“Steady, lass!” The driver of the dogcart soothed his horse as it pulled to the right. “She’s always skittish here,” the driver explained to me. “She doesn’t like passing the old graveyard.”
We had reached a crossroads, where the Black Yett of Sidlaw, the main road, eased off towards Perth along the foot of the Sidlaw Hills. Our much narrower track headed north, up a pass between two green heights. The driver’s old graveyard was tucked behind a moss-furred dry-stane dyke, with a scattering of gravestones at different angles, as if each was trying to escape the b*****e of the soil.
“Why is that?” I asked. “Graveyards and such places don’t normally frighten horses.”
“This one does,” the driver said. “Something scared her here a whiley back, and she’s never been happy here since.”
“The gr
