Preface: Whiting Bay Memories bring you this wonderful story of Dan Cook Smuggler from the cottage on the right in the above image. This cottage is now demolished but many of you will recognise Seaview on the left, home of Archie Nicol.

We will shortly be bringing you a supporting trail to explore the history and delights of Largiebeg.

Extracted from ‘The East of Arran’ A Guide Book for the Young of all ages by A.Boyd Scott. 1919

Ships and Smugglers: the story

Old Donald was sunning himself on the bench, watching the hens as they still found something to peck at on the white gravel and the lawn of tired grass beyond, or screwing up his eyes to look beyond the reddening rowan trees and the corn fields and the yellow sand of the shore, and watch the Duchess of Hamilton crossing the blue bay, stately and queenly as a duke’s lady.
He was ready for a crack even with a school-boy, and many a tale he told as he sat there in the sun, seeing all old things clearly in that evening light of age, which is the gift of old men.
“Well I remember,” he said that morning, “when there were no steamboats whatever coming into Whiting Bay but only to Lamlash, and nothing but fishing boats and the big smack that was sailing from Glen Ashdale to Ardrossan and maybe to Ayr at times too. Aye, aye, well, well!”
“There would be luggers too, Donald,” said I in the pause that followed.
“Certainly there was luggers; and what will you mean by luggers?” he replied.
“Oh luggers, you know!” I explained as boys do by simply repeating what they said before. “Luggers, you know: smugglers’ boats and revenue cutters chasing them, and fights on the shore and in caves between the excisemen and the smugglers, you know!”
“Smugglers it is,” the old man answered. “Oh yes, now and then there was smugglers here and there, they’ll be telling me, but that was long ago. You wouldn’t be thinking I was a smuggler, would you now?”
And Donald chuckled in a way that raised a most hopeful suspicion in my mind: but in vain.
“Oh yes, there was smugglers now and then”, continued Donald. “Fine I could show you a place in the burn yonder and a few more forbye, where they would be having the sma’ stills hidden away just neat. Aye, and a good place in Holy Isle, and a good place at Largie Beg, where the skiffs sailed away at night with the good stuff aboard, yes indeed.”
“Largie Beg, Donald!” I interrupted. “Did you ever hear tell of a smuggler at Largie Beg, who tied up a revenue man and then cut his throat?”
“Hoots, away with you!” said Donald sharply; “who’s been telling you that havers? It never was: but it was Dan Cook at Largie Beg who had the great to-do with the King’s men and the people were laughing from Bennan to Brodick about it after. Oh, he was the lad, was Dan Cook, a big man with a long nose and he was always sniffing when he was talking and “Who are you to set yourself up?” it would be sounding like. He was amusing!”
Donald by now was well under way and thus I got the tale of Dan Cook at Largie Beg.

It was indeed at Largie Beg that Dan Cook was living, him and his wife, and she was the brave woman too. There they would be all alone, but the wee herd lad for the two cows or maybe three or four. It is a good house, and it is standing there as before with everything else. Aye, and from the door you will look that way and there is the bay between you and the Dippen rocks to the southart, and you will look this way and there is the bay past Largie Meanach to Largie Mhor at the Black Rocks.

Well, well, do you know it was in the burn there in the Dippen Bay, and it was very near to the house, that Dan had his sma’ still working away and him making good stuff, and getting good money over the water when he would sail in his skiff to Saltcoats or somewhere, I am not sure. It was working away a long time it was, that wee still, after the others about the burns there was all caught and carried away by the revenue folk. But there you are, they couldn’t find Dan’s still: ah, he was the amusing lad!
You see, he was born there, and every rock and hole and every cave on the shore he knew as well as you could, and he had one cave down below, and it was all thick with brackens and whins and brambles too, likely, and wouldn’t he carry his still down there to hide it every time indeed that the gaugers came about like ferrets along a dyke? He was the lad, Dan, as strong as the big red stag that John Hamilton killed up the glen, when he carried away on its horns his high fence he built to keep them out of his corn. You see it was against the law to indeed to lay a hand on the deer, or to kill them what is more, but was it against the law for them to let deer to grow like that stag on poor man’s corn, will you tell me that? The law – . . . Aye, aye, well, well, it was about Dan Cook: I’m not forgetting ! . . . Well now, they couldn’t be nabbing him at all, at his wee still, and there he was laughing and sniffing away and doing fine. But the neighbours would say, “They’ll be catching ye yet, Dan lad!” And the minister himself from Kilmorie came away in by, and he had his suspicions of Dan, and knew about it all as well as the rest; and the minister took his bit dram in Dan’s house and said, with a look in his eye, “Aye, aye, Dan, there is no question in the Catechism about whisky at all,” and Dan would laugh and see the minister up to the road, and Dan would be going to the church that Sabbath and maybe one more running.
Well, the time went on, and there was people buried, and all the while there was Dan working away. But one day, they’ll be saying, along the road came Alastair Stewart from Kiscadale over there; he had a funeral for the day of his cousin at Dippen going to Kilmorie. And there was Dan looking over the wall and smoking and looking at nothing. And Alastair stopped and took off his hat and he wiped away at his face, it being a warm day and him with his black clothes on him, with a crepe round about his hat, and a hard collar to his neck.
“Well, well,” says Alastair, “and you’ll be knowing that the cutter is sailing at Loch-an-Eilean the day, Dan?”
“Indeed,” says Dan, with a face as innocent as you could see. “Indeed,” says he, “and what business will that be to me, Alastair Stewart?”
“O none at all, none at all,” says Alastair, quite serious; “none at all, none at all; but she’s a good boat, and I thought maybe you’d like to be calling to them while they sail by to come in by and rest a bit”.
So they cracked away together, and then Alastair put back his hat on his head, for he would be going now to the funeral of his cousin and away he went up the road. But Dam put his pipe away in his waistcoat pouch and took a dauner to the front of the brae and looked away to Largie Mhor, and I declare to my goodness, what did he see but the revenue boat coming along with a North wind from King’s Cross Point, and he didn’t like to see the way she was heading. Dan rubbed his hand down his nose, and thought a while, and then he said, “Imphm aye, it’s just possible!” and with that he called to Jeanie his wife, for that was her name, and says he “Jeanie woman, there’s a bird coming; we’d be better to get the worm out of sight from her”, meaning, to be sure, the sma’ still. O he was the amusing lad, was Dan Cook.
Jeanie said nothing – she was the business-like wife for a man – and the two of them together went down to the burn, and away they took the wee still between them out from the brackens and over the stones and down the hill as quick as you could, and to the shore and to the cave which they knew, and well hidden it was, as well that you couldn’t guess even if you were pulling brambles at the mouth of it. O she was the powerful woman, a real help-meet for an honest man! My old grandfather was telling me long ago about Jeanie M’Kelvie, that was Dan Cook’s wife, that once she was so strong that she took a stirk by the head that came into the byre, and what do you think she did- …Very well, I’ll tell you another time, as you say, but she was the powerful woman. The stirk –
…Very good, I’m not forgetting about the cutter, but you musn’t hurry a man with his story. Well, well, up the brae comes Dan and Jeanie, and they got to the house well and good, when what was it at the bay at Largie Meanach but the cutter putting a boat ashore with three men in her, and two of them stepped ashore and left a man to mind the boat, and up the two were coming to the house at Largie Beg.
When Dan caught sight of this he sent Jeanie away to a neighbour’s and into the house he went. But before that, round to the byre he goes and gets a couple of two pitchforks for the hay and in he brings them to the house with an end of rope besides; and he ties the two ends of the pitchforks together with the rope, making a lashing of them together, for that was a bit of his ploy, as I’m telling you. And there he was in the lobby between the two doors of the house that runs from the front door to the back door, and he kept the two doors shut, and he stood in the middle with the points of the hay-forks holding them between the doors. He was the clever lad, Dan!
Well and now, up comes the two gaugers, very, very smart men by their way of thinking it, and the one went to the front door, and the other took a turn round the house to the back door, and there they cried, “Open Dan Cook, in the King’s name!” But all that Dan would do was to laugh and say, “Open the door yourself for a change, and just you come in ben!” So they pushed at the doors, and nearly ran their noses on the hay-forks, and they stopped and saw that there was trouble. But Dan said, “Ach now, you’re surely not changing your minds to have a bite of dinner here this day! I’ll just be letting you have the tooth-picks before you come to the mutton, like!” But would they come in? No: they thought twice about it, I’m telling you, and round came the one at the back door and had a talk with his mate, and the one waited to keep Dan there, and the other went away in a hurry to get more assistance from the cutter. When what do you think Dan will be up to next, but he is out of the house like a collie over a dyke, and grips the one at the door like a dog with a rat, and shakes him till the teeth of him shook in his head with a clatter, and down he got him, and along he pulled him by the scruff of his neck, and then tied him like a sheep hand and foot, and lifted him like a bairn and put him away into a hole in the peat-stack, and built up a wall of divots to keep him snug and warm like! O he was the wonder, was Dan.

Aye, aye, and into the house he gets himself in good time too, before the men from the cutter comes up. Did I tell you that the man from the back door would be away to get help from the cutter?
Well, he did, and the skipper of her swore like a trooper in Ayr, and orders his men to take guns and pistols and cutlasses, and be quick about it, and up the shore at Largie Meanach they came in a duvvle of a hurry – I mean truly speedily that is, and up to Dan’s house with their sea-legs out of breath. Then up speaks the skipper and says:
“Surrender in the King’s name!”
Dan all this while was behind the door for certain and they could hear him give a sniff, and then he cried out:
“Away with you and not be troubling me when I want to have a bit snooze this warm day!”
The skipper looked round to see if any of his men was laughing up his sleeve, for they knew Dan, some of them did, to be the wag he was, and then he cried:
“Dan Cook, in the King’s name, give yourself up, and be slippy about it!”
But Dan would do no such thing, but he cried:
“I have two cocks as it is: away and find a dung-hill for yourself and learn to crow yonder, auld claret face!”
This gave the skipper a flea in his lug, and up he gets and orders his men to fire a volley of their guns over the house. My faith, it was a noise they made, there is no mistake! They were telling that the sound of it was heard at Dippen, and the minister stopped in his prayer at Alastair Stewart’s funeral for his cousin, and old Mary Currie, Alastair’s good-sister, fell with a skreich on the floor, and broke all the glasses for the dram they would be having before they started away for Kilmorie. And all the collies at Largie Beg ran away yowling to Largie Mhor, and the kye put up their tails and went off to the moor, and the hens flew over the house, and the big sow caught the wee herd lad and cowpit him into the water of the dung-hill. And lo and behold, there was Dan standing at the door as neat and cool as a pat of butter on a cabbage leaf, and looking round him calm as a judge.
“Goodness gracious, I declare,” says Dan, “what was that noise whatever? Has the French landed?”
Then up comes the skipper, swearing so bad that Dan put his fingers in his ears to keep it out, and he says:
“Look you, Cook, where is my man? What have you been doing with him?”
And Dan says, with a face of innocence, “Your man? I’ve not lost a man. Count your men for yourself. I’m no great hand at the counting.”
“You blackguard!” cries the skipper, and he turns to his men and says, “Off with you, men, and find him!”
Surely enough they began to hear a wailing and a crying like a bairn shut up in a meal chest, and this was the man in the peak-stack wailing, for he heard the guns fire and knew that here was his friends at last.
Well, off they went, and off went Dan alongside, rubbing his nose and sniffing away, and he would be saying:
“Do you hear a crying now? Glory to goodness, was your sailors killing my pig? By gum,” he would say, “if your sailors was killing my pig, my bonny wee pig, I’ll have the price of her in your blood, I will”.
In time they come to the peat-stack, and there he was, and very like a pig in a sty too, I’ll be thinking. Out he is pulled, and the rope gets cut at once, and everybody turns to Dan and fair scowls at him. But Dan holds up his hands like an old wife at another old wife’s story, and says he:
“Did you ever! How did the lad get into the peats? Maybe he wanted a place to smoke, and maybe he would be setting the stack on fire with his smoking, the scoundrel!”
“You are the scoundrel, you long-nosed blackguard,” cries the skipper, coming up to him. “It was you that set him there, you double-faced smuggler!”
But Dan would only be stroking his nose and saying:
“Isn’t it the fair confusion that the lad got there? It is the fair wonder!”
And nothing more could they get out of Dan but the same, he standing and glowering at the peat-stack and the man, and back again to the hole in the divots. O he was the amusing lad, Dan.
Ach well, it was the finest thing for all the neighbours who were there, holding their hands across their mouths and saying to Dan, “It would be the Wee Folk that did it on the man, Dan!” and Dan would say, “Maybe Neil, maybe Jeanie, or maybe the Duvvle!” They are uncanny lads, the gaugers.”
Well, well, they scattered and looked for the wee sma’ still, but ach, they would be looking for a needle in a hay-rick, the callans, and they peched away about the brackens at the burn and beneath rocks and stones, and behind the whins, and down to the shore, but never a smell of it they had.
So surely, the skipper blew a whistle and away they would go to their boats! And Dan walked down behind them a bit of the road, with his hands in his belt, and whistling for a tune “The Devil caught the Gauger”: aye, and a very good piper he was, was Dan in the evenings on the roadside at Largie Beg. And the skipper said to him, what was he following for? And Dan said:
“I was keeping an eye on the lad that was smoking in yon peat-stack. I wouldn’t wonder if he was after my divots to light his fire on your bonny bit boat!”
But then Dan came back to the folks at his house, and they laughed and slapped him on his back. All that they could get Dan to be saying was this and no more:
“Ach, isn’t it a great amusement, the gauger lads? But it is indeed a bit of a nuisance too, whatever!”
O he was the fair divert, was Dan Cook!

Taken from ‘The East of Arran’ A Guide Book for the Young of all ages by A.Boyd Scott. 1919 Transcribed by Cheryl Burgess for Whiting Bay Memories

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Part 2

Moving forward to 1983 STV filmed this short drama at Sea View Largiebeg. We have found a copy of the film which you can enjoy by clicking on the link below. Remember to come back to this page and enjoy more images of Largiebeg, Largiemeanoch and Largiemhor

The Secret of Croftmore

An STV production Starring a young David Tennant, filmed at SeaView Largiebeg

A Slideshow of 13 images to enjoy.

Special thanks to all those who have kindly donated all these images to Whiting Bay Memories. We are very grateful to each and every one of you. Without them we would not be able bring these tales for everyone to enjoy.