Walking With Cattle

Droving was once the lifeblood of Scotland's rural economy, and for centuries Scotland's glens and mountain passes were alive with thousands of cattle making their way to the market trysts of Crieff and Falkirk. With the Industrial Revolution, ships, railways and eventually lorries took over the drovers' trade, and by the early twentieth century, the age-old droving tradition was all but dead. Except, however, in the Western Isles, where droving on foot continued until the mid-1960s, when MacBrayne's introduced a new generation of ferries capable of bringing livestock lorries to the islands.

In this book, Terry J. Williams follows the route of the drovers and their cattle from Outer Hebrides to the Highland marts. Travelling by campervan and armed with a voice recorder, a collection of archive photographs and a set of maps marked with the old market stances, she seeks out the last surviving drovers. The resulting narrative is an extraordinary insight into a lost world, told through the voices of the few remaining individuals who remember the days of walking with cattle.

“Compact and focused in her ambition, [Williams] pursues Uist's drovers from the Atlantic's edge to the marts of Oban and Dingwall, bringing us memories from practitioners from a former way of life. Her subject is the marriage of people and place, and in careful prose, and with black and white photographs, she makes a fascinating way of life both grounded and heroic'”

' -- Tom Adair Scotsman

Terry J. Williams is a farmer's daughter who was brought up in Cumbria and has lived in Scotland for many years. She was a crofter on Skye for 10 years, and has also worked as a freelance photographer and writer. Her book Ten Out Of Ten was published in 2010 to celebrate the first ten years of Sgoil Chuil na Gaidhealtachd in Plockton.

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