Dark skies over Mormond

Today has been one of those four-seasons-in-a-day days that we often get in Scotland. Lots of sunshine in the morning was followed by black, yes black skies in the afternoon, hail and even snow. This was the sky on my way home from Fraserburgh in the early evening.

Mormond is not a high hill, being some 223 metres at its highest, but it is prominent against the flat Buchan farmland, and is a landmark from the sea. It also features in the well known whaling song:

FAREWELL TO TARWATHIE
Traditional (Scotland) - early 1850s

Farewell to Tarwathie,
Adieu, Mormond Hill,
And the dear land of Crimmond,
I bid ye farewell;
I'm bound out for Greenland
And ready to sail,
In hopes to find riches
In hunting the whale.

Adieu to my comrades,
For a while we must pairt,
And likewise the dear lass
Wha fair won my hairt;
The cold ice of Greenland
My love will not chill,
And the longer my absence,
More loving she'll feel.

A few years ago on a trip to Dublin we heard this sung in the Oliver St. John Gogarty pub in Temple Bar and introduced as an Irish song. I took great pleasure in telling the singer he was singing about a place in Aberdeenshire less than ten miles from our home! He wasn't at all fazed. "Sure now the Americans in here won't know the difference!" Every time I drive passed Mormond this memory makes me smile, even on a black day.