The Drover's Dogs by Susan Price, reviewed by Bill Kirton

The story is built around the old traditions of crofting and droving in Scotland. Drovers and their dogs keep the cattle moving on long treks from the Highlands and Islands to the markets on the other side of the country. As they then stay to oversee the selling of their stock, their dogs make their own way home. This book reverses the process in that we first experience the dogs’ return, which, serendipitously for Sandy, a young boy running away from the ill treatment he’s been getting from the farmer to whom his mother sold him, coincides with his escape. It also reverses beautifully the assumptions we have about the relationship between humans and dogs because, as the author makes clear, it’s the two dogs who are in charge on this journey as they herd Sandy along the route they’ve chosen. They’re going home and taking Sandy with them.

To avoid spoilers, I’ll say nothing about how the story develops once they reach their destination. It does, though, involve yet another reversal as the dogs leave home again and Sandy goes with them; a new outward journey for them, a return for him. Add to all this the fact that I read the whole book on my own 2½ hour train journey from the East of Scotland to the West and there’s a satisfying symmetry about the whole thing.

It was a joy to read. There were hardships aplenty for Sandy, and the author spares us little of the deprivations the poor had to suffer. The precarious and often cruel nature of rural life in 19^th century Scotland is carefully sketched. The characters, including those of the dogs, are conveyed in light but telling touches, and the overall style has a warmth and a tenderness that, for all the indignities that Sandy has to suffer and the unfairness of the laws governing child labour, hints at where true nobility and humanity lie. This is the Scotland of myth and romance, but this author knows better than to trade in stereotypes. She tells the whole story, the good and the bad; hinting at the social and economic changes that affect the whole way of life of these people and will affect them even more powerfully as new ways of travelling and doing business are developed. But at the story’s core, it’s always the people who matter: Sandy, the drovers, the crofters, the families, and of course the dogs. It’s a realistic, unsentimental yet happy tale, made all the more touching by the fact that the narrator is Sandy himself, but as a grown man who can convey the immediacy of his sufferings and joys as a boy but put it all in the wider context of his own maturity and the changes he has seen in life in Scotland.

Forget about Brigadoon. This is really what it was like. And it’s a terrific story, beautifully told.

Haunting Hounds by Karen Bush

When I was very young – but probably old enough to know better – I used to be an avid reader of ghost stories (I still am, and now I’m definitely old enough to know better.) I loved nothing more than curling up under the covers and scaring myself silly with tales of headless horsemen, phantom nuns, and grey ladies. Of course, one of the good things about being a ghost-mad kid in Britain is that Blighty’s a notoriously haunted country, in which just about every village and country lane boasts its fair share of ghosts. And not all of those ghosts, as Karen Bush proves in this lovely collection, come in human form.

If men can return from the dead – and, according to folklore throughout the centuries, they can – then I suppose it follows that man’s best and most loyal friend might also do the same. The spectral dogs in this collection are every bit as diverse as human ghosts. Some are horrible, and some are helpful. Some are gloomy, and others are playful. Some come back to haunt the living because of unfinished business, and others do so for no apparent reason whatsoever.

There are plenty of famous spectral hounds here, from the hounds that ride with the Wild Hunt to the mysterious black dogs that haunt lonely roads, either helping or harming the humans they encounter. There are literary dogs, like the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles and the Isle of Man’s Moddey Dhoo, which features in Sir Walter Scott’s work. There are vicious dogs and placid dogs, guard dogs and guide dogs, witch dogs and even fairy dogs. And as well as the well-known spectral dogs, there are plenty of more obscure local legends; a huge amount of research must have gone into this book.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not (‘All argument is against it; but all belief is for it,’ according to the opening quote by Samuel Johnson), they’re undoubtedly an intrinsic and fascinating part of folklore, and rather revealing on a psychological level. Ghost stories are often as reassuring as they are frightening, and the same applies to ghost dogs: it’s comforting to think that our canine companions might survive death. And this fascinating, affectionate tribute to our four-legged friends is, ultimately, comforting – not least because of Claire Colvin, whose beautiful and humorous illustrations really make this book a treasure. Highly recommended to anyone who loves ghosts, or dogs, or both.

Haunting Hounds can be purchased at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.