Red Rowans and Wild Honey

The sequel to the perennially popular Yellow on the Broom, Red Rowans and Wild Honey follows Betsy's story to the end of the Second World War. She recounts in vivid detail the heady years of her adolescence, her courtship and her mother's struggle to bring up four children in the only way a Travelling woman knew: hawking wares, fruit picking, tatty howking - in fact any kind of work that would provide the next meal. This edition also contains another substantial piece of autobiography, which remained incomplete at the time of her death and which appears in print here for the first time.

Betsy Whyte was born into a traveller family in 1919 and brought up in the age-old tradition of the 'mist people'--constantly moving around the country and settling down in one place only during the winter. It was while the family were 'housed up' at this time of year that she received her education, attending a number of village schools before winning a scholarship to Brechin High school, where she was the only traveller child. She gave up the traveller life when she married in 1939 and started writing about her childhood in the 1970s.