With the republication of Dorothy K. Haynes’ memoir Haste Ye Back, we asked the editor of the new edition to tell us why we should be reading Haynes now, and why she fell out of the canon.

Haste Ye Back
By Dorothy K. Haynes (edited by Craig Lamont)
Published by ASL

If you have heard of Dorothy K. Haynes, it is most likely that you have read one of her short stories, probably a supernatural tale. Or maybe you heard one of these stories broadcast on the radio. But it is more likely that you have not heard of her at all. Haynes represents a bit of a blind spot in Scottish literary history. She was born in 1918, and, following the death of her mother, she attended Aberlour Orphanage with her twin brother Leonard.

During her time at Aberlour she discovered her talents in writing and found the encouragement to pursue it further. She recounts all of this, and more, in her 1973 memoir Haste Ye Back. She published two novels: Winter’s Traces (1947) and Robin Ritchie (1949), but it is her debut collection of short stories – Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch (1949) – which launched her career. During the 50s, 60s, and 70s, she wrote new stories, mostly for broadcast, and a new collection titled Peacocks and Pagodas was printed in 1981. She died in 1987. In the later years of her life, and after her death, she has been widely anthologised in horror and supernatural annuals, periodicals, and in plenty of Scottish Short Story volumes. It is this fine reputation as a short story writer that has kept her legacy alive, though the flame of memory has been flickering and threatening to go out for some time. Indeed it might have been extinguished altogether if not for the 1996 edition of Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch edited by Angela Cran and James Robertson, which introduced three previously uncollected stories to Haynes readers.

In the ensuing period there have been some radio transmissions of stories, but only very sporadically. Timothy C. Baker (University of Aberdeen) wrote on Haynes in 2022 for the journal Gothic Studies, reaffirming her place in the supernatural canon. In 2023 Gerard Carruthers (University of Glasgow) included Haynes’s title story (‘Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch’) in his new Scottish Stories collection. And this year was published the new edition of Haste Ye Back, edited by myself, with the permission of Dorothy’s son, Leonard Gray. Working with Leonard on his mother’s archive has been a real pleasure, and the origin story of the new edition can be found in a news piece by Aberlour Children’s Charity here.

As I state in the Introduction to this new edition, Haste Ye Back is often misleadingly described as an autobiography, but in reality the book only encompasses a few crucial years in her youth, albeit in great detail. Those years spent at the orphanage are bookended with a Prologue and Epilogue on her journey back to the site of Aberlour during its deconstruction with her husband – who she met there – and makes for very effective life-writing. It is an account of the imagination in bloom, of sharpening awareness with a sense of loss draped over it.

In this new edition I have sought to retain the 1973 text intact, adding some explanatory footnotes along the way. I have also introduced some new texts, in the hope of giving a more rounded account of Haynes and Aberlour. There are four archival items: one letter to the former superintendent of the orphanage, two early reminiscences sent to the orphanage magazine, and one undated manuscript reflecting on the importance of the place to her personal growth.

I also decided to include the text of her first ‘successful’ short story ‘The Head’.  The tale is about a man shackled to a church wall as punishment for stealing, who, in his discomfort and delirium, is affected by the head on a spike set beside him. It is a masterful tale, dealing with perspective literally in terms of the shifting view of the scene and in a moral sense. It was first printed in Writing Today (1945), was republished the following year and won the Tom Gallon Award for 1947. In this story we find one of the many macabre themes which would go on to characterise Haynes for decades to come.

Now that Haste Ye Back has been reprinted, Haynes might be discovered anew. The next step is to reconsider her novels, never reprinted, and to do something meaningful with the short stories, including the dozens of unpublished typescripts which are lying in wait. What matters now is the momentum in studying Haynes and her unique voice in Scottish literature, and making the best use of it going forward.

Haste Ye Back by Dorothy K. Haynes and edited by Craig Lamont is published by ASL, priced £14.95.