Dumfries

[bird singing]

Alison Robertson, Dumfries, says, "Guessing the mystery sound is the highlight of my week.

Is it a blackbird? We'll have to check Merlin." No, you're not allowed to check Merlin.

[laughs] That's cheating.

How did you come about...

How did you get the opportunity to make a film about this?

Well, there's, there's an arts organization, uh, based in Dumfries and Galloway called Upland, and for the last three or four years they've been running a residency program called Artful Migration, where they ask artists to, uh, apply, and if successful, uh, respond to different bird species that, uh, call Dumfries and Galloway home for certain parts of the year.

So it was part of that, this iteration of that residency program.

If it bows any of my readers under as deep and certain a confidence as mine, that, in God's hand our breath is, and His are all our ways, my task will not be fruitless in the great day.

On the 24th May, 1824, I was born in a cottage on the farm of Braehead, in the parish of Kirkmahoe, near Dumfries in the south of Scotland.

My father, James Paton, was a stocking manufacturer in a small way.

And he and his young wife, Janet Jardine Rogerson, lived on terms of warm personal friendship with the gentleman farmer.

And where are the healthy, happy peasant boys and girls that such homes bred and reared? They are sweltering and struggling for existence in our towns and cities.

I am told that this must be, that it is all the result of economic laws, but I confess to a deepening conviction that it need not be, and that the loss to the nation as a whole is vital, if not irreparable.

While yet a mere child, five years or so of age, my parents took me to a new home in the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter miles north of from Dumfries, on the road to Lockerbie.

At that time, about 1830, Torthorwald was a busy and thriving village, and comparatively populous, with its cotters and crofters, large farmers and small farmers, weavers and shoemakers, cloggers and coopers, blacksmiths and tailors.

That since that time, however, he had had occasion to notice that in general the Scotch were ready to threaten but slow to act.

That, as to the bastard referred to, who was doubtless the Earl of Murray, he would take care that he should never enter Scotland far enough for his sword to reach him, were it as long as from Dumfries to Edinburgh.

Which in other words was as much as to say that Murray should remain exiled in England for life, since Dumfries was one of the principal frontier towns.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy proceeded, and Douglas and Ruthven, having collected their accomplices and taken their measures, came to Darnley to finish the compact.

As the price of the bloody service they rendered the king, they exacted from him a promise to obtain the pardon of Murray and the nobles compromised with him in the affair of the run in every sense.

The Bruce's party took advantage of the general unrest and discontent to form a conspiracy.

As Balliol lay at Annan, near Dumfries, with but a small guard around him, he was suddenly attacked by John Earl of Murray and Sir Archibald Douglas.

They fell upon him at midnight, scattered or slew his retainers, and chased him to the gates of Carlisle, December 16th, 1332.

Immediately risings set in all over Scotland and the new king's followers were hunted out of the country.

He bade Balliol sign a treaty ceding to him not only Berwick, but all the border shires of Scotland as far as Edinburgh.

Footnote.

Namely the three Lothians, Berwick, Roxburgh, Peebles, Selkirk, and Dumfries.

End footnote.

I grew up wanting to be an entertainer because I didn't know anything about it.

I grew up literally on a farm in Dumfries and Galloway.

Amazing.

Hello, Dumfries and Galloway.

They're called the Dunhamers in Dumfries because they go Dunham from Glasgow.

I love that.

It's lovely, the Dunhamers.

Anyway, the mum had passed away.

The kids, one was in Edinburgh, one was in the Freesia, one was in Germany.

So again, my mum's, that's my son, he's an estate agent.

He'll do everything.

but we are on the Regency Radio Network, so welcome along.

We're online, we're on apps, we're on DAB across Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and also across southern Scotland on 107.3 FM, courtesy of a live radio broadcasting from Dumfries.

How sweet it is to be loved by you.

Oh, yes it is, baby.