Mary Smith's celebration of the landscape of South-West Scotland is more than a litany of strange and beautiful names but a reminder of past and half-lost significances.
This poem can be found in her new collection, Thousands Pass Here Every Day (Indigo Dreams Publishing, £7.99).
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Once, people spoke their maps.
Everyone knew where lay
rough moorland of the perilous region,
the hill of the eagle,
mountain of awesome grandeur.
Once people were wary of the crag
of the storm-swept range, made pilgrimage to
the hill of the memorial pile or that other,
above the hollow of the warrior's tomb.
Once people spoke of their land
and what it meant to them,
before strangers, with inflexible tongues,
bringing pen and parchment, plotted
names which whisper only an echo
of what they once were:
Palgowan, Benyellery, Mulwharchar,
Craigmasheenie, Pinbreck,
Corrafeckloch.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article