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As a poacher, Sandy was
as systematic in his operations as any farmer. Early in the spring he
would provide himself with rod, bag, and gaff, and set out for the most
likely place to find fish. He recognised the validity of the law which
enjoined a close time in both fishing and fowling. “Yes,” he would say,
when questioned on this subject, “Yes, it is right that there should be
a close time, though the day fixed on by the law is arbitrary. It
depends upon the season; but I suppose some day must be chosen, and the
law is not far wrong. 'There or there about,’ is what nature says.” As
soon then as close time had expired Sandy was in the field, equipped for
work as above noted; and dressed in tartan coat and trews, with white
felt hat, he looked as smart as any gentleman in the land, and indeed by
those who did not know him, he would be certain to be taken for the
landlord of the property on which he might be found. Poaching, as now
practised, is so associated with ruffianism and crime, that it appears
almost unfair to apply the term to Sandy’s high style of doing the
thing. He was more like the “free forester” of the olden time, claiming
the privilege he exercised as the unalienable right of a free born Scot.
Limited only by his own desires, his field of operations was very
extensive. One day he might be seen with his dog Charlie—a little brown
spotted setter—crouching close at his heels, and his white felt hat all
stuck over with hooks and other fishing tackle, plying the rod on the
banks of Dee at the Craggandoun, four miles above Balmoral, and the
following day lashing in the same style the salmon pools on the Ballogie
water thirty miles lower down the river; while a day or two after would
find him similarly engaged on the Spey at Carron or Aviemore.
As an angler, he was perhaps less successful than as a sportsman in any
other line; yet considering the wretched trim in which he kept his
fishing gear, the bags he made were wonderful His rod, a few days after
purchase, would be found tied round at some ugly break with the coarsest
whip cord, while line, reel and hooks were subjected to the worst of
usage and the least of attention. In fact he thought everything he
handled ought to be like himself, capable of sustaining any treatment
however bad.
How he passed the first month or two of the fishing season has already
been noticed. With the advent of spring weather in April, Sandy
renounced the luxury of lying down in wet clothes among the straw in
some friend’s bam, and sought no other comfort for the night than what
nature supplied on the grassy bank of the rolling river,
“Lolled to sleep by the
rash of the stream,
And gently awaked by the early beam.”
In this manner the months
of April and May were generally passed. There were occasional
interruptions. When the produce of his labours had lined his pockets, he
would spend a week or so among the haunts of his fellow mortals,
“enjoying good company,” as he used to express it. His fondness for high
life in his own way was the great weakness of his character, and
probably did more to injure his health than the privations he suffered
by flood and field.
By and bye as June wore on, and the season for angling as a remunerative
employment was passing away, Sandy would be taking an occasional turn
into the forest to ascertain if the stags and the “yell” hinds were
coming into condition. When he was satisfied that there were in some
favoured glens “good animals”—animals that would command attention in
Leadenhall—he would look out the rifle, which he had thrown aside in
Banchory, Dufftown, or some other place he was in the way of making his
headquarters at the close of the previous season, and which he would now
find all covered over with rust and in a sad state of disrepair. The rod
was now cast aside, as if he was never to look at it again, and the
rifle, put into as good order as was thought necessary, was laid hold
of. He now disappeared from the habitations of man, taking with him by
way of provisions, a “pocket pistol,” well filled, and a “whisky buckie”—a
compound of whisky and oatmeal rolled together like a great pill of two
or three pounds’ weight, in fact “Atholl brose” of portable consistence.
Several days would elapse before he would again be seen or heard of; but
some early morning he would appear, bearing on his shoulders two huge
venison haunches which he had probably carried a distance of seven or
eight miles during the night.
A few days after these had been despatched to Leadenhall, Sandy would be
found, like a prince, at some favourite hotel, surrounded by a gang of
harpies who had smelt the game, and practising on their victim’s
weakness for “good company,” endeavoured to supply that commodity in
return for the “treat” which they knew he would bestow in the most
lordly manner. While the price of his haunches lasted, ball and revel
were the order of things; and high and fast life went on for some time.
Not, however, on every occasion that he received money from the great
London market did Sandy spend it in this foolish and reckless manner. It
only so happened when he had the misfortune to fall into the trap laid
for him by some worthless and designing loafers, that too often dogged
his steps. At other times he would husband his money almost with miser
care, and these were so much more frequent than those of a prodigal
expenditure that he was seldom without as much as served his needs,
after handsome donations to his poor relatives—a duty which he never
neglected when he had the means of discharging it
“When again in want of money, Sandy would prepare for another
expedition, taking the precaution, however, to select a different forest
He had several reasons for so acting, among others a desire not to be
too hard on any one, unless indeed he bore a grudge to the owner for
some act of severity towards himself which he not unfrequently took this
way of avenging, but generally from prudential motives, afnud lest the
fact of the former inroad should have got wind, or the deer’s “grealach”
(inside) might have by some chance been discovered by the keepers who
would then be doubly on the alert, or that some one of the many
accidents by which murder will be out might render a second visit after
so short a time unsafe.”
While poaching for deer he was very seldom detected or caught. This was
partly owing to his caution. From long habit he had acquired the art of
keeping such a sharp lookout that it was almost impossible for a keeper
to approach him unobserved. His piercing eye was continually on the
watch for signs of danger as well as for game, both of which he had the
faculty of discovering to a degree seldom, if ever, attained by any
other man. Besides this, “he made so little noise in the forest,” as the
keepers affirmed, “that it wisna good fin’an’ him oot.” Sandy’s aim was
so true that a second shot was scarcely ever necessary to secure the
game. Yet it was not steadiness but quickness of aim that signalized his
shooting. He has often been surpassed at rifle practice at a target, but
never at taking up a stag between the trees as it bounded through the
forest. "I remember meeting him,” says an old friend who was well
acquainted with the character of his shooting, “one day soon after he
had been in the forest, and he complained bitterly of himself for having
missed two or three fine stags. ‘Were they standing, Sandy?’ said I.
‘They were, James; and I believe that’s how I missed them.’ ‘I think
so,’ said I, ‘if you had got a glimpse of them bounding between the
trees, there would have been another story to tell’ ”
But he more frequently baffled the gamekeepers by the address with which
he had concealed himself than in any other way. The writer has been told
by the late John Bowman, gamekeeper in the Ballochbuie, that if he once
lost sight of Sandy Davidson in the forest he could seldom find him out
again; and those who remember old John will have little difficulty in
believing that, if Sandy could elude him, he was pretty safe under
similar conditions from the pursuit of any other keeper on Deeside.
Notwithstanding all his arts however, he was sometimes caught; but,
unless under special circumstances, he was not informed upon. All that
was generally exacted from him was a promise that he would not come back
again within a certain time; and if once he pledged his word it might
almost implicitly be relied upon. Such an engagement was, in Sandy’s
estimation, like a solemn truce between two armies. But though it was
very seldom that he was brought before the Justices and fined for his
poaching, he had a great horror of being caught, not so much because he
accounted it a sort of military defeat, involving through the promise he
was sure to have to make a cession of territory and a curtailment of
privilege, as that it put the poor gamekeepers into a false position
with their employers, and endangered their livelihood should it be
discovered that they had not reported him. One instance of this kind
deserves to be noticed, as it is highly honourable to Sandy:
A keeper one day by some unlucky chance came upon him, under
circumstances when it was impossible for him not to report him .to
headquarters. He pointed out the circumstances to Sandy, remarking, “If
I don’t tell on you, my wife and family will be ruined.”
“I would not have such a thing happen to a poor man on my account, no,
not if the matter were to cost me one hundred pounds, instead of five.
Go you and report me, and when I am summoned, I will appear and relieve
you of danger,” was Sandy’s heroic answer. He was reported, and paid the
fine ungrudgingly, and was a great friend to the keeper afterwards,
frequently giving him small sums of money to assist him in bringing up
his family, and abstaining from shooting on the ground over which he
watched, lest any should represent his kindness as bribery.
Though he could be thus generous to a poor man acting openly in the
discharge of his duty, he hated with a corresponding intensity sneaks
and poltroons, and if they injured him he did not spare them when it was
in his power to retaliate.
It happened once that Sandy had shot a fine stag in Glengelder, now a
portion of the royal forest of Balmoral. At that time some change of
gamekeepers was contemplated on the estate, and several persons were
grasping at the situation and endeavouring to supplant each other.
Finding the animal too heavy for his strength to remove it before
morning he had engaged a man to bring a horse for that purpose,
describing to him where he would meet him at an hour which he appointed.
The man came, but he had either misunderstood his instructions, or in
the darkness failed to find the place, and though Sandy repeatedly fired
his gun as a signal to attract his attention, it proved of no avail. On
his way home the man was discovered on the highway by two of the
candidates for the vacant situation, who had some temporary employment
as watchers over the property, and guessing what errand he had been on,
they so wrought on his fears that he told them all the circumstances.
The result was that Sandy was summoned before Mr. Roy, factor on the
Invercauld Estates, and the only Justice of the Peace then in the
district, and fined the statutory penalty of £5. The factor, as a
magistrate, was obliged to discharge this public duty, though he knew
this was not the way to manage Sandy, for whose good qualities,
notwithstanding that he hated his profession, he had in his private
capacity a certain degree of respect. Sandy bore Mr. Roy no ill-will for
the dischaige of his duty, but for the “fool” who informed upon him, and
especially the “sneaks” who had played upon his simplicity “to entrap a
man unlawfully whom they had not the skill to convict by the means which
the law permitted,” he entertained the reverse of friendly feelings,
putting himself to considerable trouble to poach on their beats, when he
might have obtained his game more easily and safely elsewhere, and
making no secret of his delight when some years afterwards they were
dismissed from their situations.
It was when in pursuit of the deer that Sandy had to pass the dreariest
and most lonesome time of all his poaching expeditions; and to a man
tainted as he was with the superstitious notions of his day and class,
it must, one would suppose, have been almost unendurable.
Leaving some distant village late in the afternoon, furnished with his
rifle, powder and ball, pocket pistol, and “whisky buckie,” he would set
out for the forest in which he meant to try his luck. Long before he
reached its confines he would strike off from the public road, and,
after traversing twenty miles or more of rough trackless hill-ground in
the dark, the dawn would find him concealed in some wild corry of the
Ben Muicdhui range, watching the movements of the antlered herds that
might be within eye-shot of him. There he would lie the whole day
long—sleep, it is true, a considerable part of it—taking note at
intervals of all that came within his ken, keepers’ movements, as well
as those of the deer. As evening drew on he would be very observant of
the places to which the latter repaired for the night He had studied
their habits so long and so thoroughly that when he saw a herd lie down
he could generally tell where they would be found at daybreak next
morning; and thither he would convey himself in the darkness. He might,
however, have several days to spend in this manner before he got his
coveted shot, for deer were not so plentiful then as they are now in the
corries of Ben Muicdhui. And how terrifically dreary and lonesome must
have been the wakeful nights he passed in these wild regions, where even
nature herself is most weird and preternatural! We are apt to suppose
that superstitious beliefs fill the mind with unnatural fears, and
perhaps so they do; but it would be an error to conclude that such
beliefs make a coward of a man, or unfit him for braving any danger. It
may be fairly doubted whether the most sceptical disciple of the
materialistic school would not have been the subject of greater
fear—fear of unknown danger, whether preternatural or not—at the dead
hour of midnight, if placed among the yawning chasms and towering
precipices of Ben Muicdhui, than Sandy Davidson, with all his
superstitious beliefs.
One whose information has often been quoted in this sketch thus
describes the condition of his mind: u Notwithstanding the eerie life he
led among the hills at all hours, he never got above a belief in the
preternatural—especially a belief in those merry gentry who are said to
be clad in green. He once came from the Glenbeg forest, in the Braemar
district, where he had been spending the night to have an early shot at
a stag, declaring to me in solemn seriousness—
‘I have oftentimes had doubts about the fairies, but I heard them last
night, as sure as I ever heard anything, singing and playing on the
bag-pipes.’ This he evidently believed, as he was above an untruth or a
jest on such a subject, and besides was very grave and troubled-like in
mind. But though he was superstitious from the training of the time, and
the affair of the 'Black han' in particular, it never in the least
prevented him from going at all hours into what many less brave would
have thought the very jaws of death and destruction — the murky and dark
forest, the eerie mountains, heightened in gloom and terror by the shade
of the night, and the strange unearthly soueh of the wind among their
beetling crags.”
As a variety, Sandy often intermitted his visits to the forest, in order
to have a day or two at the “pouting” when the river was in condition—a
sport of which he was passionately fond, and in the pursuit of which he
had no equal. The testimony of one, well acquainted with his skill in
the various branches of the line of life he led, is as follows—
“I have known several men more successful than Sandy Davidson as an
angler; occasionally too he would miss his mark in the forest,
especially if the deer were standing; he has even been known, though
very rarely, to be surpassed on the moors; but as a spearman of salmon I
have never known his equal. How well I remember one sultry summer day
when the river Dee was low enough for 1 pouting’ (spearing) purposes, a
little party of us set out on this sport with Sandy as one of the
number. We were all good old tried hands; yet at the close of the day he
had three more fish to his own hand than we all put together. He had
practised this sport from a boy about the Auld Brig o’ Dee, and knew
every stone for miles along the river where the salmon were likely to
‘haul.’ His practised eyes would scan the water to a great depth. His
power of detecting the fish in streams and at great depths was something
wonderful. It was a treat to watch him when the game came in view; the
expertness of his movement, the eagerness of his manner, and the
keenness of his glancing eye. Then he would raise the spear cautiously,
take his quick aim, hurl it to a distance of many yards, transfixing his
prey as surely as the falcon is sure of his quarry. I have seen him do
this in all positions, sometimes while standing up to the neck in some
dark, forbidding pool, at other times in some dangerous rapid, and yet
of the many salmon I have seen him throw his spear at I have never known
him to miss but one.”
But another branch of his poaching operations comes now to be noticed;
and in doing so we give the information of one often quoted in this
sketch:
“The time would be coming on apace when his step would become lighter,
and his eye brighter; for the glorious 12th of August had to the year of
his death this inspiring effect on poor Sandy. The rifle would now be
thrown aside, as if it had been useless lumber, and the fowling piece
would be hunted up in the same manner the other had been a month or two
before. Other sportsmen had their prescribed field of operations,
Sandy’s was practically without limit
The crack of his gun might be heard anywhere, from Inverness to Glenmark—a
distance of 80 miles. His habit was to shoot in early morning and late
evening, especially when the gentlemen were in their shooting quarters.
I have often heard him say, 'Real gentlemen are deserving of respect;
and I hold it to be too impudent to shoot over their grounds when they
themselves are out.’
“It might be supposed that in the dim twilight or early dawn the produce
of his gun would not be very great But it was not so. Though he
disdained to adopt any unsportsmanlike method of obtaining
game—expressing his contempt for those who did so by the not uncommon
remark, ‘ Why! he is no man at all who would not give a muircock a
chance for his life by getting on the wing; an old wife could kill a
sitting bird; yet he was so sure a shot, and his eyes, either from
natural strength or long use, had got such a power of descrying,
especially game and gamekeepers, that a full bag was often the result of
an hour’s shooting in the dusk.
“The unemployed part of the day was spent by him in sleep, either below
an overhanging rock, or deeply imbedded among the long heather. His
power of falling asleep was something extraordinary, but it was somewhat
like a Red Indian’s sleep, very light, for the slightest sound would
awaken him.
“He not only had, for a poacher, the courteous feeling about not
shooting when the gentlemen were out; but from a similar motive it was
his general practice not to wander far from the marches of different
gentlemen’s properties. I have heard him defend this practice by saying,
‘Some people would think this cowardice on my part, because, if likely
to be taken, I could soon move across the march; but this is not the
reason with me. It is because it is not so impudent like as when one
goes into the heart of the property.’ There were, however, some notable
exceptions to this rule.
“He was very well known to most of the gentlemen and keepers in the
north of Scotland for these respectful characteristics, and was in
consequence often tolerated when more ‘ impudent1 poachers would not
have been. Those keepers who were not inclined to overlook his poaching
encroachments, or who treated him with, as he thought, unnecessary
severity when he was in their power, roused a sleeping lion within him;
and it was the only revenge he ever took or threatened to take even on
those who had treated him most harshly. ‘ I would never like,* he would
say, 1 to annoy a civil man, but those scoundrels who would not allow an
honest man to live deserve punishment’
“A case of this kind once occurred on Speyside. Sandy, as already
noticed, was seldom caught napping, but it did sometimes happen. On one
occasion he was passing the noonday hours on the braes of Avonside,
concealed among the long heather as usual, waiting the evening to have
his shot, when the party at the Lodge had retired for the day. He had
fallen into a deeper slumber than usual, and was only awakened by the
sound of footsteps close at hand His dog ‘Charlie,’ knowing his business
better than to rush off, like illiterate curs, and make a noise,
apprehended the danger of the circumstances and crouched closer to his
master; but all in vain. Men may pass very close to each other without
discovery, dogs seldom will Finding himself detected Sandy sprang to his
feet at once, resolved to act as dignified a part as circumstances would
permit The gentleman of the party, who was himself the discoverer, flew
into a passion and stormed furiously, while the object of his wrath
stood before him unmoved
“I demand your name instantly,’ said the irate sportsman, in a tone that
told Sandy he had the worst to expect; and he therefore immediately
replied, ‘ My name is Alexander Davidson; what is your name?’
“My name,’ replied the other, ‘is George MacPherson Giant of
Ballindalloch, and I require you to follow me.’ “Sandy was taken before
the Justices and fined £$• When questioned about this business, he used
to remark, ‘The money was not at all lost, for the moors of
Ballindalloch paid for it handsomely afterwards. I knew Sir Geoige
perfectly, but I thought it would not be every day I would have it in my
power to ask the name of such a great man; and I believe he had as
little occasion to ask mine.’
“I have been told that when he came to the Ballindalloch moors his eyes
would assume a determined expression, his steps quicken, and his aim
become unerring. He would also deviate from his usual practice of
shooting on the marches, and would strike into the very finest ground
and blaze away in defiance of the watchers, and yet he was never
afterwards caught on these moors. When pursued, as he sometimes was, he
has been known to disappear on comparatively bare ground, plunge into
some moss pit leaving nothing exposed above water but his nose, and in
this state remain till danger was past”
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