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Credit: VisitScotland/ Paul Tomkins
Home / Discover / Stories / Literary Skullduggery

Literary Skullduggery


The following poem was written by the submitter (anonymous):

Burnt mound crucibles

The match box buildings
Where the valley yodels
Rigs join like ribbons
By the little chapel

Hens have their weddings
Adam and Eve and the apples
Stone forts hold weapons
Helmets, shields and tassels

Bric a brac dwellings
Linked to the stables
Well water was drooling
Through burnt mound crucibles

Ducks teach chicks lessons
They hatch out in rabbles
Pubs echo with sessions
Manuscripts of babble

Cuckoo clocks cooing
The skirls of a fiddle
Gossiping women were mooing
Calves rocked in their cradles

The isle's forkytail reel
A fun spirited drill
As several mill wheels
Cabins are lobster creels

A Viking voyage
Sailing the world's edge
Travelling over the isles
Figures of eight for miles

Islands dance their steps
Folk in shawls and caps
Buildings burst with tourists
Fiddles ruffle the guests

Heads are nests with combs
Sun is pushed through looms
Giving warm welcomes
From the Norse place names

Tables lay banquets
Tapestries of nets
Croft Kingdom districts
Stones tattooed from Picts

Dances in the barns
Rock's knitwear patterns
Tombs from chieftains
Pirates and sea captains

Wind syphons earth's veins
And blows grass like reins

Trolls at broken borders

Skies summon about the weather
Ram's scarves are knotted tethers
The shore is like chewed leather
Tying the islands together

There is dots of soil powder
Over the scabbed rock shoulders
Collapsed stones are gathered
Lambs roar for their mothers

Prince sheep come to be fathers
Broch's reached by rock ladders
Lassoes spun by the spiders
Coins roll through the heather

For a dowry to a daughter
Signed papers from an ogre
Across puddles of water
Splashing with sly otters

So they gave the spiked quarter
Full of slaves and martyrs
Windows upon the horrors
With trolls at broken borders

Claw scratch

The moon is a twilight torch
Dogs lead sheep in a march
Crofts are a tangled patch
Heaven is sparked by a match

Crows are the witch's pets
Reading old newspaper nets
Of the daily catch
Tallied with a claw scratch

Harvest heather burns to gold
Yawning midnight bells towl


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