Wee Scotch Whisky Tales (3 page)

One ‘Whisky Road’ started in the Braes o’ Glenlivet and went over the Ladder Hills by Ladderfoot, thence descending to Bellabeg on Donside. From Bellabeg the convoy would then have moved, by night, through the populated district of Cromar, before arriving at Aboyne and starting the next stage of their journey over the Fungle Road the following day. Formerly called the Cattrin Road, named from its reiver (catteran) days, this was an established drove road which the smugglers followed over the hill to Tarfside in Glenesk.

Thereafter, the law-abiding drovers followed the North Esk to Fettercairn and then to market. But the smugglers walked their ponies another route south, through the less-frequented Clash of Wirren to Glen Lethnot, and then south by Bridgend to the track which went between the Brown and White Caterthuns (Iron Age hill-forts), from which vantage point (and splendid camp) they waited for night to fall, to descend upon Brechin. A place thereabouts is called ‘Donald’s Bed’, where a murdered exciseman lay for 20 years before discovery – showing that at least one of the law-enforcers number had been, regrettably, wise to the smugglers’ secret route.

THE DE’IL TAK THE EXCISEMAN

Whatever problems they encountered on the ‘Whisky Roads’, the smugglers knew none that compared with the terrors of the gauger, or exciseman. After the ’45, soldiers were stationed at places like Braemar and Corgarff castles, as a counter-insurgency measure against an expected further Jacobite rising. However, once the residual Jacobites were hunted down the soldiery became primarily involved in excise duties, aiding the excisemen in their thankless struggles. The gauger’s was an unpopular and dangerous job, and it is not surprising that many excisemen took the easy option and turned a blind eye to smuggling. However, professional pride and the bounties attendant upon seizure of contraband, provoked many into actions of incredible heroism.

But the battles were not always won by the gaugers, as is recorded in the ballad
The Battle of Corrymuckloch
, which describes an encounter that took place around 1820 between some smugglers and excisemen supported by soldiers of the Royal Scots Greys. The contraband had come to Glen Quoich in Perthshire when the smugglers were accosted by the armed soldiery. Using sticks – and stones from a dyke for missiles – they put the soldiers (‘the beardies’) to flight and captured the exciseman. The poem makes clear that the soldiers were equipped with firearms, but also that they declined to use them when faced with resolute opposition, indicating perhaps a certain lack of enthusiasm for their task.

Sometimes the gaugers simply, and wisely, declined combat. The Revd Thomas Guthrie wrote that as a boy in Brechin in the early years of the 19th century, the sight of men ‘come down from the wilds of Aberdeenshire or the glens of the Grampians’ to sell their whisky was a common sight, carrying it on ‘small, shaggy but brave and hardy steeds’. He confirms that they watched ‘on some commanding eminence’ (probably one of the Caterthuns) during the day, and only moved onto the plains at night, distributing their whisky ‘to agents they had everywhere’. And for the smugglers, there was nothing like rubbing the outnumbered and defeated enemy’s nose in the dirt, as Guthrie noted:

THE END OF THE TRADE

The local lairds’ connivance with smuggling was shown by the low penalties imposed in areas where illicit distilling was endemic: while the fine in Fife or Ayr was the statutory £20, at Aberdeen (where the legal officials were often also local landowners) capture and conviction would cost you on average 11s 3d. One JP in a north-east court was embarrassed when the accused said to him, ‘I havnae made a drap since yon wee keg I sent tae yersel.’ Fines were often paid by the smuggling community through a levy, and thus did not drive the illicit distiller out of business.

Eventually the government was compelled to deal rigorously with a trade which resulted in so much lost revenue. By 1822 agents for the excise were assisting at all civil trials, ensuring that the minimum penalty of a £20 fine or six months in prison was imposed, with transportation to Van Diemen’s Land for those who violently resisted arrest. The increased success of the militarily-backed seizures (the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 had released large numbers of soldiers for this duty) prove the point. In 1822 alone there were almost 10,000 people prosecuted for breaking the excise laws in the Aberdeen and Elgin courts alone, amounting to over two-thirds of total Scottish prosecutions – emphasising again the key role of the North-east in the history of illicit distilling. But increased repression would not have worked without economic measures to back it up.

The duty on whisky was massively reduced to 2s 3d per gallon, giving the advantage back to licensed distillers with their economies of scale. In addition, tenants found guilty of illicit distilling were evicted by local landowners, some of whom turned to distilling themselves – or more commonly they leased or sold land to legal distilling operations. By 1832 less than 200 cases concerning illicit distilling were heard in Scottish courts. ‘Poachers’, like John Begg on Deeside and George Smith in Glenlivet, had by then turned ‘gamekeepers’ and set up commercial production. They did this in the face of local hostility; for many years Smith went around armed and in fear of attack. The new status of whisky was demonstrated by the presentation of a bottle of Glenlivet (albeit illicit) by Sir Walter Scott to King George IV on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822. The beginning of the end of the illicit distilling industry in 1823 contributed, however, to massive depopulation on upper Donside, the Cabrach and in Glenlivet, a little recorded exodus as it was mostly voluntary rather than enforced. The ‘Whisky Wars’ were over.

The trade thereafter survived only in really remote Highland locations. James Mitchell records that as he was taking a drive up Glen Moriston in the 1840s, ‘I saw before me at some little distance about twenty five Highland horses tied to each other, and carrying two kegs of whisky each’. The men walking with the ponies were in bonnets and plaids, carrying bludgeons. They recognised Mitchell and, instead of beating him, offered him a dram. Such folkloric relics were, however, small beer to the days when large areas of north-east Scotland in particular were in a state of armed conflict between the distillers and gaugers in the scarceremembered ‘Whisky Wars’.

4 The Strathdon Dram: The One That Got Away

SPEYSIDE WHISKY IS world-renowned. And few have not heard of the Royal Lochnagar Distillery on Deeside. But between the Spey and the Dee, those two major rivers of north-east Scotland lies a more modest watercourse, the River Don. Donside attracts little tourism, which is a pity as it is a beautiful and fascinating area of castles, rolling hills, and legends. Especially whisky legends.

The Don no longer produces whisky, but it once did. The fertile reaches of Upper Donside (Strathdon) were for many years bandit country, where hundreds of sma’ stills were concealed in the surrounding hillsides. The pot still, fondly named the ‘Yowie wi the crookit horn’ (
Anglice
‘ewe with the crooked horn’) brought a brief prosperity to Strathdon in the 75 years following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

Upper Donside had been Jacobite territory and Corgarff Castle was garrisoned by Hanoverian troops after the ’45. These troops were very successful in stamping out the last relics of Jacobitism. But they were much less successful in stamping out the ensuing phenomenon that lengthened their stay, illicit whisky distilling.

In the years following the Jacobite defeat, the sma’ stills spread across the land. Looking back on this period in 1845, the Minister of the Kirk of Scotland at Strathdon stated:

His comment makes it clear that this period was well over by 1845. The Kirk itself was an opponent of whisky smuggling, though religious opposition was not the cause of the trade’s ultimate demise.

Defiance was indeed the watchword. And in the upper reaches of lonely Glen Noughty (or Nochty), a side-glen off Strathdon, stands today, and is marked on the OS map, a ruin called
Duffdefiance
. A man had been evicted from Glenlivet for illicit distilling. Unabashed, he crossed the Ladder Hills to Donside, and established a new distilling site in Glen Nochty. Here he also gained squatter’s rights by having a house built with its ‘lum reeking’ before being challenged by the local laird, one Duff –
aka
the Earl of Fife. Hence,
Duffdefiance
. In my opinion the building marked as being Duffdefiance on the map is a later construction; nearer the burn lies the remains of a cruder building which is more likely to have provided the distiller’s abode.

In Glen Nochty also took place a conflict, the Battle of Glen Nochty, between distillers and excisemen that led to a popular ballad being written about it. Interestingly this ballad is written to the tune of the Jacobite song,
Johnny Cope
. A Glenlivet man, John Milne, wrote the song,
Noughty Glens
, and gave the honours to his compatriots against the reputedly cowardly Donside men. The ballad has 64 verses and was published in 1826, shortly after the events it describes. The song launched Milne as an itinerant poet and songsheet seller, which was just as well, since his wife’s whisky business was soon closed down. The poem starts with the excise officer, one McBain, leading his men into the glen:

A fusillade drove the gaugers off, but they returned with soldiers from the Corgarff Castle garrison. They appear to have had little appetite for their work and when met with a hail of stones, also retreated. But though they won this battle the smugglers were soon to lose the war.

Apart from the attentions of the soldiers at Corgarff, other pressures were being brought to bear on the sma’ still operators. Charles Forbes bought the estate which included much of Upper Donside and announce his intention to stamp out the trade. In 1825 he inserted clauses in all his tenants’ leases, which stated that

This had much more effect that the threat of arrest, usually accompanied by a small fine, in helping suppress the whisky trade. The song,
Noughty Glens
, mentioned above, sadly reflects this development:

The family of McHardy, or rather the families, for there were many of them in Strathdon, had long been associated with illicit stills on Upper Donside, especially the McHardy’s of Burnside and Corryhoul. The estate records of Forbes note that:

In spite of his prohibition against distilling and threat to evict culprits, the estate records note
‘Agreed’
to her continued tenancy. Evicting a widow with nine children was probably a step too far even for Forbes.

The taxation burden on legal, large-scale distilling had been greatly reduced in 1823 and changes to revenue laws made it much easier for those with some capital to set up in legal business. It is rather thus ironic that the first legal distillery on Upper Donside was established by one James McHardy in Corgarff in 1826. McHardy possibly had fears about the security of his enterprise, since he set it up in the actual kitchens of Corgarff Castle where his potential customers included the local garrison. In the castle, and behind the secure star-shaped curtain wall, he probably felt he could survive local resentment. Today one can visit Corgarff Castle and see a fascinating reconstruction of McHardy’s distillery. It is a reconstruction because the original legal distillery was attacked and burned to the ground when the soldiers were out on patrol. (Corgarff Castle is open all year, weekends only in winter. A beautiful building in a gorgeous location, and full of historical interest. Tel: 01975 651 460.
www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
.)