大象传媒

Readings from the work of acclaimed Scottish author Jessie Kesson. Best known for her novels "Another Time, Another Place" and "The White Bird Passes", Jessie Kesson's writing was often inspired by events from her own life and by the landscape of North East Scotland.

Today, extracts from her "Country Dwelller's Year", first published in monthly instalments in the Scots Magazine during 1946. These finely honed observations of the natural world and the rhythms of the farming year were written when Jessie Kesson and her husband lived in Morayshire as cottar farm workers.

Glossary:
Cottar ..... farm labourer who occupies a cottage in return for their services
Howe ..... low-lying land
Orra loon ..... a lad employed to do miscellaneous unskilled work
Hairst ..... harvest

Jessie Kesson (1916 - 1994) was a prolific writer of novels, poems, stories, newspaper features and radio plays. She came through a hard start in life (born in the Inverness workhouse, raised in an Elgin slum, removed from her neglectful but much-loved mother to an orphanage in Aberdeenshire) with a passionate determination to be a writer. She combined a successful writing career with a variety of jobs, from cleaner to artist's model, and was a social worker for nearly twenty years, settling finally in London with her husband.

The full text of "Country Dweller's Year" is published by Kennedy & Boyd as "A Country Dweller's Years: Nature Writings By Jessie Kesson", edited and introduced by Professor Isobel Murray.

Reader ..... Claire Knight
Writer ..... Jessie Kesson
Abridger ..... Kirsteen Cameron
Producer ..... Kirsteen Cameron.