I almost skelped the boy. I’d had a drink, and was outside for a smoke down the stair of the venue.
A few of us were; spilling out into the Meadowside night just by where the Brewdog is now.
This bald London academic guy had wound me up. He was quite stylish in a hipster sort of way. A bit of money about him.
“I’m actually here collecting data for my PhD in anthropology,” he’d said.
Interesting stuff. What about, I’d asked with drunken curiosity.
“There were this spate of rural people thinking they’d seen black cats, like large felines something like a panther in areas around Dundee and Fife.”
I was raging.
Me, my mum, brother and sister had all been playing in Crombie Country Park, just up fae wir own village in Newbigging.
I was pretty wee, still at primary. Brother and sister about the same.
My mum was her usual cheery, harassed self, a lone woman with three boisterous bairns belting in every direction.
Suddenly we were all screaming and crying “mum, mum, mum!” and pointing into the field by the woods.
We saw the eyes of a big black cat staring out at us, and a feline body quickly jouk and flit into the trees.
The panicked Heathers bundled into the safety of the Vauxhall Cavalier.
We still chat about it now and then.
And now here’s this guy coming up the road to study us like we’re a bunch of dafties believing in fairies or fleeing imagined burnside kelpies down by the Dichty or whatever.
I scattered a few unkind and unwelcoming words his way, pinged my fag and went elsewhere.
Is the black cats the new dragon?
It bothered me for ages.
Big black cats have been seen throughout Angus and Fife loads of times, with a particular rash when I was in later primary around 1998.
But they’re a myth, according to anthropologists. A wee tale we’ve been telling wirsels.
It was brought back to me walking through town with a non-Dundonian pal the other day.
How come yous have a muckle Dragon statue in the city centre, she asked.
Fair enough.
I rattled off the story: a farmer at Pitmedden had his nine daughters gobbled up by a ravenous dragon. One of the daughters’ lovers, a doughty lad called Martin, rode in fury at the head of a mob and in his rage found, fought and slew the dragon.
The Pictish Stone in the fields up fae Bridgefoot is meant to mark the spot of the dragon’s demise, and various place names are related to it too.
The one that gets me most is Baldragon. It’s just Gaelic for “the village of the dragon”.
From that, we learn that the story of the dragon was here when we were still speaking Gaelic as a primary language, centuries ago.
This story has been around, and meant something to folk, for an incredibly long time.
Belief in dragons, belief in ourselves
Folk tales are shared, embedded in wir communities almost.
They are an anchor that stops our sense of self drifting too far.
I’m sure that people believed – really believed – this story about the dragon, and the poor dead women, and Martin and all the rest, for a long time.
The difference is I never believed in dragons.
It’s folk like me – skint teuchters – that in the United States claim to be abducted by aliens. We arnae always reliable witnesses
As a bairn in the town for shopping I’d climb on the Dragon statue. I’m sure loads of you have.
If I heard the story about the poor lassies being eaten and wee mad Martin charging after the skybourne scaly culprit then I certainly didnae believe it.
The statue is a memorial to a dead story. Once it was living, now it is deceased.
The black cats are different. I was an eyewitness. My family were.
Time for a statue to the black cat of Crombie?
I rang my mum up while writing this.
She confirmed, and by a stroke of luck she was sat with another Angus pal who also had a story.
This guy says that in 1992 he was driving up towards Glenogil, getting on for deep upland Angus, when a large black cat, bigger than a fox, breenged across the road
in front of him.
I heard him on the phone, adamant about what he saw.
Police in Scotland have issued a clarification on a big cat sighting in Ayrshire after previously warning a black panther was on the loose.
https://t.co/eAttZHcDzk— The Scotsman (@TheScotsman) October 20, 2018
And yet I cannae quite believe in big black cats, after the visiting academic poured scorn on me.
For some reason his late-night speculative sentences carry more credibility than the conviction of those in my community whom I trust and love.
One word from an elite outsider, and a local story that’s thrived for decades is mortally wounded, in my head at least.
I can well imagine haughty monks or lairds from further afield scorning the Gaelic speaking peasantry of Strathmartine when they came across the story of the Dragon.
This resistance to believe ma ain fowk has survived despite more modern sightings and even video evidence.
A big part of this is self doubt.
It’s folk like me – skint teuchters – that in the United States claim to be abducted by aliens.
We arnae always reliable witnesses.
So I’m asking you, Courier readers, do you believe in big cats in Scotland?
Have you seen one?
Did we see a big black cat in Crombie?
And is it time we erected a bronze statue puma in the town, so future generations can tell visitors about the havers their bumpkin ancestors believed?
In Saturday’s Courier…
