The Best Laid Plans
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The Best Laid Plans
The methods used to outwit the gaugers were elaborate and various - often necessitating hours of careful planning, but sometimes causing the smugglers to call up their best improvisational skills. And distilling was a way of life that tended to make those skills very refined indeed.
Here are some ingenious examples:
A Bit of Black Magic
In the valley of Strathmore in the 1820s, a group of smugglers, spurred on by an old-time hoodwinker, Sandy McGregor, got the better of the local Supervisor of Excise at Coupar Angus, Joseph Henderson, with a particularly cunning ploy. Hearing that the gaugers were hot on the trail of their convoy, the smugglers did a bit of hasty dealing and dressing up in the village of Ardblair.
The waiting gaugers were treated to a highly extravagant - but doggedly sombre - funeral procession, complete with black-draped hearse, black horses, men in black armbands and women in mourning clothes. No prizes for guessing what was in the hearse! What could the gaugers do but doff their hats in respect?
Apparently the episode led to a nice sideline for the undertaker at Ardblair - and the gaugers were none the wiser.
Feverish Trick
A lady distiller from Auchterhouse, five miles north-west of Dundee, remembers how she helped to get her father out of a tight spot when a group of gaugers turned up out of the blue. She was seven or eight and ill in bed with the flu and there was four ankers of the peatreak in the house, as well as a bag of malt ready for the still.
When the Excisemen arrived from over the hills, her father quickly lifted the mattress from the bed, put the evidence in the bed and put the mattress back on top. The little girl was placed back on top and told what to do.
When the door burst open, all the gaugers could see was a concerned mother and father leaning over their sick child When they inquired about her health they were told she had a terrible fever. The cunning father even put one gauger's hand over his daughter's hot brow. The preventive officer couldn't get out of the house quick enough!
Legends
- The Best Laid Plans