When the Snow Fell, the Whisky Moved

“A Folklore of Glen Prosen”

Long before the law learned the lie of these hills, winter was the smuggler’s closest ally.

When snow fell thick across Glen Prosen and the high ground beyond, the glen grew quiet. Doors were barred, paths vanished, and the excisemen thought twice before riding into the corries. But for those who knew the hills - the farmers, drovers and shepherds - this was the season when whisky moved.

Fresh snow fell fast and wiped tracks as quickly as they were made. Hoofprints softened, footprints vanished, and the wind finished what the snowfall began. Men moved while the storm was still falling, not after it. To wait for clear weather was folly - settled snow told tales no smuggler wished to hear.

Peat fires burned low in hidden bothies, their smoke blurred by mist and weather. Sound carried poorly in a storm, and the glen swallowed it gladly. By dawn, a still could be broken, barrels shifted, and the place left cold and innocent beneath a white coverlet.

The old paths mattered then. Jock’s Road carried more than drovers between Deeside and Glen Doll, and from it ran quieter routes threading Glen Isla, Glen Clova and Glen Prosen together. One such way was the Kilbo Path - a hard, high road skirting Corrie Kilbo and crossing the Shank of Drumwhallo before dropping into Glen Prosen. In winter it was no place for strangers, but smugglers trusted it. The law rarely did.

Excisemen who ventured into the hills after a storm often found little reward for their trouble. A cold hearth. A shattered still sunk into a burn. Ash scattered and footprints already melting into nothing. The whisky, by then, was long gone - carried quietly through a landscape that kept its own counsel.

So it was said in Angus that winter did not halt the whisky trade, it refined it. Timing was everything, and the snow, for a while at least, belonged to the smugglers.