Latest news with #SkirlyCrag
The Herald Scotland
13-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Meet the exiled minister who has a new flock to care for
There was a time when she had another kind of flock to tend to and wore a very different outfit – the robes of a Church of Scotland minister. Then, after a rape by a married church elder that led to an ecclesiastical trial, she donned the heavy cloak of a scarlet woman, foisted on her by disapproving people who didn't really know her. Helen Percy left her church role behind for a new life as a shepherd (Image: Helen Percy/Luath Press) Before she could shed it, she'd face finger-pointing and horrible name-calling – she was a 'witch, a whore, a harlot'. It would take almost a decade of legal action before her sex discrimination case against the Kirk would see her vindicated and compensated. Cast out and shunned by some, comfort would be found not in scripture but in the slow, grounding work of shepherding. Today, a resurrected Helen sits comfortably in a house made of straw, the walls – 18 inches thick – have been plastered by her own hand using lime mortar mixed with hair from her beloved mare, quite an achievement for someone who started off not knowing how to operate a drill. There is a log burner to keep her cosy and three devoted dogs at her feet for company ready to join her later at a nearby farm where she will help shear 540 sheep. Her church is now nature's great cathedral and her flock is her own dozen or so Devon and Cornwall longwool sheep. Read more by Sandra Dick: While life as a shepherdess is far from the sex scandal that rocked the Kirk and saw her suspended from her duties as an associate minister to six parishes in the village of Kilry, Perthshire, she still lives and works slap within her former parish's boundaries. 'Many people have asked why I didn't move away,' she says. 'But anywhere I went within Scotland, people would have read the newspapers and made a decision about me based on that. 'If I stayed in the parish, everyone who knows me knows I'm not I'm not the floozie plastered on the front pages.' She laid that to rest in her memoir, Scandalous, Immoral and Improper: The Trial of Helen Percy. The title borrowed from the charges laid at her door by some in the Kirk, it told how she was raped by a married church elder, became pregnant as a result and had an abortion. He confessed that the sex had not been consensual – no police charges were brought – yet Helen still found herself hauled in front of Church members and other ministers. As the scandal seeped from the rural Angus parish into national headlines, she felt no option but to quit. For nine years she fought her corner until, in 2006, her sex discrimination claims led to compensation from the Kirk. Now, she has written a different kind of book that reflects a new life, first as a hired farmhand learning as she went, and then as a shepherdess. Helen Percy's new book, Skirly Crag, tells of her new life as a shepherd (Image: Helen Percy/Luath Press) Entitled Skirly Crag in reference to a Highland hill near her home, it is peppered with first-hand insight into sometimes hard-to-stomach animal husbandry – a grim reminder of the price animals pay to provide our food, and the dedication of farmers and shepherds who care for them. As well as documenting the brutal reality of farming life, it highlights the comfort a beloved animal companion can bring in times of despair, the grief of losing them, and how while some are indeed dumb animals, their instincts to nurture offspring and to survive are as strong as any human. For Helen, sleeves rolled up and often knee deep in mire, there is the relief at pulling stricken animals back from the brink – sometimes using whatever comes to hand from belts to her bra – and acts of mercy to end suffering. As she travels from one farming job to another, she encounters rich characters both human and animal, including one epileptic hare, a smarter-than-average Bluefaced Leicester ewe that amazed her with its mothering skills and a rescued guillemot that seems determined to set up home with her. In some cases – such as the tight-fisted island farming family who grudge their flock feed and abandon their care in favour of respecting the Sabbath – the animals can be more likeable than their keepers. In that particular case Helen would catch her ferry home after lambing season was over carrying a little something extra in her backpack in the form of a bleating motherless lamb, snatched from what she feared would surely have been a miserable death. It's a moment of compassion, something Helen recalls not everyone displayed as she navigated life away from the pulpit. 'When you go through any trauma you end up knowing who your friends are,' she reflects. 'There can be surprises in both directions. 'For me, there were a couple of people that I felt were my friends who didn't want anything to do with me, and others who I expected would cut me dead, were so kind. 'The people that were not, were mostly other ministers,' she adds. 'A handful of people in the parish snubbed me or drove past without acknowledging me.' Helen Percy left the church for a new life as a shepherd (Image: Helen Percy/Luath Press) Most though, stood by her with kindness that could reduce her to tears. One, whose 'nothing ever goes right and I'm not long for this world' outlook earns him the moniker, Eyeore, would change her life. With the parish scandal still fresh and despite being in her 30s and with no agriculture in her DNA, his need for a farm labourer clashed with her need for new work. Carrying water buckets and hauling sacks of oats, pitching hay and spreading straw in the animal pens was not work that her University of St Andrews theology degree or ordination as a Church of Scotland minister in Paisley's Greenlaw Church in the early 1990s had prepared her for. Yet under the guiding hand of Eyeore, she learned 'on the hoof' of the ups, downs, blood and guts of lambing season, emerging as animal midwife, nurse and undertaker to countless animals. As her reputation as a trusted shepherd grew, she'd travel to farms across the country to help farmers through the turbulence of another lambing season. Handling sheep is dealing with a very different kind of flock. Rummaging around a labouring ewe's rear end to drag free a stricken lamb, tending to a miserable mother sheep mourning their dead or suffering mastitis or some other miserable condition would be all in a day's work. And often the animals would be less troublesome than their owners… Among them, so-called Mr Effin Fox-Harding of Forfochten, who dines on a sludge-coloured pot of brussels sprout soup that lasts a week, and an entire cow that's been butchered and every single bite turned into burgers. He calls his skittish flock of sheep 'old whores' and his dog has felt the toe of his boot on many occasions. Shepherdess Helen Percy still lives and works in the parish where she was once a minister (Image: Helen Percy/Luath Press) But his nasty temper backfires: nervous sheep are harder to control, and his panicked herd of cows extract their own revenge… 'Cows that were ambling along the lane calmly, pausing to sample mouthfuls of lush grass from the verges, suddenly start leaping over fences and breaking gates when Effin falls in behind them,' she notes. Eventually his temper triggers them into an impromptu rodeo and stampede leaving him flattened on the ground, chewing grass. Helen favours gentler methods, and as her confidence as a shepherd grows, her homeopathic remedies have remarkable impacts on the sheep she tends to. Regardless and to her frustration, some farmers remain rooted in methods of the past and outdated superstitions. 'The six most dangerous words in farming are 'It's aye been done that way',' she says. 'Some methods can appear cruel but most farmers know their animals are worth a lot of money and they do care about them. 'They can be cussed and bad tempered but they are very caring and very knowledgeable. 'For most, it's a way of life, a hard job with long hours.' Read more by Sandra Dick: The book pays also pays tribute to the sheepdogs that can make or break the task of caring for sheep. Loyal and hardworking, some of hers were adopted from less kind owners and become treasured companions at her side through difficult times. There would be some difficult dogs too, among them one bought in good faith from an unscrupulous dealer that turned out to be too timid to leave its kennel, and then so inept it would chase a blackface sheep off a ravine and run into a fence. It led to another messy legal dispute as she battled for her money back. One dog in particular would touch her soul like no other. The overwhelming grief that came with its loss is the subject of her next book, Whistlebare, set to be published next year by Luath Press. Now 60, her life as a minister is now firmly in the past. Other than conducting the occasional funeral for a friend, she doesn't go to church, nor does she regard herself as particularly religious. 'I think the church is a human and very flawed institution,' she says. 'Besides, I have never really thought that God had all that much to do with the church. 'I find God in all sorts of people and places, in nature but not really in church.' She covers her story in the book Skirly Crag. (Image: Helen Percy/Luath Press) But still there are parallels between her two lives: caring for the dying and dealing with death are components of both. 'You have to deal with death frequently in both,' she points out. 'It is a downside of the job.' Death is not the problem, she adds. After, all most of the animals she encounters will end up as Sunday roast. Witnessing suffering is harder. 'Pulling out a lamb in bits I don't mind so much because it's already dead. 'You become immune to the dirt and the smell. But not to seeing something in pain.' The book, which began as a series of 'lambing' diaries, scribbled down each day despite her fatigue, explodes any lingering myths that shepherding is a gentle occupation. 'One reason I wanted to write the book was to get people more connected with where their food comes from. 'People tend to have a romantic idea of what it's like to be a shepherd,' she adds. 'I wanted people to understand why I'm usually covered in glaur.' Skirly Crag by Helen Percy is published by Luath Press.
Daily Mail
27-06-2025
- Daily Mail
Raped by a Kirk Elder and forced from her job by malicious rumour, how a former Church of Scotland minister found salvation in the unlikeliest of places
Struggling up the ferry gangplank with her shepherd's crook, her dogs, a huge bag of filthy clothes and a rucksack on her back, Helen Percy was understandably on edge. When you are staging an abduction, it is better to be less conspicuous than this. As she handed over her ticket just inside the vessel, a plaintive cry seemed to come from her luggage. She pretended it had nothing to do with her. Shortly afterwards, a fellow passenger asked if there might be a drink inside her rucksack that was leaking. 'No,' she replied. 'It's a small sheep and it's probably just peed. 'But thanks for telling me.' The creature was in fact a day old – abandoned by her mother – and the island farm owners who entrusted Miss Percy with their flock did not know she had her. Yes, she accepts, it was an abduction, but it was also a rescue mission. The grim reality of life on the farm where she had just completed a shepherding stint was the lamb would almost certainly have died. Instead, it took the ferry to the mainland, sat on Miss Percy's knee on the bus to her home in Perthshire and curled up in the crook of her arm in her bed that night. Decades ago, Essex-born Miss Percy was known as a most unorthodox minister. Now the St Andrews University graduate tends to a new flock with similar single-mindedness. 'Why do I do this job?' the 60-year-old asks herself in her new book, Skirly Crag. 'Why am I up at sparrow's fart each day, with no days off, a pitiful rate of pay and bosses who are variously cantankerous, cussed or crazy?' Part of the reason is ministering to a human flock did not work out – infamously so. During her late twenties, as an attractive young minister in rural Angus, she was pilloried following allegations of an affair between her and a married Kirk elder. A senior church colleague branded her a witch. Congregation members gossiped that she had slept with every man in the parish. Word went round that she took sermons in her nightie. In some regurgitations of the tale, the nightie was see-through. Finally, she quit the ministry in despair. The truth was, she was a childhood victim of sexual abuse by her father and, because of that trauma, was intent on a life of celibacy. One further incident of sexual abuse occurred during adulthood – this time with the married elder who befriended and later raped her. Yet their relationship was construed as an affair, and as the Church of Scotland sought to shield the perpetrator and his family, Miss Percy was hung out to dry in a media feeding frenzy. Even when he agreed to write to the presbytery confirming there had been just one sexual encounter and that it was not consensual, the church did not make this public. The elder was later interviewed by the police but not charged. Almost a decade of legal action followed before a House of Lords ruling finally vindicated her and awarded her compensation. That unhappy tale is told in her first book, Scandalous, Immoral and Improper, published in 2011. Her second published work is quite the contrast. 'Yes, this book comes from a happier place,' Miss Percy says. 'But I do still miss what I believed being a minister was really about – being with people in the depths of their pain, despair and grief, what I call the 'muck of humanness'.' There is no shortage of muck in her current life. 'Forget beribboned Bo-Peep dresses,' she writes. 'Think instead of unbecoming waterproofs, the same shirt worn for a week, jeans smeared with globs of birthing fluid, blood and mustard-coloured skitter.' And yet, it becomes clear, her years as a shepherdess are not so very different from those spent as a minister. She still devotes herself to her charges. The little lamb she stole away on the CalMac ferry is not the only one to have lain beside her in bed. Unable to leave another severely ill one in a barn she tucked it in next to her and woke at dawn to find she was cradling a corpse. In desperation, she has used her own bootlaces, her belt – even her bra – to tie a pregnant ewe's feet together to prevent her disappearing down a steep hill face where an all-terrain vehicle would not be able to rescue her. Her memoir is perhaps as much about the dogs integral to the shepherd's work as the flock itself. Many feature in Skirly Crag, some scarred by abuse from previous owners and in need, above all, of understanding. Miss Percy can clearly identify. She says: 'Many shepherds know that they could not do their job without their dogs and do care for them and value them. On the other hand, there are others who treat their dogs as tools and not as feeling, living creatures.' An early dog, Jet, was sold to her by a conman, Nathan Smith, for £2,000. He advertised the sale with a video of the dog expertly rounding up sheep on a hillside. However, when she arrived in the North of England to make the deal, he contrived to palm her off with a different one, which turned out to be useless. Later, as she tried to return him and get her money back, she learned Smith had been in an 'accident' and would be hospitalised 'for months'. All part of the con, she later discovered. Ultimately a judge at a court in Burnley, Lancashire, ruled it a scam – far from Smith's first – and ordered him to reimburse her. He has yet to do so. 'Exposing the conman, the charlatan, for what he was doing did bring me some satisfaction,' says Miss Percy. The experience left her unable to afford another expensive sheepdog but she learned of a £500 one in Sutherland which was being rehomed. This time the owner, named Grant, refused even to take a deposit from her until she had taken the dog home and put him on trial. He turned out to be perfect, so she rang the seller to say she was sending the money but he declined, telling her 'bring me a bottle of whisky next time you're up in Rogart.' She writes: 'I find that I am welling up and I put down the telephone. I write Grant a letter telling him that the reason I cried was not just because £500 would have broken the bank but because his generosity restored my faith in human nature. 'Grant says my letter brought tears to his eyes too.' Tears flow regularly throughout Skirly Crag for two main reasons: in lambing season much can go wrong and often does – and this shepherdess is at least as emotionally invested in her flock as the farmers she contracts for are financially invested. And yet, as she accepts, 'most of my charges will end up on a plate as Sunday roast'. How does she square her devotion to them with their ultimate destiny? 'My job is to make animals' lives as good and as stress free as possible while they are on the farm. Yes, it does worry me what happens after they leave the farm, particularly the stress of being transported and delivered to the end place.' A farm is a factory, she admits in the book, but adds: 'I am thankful that I am paid to look after the sheep while they are alive and my wage does not depend directly on the meat trade. The days when I have to weigh fattened lambs and load them onto a lorry are the closest I come to shaking hands with the butcher.' Not everyone sees the job the same way. She compares notes with 'Eeyore', a grouchy shepherding mentor, on what they like best about working with sheep. 'Me, I love the welfare aspect,' she says. 'I enjoy helping the ones that are ill or injured and making them better. And you?' 'Selling the b*ggers,' he replies. Should there, then, be more female shepherds? She does, after all, observe that men in livestock farming are 'more liable to use brute force than psychology' in dealing with animals – and she is not afraid of haranguing some when she witnesses cruelty. 'That's a hard one as I do know very caring, competent male shepherds who have far more experience than I do, and I've learned from them. 'But yes, working for women farmers is often a quite different experience as women do tend to have more empathy, particularly with animals giving birth.' As for hygiene, what is it with these male farmers who offer you breakfast with arms covered in God knows what from don't even ask where? Farmhouse meals, she says, lost their appeal on one posting when she found the farmer slicing a loaf with globs of birthing fluid on his hands. 'Don't worry, I haven't birthed a sheep this morning,' he told her. 'It dried on since last night.' It's a curious afterlife, then, for a minister forced from her job by a tide of malicious rumour and gossip. Some might consider it purgatory. 'I am slaving in the lambing field and in the sheds hours after most folk are indoors watching television, or snoring in their beds.' Indeed, she admits, her cottage does not even have a TV. A working day can start at 4am and end at 11.30pm, with little more than heated beans eaten straight out of the pot for sustenance. Yet she clearly loves it. She lives alone on top of a hill, can see no other inhabited house from her front door, and likes it that way. Speaking to me in 2011, she said celibacy was a necessity for her and she was 'quite happy about it'. She added: 'I love living on my own. I have lots of friends, I like them coming to visit and I like when they go away again.' Little, it seems, has changed in a decade and a half. Has she found her true calling in shepherding then – or does she dwell on the events that led to the career change? 'It's not that ministering was not also a 'true calling', just that the church was a very hard place to be for a woman whom some of my friends described as being 'ahead of my time' or unorthodox.' There is some justification for the description. She really did give a church talk to children one Sunday with a calf-length Snoopy nightie visible underneath her cassock. It was to illustrate that: 'God looks on the things of the heart, not the outer garment.' One minister used to criticise her for sitting beside parishioners on their settees when she visited them in times of grief or trauma. Men and women of the cloth were supposed to establish personal space by choosing a chair. That is not her style at all – either in ministering or shepherding. Is she still religious? Her answer is an unexpected one for a former minister: 'I do still take funerals if I'm asked to, and occasionally weddings or baptisms. 'But I'm not sure I would ever have described myself as 'religious'. 'I don't go to church, if that's what you mean by being 'religious', but I never did think that God had anything to do with church.' She adds: 'The church is a human institution and often a very flawed one. 'I always clung to the belief, and still do still believe, that goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, and life is stronger than death. 'It's really important to hang onto that belief, especially in this truly terrifying world where there is so much hatred, inequality and warmongering.' Miss Percy's abducted lamb began life at her home assuming she was a dog. She skipped along beside the collies every time their owner took them for a walk and joined in with them at playtime. Gradually she introduced it to an elderly member of her own species and, over days, she and 'granny' grazed together in a field. The day came when she called the lamb for her walk with the dogs but found the animal less keen than usual: 'A few yards from me she halts, then turns away with her nose in the air. 'I can almost hear the melodramatic sniff of disdain. From now on, she wishes to be a sheep, not a poodle.' It could almost be a metaphor for Miss Percy's own life. For a time she was a minister, drawn to the pastoral values of the church but repulsed by what she saw as its institutional bias. It turned out she was a shepherd all along. ■ Skirly Crag: the Shepherd, Her Dogs, the Hill and the Hare, is published by Luath Press, priced £14.99 hardback.
