The Drove Roads of Scotland: Review

One of the benefits of the publishing trade in a smaller country is that genre of books which are dubbed 'of national interest'. In a larger country, books on, say, social history tend to be thin on the ground, localised and left to tiny presses who lack distribution. Books from the past which ought to stay in print tend to get forgotten. Edinburgh-based press Birlinn, in its main imprint, specialises in history, archaeology, customs and traditions, the military, travel and folklore, all from a Scottish perspective. As well as commissioning new books on these subjects, the press makes available classic, sometimes arcane texts from the past.

The Drove Roads of Scotland was begun by ARB Haldane in the early 1940s. Haldane was captivated by the roads and routes used by people to cross Scotland – another of his books (New Ways Through the Glens) charted the building of canals and roads in 19th century Scotland. To some, a book on roads might sound a little dry – I was once surprised to find myself shortlisted for a prestigious literary prize, only to be beaten by a book about a motorway, but that book (Edward Platt's Leadville) used a road as a starting point to investigate the whole business of social change on the edges of London, and Haldane's book may start with his curiosity regarding a fading track in the grass above Glen Devon, but it soon leads to crime, power, religion, royalty, war - nothing travels far without a road.

Those whose first thoughts of droving involve a bucolic scene where a stalk-chewing rustic and a few roguish collies move along a line of swaying stirks might want to consider Haldane's suggestions that 'much of the early traffic in livestock (was) the result of raiding between glen and glen and between Highlands and Lowlands... it almost seems that cattle raiding was in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the chief occupation of the people of Scotland.'

In earlier centuries, much of the livestock trade had been in the hands of monks, but once cattle became symbols of wealth among warring clans, there was constant threat of pillage, often leading to skirmishes in which men were killed – in 1603, 80 men died in Glenfruin when the Macgregors were attacked while trying to lead away a large herd. To this end, authorities brought in a range of strict controls and branding methods, and strictures on markets and butchering and these measures helped stave off a minor civil war based around livestock.

Half of Haldane's book deals with specific trails, mainly leading southwards, from Skye and Aberdeenshire and Easter Ross, towards the trysts – the livestock fairs. Although these chapters are most concerned with routes and methods, they are made more interesting by the inclusion of economic and social history, plus some local lore, much of it all but forgotten. Haldane commented in his introduction that the book would have been better written some decades before, the droving business having died out in the Victorian era. When Haldane was writing, he was able to speak to only a few old men who recalled the latter days of the big trysts.

Drove roads served more than the trade in livestock. Scotland had relatively few roads of any quality and these routes were crucial for the supply of timber, crops, fish, textiles and leather. The burgh system, under the crown, jealously guarded the right to arrange fairs, and the tryst (a meeting 'on trust') was a way for traders and drovers to meet and sell their goods. Large markets included Dumbarton, Alyth, Dumfries and Brechin, but the two major annual trysts in the 17th and 18th centuries were at Crieff and Falkirk. The latter became dominant, with a full market held three times a year, and lasted throughout most of the 19th century, declining in the last third due to the rise of modern transportation.

Drovers were rough sorts – the people of Crieff were said to dread the tryst, when drovers would appear at their door demanding board and often leave with pockets full of their possessions. A colourful description of the Highland drover from Stirling newspaper ran thus: "his Highland blood is up and he screams himself hoarse in shouting to his dogs, ordering his neighbours or assistants and threatening with the infliction of his cudgel those who show a disposition to encroach upon his stance..." Haldane's book remains an absorbing account of a lost trade which shaped the country over many centuries and will fascinate those who have an interest in Scotland's social history or the topography of the country's uplands.