User:Duncan William Harley
[[Category:]]Duncan Harley has written extensively about the history and the mythology of the North-east of Scotland.
Although not born and bred in Aberdeenshire he considers the county his adoptive home. He worked for a time at a well-known street newspaper before turning to free-lance writing and blogging. Feature writing now takes up much of his time alongside the penning of both theatrical and literary reviews. Duncan lives in rural Aberdeenshire with his cat Lucy and is surrounded by a huge pile of other people’s books. At weekends and holidays, he and partner Janice Rayne like nothing better than to explore the history and the landscape of the North-east of Scotland.
The folklore and the history of Aberdeenshire make for interesting reading. Invading armies have come and gone and the boom and bust of oil has changed the landscape forever. Where bloody battles were won and lost, gas pipelines and shiny white windmills now litter the landscape.
Along the way the Romans left their mark and evidence, in the form of long abandoned marching camps, is still being excavated. The Picts for their part, left a more obvious heritage in the form of symbol stones and hill-forts.
Macbeth, Burns and Inkson McConnochie all played their part in shaping the folklore of the North-east and the monarchs and the lairds, for their part, often took more decisive action. As a sometimes tearful populace looked on, they variously managed the land and, more often than not, plundered it mercilessly.
Mary Queen of Scots, the doomed Marquis of Montrose and those Jacobite Pretenders ravished the landscape and, in consequence, often exposed the population to the full horrors of civil war and state sponsored vengeance. The castles of old bare witness to the cruelty of the past and the ballads of old record the tumultuous events which shaped the North-east of Scotland.