Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of whisky

smugglers? Ian Sutherland picks up the trail

IN JULY 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson rented a holiday cottage in the

Upper Deeside village of Braemar -- 1200ft above sea level, in the

foothills of the Cairngorms. With him came his new wife, the American

Fanny Osbourne, and 12-year-old Lloyd Osbourne, her son from her

previous marriage. They were joined by Stevenson's father Thomas and his

mother Margaret.

According to common tradition, the rest is history. In the cottage --

described as having belonged to the ''late Miss McGregor'' -- Stevenson

created Treasure Island.

This year, there have been various attempts to identify which part of

the world contains the ''real'' Treasure Island. Claims have been lodged

on behalf of locations as varied as Mykonos, in the Aegean, and Unst, in

Shetland.

In Braemar, retired police officer John Duff is reaching a very

different conclusion: Treasure Island was not only written in his native

village. Many of Stevenson's characters are based on people living in

Braemar in the 1880s, a number of locations can be pinned to sites in

Upper Deeside -- and themes such as buried treasure have their origins

in Braemar folk legends and history.

As befits a lawman, John Duff has been on a quest for hard evidence.

Victorian census records were his first port of call. ''The 1881 census

showed a family called Silver living at an address given as 10 West End,

Braemar. The address doesn't exist now, but it seems to have been in

what is now the Chapel Brae area of the village -- on the route up to

Morrone Hill, from which there's a superb panorama of the Cairngorms.

''The head of the family was a Kincardineshire-born miller by name of

John Silver. He lived with his wife Elizabeth, who was born in

Newmachar, near Aberdeen, and their four children included a son, also

John, then aged 11. Their other son, James, who was 14 in 1881, won

third prize in the boys' race at the 1881 Braemar Gathering. Stevenson

was in the village in early September when the games were held.''

Although the summer of 1881 was wet and cold, there is evidence that

the Stevenson family were not confined to their holiday home. The writer

had many ''walks together'' with his stepson. He recorded that Lloyd

returned from these excursions in a ''glow of romance''. John Duff

suspects strongly that some of that romance involved tales about -- if

not actual contact with -- people whose lifestyles were, even in 1881,

downright piratical.

In most historical accounts of northern Scotland, illicit distilling

and whisky smuggling tend to be associated with Speyside. In fact, Upper

Deeside -- with shorter routes into urban Scotland -- was a major site

for such operations. The general view is that smuggling of illegal

spirits died out completely with the introduction of official licensing,

in 1824. But not in Upper Deeside.

Says John Duff: ''There certainly were illicit stills in the area

below Morrone as late as the 1880s. There were three stills in the area

known as Corienamuick, which was then heavily forested and well-hidden.

Most of the distillers were crofters. The best-known rejoiced in the

name of Charlie 'Princie' Stuart. I think it's possible Stevenson picked

all this up.''

In the hope of controlling Braemar's buccaneers, the Government

maintained a garrison at Braemar Castle, a mile east of the village,

until well into the 1820s. The military presence was occasioned also by

lingering fears in Whitehall of any resurgence of Jacobite activity in

Upper Deeside. John Duff has taken careful note of the fact that Miss

McGregor's cottage stands only yards from Braemar's Invercauld Arms

Hotel. Where the hotel now stands, the Earl of Mar raised the Jacobite

standard to launch the Old Pretender's Rebellion of 1715.

And he wonders whether Stevenson might not have imbibed a little more

than tales of rebellion and challenges to authority. At the beginning of

the nineteenth century, Braemar was described as ''one of the meanest of

Highland clachans''. By the 1880s, it was firmly on international

tourism maps. The ''mean clachan'' had only 850 inhabitants, but --

thanks to Queen Victoria's annual presence -- up to 10,000 visitors came

during the high season. Braemar had arrived, but remained isolated -- a

form of inland island. Because of royal opposition, the railway from

Aberdeen came to a premature halt at Ballater, 17 miles to the east.

Rough and ready horse-drawn transport took visitors on from the

railhead, over appalling roads. Journeys from Perthshire were even worse

ordeals, with the notorious Devil's Elbow a major obstacle. Little

wonder that Deeside Gaelic survived well into the twentieth century,

along with Braemar's ancient Catholic traditions -- and wholesale

lawbreaking in the form of illegal distilling. Royalty's camp followers

wanted to sample uisge -- and it was an impossible task to import large

quantities of the legal variety.

So, Princie Stuart didn't lack for customers. Stevenson didn't lack

for stirring tales of smuggling. And the Invercauld Arms became the

Admiral Benbow, while the slopes of Morrone became isolated parts of the

coast of the Bristol Channel. Stuart would have needed considerable

supplies of barley. John Silver was a miller. QED.

John Duff's patient detective work has thrown up other similarities

between the vivid world of Treasure Island and the realities of

Victorian Braemar. ''In the book, Squire Trelawney takes his trusty

gamekeeper with him on the Hispaniola. The Duke of Fife, a major

landowner in Upper Deeside in the nineteenth century, took his

gamekeeper with him on what's described as 'long travels', big

game-hunting in Africa. The keeper's name was Ronald MacDonald. Back in

the village, he used to wear a jacket which he claimed had a hole in it

from an African spear. He'd have been on the go at the time Stevenson

was writing Treasure Island.''

Just before Stevenson took up temporary residence in Braemar, local

author John Grant brought out his Legends of the Braes of Mar, a rich

lode of references to brigands, vagabonds, rebels, castles, hidden loot,

and tall tales. Says John Duff: ''The book appeared in 1876 and was

well-known in Braemar by 1881. I think it's possible Stevenson met the

author.'' Over a dram of Princie's best, no doubt.

John Duff argues that Morrone makes a first-class analogue for

Spy-Glass Hill along with the smaller eminence of Tom nan Rabhadh,

looking south into Glen Shee, from long-ruined Kindrochit Castle (itself

a few hundred yards from Stevenson's cottage). It translates as

''Hillock of the Watchers''. Lion's Face Crag is another contender. It

used to be called Creag Mhortair -- Murderer's Crag.

In Treasure Island, there are characters named Morgan, Anderson, and

Hunter. Says John Duff: ''Morgan is perhaps the oldest name in the

village. It's supposed to derive from a Pictish name. There are still

Morgans living here.'' There are also Andersons and Hunters. If

Stevenson took any interest in the Braemar Gathering he would have been

aware also of Balmoral resident ''Dancy Rose'', who taught Highland

dancing in Braemar. John Duff's circumstantial evidence includes

reference to Stevenson's Supervisor Dance, the chief revenue officer who

scatters Silver's unholy crew at Kitt's Hole. A number of Braemar

worthies are helping with further inquiries. Retired postmaster and

registrar John Stammers recalls an old lady who kept a parrot, when he

was a boy in the 1920s. Parrots are very long-lived birds. The creature

could easily have been around in 1881. This particular bird was vocal,

too. When the minister called, it's reputed to have shrieked ''the

bugger's in''.

John Duff is not yet ready to announce his final suspects. The jury's

still out. But the coincidences are mounting and the game's afoot.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a famous joker -- he could refer, tongue in

cheek, to rain-soaked Braemar as ''the finest habitable spot in

Britain''.

As for buried pieces of eight, those stories are still being

investigated. John Duff's successors are concerned by the activities of

metal-detector enthusiasts who seem to have done their own homework and

are causing serious problems at a number of sites in the Eastern

Cairngorms. If they're caught, they'll join certain other privateers --

under lock and key in the stockade.