It expanded from bleary delay rippling with looped phrases to embrace molten metalloid raunch and blues grit, acoustic guitars and pedal steels.

Young Tam came up and eyed me quick With reddened cheek—Braw Tam was daffed like a chick—He could na speak—Ah Marie they are all gane hame

“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”

By the month of Þorri, a month which does not in fact exist in towns, I had become quite convinced – and indeed much earlier than that.