Bog-Myrtle and Peat: Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895

Set in the windswept moors and tight-knit villages of Galloway, this collection gathers tales from the late 1880s and early 1890s, rendering a corner of rural Scotland in vivid detail. Crockett writes of ministers confronting sinful parishes, of smugglers navigating the coastline with illegal cargo, of communities besieged by plague where only courage and sacrifice can bridge the gap between fear and reverence. The stories pulse with the rhythms of a world where faith and superstition interweave, where the bog-myrtle smells sweet on the autumn air and the peat fires warm both body and soul. There is darkness here: moral corruption, resentments buried beneath pleasantries, the terror of a parish losing its children to disease. Yet there is also profound tenderness, the kind that emerges when a stern minister buries the dead with his own hands and earns at last the love he could not command. For readers drawn to the Kailyard tradition, to Scotland's literary past, or to stories of communities wrestling with their own sins and redemption, these tales offer a window into a world that was already vanishing even as Crockett wrote.