Their Shirts All Soaked With Sweat
Who can tell what sorrows the ghost crofters knew? What secrets? What tortuous lonely silences?
Only one person and her name is Peg, the one-legged woman from Brue. This wasn’t why she was called Peg, but after the accident with the Samurai sword Uncle Uistean brought back from sea, everyone agreed how fortunate it was that she was already called Peg.
Peg! Peg Peg Peg Peg Peg! Where shall I begin with Peg? She was a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an episode of Countdown and if you don’t know what that means then I can’t help you, friend. She was inexplicable like that. You couldn’t explic her with the OED nor any measuring device. She was outwith the bending sickle’s compass of the finest poets’ circumscription. But I can tell you this, her soul was purple and she detested chess.
Ah Peg was the wild one alright. Many’s the night she would hop about the moor in simple garb before stopping in a bit less boggy than the others. Then eyes heav’nward she would spin and spin until the stars appeared to her to be concentric circles etched into the black night and drawing her, pulling her into their centre, an ineluctable force come for her from another time…or perhaps from all times.
Anyway, one time Peg was out on the moor and some pretty mystical shit was going down. She had just returned from her travels to other centuries and concluded that apart from consumer durables, the Lewis of long ago was pretty much the same as the Lewis of today. Same problems with chillblains and broken veins, same worries about getting home from town on Saturday nights. She vowed to blog this information the very next day.
As she lay exhausted on the heather, she closed her eyes and fell into a terrible dream. She awoke screaming and clutching at her scanty puffa jacket. But when she opened her eyes she found she saw exactly the same thing as when she closed them. For hovering before her, pale and shimmering and see-through were 4 mounted crofters, the wool on their steeds shot through with silver sparks and steam issuing from their flared nostrils. The wind whipped up.
Panicked, Peg scrambled back until a gorse bush stopped her. The four ghost crofters advanced on their edgy sheep, which snorted and pawed at the ground. Trembling, she raised her eyes and looked directly at them. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes were blurred and their shirts all soaked with sweat.
“Howdy, a’ghraidh” spoke one, his hollow eyes transfixing Peg until one of the ghost sheep sneezed and broke the spell.
“If you don’t want to end up like us, damned to ride the stormy Hebridean night for ever, then here’s what you must do,” said the second crofter from the right, and, tipping his flat-cap down over his nose, he told her what she must do, but more importantly what she musn’t do because there are always more restrictions than allowances in supernatural affairs.
One by one then, the ghost-crofters told Peg of their sorrows, their secrets, their lonely silences in a realm apart.
Suddenly, across the sky behind the crofters streaked a flock of red-eyed sheep. The ghost-crofters looked meaningfully into Peg’s eyes for a moment, then turned and galloped away after the flock, their hooves thundering across the sky, leaping over hedge-shaped clouds, condemned to herd that devil’s flock for all eternity.
Peg, got up and hopped back into the village. The first child to see her that grey morning told of the astonished look on her mud-smeared face and how her hair had turned pure white.
Her pupils remain dilated to this day and she never spoke again. And friends, I think that’s just as well, don’t you?
May 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
You’re going too fast – I can’t keep up. Four mounted crofters…ah!
When we first courted – before he dumped me -MTL promised we would live in a croft and he would jump out at me in the dark corridor and kiss me silly.
Pathetic or what?
May 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Pat, to be kissed silly! That’s dreamy!
May 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Oh Pat, I do that to Maggie all the time and we don’t even have a croft
May 21st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Struck dumb by four ghostly secrets. Did they talk dirty to her then? I feel more sorry for the red-eyed sheep than Peg.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Ghost-crofters in the sky.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Kim, no wonder her cakes are so light! She must whisk batter faster than a tornado in a state of constant nervous readiness for a leaping out husband.
Nanas, only the wind may tell. Spare your pity! I’m sure all these sheep had committed heinous sins in their lifetimes. Maybe not enough to get them sent to hell though. This might have been sheep purgatory. They ought to be glad they’re not eternally being served with mint sauce in the dining caverns of hell.
Bock, yippee – i – ay, yippee – i – oh…” Did I mention their hooves were made of steel?
May 21st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I can’t explic why, but a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an episode of Countdown is absolutely the opposite of Mastercard.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Sneezy, pricefull?
May 21st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Less. Priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:56 pm
But Visa’s accepted more places than Mastercard.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:13 am
I looked up ileuctable but can?t spell it yet, too many constinants.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 am
Ah, the Four Shepherds of the Apocalypse with their revelations. ‘Shepherd, pass by, as the poet Yeats might have put it had he been a Hebridean.
We have a similarly named islandwoman of some infamous reknown too, Peig (Sayers) from the Blaskets. I see now what troubled her into writing her memoirs.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 am
Aye, a bad batch of Lagavulin’ll do that to you. Many’s the ditch I’ve lain in on a targey night with my thumb held out to stop the late-night ram.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:06 am
and some pretty mystical shit was going down.
Oh my, dear. I think you’ve been in California too long. These weird hippy artifacts are beginning to sneak into your speech. I’d boil a haggis, stat, if I were you.
Cheers.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
Conan, the Blaskets? Are they next to the Blins?
Ghasty, we have ram service too but there’s also one ewe tram: a sheepcar named Desire.
Rand, Sometimes, sometimes i say “Gnarly, dude!” too. But only recreationally, you understand. I only said it to the judge once, and it just sort of slipped out.
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Sniffly! didn’t see you there, sweetheart! Don’t worry yourself, I can hardly spell the vowels. Aaaaa, eeeeee, eye, oh, you. Rats! See?
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
The ineluctable modality of the visible, by Jesus.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
her scanty puffa jacket
i’m going to need a visual representation of this item of clothing. i’m sorry, i just am.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Bock, “The ineluctable modality of the visible, by Jesus.” sounds like the title of a picture done by a certain academically advanced son of a carpenter 2000 years ago in the Middle East when all the other kids had just called their drawings “A Camel”.
Kara, it can get so cold and windy and wet on the North Atlantic seaboard that a sherpa costume will seem as scanty as a silky negligee. The only way to survive up there without 7 jumpers and a cagoule is to be a low-lying shrub, a gnarled and agonisingly twisted tree or a monstrous woolly yeti woman.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I never do those silly lmao things, or the equally silly *laughs* things, so I’ll just have to restrain a manly chuckle and carry on.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Oh. New banner. Or have I been skipping past the top for ages?
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Bock, I’m sure your chuckles are manliest ever. I’m sure they are the hairiest, most manly chuckles in Munster.
Sneezy, thought I needed a bit more Vegas, a bit more drama, a bit less dull brown on my site. If I had my druthers the whole sides of the blog outwith the white bits would be these colours but I’m not interested enough (am too stupid and lazy) to bother my bum with such wizardries.