The deil's awa wi th' exciseman
Gaugers were the hated excisemen who hounded whisky smugglers in the 18th and early 19th century. And Malcolm Gillespie was one of the most wretched and tragic of all. Ian R Mitchell tells his story
The exciseman, or gauger as he was known in the Scots vernacular, was probably the most hated figure in Scotland 200 years ago. This dislike was given a humorous slant in our national bard Robert Burnsâ poem, The Exciseman. Here the despised figure is carried off to Hell by the Devil (Auld Mahoun), The deil cam fiddlin through the toun, And danced awa wi thâExciseman And ilka wife cries âAuld Mahoun, I wish ye luck of the prize, manâ Ironically Burns himself served a spell as an exciseman, though in the relatively quiet Dumfries area of South-west Scotland . His job would have been very different had he found himself in his forebearsâ homeland of Northeast Scotland, where smuggling was rife and the conflict between distillers and gaugers reached a low level civil war, with fatalities on each side.
In the wild areas which lay between the Lowlands of the North-east and the Highlands proper, that is, the upland areas of the Cabrach, Glenlivet and Deeside, the illicit whisky industry was a massive enterprise.
Here people did not just distil âthe craiturâ for the resulting conviviality, on the contrary most of their production was exported to the Lowland towns and cities. The money from the sale of the contraband did what farming in these poor areas could never do; it raised the money to pay the tenantsâ rent and left a good surplus for a decent living.
Everyone, involved in the distilling or not, conspired to defeat the forces of the law. Local landlords, actin.....
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By Ian Mitchell
Section : Whisky history
Page number : 40
