ABSTRACT
The Northeast has been described as ‘the cold shoulder’ of Britain. 1 Neither its climate nor its soil is naturally hospitable, but generations of stubborn farming folk have forced it into productivity by dint of the northeastern cure for most of life’s ills—hard work. Though the Laigh of Moray to the west and the Howe of the Mearns to the south may, for folklore purposes, be taken as secondary areas of influence, the region itself consists of the counties of Aberdeen and Banff and the northern part of Kincardineshire. Topographically, these shires vary greatly as they stretch westwards from flat, treeless Buchan through the uplands of Strathbogie and the Garioch to mountainous Mar and the highest land-mass in Britain, the Cairngorms. Bounded by these mountains to the west, the sea to the north and east, and the Grampians or the Mounth to the south, the Northeast is a distinct geographical entity.
