A Shepherd Remembers

by Andrew Purves

Andrew Purves was born in 1912 in the parish of Linton, near Kelso, Roxburghshire. His boyhood ambition was to become a shepherd like his father before him. He achieved his goal, and during a long career of shepherding he worked on farms in the vicinity of Kelso as well as further afield in Berwickshire and Glas Water, and over the Border in Glendale and Otterburn. This career spanned a period of sweeping changes in the structure of agricultural communities and of rural life, during which the countryside of his childhood and youth altered almost beyond recognition. 'The life and work of the people about whom I write lives on only in the memory, and what is now being forgotten by the few of us who remain will soon be lost forever and to all. No-one has yet spoken for these, the men and women of the Border touns.'

280 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001