Scottish Pastoral

Patrick Laurie, Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape (Birlinn, 2020)

In many ways this is a very similar book to James Rebanks’ English Pastoral, and there is a ringing endorsement from Rebanks on the cover: ‘I love this book.’  Rather than being in the Lake District, Laurie’s farm is just across the Solway Firth in Galloway, making this something of a Scottish Borders pastoral.  The book is similarly organised in a month by month account of the year, through which weaves Laurie weaves his story of returning to the land after his father had rented the fields.  While a shortage of money is frequently mentioned, there is a greater sense of privilege in this book than in English Pastoral, and there is never really a sense of the grinding rural poverty that sometimes comes across in Rebanks’s writing.  Rather than focusing tightly on his family, Laurie is more anecdotal and wide ranging in in his tone, with frequent references to the history of Galloway and its place as an in between space.  This is partly offset by the theme of infertility and fertility treatment that runs through the book in stark contrast to the fertility of the cattle, but a parallel perhaps to the dying curlews.  The Galloway cattle and the curlews are the stars of the show (and foxes are the enemy).  I was left wondering what it means for a landscape to vanish.