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  • Benighted in the Foothills of the Cairngorms: January
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Benighted in the Foothills of the Cairngorms: January

Olive Fraser

Cauld, cauld is Alnack …
Cauld is the snaw wind and sweet.
The maukin o’ Creagan Alnack
Has snaw for meat.

Nae fit gangs ayont Caiplich
Nae herd in the cranreuch bricht.
The troot o’ the water o’ Caiplich
Dwells deep the nicht.

On a’ the screes, by ilk cairn
In the silence nae grouse is heard,
But the eagle abune Geal Charn
Hings like a swerd.

Yon’s nae wife’s hoose ayont A’an
In the green lift ava
Yon’s the cauld lums o’ Ben A’an
Wha’s smeek is sna.

A’ the lang mountains are silent
Alane doth wild Alnack sing.
The hern, the curlew are silent.
Silent a’ thing.


Olive Fraser

Submitted to the  Festival of Britain Scots Poetry Competition, 1951, and published in New Scots Poetry (Serif Books, 1952); included in The Wrong Music: the poems of Olive Fraser (Canongate, 1989). 

Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Olive Fraser

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mountains Placebook Scotland Scots winter
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Olive Fraser1909 - 1977

Olive Fraser was born in Aberdeen, and died in the same city sixty-eight years later, the early promise of her life and work having been sadly blighted by illness of both mind and body, her poetry little published and...
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