The story said that the mighty tusk had been taken away and examined, but that the results of the analysis had shown that far from being a mammoth's tusk, what Norrie had found buried in his peat bank was nothing more than 'a modern horn, probably from India'. The story was embellished by suggesting that it had been merely brought back to Islay as a souvenir by a member of the British Raj, who had at some point become bored with it and tossed it into a bog.
Norrie, needless to say, never saw his mammoth tusk again. And so the story might have remained, being gently massaged down the years, until someone was kind enough to send Bruichladdich Distillery a very remarkable photograph, which we attach here. Now if I had been in Norrie's boots, and I had found a tusk like that buried in a Scottish peat bank, I would have gone for a mammoth ID, no matter what some mere archaeologist might say. Indeed I reckon we should start a campaign to find out who it was that took Norrie's mammoth tusk, and have it returned to its rightful home...
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