I’m taking a detour from posting about Regency trivia to share a Scottish tidbit, because, as you know, I write Scottish Regencies and Highland romances too.
I’m writing a short story for a 2015 Valentine Anthology, Heart of a Highlander with Windtree Press, and the setting is the Scottish Highlands.
I’ve got my heroine, Giselle Ferguson (You’ll remember her from Highlander’s Hope and The Earl’s Enticement) in a cemetery surrounded by a dry stone wall, which is actually called a drystane dyke (This reference is in Scot’s, so I had to link it!) or a dry stone hedge in Scotland.
Anyway, a dry stone wall is a wall built from various types and sizes of stones without any mortar to hold the stones together.
Who knew? I didn’t.
Naturally, the type of stone depended greatly on what was abundant in the immediate area. Some walls use rounded stones while others use flat rocks.
There are several construction methods, and it’s not uncommon for a wall to have small gaps called “smoots” to allow rabbits or even water to pass through.
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| sheep creep |
One of the images I’ve posted shows a “sheep creep” or “lunky holes; an opening large enough for sheep to pass through but not cattle. I also found reference to the larger openings being called “cripple holes.”
Hmm, I imagine somewhere someone is screaming that label is politically incorrect.
Here’s a short excerpt I had to share because I found the perfect image to go with it on Wikimedia Commons.
“Except where a scrolled iron gate stood closed to wildlife, sheep, and cattle, a stone wall hemmed in the family cemetery atop the knoll.”
I keep thinking how much work it must have been to lug all those rocks, and then stack them so they didn’t topple over.
Have you ever seen a dry stone wall? I saw a few in England several years ago, but I don’t recall seeing any locally.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone
http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/inform_dry_stone_walls.pdf
http://conservation.historic-scotland.gov.uk/inform-dry-stone-walls.pdf
All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
