The Cornkister Days

Book excerpt: A detailed look at the lives of the Scottish tenant farmers and laborers who worked the land from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. With a knowledge and a skill that reveals his passion for the land and its people, David Kerr Cameron picks his way through the rural upheavals and developments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries towards the landscape we recognize today. In doing so he provides a wide-sweeping and unforgettable view of our rural history and completes his great rural trilogy portraying the old farming landscapes of Scotland’s North-East Lowlands. Both nostalgia and great understanding are revealed as the author recalls a society based on the plough, a society that moved against the tapestry of the year: “This was the backcloth against which the farmtoun folk lived out their days; its seasons and rituals governed their lives, and ultimately their destinies. Here now is that story, the story of a landscape all but lost before the onward march of agri-business and agri-technology.” The days recalled are the days of the Clydesdale horse and the hired man, the cottar and crofter, the farmtoun tenant, and his laird. Praise for The Cornkister Days “Here you can smell the tang of the soil and hear the jingle of the harness. Cameron takes his place among the great Scottish writers of the last century.” —Jack Webster