Writer Arthur Granville Bradley (1850-1943) describes the day after a storm and what that means for the landscape around the Whiteadder, as well as for his host – a keen fisherman: ‘… the curtain of morning rises on another scene; a scene radiant with sunshine, canopied with blue skies, and balmy with soft scent-laden zephyrs. Such, indeed, are days worth living for upon the moors, and this was one of them. The waning heather had gathered a new lease of life, and glowed with reinvigorated glory. The sheep pastures glistened with a fresh touch of verdure. The brown burns shone brimming and lusty in the valleys, and from every side came that delicious sound of gurgling waters. Our host was away after breakfast, with ‘a piece’ in his pocket and a bag of worms dependent from his waistcoat button, and didn’t come home till long after dark. His family were just beginning to get anxious about him when he turned up, still full of enthusiasm, and a basket of trout into the bargain.
Arthur Granville Bradley’s book ‘The Gateway of Scotland or East Lothian, Lammermoor and the Merse’, published in 1912, is considered a culturally important source. Bradley was a British historian who from 1897 to 1926 wrote a number of books about the places, people and history of Britain and North America.