Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 32 on 13/04/2007.

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Smuggling

It’s been called the national vice of Scotland, and smuggling is ingrained in the country’s history. Dominic Roskrow seeks out some smuggling hotspots

You feel it most acutely on the hills close to The Glenlivet Distillery in Speyside.

Climb up here on a spring day, when the sun is up and casting watery light over the glimmering crags and bullish grass, and the wind, chilled by the last cries of winter, tingles the skin and ruffles the hair; stare out over the valley, with the Spey snaking through its heart; feel the timelessness of the landscape, the permanence of the geography, and you’re there, back with the whisky smugglers, back in a time of danger and romance, of drama and heroism.

When you’re here, close to Josie’s Well, the water source of the Glenlivet, or making your way along one of the trails that the smugglers would have used to bring their precious aqua vitae to thirsty mouths in the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and further still, it’s hard not to be touched by the romance of it all.

It shouldn’t really be this way, should it?

After all, smuggling covers a multitude of sins. Gun running, for Scottish rebels 500 years ago or Loyalist paramilitaries in recent times; trafficking of people and often children, hard drugs, tobacco even – these are heinous crimes that have all been committed under the banner of smuggling.

And yet when it comes to whisky, there’s something honourable about it all, a case of correcting an iniquity in the form of punitive English taxes, providing a small income for those that needed it most and providing pleasure for the whisky enthusiast. It is, if you will, the Rabbie McHood s.....

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Scotland History

Page number : 68