this story before and have an idea who he was?

I'll find out from Irvine tomorrow who the Author was and the name of the book if he remembers it.

Sam

[stevem49]

Why go back to France and then refuse to soldier. Logically he would have stayed at home.

S

[George Armstrong Custer]

Your friend is almost certainly misremembering parts of the plot of Lewis Grassic Gibbons' (the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell) Sunset Song, published in 1932 as the first book of his celebrated A Scots Quair trilogy. The central heroine, Chris Guthrie, marries Ewan Tavendale, who is the soldier executed in France for desertion. The book is fiction, but gives an excellent impression of the people, rural life and land at the time of the Great War of that part of north-east Scotland known as the Mearns.

George

[Steven Broomfield]

Dramatised by the BBC, some years ago, I believe.

[George Armstrong Custer]

It was, Steve, early '70's I believe, although I have never seen it. Reviews suggest it was a rather well done adaptation.

[roughdiamond]

Your friend is almost certainly misremembering parts of the plot of Lewis Grassic Gibbons' (the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell) Sunset Song, published in 1932 as the first book of his celebrated A Scots Quair trilogy. The central heroine, Chris Guthrie, marries Ewan Tavendale, who is the soldier executed in France for desertion. The book is fiction, but gives an excellent impression of the people, rural life and land at the time of the Great War of that part of north-east Scotland known as the Mearns.

George

That's the very Author/Book/Character. Cheers George.

[Steven Broomfield]

It was, Steve, early '70's I believe, although I have never seen it. Reviews suggest it was a rather well done adaptation.

From what I remember, the laughs were few and far between.

"Dour" might be a word. "Miserable" might be another.

[George Armstrong Custer]

In that case, the TV adaptation would seem to have caught the essence of what was a large part of the makeup of the inhabitants of the Mearns, Steve. But as the original novel also establishes, this was shot through with a brand of humour peculiar to the region. Rural life was hard there at the time of the Great War, and amusements were few. The best non-fiction account of that milieu is David Kerr Cameron's 1978 history The Ballad and the Plough: A Portrait of Life in the Old Scottish Ferm Touns. Tellingly, Cameron uses some of the same words as you in your description of the tone of the TV adaptation of Grassic Gibbons' novel when describing the inhabitants of the Mearns:

"[A] dour folk; strange folk often droll to the point of eccentricity; folk with a humour so dry sometimes that it was just this side of maliciousness; folk whose pleasures were mainly simple and not infrequently carnal. They were people of a special strain, resilient and enduring; in another context their men became the backbone of the regiments and their loyalty was heavily traded in the discreet corridors of Whitehall."

George

[centurion]

A mate from work (Irvine) who's a Teuchter (Highlander) t

When I was living in Scotland (in the early 70s) calling a Highlander a Teuchter was likely to earn you a punch up the bracket. Calling him a hairy Teuchter was likely to result in annihilation (much the same as calling an Afrikaner a hairyback). Have things changed?