Waltzing The Stones - Caithness
Description
A one minuter "interstitial" was created from this to show on BBC2 December 07.
This is my own version of a video I created for the BBC Highland Lives workshop. It is about a local man who still lifts flagstone from the quarries by hand, and then goes on to build tranditional Caithness Flag Fence.
This is a true Caithness accent.
The website features a host of videos and slideshows from different areas in the Highlands of Scotland and can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/highlandlives/
Music by Dick Clarke
Partial Transcript:
"Moving the stones, aye it's the same as though ye's waltzing, in fact I mind a woman saying 'til me, you're like that you're waltzing out there at the back"
"Born and brought up in the quarries, ye know... we started this then.... just before.... Wully, ye know Wully.... He wis wantin...... all, I did all 'at fences for Wully all aroond til ye, all at you're seein, so now, whenever efter they left here with the quarry, we was needin some flagstones so we came up here an...... I knew what I's wantin ye see, ye know the type that ye's wantin and at so........that's how it started here and this."
"I'll be 84, I think, in December, aye"
"There must be thousands of flagstones as that was miles of, miles of fencing, you know, and whoever, whoever was squared it out, somebody must have laid it all and squared it all......"
"there's something fine about it, about the flagstones"
"look at that fine line itsel' here, look at this line here, look, straight aways, no bother, ye know."
"That's fine like that now is it no'
"Cos ye've different sight, you're younger than me, they lek it straight wi binoculars, is that no' fine now, is 'at no' great
It's a lovely fence
Aye its fine, aye