(From the projected third part of her autobiography)
1
‘Bryce,’ I said one day, ‘I would like to go away to the country. Nearly all the other travellers are away and it’s a lovely summer. That money you got from the army would buy a wee van: they are really cheap just now. We could gather rags or something and, with you being a discharged soldier, you would get extra petrol.’
Bryce was not keen on driving a van. ‘I could get a horse,’ he said—and his eyes lit up at the thought. He loved horses. Of course I didn’t share his enthusiasm, but I was so pleased to see him take an interest in something that I hid the fact.
We were still living in the little house in Usan—with his mother, who had moved in with us. She was very kind to me, but since his discharge Bryce had been quite spiritless, wishing only to creep into his shell and stay there. ‘Lord,’ I often thought, ‘how easily bent has been his tender spirit!’ The agony of his injured back, the agony of the awful sights of blitz victims and their horrible suffering, had really floored him. As the months went past I wondered what I was going to do with my sadly changed, strange, gentle husband. So—after I had vainly tried again to get him interested in a van—I agreed that he would go to Perth sale and buy a horse.
He returned with a beautiful animal—and an eager, happy face. A high-spring cart and shining harness completed his outfit. ‘Come and speak to him! Look at his mane and tail! I’m going to call him Barry.’ Barry is the cant term for ‘really good’.
If he hadn’t been so excited and distracted by all the people coming to admire his yoke, he would have noticed my reluctance to go too near Barry’s head. However, I was very pleased to see Bryce so happy. ‘The horse is doing more for him than I could,’ I thought. ‘So I’ll try to show pleasure if it kills me.’
2
Soon afterwards I thought that it really might kill me. I had persuaded Bryce to leave the children with his mother when we went for a run. About five miles out the Forfar road Barry, for no apparent reason, tossed his head in the air and bolted.
Luckily there were very few cars on the road and Bryce was a very good horseman. Even so he didn’t manage to stop Barry before the cart was damaged after being pulled through a hedge. I had decided to jump, and rolled into a ditch when I did, after hitting the road with my knees.
When I painfully pulled myself out Bryce was at the horse’s head talking softly to him and looking for any scratches which the hedge might have made. ‘I don’t think he has hurt himself,’ he shouted to me. My blood shot to boiling point in an instant. ‘You don’t think he has hurt himself!’ I mimicked. ‘It disnae matter that my twa knees are lying on the road, as long as he is no’ hurt. You can eat your bloody horse, or better still take it intae bed wi’ ye. I’ll certainly no’ be there anyway.’
I kept on ranting as Bryce immediately came through the hedge and jumped the ditch. ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed, when he looked at my knees. If they were not exactly lying on the road, all the skin of them was, and the blood was running down my legs. He sat down beside me and put his arm round me, making apologies and uttering every endearment that he knew. I started to cry with my head on his shoulder.
The sound of horses’ feet and cheery whistling made me look up to see a young ploughman coming home from work. He was sitting sideways on one of his pair of horses. ‘Woah, Daisy!’ he shouted. ‘Fit the hell hae you twa been up tae?’ Neither of us moved, but Barry did. Within minutes the ploughman jumped the ditch, freed the horse from the harness which held him to the cart.
‘Fit cam’ ower you the day lad? Get a fricht did ye?’ He spoke ever so gently to Barry as he did so. Then he led the horse along the inside of the hedge, till he reached the gate of the field, and came out on to the road with the pony.
Bryce got up to meet him. ‘I’ll gie ye a hand wi’ yer cairtie,’ he told Bryce. This type of cart only had two wheels and they were firmly wedged in the ditch. However with the expert help of the ploughman Bryce soon had it on the road again. I had pulled my skirt down over my knees and just sat there on the grass verge, feeling rather sore and a bit dazed. Soon Barry was yoked to the cart again.
‘Are you aa richt, lass?’ the man asked me as I tried to get up without too much pain. ‘No! she’s no’ aa richt,’ Bryce answered for me. ‘Her two knees are almost to the bone.’
‘Get her intae the cairtie, and tak her alang tae the wife. Come on lass!’
‘Dinnae bother,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You’re comin alang tae ma wife. She was a nurse and she’ll be richt pleased tae get a patient again. She loved her nursing, but aa she has tae nurse noo are three little anes.’
A little later as I sat in the cotter house drinking a nice cup of tea, I felt my heart swell up within me, and a great feeling of well-being. My knees had been expertly attended to, and after a couple of aspirin and a cup of tea, I once again marvelled at the goodness which is deep in the hearts of most people. We left that wee house feeling as if we had been allowed to visit Heaven for a space.
Bryce, to please me, had to lead Barry all the way home. He also had to lead him when we went out to camp in the country. The poor soul had no soles left on his shoes by the time that we reached a camp near Perth. Of course we had stopped at other camping-grounds and spent a few nights on each, enjoying the company of different travellers.
More than one of the men had said to me, ‘If you were my wife I’d be giving you a good hard kick. Or I’d let you walk.’ I just had no answer.
However Bryce sold the horse where he had bought it—in the Perth sales—after he had taken me and the bairns into Coupar Angus where my mother lived.
Oh laddie, I could have telt ye no’ tae buy a horse. That lassie just cannae be daeing wi’ horses at aa,’ mother told Bryce, ‘I just cannae understand what it is, but she’s always been like that.’
We spent a while with mother and the girls. Bryce was often doubled in two with pain in his back which sometimes affected his legs as well. Mother had come to be very fond of him, and chided me for making him walk whilst the bairns and I were in the cart
‘Ma, it was for fear o’ the bairns. Ye ken fine that I would have led the horse and let him sit on the cart, but I can dae nothing wi’ they animals. Nothing would please him but a horse.’
‘Hundreds of sheds and garages are full of cars and vans just going to rust. Would he no’ be better wi’ an auld van?’
Katie, Lexy and mother all toadied Bryce during our stay with them. Making him take things very easy and feeding him with every little tit-bit that they could spare. He quite enjoyed being made a fuss of, but would not eat anything past the rest of us.
However, he did not really enjoy our high-spirited, seemingly carefree attitude towards life. He just couldn’t understand why we laughed, joked, and capered so much. Nor why mother spent her last penny on a pair of shoes for him, not to mention the ration coupons. He tried in vain to make her take the money that she had paid for them, ‘Ach awa, laddie!’ she told him. ‘I never died a winter yet. God never made the mouth, but what he made the morsel.’
Bryce soon did pick up a van, and we, mostly Lexy and me, had a most hilarious time when he was learning to drive. We always went with him in case of mishap. One day he had to stop when a convoy of soldiers came along. Our cheerful waving and shouted replies to the lads really annoyed Bryce. ‘I’ll bet you kept some carry-on when I was away,’ he fumed.
‘God bless me! Bryce, they laddies are going and cannae be sure that they’ll ever come back. A wee joke and a wave is little bother tae give them.’
‘If I wisnae here I’ll bet you would give them a lot more than that,’ he retorted. It took Bryce lang and lang to come to realise that ‘it’s no’ the rattlin’ cart that coups first’.
Anyway he soon mastered the art of driving, in spite of Lexy’s and my rather irritating presence. Then we took to the road again. First, however, Bryce took us out to the little cemetery near Caputh where father was buried. Wild cherry trees waft their scented blossoms over it in the spring time. Mother could rarely get out to it as it was right in the heart of the country.
None of us cried, but we lingered, each of us savouring our own special memories in silence. Then we heard a sound from mother which at first we thought might be a cry of sorrow or a sob. However, it was laughter.
‘I’m thinkin’ o’ the time that I burst the two tyres o’ his bike. I can see him yet. God rest him, cycling alang the road there in his bare feet, wi’ two flat tyres. We were’nae lang together at the time. I cannae mind noo what we were arguing aboot, but he aye used tae jump on his bike and clear out awa’ fae aboot me when I got wild. Little did he ken that when he was sitting wi’ his twa feet intae a wee burn taunting me, that I had thrown his shoes into the hedge and burst his tyres.
‘You were’nae half clever,’ Katie rebuked her.
‘Ach, we laughed so much that we forgot aboot arguing,’ mother answered.
3
We took leave of them the following day, and travelled around the country a bit. Bryce didn’t want to stay on a farmer’s ground because he couldn’t work. His back troubled him too much.
One day when we were sitting making baskets at a camp, I’ll no’ say where, I noticed a figure coming towards us, down the old road. ‘O’-oh’ I said, ‘We’ll likely have to shift.’
The figure turned out to be a minister, quite old, but still a striking, strapping man. Wee Mary ran to me at his approach. ‘Don’t be frightened, child,’ he told her. ‘Is that a basket you are making?’ he then asked me.
‘Yes,’ I answered. Bryce had cut and peeled the willows, but as yet he couldn’t make baskets. ‘We are badly in need of a basket,’ he continued, ‘Would you sell it to me?’ ‘Surely, surely,’ I answered. Then he began talking to Bryce about numerous things whilst I finished the basket.
‘Are you an Orkney man?’ I put in.
‘Aye, that I am,’ he answered, ‘But I have been away from it for more than forty years now.’
‘Will that suit you?’ I asked, after pruning the basket. ‘That is just perfect.’ He was ryping his pockets for money as he spoke. ‘I’m afraid I’ve come away without any money. I’m getting a bit forgetful.’
Bryce’s eyes met mine. He fully expected me to tell the minister to take the basket whatever, but I didn’t. ‘You’re not exactly gasping for a basket,’ I told him, ‘I will make one for you tonight, and bring it along to the manse tomorrow. Will that do?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, ‘But there’s no need to bring it to the manse. I will come back here tomorrow. It is a nice walk and I love to walk.’
Ricky was lying quietly chewing a bone near to where wee Willie was sleeping on a rug. He growled ominously when the minister approached to admire the child. ‘It’s alright Ricky,’ I said, but he still eyed the man warily.
He, Ricky, was still very active and protective towards the children. It grieved me to think that he was—for a dog—getting old. ‘I’ll see you around four o’clock tomorrow then,’ the minister said as he walked away.
‘What’s your reason for no’ giving the basket to the minister?’ Bryce asked me, ‘I thought that you would have walked along to his house with him and got the money from him. Or that you would have just given it to him.’
‘Bryce,’ I answered, ‘You ken fine that I need the money for that basket. There’s not a haet to eat, is there? And that man has nae money.’
‘Wha telt ye that he has nae money? Did he say that? I never heard him say that. Were you speaking to anybody about him?’ Bryce’s questions rather irked me, but they also made me think. Where had the idea come from that the minister was broke? That I could not tell. This type of thing happens to me often, and is quite unexplainable, yet always right.
Bryce was still throwing questions. ‘Look Bryce, I just dinnae ken wha telt me, but I’m sure that he has nae money. Now stop annoying me and take me to a couple o’ farms.’ ‘You are a droll wee woman Betsy,’ Bryce went on, ‘Why do ye no’ want to tell me. You must have been speaking to somebody.’
‘Well if I was it must have been tae that big craw ower there,’ I retorted.
I exchanged the basket for half-a-dozen eggs, milk, some potatoes and a shilling, in the first farmhouse that I went to. For that shilling I got bread, some oatmeal, and a five of Woodbine. Bryce has never smoked, and I had gone over to cigarettes. Believe it or not I also had enough for two penny bars of Nestlé’s chocolate for the weans.
Bryce was rather surly and spoke very little during this time. Any words that he did say were spoken to the bairns. Only his eyes spoke to me and they weren’t saying anything kindly. However it was not in his nature to stay long in that kind of mood, and we spent a very pleasant evening during which we romped with the weans and afterwards I made a basket for the minister. It didn’t trouble us one bit that we were the only ones camped there.
The following day we fared quite well, until we came home to the camp, that is. We had just finished supper when the inevitable blue-uniformed figure appeared. Bryce got all nervous and upset. He feared authority. ‘Well, lad, I have been sent tae tell ye that you’ll have tae shift,’ the constable told Bryce. ‘I might as well hae a look at your papers tae. You’ll hae papers do ye? Insurance, driving licence, and a’ that?’
Bryce hurriedly produced a wallet and handed the papers to the policeman, saying, ‘This has been a camping ground as lang as I can remember.’
‘Maybe so, maybe so,’ the constable answered, ‘but no’ ony mair. Nothing tae dae wi’ me. I just hae a job tae dae.’
Then suddenly, ‘How are ye no’ in the army?’ Bryce then handed him his discharge papers. He was a pleasant looking man, and after looking at the papers said, ‘What did ye get your discharge for?’
‘Ach, I buggered up my back, min. Doon in Liverpool it was. They got a sair bombing doon there. They had tae get the sodjers tae help lift the rubble aff the dead and the poor creatures that were trapped under it.’ Bryce did not feel that he needed to try putting on a polite voice with this man.
‘Ah, but the tide is turned a bittie noo,’ the constable went on, and soon he was giving us all the latest war news. It must have been his favourite topic, because he kept at it for over two hours. Then, on seeing the old minister approach, I heard him say, ‘Oh here’s auld Alan Reid himsel’ come tae visit ye.’ Then, addressing the minister, ‘Well, well, Alan, you’re still aye-tae-the-fore are ye?’
‘Och aye, Jimmy boy, I’ve a lot more sinning to do before I take my departure!’ the Reverend answered.
‘I suppose you are giving these creatures the boot,’ he continued. ‘That I am Alan. A man mun dae what he mun dae. If this was my ground they could stay as lang as they wanted.’ The minister and the policeman seemed to be well acquainted.
I often get a notion to do something outrageous, and the outrageous notion that came to me then was to offer the two men a cup of tea. ‘Tinkies tea’ was a byword for stewed tea amongst non-travellers at that time. Also I have always been partial to beautiful crockery, and I had acquired some little bowls which were indeed beautiful, decorated with flora and gold-leaf in the way that former craftsmen were so expert at, and which seems to be beyond the powers of present-day manufacturers.
Bowls were more used than cups for tea at that time, among the working class and others. The policeman did seem a bit taken aback at my offer. His eyebrows shot up till they nearly touched his hairline, but he did take the tea.
The minister, however, had no qualms at all. ‘How kind of you my dear. Just what I need,’ he very graciously told me. This, from the minister, seemed to put the constable more at ease with my tea. ‘I enjoyed that, lass,’ he said after drinking it and handed me back the bowl. He took leave of us soon after that, making apologies for his errand.
I folded a tartan rug on the top of a strong orange box, and persuaded the minister to sit on it. I was chuckling inwardly at the tea episode. No w I gave my attention to Alan Reid, drawing him out to talk of his childhood in the Orkneys and the travels of his life.
4
He had the ready laughter and obvious fushion of one who just wouldn’t be old whatever the number of his years. The eyes reminded me of downy blaeberries. They were the same colour, and the downiness was the only thing that gave away his age.
‘I have your basket ready,’ I told him, running to fetch it out of the van. ‘My goodness! It is a beauty, but I er—um—well I had to pay a telephone bill and I’m a bit short of ready cash.’
Bryce who was sitting with a bairn on both his knees flashed me a look. ‘It’s a present,’ I told him, ‘And specially made for you.’ He protested of course, but I soon overruled the protests. ‘Mama will be so pleased,’ he said. The poor dear is quite crippled with arthritis, but she loves basketry and will be happy to know that I won’t drop the eggs again.’
‘Ach but why don’t you come along to the manse and see Mama. She will be delighted to see you and the children. Come on Bryce. Take them along the road. You’ll be welcome I am sure.’ I let the minister sit at the front with Bryce and got into the back of the van with the bairns.
The manse stood well back off the road down a narrow lane between two high beech hedges. A little brown gate in the hedge took you through to where a very old church stood. ‘Come and see my church,’ he said. We followed him through the little gate and over to the door of the kirk, which he soon opened. The inside looked rather neglected but the grey walls had stood up very well to the brunt of time and the setting sun lit up the most beautiful of stained glass windows. The eyes of the saints and the Saviour seemed to follow us as we walked down the aisle. A strange ecstasy of physical and mental feelings came over me. Yet I had no definite religious beliefs. Only a fathomless belief in the existence of God. This belief completely liberated me from any fear of sneering, cruel humans. Their hostile words and actions never really reached their target. I was then, and still am, quite immune.
I have great respect for people with a little sense, wisdom, and understanding, but for wealth, power, and high education without at least one of the first three gifts of God, I have little respect. However, there I go again. I must pull myself back to the church and its occupants. The floor was grimy. The seating too would have been the better of a good clean-up.
‘Have you any family?’ I asked the minister. ‘No, we were not blessed with children,’ he replied.
Mama was just as interesting as her husband. They both had an air of breeding which their great lack of worldly gear couldn’t hide. Everything they possessed was very badly worn. Even the old lady’s attire had seen much better days. The minister himself did have a very good grey outfit in which he looked splendid. In spite of the evident poverty they talked about things as if they were grand. ‘Take our guests into the parlour Alan,’ she said, and bring me my eiderdown. I feel a bit chilly.’
The parlour contained an old Chesterfield suite with the stuffing sticking out in many places. Her eiderdown had little of its original silk outer cover left, and they hung like ribbons from various pairts. An old dresser and several wooden chairs completed the parlour’s furnishings.
‘Can I help you?’ Bryce asked when the old lady began to manoeuvre her wheelchair through the door. ‘No, young man. I very much appreciate your offer but I must retain a little independence.’
After Alan had tucked the eiderdown round her legs she asked him to make some tea for her guests. ‘Use the china tea-set dear,’ she told him. The tea-set was indeed china but badly cracked and with chips on the rims of the cups.
The old lady had already made friends with the bairns. Wee Mary was sitting on the floor, gazing up at her, and seemed quite fascinated. Willie too was stretching out his arms towards her, but I restrained him.
After tea the minister asked Bryce out for a walk to see the rest of his domain.
I found that Mrs Reid loved to talk, and was glad that she really could converse with wit, understanding and charm. No boring small talk. I listened enraptured to the history of her early life. During a lull I told her that I would put away the dishes. When I entered the kitchen I soon discovered the reason for their poverty. It was littered with empty wine bottles. Hundreds of them, I am sure.
When I returned, the men were just coming in, and the minister looked eager and excited. ‘Mrs. Whyte,’ he said, I have a proposal to put to you. Your husband wants your approval before he agrees to it. I would like you to come and stay on my glebe.’
‘Please say that you will. We would be overjoyed to have you, wouldn’t we Mama.’
‘We most certainly would,’ she answered. ‘I would be delighted. Especially if you could find a little time to come and talk to me, my dear.’ She looked at me as she spoke.
Both the children had fallen asleep on our knees long before Bryce and I left. It was even then difficult to get away.
Next morning we went along to the manse, as I wanted to see the minister’s glebe. There was no churchyard and quite a large expanse of land stretched down beyond the church. Right at the bottom of it were lots of vegetable plots, and it was surrounded by a high hedge. An ideal camping sight, with a drive in past the church. There was even a spigot at the side of the hedge where we could obtain water.
So we shifted to it. We had a very large brown ridge tent made of superior canvas which could defy the heaviest rain from getting in. With a tilley lantern hanging from a hook on the middle of the rigging-stick and a little tilley heater, the tent was quite cosy. The minister stood watching with interest as we erected it.
‘Are the children christened?’ the minister asked.
‘The wee boy isn’t,’ I told him.
‘Then we must christen him this very night. We’ll have a little party too,’ he went on.
‘That’s very good of you,’ Bryce told him, ‘I’ll give Betsy some money to buy things for the party.’
‘Ach, there’s no need for that. There is food in the house, but as I expect you know, it is most unlucky to have a christening without wine.
We had never heard any such thing, but agreed to bring some wine at six o’clock that evening.
Bryce had been lucky the previous day having bought a van-load of beet-pulp bags from a farmer and selling them. The farmer had laughed heartily when Bryce, having no money, had offered to leave me and the children there as security. ‘She will just sit down the road a bit until I return with your money,’ he had told the farmer. ‘I won’t be long.’ ‘You just haud going and I’ll just keep them a’thegither,’ the farmer joked. Then, ‘Na, na lad, I’ll trust ye tae come back.’ He did go back and paid the farmer.
So we bought two bottles of wine. I knew what kind to get, having seen the bottles. Then we went to get William John christened. We had quite an enjoyable evening too, during the course of which we volunteered to clean the church for Sunday.
The sly manoeuvering of the minister to hide the wine that we didn’t drink gave us much amusement which we concealed. He had a habit of making little pecking noises in his throat which almost revealed his thoughts.
During our stay there we picked up lots of articles for the old couple when we were out gathering rags with the van. Bedding, carpets, clothing, even pieces of furniture. We also laid the carpets and helped to tidy up all around. I must say however that the old man really did very well in the house himself. He was really an old rogue however. He would come over to the tent and ask Bryce to let me come to the house in the evenings.
‘I have some ladies coming to tea, and they are most keen to have Betsy tell their fortunes. One is a Miss Pringle. She can’t seem to hold a man, poor soul. She is a farmer’s daughter too, but has been jilted several times. Then there’s Mrs McAlpine,’ and he proceeded to give me a history of the ladies who were coming to tea, their background and other details of their lives.
‘I am sure that they will be delighted when you tell their fortunes Betsy. You will come won’t you? They will be most disappointed if you don’t.’
I did oblige the Reverend churchman, but let him keep the money which the ladies gave me. ‘No, no Betsy. We’ll go fifty-fifty,’ he insisted. His slyly given information about his visitors I tried to ignore, but it was difficult.
On Sundays he persuaded me to come to church. ‘Here is half-a-crown, Betsy. Now when you see three or four people coming into the church, just walk in in front of them, and put it on the plate. Let them see you put it on the plate.’
My conscience began to pound me, but the Reverend Alan Reid seemed to be without one. He had lost favour in my eyes, if he ever had any. One Sunday he rebuked me for hanging out some clothes. It had rained most of the week days. ‘We just can’t have that, my dear, washing hanging out at the manse on a Sunday.’
‘You old hypocrite,’ I thought, ‘I’ve had enough of you,’ and I started to pack.
By the time Bryce returned from visiting some relations everything was ready for the road. Even the tent. ‘What’s wrong now?’ Bryce asked. ‘I must get away from that old man, Bryce. I’m getting so disturbed that I cannae sleep at night.’
‘I ken darlin’,’ he answered. ‘Wha would credit that a minister would cairry on like that?’
I was all for just going, without any goodbyes, and Bryce agreed. Only a small mark, where our fire had been, remained on the glebe, and the mark of our tent. ‘When he comes through that wee brown gate he’s going to wonder what came over us.’
‘Let him wonder,’ I answered Bryce, ‘Some minister he is.’
5
As we drove along the road I felt better than I had during that month—free to be myself and to set my conscience free too. ‘Where are we heading for?’ I asked.
‘Well, my sister Nancy and her man are staying up at the other side o’ Marley Loch. Would you like to go there? I thought that the girls would be company to you.’
‘Are they at the flax?’ I asked. Every other farmer seemed to be growing flax during the war years and it was a good thing for travelling people because it made life easier. They were allowed to stay on the farmer’s ground, and didn’t have to trek many miles looking for a spot to camp, and be hounded around by the police.
‘Aye and the auld man MacDonald is there too with his lassies.’
So we went there. Although I was very familiar with the place where we were camped, yet the beauty of it was always a source of much pleasure to me. Marley Loch, Cluny Loch and the Loch of the Lowes—all have their individual beauty, although they are so near to each other. The surrounding countryside too is breathtaking. Bryce of course couldn’t work, but he went out with his van gathering all manner of materials so desperately needed for the war effort. I worked in the flax field with the girls. Work was play to us.
We went our different ways when the field was finished. Bryce and I travelled up country. Coming into Dunkeld via Birnam, I was completely entranced with the beauty of it. Every variety of nature’s beauty imaginable. I gloried in it as we travelled from camp to camp. The other traveller families we met were also a delight to Bryce and me. Crieff, Comrie, and then Argyllshire. Then the road to the Isles. Sometimes we couldn’t get moving for the want of petrol, although Bryce got extra. Many times farmers came to our rescue. Sometimes other travellers who had coupons to spare.
On the way back we stayed a few nights in Pitlochry, and some of mother’s brothers were there. I learned that Uncle Duncan, one of her brothers, had gone and joined The Black Watch. He had been in the First World War and had a short arm, caused by a bullet wound. Yet he was accepted into the army, but never sent abroad. My relations overwhelmed us with kindness. All the young men were away in the army as well, so my uncles just stayed put, dreading to go to the post office in case a letter or telegram with bad news would be waiting for them.
Annie, I missed seeing. She had married the lad she had told me about and was travelling with his parents. This was expected amongst travelling people.
An old couple named Stewart had drunk themselves out with the other travellers in Pitlochry, left themselves really bare as they were wont to do. They came from Morayshire and their wee yoke had been sold for drink. So Bryce and I took them home in the van, to a wee camping-ground outside Fochabers where they had relations.
It was the first time that I had been there, and found that its beauty equalled my favourite part of Scotland, Perthshire. The rugged enormity of the mountains, the beauty of the autumn-clad trees, the flowers, ferns and fading heather. The scents of all of them were indeed a tonic. Their spiritual healing powers worked wonders for Bryce. He was once again the man that I had married. Not physically, but mentally.
6
I will always be grateful that we had those wonderful days. Most people would regard the life of travellers as anything but enviable. I, however, would love to be able to go back again. Back to the world as it was then. When one could drink the cool clean, pure water of mountain burns. Eat the fruits of any byway hedges, the young leaves of hawthorn, and later the fruit. Arnuts, sooracks (a green leaf which is most pleasantly sour), blaeberries, cranberries, brambles and wild gooseberries. The heads of corn, wheat, and barley too, could be rubbed between the hands, then blown on gently to get rid of the husks and eaten. Rabbits were delicious, as were brown trout. All were free from disease and poisons.
The world was as yet unpolluted. Our part of it was, anyway. We could pitch our tents in places of unrivalled beauty, right in the heart of the countryside, enjoying our bairns and our friends. The nests of harvest mice, wrens, robins and woodpeckers we could show to our weans. Those little homes would defy any human builder to equal. We could shift to clean ground after a thunderstorm.
Now I can hear a lot of you say ‘Yes, and muck it up with your dirt.’ I admit lots of travellers did exactly that, but within a year Mother Earth had sucked the dirt into her large re-processing belly and turned it into a nourishing diet for herself.
Yes, I am much more than grateful that I knew the world as it was then. Now it is impossible to get anything to eat which is pure and not full of all manner of chemical poisons. Nor can one drink from any burn the ice-cold sparkling water. But once again my feelings for nature have diverted me. They are so very strong.
7
It was late September 1943 when we returned to Usan. One day I met a traveller woman who lived in Ferryden. ‘We are leaving the village,’ she told me, ‘going back north again. You should write to my landlady who lives in Edinburgh if you want the house when I leave it. Your bairns will not have so far to go to school when they reach schooling age. Anyway it is much nearer to everything in Ferryden.’
I thanked her, and we got the house after I had written to the owner. It was only one room up a close and up a stair. There were five other one-roomed houses in the close. A row of small coal sheds opposite them, and a wash-house with a tap where all the tenants did their washing and carried their domestic water from. Two other tenants on the street at the bottom of the close also shared the wash-house.
There were no toilets. In fact there were few houses with toilets in the the village. There were public toilets, however, and the ‘Ladies’ was perched almost overhanging the sea, about a hundred yards from where we lived. The ‘Gents’ too was right above the sea but nearer to us.
Numerous sheds also stood perched precariously on stilts along the sea front. I say on stilts, because the front of them was just on land but the rest was supported by strong thick poles. When the tide came in the sea lashed right up under the sheds. An old man used one of those sheds to mend boots and shoes in, and a very good cobbler he was. Others were used by the fisherfolk to shell and bait in. A larger number were used to keep buckets which served as toilets in. The sea received the contents of these buckets, mostly after dark. This was no easy task for a very old person as the coast line is rocky and irregular. The blackout made it a bit dangerous. One dear old lady solved the problem by having a hole cut out on the floor of her shed and would empty her bucket through it when the tide came in.
A large coble which acted as a ferry was the only means of transport other than walking. For a penny one could get the ferry across to Montrose. Many of the Ferryden woman and girls worked in Montrose. By the time we moved into the village Alexander’s bus company was providing transport. The ferry still ran for a while but just could not survive so, rather reluctantly, the man who ran it gave up.
The village is hunkered so close to the sea that there is great dearth of spare ground. Many villagers used the beach as drying-greens. By the means of stout long poles cemented into the beach, and pulleys, they solved the problem of lack of drying space. Their clothes, fluttering above the water, sometimes frenziedly in the strong winds, seldom became unanchored, for the villagers mostly used traveller-made clothes pegs, which defied the efforts of the strongest winds.
Despite the lack of amenities, the village, and the houses, and the villagers themselves were spotless. You could walk from one end of the ‘toon’, as the natives called it, to the other without seeing as much as a burnt match on the street. The local council worker was very thorough at his job, taking a pride in keeping the village clean.
I remember one day when we were not long in the village, Bryce got a severe reprimanding from the ‘scaffie’, as the council worker was called. The mens’ toilets consisted of a row of wooden-topped ‘seats’ without individual doors. A traveller would never sit on the seat of a public toilet, and Bryce had his feet on top of the seat. ‘What the Hell are you doing wi’ your feet on the seat? Could you no’ just sit on it like a’ ither body?’ the scaffie shouted.
‘No min. I’m no’ gaen tae sit on ony dirtie lavvie seat,’ Bryce told him. ‘Dirty! did you say dirty? I’ve just finished scrubbing they seats, you impudent bugger.’ He was very angry now.
‘I ken, mister, but I’m no’ meaning that kind o’ dirt,’ Bryce tried to explain.
‘Dinnae haiver, and dinnae let me catch ye at that agin. Folk have tae sit on the seats.’ After that Bryce used to jump into the van and head for an isolated country spot when necessary.
Scottish fishing villages got the name of being clannish—of resenting any incomers, let alone travellers. If there was any such feeling it was not shown. There were five families of travelling people living there and the villagers could not have been kinder. There still were one or two fishing boats going out and often on their return we would be given ‘a fry’, as they called it—haddock, cod, and the delicious flat fish called ‘flukies’.
The flukies seemed to be a favourite dish of the villagers themselves. I was sometimes given partans crabs, and lobsters too, but as all shellfish were forbidden food for most travellers, I gave those away to someone who could eat them.
Although nearly all the young men were away in the Navy, or other services, almost all of the men who manned the lifeboat and the pilot boat were Ferrydenners. For generations those fisherfolk had inter-married in much the same way as travellers had. Almost every house was occupied by Coulls, Wests or Patons. Also, like the travellers, they gave each other quite a few nick-names, and were rather superstitious.
Certain names, especially of some animals, dared not be spoken. No one durst point to a boat or ship out on the sea. When there was a death in the village the older inhabitants would say, ‘There’s shair tae be anither twa’,’ and they were seldom wrong. Many of them often lived to be over a hundred. The first time that what I took to be a very old lady told me that she was on her way to see her mother, I hardly believed her. She herself must have been around eighty.
The very old fishermen used to meet at a certain spot almost every day and they would pace backwards and forwards newsing to each other. They only took three or four steps each way. The length that they had had in their boats.
The sea always seemed a bit awesome to me. Silent mountains, giant trees, lochs and rippling rivers, and all the other great things of nature I loved, and felt a kinship with, but the sounds of the sea I found disturbing. Not so much the roaring waves, but the deep groaning and the weird wailing. They seemed strange and unearthly, like they were coming up from an occupied bottomless pit. No-one else seemed to be bothered with this feeling, but this was something that came from within myself and which I still can’t understand.
We left the house in early spring every year and travelled around Perthshire and Angus, nearly always in the company of some of Bryce’s kinsfolk. Although it was getting difficult to find a place to stay, it was not as yet impossible. We became very fond of Ferryden and its people. So we kept on our house there.
8
After what seemed like a very long time the war ended, and only then did we fully realise the extent of its horrors—things like Belsen and other prison camps. The incinerators, the vast amounts of rubble which were once happy homes, churches, or buildings of great beauty, all over the world.
Then the worst of all horrors—The Bomb. Every newspaper and picture-house showed the unbelievable extent of human weakness.
Yes, weakness and stupidity, when human minds become distorted and capable of such cruelties. When the atom bomb was let loose and dropped in Japan, the gloating delight of many people around me was much more terrible to me than the ghastly results of the bombs. In our simple society we regarded nothing in the world so precious as human life. Life of any kind, even animals, was loved with an almost fierce strength and compassion.
I remember four stout relations of mine being reduced to tears when they discovered that animals too were capable of feeling this deep love for each other. They were young men and had been used to going on hare-hunts since childhood. One evening their dog raised two hares and eventually caught one. On this the other hare ran back and sat screaming pitifully as it watched the killing. Of course they called the dog in, and came home very, very shaken, and surprised that an animal should behave like that. The wife of one of the men started to chide him for being late for supper. ‘Dinnae speak to me, woman. I want nae supper. I could’nae eat a bite if God called on me.’
‘Dinnae tell me that the gamekeeper catched youze?’ his wife asked. ‘Worse than that,’ he answered. ‘I’ll never be the same again if I live to be a hundred, and never again will I set a dog after a hare.’ He and the others then related what had happened.
Their eyes were wet and their faces pale as they did so.
I am wandering again, however. I must return now to where I was, sapless and very shattered, quite unable to adjust my mind to the fact that people could be so soulless. To take pleasure in seeing any human, or animal, suffer seems most inhuman to me. I felt tender pity for the victims of the atom bombs, although they were considered to be treacherous enemies. Of course I felt the same about all the victims of that brutal war. A war which nearly killed God Himself, almost driving Him completely off the earth. Never since has He managed to regain his losses.
9
The end of the war was also the beginning of the end for the Scottish travelling people. With bewildering speed camping sites disappeared almost completely. Soon too, the farmers had machines which took over many jobs that the travelling folk had done. Even if a farmer did need workers, he was not allowed to have campers without providing flush toilets and running water, etc. Some farmers who grew a lot of berries did have those things put in, but for the majority it was not worth their while.
Then with full-time schooling becoming compulsory for the children of all householders, a time of flustration, vexation, and much misery began for most travellers. As there was no place to go they just had to live in a house, for the best part of the year at least
Councils did provide houses, but very often the attitude of neighbours was very difficult to bear.
Sometimes non-travellers would get up a petition and take it to the council if they heard that a ‘tinker’ was to get a house in their street. If the petition was ignored, unbearable misery was endured by the poor travelling family concerned. Their weans got the blame for every manner of wrong thing that happened in the neighbourhood. From pulling flowers in gardens, swinging on clothes ropes, breaking windows with stones, to actual crimes like theft. Parents constantly drilled the bairns, took them to school, met them after school, kept them in; or if the father had an old car or van he would take them away with him to some park or country road.
We had suffered a bit from this sort of thing ourselves. On one occasion Bryce’s unmarried brother was in hospital for some time, and he left his key with us, so that I could tidy up and keep an eye on his old house and look for letters, etc. One day I went there and found the door open, and a receipt from the man who opened the gas meters lying on the table. It stated that a rebate of £1 15s was left over. So I went to the gas office and was told that the door had been found open and that the rebate money had been left on the table. When I told them that it wasn’t they insisted that I must tell the police.
I did and was visited the next evening by a constable and a detective. My four boys were sitting watching television which they politely turned off, and then made a move to go out.
‘You lot stay where you are!’ the detective almost shouted, ‘I want a word wi’ ye.’ After a few questions he stared me in the eye and said, ‘Are you sure that you never took the money yourself?’ Then looking round the house declared, ‘All this will take a bit of keeping up.’
No-one’s blood ever came to the boil quicker than mine did at his words. Poor Bryce tried to make himself invisible. ‘You’re so right detective. It would be impossible if I didn’t go and steal the large sum of £1 15s from sick people’s houses every now and then,’ I answered him.
‘I’ll tak less o’ your cheek,’ he retorted.
‘And I’ll tak less o’ your insults,’ I flung back at him. I could see the children’s shoulders cringing in so I immediately went on in spite of Bryce’s ‘Shanness, shanness, you’re bung.’
‘What do you want the weans for?’ He then actually accused the boys. ‘Come on now, own up. Which o’ ye stole the money? What did you do with it?’ He went on like this for a while. My eyes pierced him with venom. ‘Look, we are not worried about the coppers, their uncle isn’t worried about it either. I would never have reported this at all if the Gas Board hadn’t insisted. So stop bullying my bairns.’
‘We are going,’ he replied, ‘but I would like tae ken whaur you buggers get the money.’ I very nearly told him that it was because we had a little brain, but refrained, not wanting to further upset Bryce and the bairns.
10
Actually the contents of my house were gotten by hard work and endeavour. Most of them came from jumble sales, roups, and even rag-bags. Some I had been given in exchange for a basket, or whatever. I also had quite a few antiques which had been ignored at sales and regarded as old-fashioned rubbish. If I had them now they would be worth a fortune, but I had to sell them when times were lean. Most travelling people have a good eye for antiques.
Travellers picked up a few now and again while collecting all manner of waste material. All kinds of scrap metals were then in great demand, also rags—especially woollens and even old torn jute sacks. As most towns had big stores that dealt in those things, a traveller just had to go there with whatever they had gathered every day. Women too went out with their men, mostly to get out of the house. They made sure that they would be home before the bairns came out of school, and took any bairn under school age with them.
Quite a few travellers found private sites to live on, if they had a caravan. There they could still have friends popping out and in, and keep some of their customs and habits alive. Even in those sites, however, many things had to be given up, such as the pleasure of gathering around an open fire to have a sing-around and to play favourite musical instruments—the bagpipes, accordions and fiddles.
It was not always an easy matter to entertain a few friends inside caravans either, as the bairns couldn’t get to bed until the visitors left. Still, travellers thought, and many still do, that it was better than living in a house.
Many couldn’t find anywhere at all to live. With mechanisation taking over on the farms, they were not needed any more. So they wandered around, being moved on by the police, stealing a night here and there in lay-bys or some secluded spot.
It was impossible to school their families in such circumstances and at the approach of a strange non-traveller man, the women would quake lest he was from the education authorities and would take away their bairns. By this time, however, most of the powers-that-be had come to realise the folly of taking clean, healthy, much cherished children away from their parents. Instead they found houses for those wanderers and persuaded them to live in them and school the wee ones. Reluctantly most of them complied, and the children discovered that they were being treated like all the other bairns in most schools. Somehow the war had changed people, and teachers no longer kept them apart from other bairns. Parents didn’t object, and the children of non-travelling people often made friends with the young travellers.
The fact that the children were being accepted, and not bruised, harrassed and segregated at school was a great help to travelling parents. We mostly live for our weans, and it was much easier to settle into houses when they were happy.
Of course some travellers just couldn’t stay put when the birds began to nest and whistle, the trees began to bud and blossom, and the sun began to make the earth really warm. So they would just up and away, back to their precarious wandering again, only to find that they had to take a house in some other town and school their bairns. I know families who have had houses in seven or eight different places throughout the country.
Many more like Bryce and I kept on our houses and gave the bairns full-time schooling. Sometimes we would take them away a week or two before the summer holidays and take them back a week or two after the schools started again. We usually got away with this and that gave us about three months away from the house.
11
By 1955 our wandering was limited to some raspberry- and strawberry-growing farms around Blairgowrie, Dundee or Forfar. There we could meet many friends and enjoy their company around open fires. I hope that no superbrain will even invent a machine that can pick those berries.
For some time now the government, realising the plight of the travellers, have been trying to persuade local councils to make caravan sites for them, even by offering 90 percent grants to the councils, sometimes 100 per-cent. Yet the government is having the greatest difficulty. Nobody, it seems, just nobody, wants us as neighbours or even in their town.
I found it very amusing to be told that when a representative from St Andrews House in Edinburgh came to Montrose, to persuade the Council to provide a site for travellers, he was told that it wanted no travelling people there. In fact about thirty families of travellers had been living on a private caravan site in the town since shortly after the war. It was amusing also because there at least forty to fifty families had already settled in Montrose. Many of them, like some of my bairns, were born and brought up in Montrose or Ferryden. The local people mix with them, work with them and intermarry with them. Yet the man from government house was having the greatest difficulty persuading the local powers-that-be to find a small spot to make a site on. The owners of the private sites for travellers had retired, and the people who had lived on it were having a rather hard time finding a place to live. They just couldn’t face going into a house.
However, they did eventually build a site for travellers at the end of the town and those people are now living there, and there have been no problems.
As you can see, my mind has carried on wandering. No one can stop it. Not even me. It can take me to nearly the top of a mountain, where I can sit and comb cranberries in the sunshine, shooing away inquisitive sheep. Or I can be picking cowslips or bluebells on the banks of the Tay water near Dunkeld whilst I am pretending to listen to some poor woman who is distraught because a horrible cat keeps returning to her garden.
So now I am going to whip the wanderer back to heel and try to keep it there. Back to the enchanting little village of Ferryden. Bryce and I soon had three more sons and were kept very busy providing for them, and keeping them out of the sea, which was only across the road from the house. I had boundless energy then and was as happy as a lark in May, so nothing was a bother to me. When not working in the fields I made baskets, mended all types of basket-work, made wooden flowers, and, near Christmas time, walked miles gathering wild, berried holly to sell. I peddled around the fishing villages of Gourdon, Johnshaven and Bervie. One thing I discovered about the fisherfolk was that they all had the same high standards of cleanliness, also of intelligence, and kindliness.
However, most of my business was done in Montrose. Now there is a town for you. I was truly amazed at the kindness and generosity I found there. I really should say ‘here’ as I live in it now. The family are all grown up and married. My grandchildren are all around me and I think that I am happy-blest.
Of course the old restless itch to wander returns almost every year when the yellow appears on the broom, but it does not really distress me anymore. I now have many friends amongst non-travellers and I am pleased that we settled in this part of Scotland.