Maddie's Town

By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.

Maddie lives in a town, or township, but not a village. The word village has a specific meaning in countries that followed the European model of feudalism. The rest of Scotland adopted feudalism; the Highlands, however, were never feudal lands, their own political structure being based on the clan system instead.

The turf walls and brown thatch give Maddie's town an organic look, as if these homes occur naturally or are the dens of animals. If you look closely, you can see the gray haze of peat smoke rising through the thatch roofs because the Highlanders had no chimneys, but just a small hole in the ceiling instead. These photos were taken at the award-winning Scottish living-history museum, the Highland Folk Museum of Kingussie and Newtonmore.

Mad Angus herds the cattle in an area near the town. This is what he is herding: Highland cattle, which are quite short and small compared to other breeds. This bull looks red with all his faded, matted hair, but he is black, which is the traditional color of the breed. Nowadays, there are lots of red Highland cattle, but it was the Victorians who decided they loved the red color and bred specifically to produce that. This bull has just been rained on, so he is wet, and a cloud of gnats and flies surrounds him.

I have no idea how Highland cattle can see where they are going.

Here is a typical turf house, a design used by the Highlanders for millennia, and in some regions up to the beginning of the last century. It has only one window and one door. Its thick turf walls have been whitewashed.

This forge has old thatch, and you can see the luxuriant growth of weeds on top. It is this sort of growth that Bess's house has, and that is why she has boosted up the family sheep to eat it. The doorframe is quite low; you can see my daughter, not yet fully grown in this image, having to bend down to enter the building. This photo was taken at the Auchindrain Township, another fine museum in the Highlands.

Here is one of those little brown sheep: they look more like deer than like a modern sheep. This one is shedding its wool, which is something that modern sheep cannot do anymore; the ability has been bred out of them. This is why Maddie goes around gathering up the wool. Nowadays, her family would have to shear its sheep instead.

This unfinished structure allows you to see the framework of a typical house. Wickerwork was often used to make an inside wall, like the one you see inside this structure.

Here is the barn, with its wickerwork walls, that Maddie and Bess sleep in on the night that Paul returns. The wickerwork is easy to make, does not waste trees, and allows air to circulate around the stored hay.