This evening I am watching the dragons play tig in the Cairston roads just as the ancestors have since the ancient ones built their low stone walled houses with roofs of turf and heather. Of course they knew that Our dragon was a small creature who couldn't be seen as it swam between the islands but they followed its large snowy wake.

Now as a twenty-first century woman there is a part of my brain knows that the dashing white wakes are the result of our strange wind and tide. There is however another part remembers Dauvit's great joy as he watched his dragon dashing along the base of the steep dark cliffs of Hoy.

A brave Viking caught sight of our dragon and carved his picture on the wall of the ancient tomb of Maes Howe while he sheltered there with his crew during a fearsome storm. There he is immortalised till this day his spiked tail curled protectively round his body.

He dashes round the shore of Graemsay as the farmers would say "Clean gyte wie the freedom" like a young cow let out of the barn to the sweet fresh grass of spring before scampering across to Hoy playing hide and seek along its craggy base.

Sometimes in life we may know the sensible scientific answers to the beliefs of our ancestors yet if we do not sometimes lay aside what we know and look with the innocent wonder of a child or our ancestors then we will lose the joy of this wonderful world