Most people have many photographs of their parents and from their own young days. I have only these seven.
Yet it is still surprising that they have survived. As I explain in my story, we travellers carried only essential and treasured possessions with us. Everything else was burned when we moved on. So most of these photographs must have been among my mother’s treasures. She kept them carefully in a little wooden box along with other precious papers such as birth certificates and references from farmers.
My mother and her brothers
In my mother’s young days, to have a photograph taken was a nine days’ wonder for travellers. Most of them were flattered and eager to comply when asked to pose by a photographer looking for an unusual postcard.
This postcard is entitled ‘Aberfeldy tinkers’. This group of ‘tinkers’ includes my mother — on the right. Next to her, playing the pipes, is her younger brother Jimmie, with her brother Hendry and his wife and child.
The caption on the postcard describes ‘tinkers’ as ‘light-fingered’ and ‘a race apart, as idle and attractive generally as the gipsy tribes . . .’ This was the feeling of many people when I was young, and it persists today.
Mother and father
Of course it was unusual for travellers to have a photograph taken in a photographer’s studio. This one of my parents was taken when Father was home on leave during the First World War — for in wartime even travellers wanted a photograph of their loved ones, lest the worst should happen. It is the only photograph I have of my father, taken before I was born. But it is a fake. Originally it was a family portrait which had become faded and worn. After Mother died, I cut off the part showing the family and asked a photographer to put Mother and Father together.
This is the only part left of the original family group. It shows my sister Katie and my brother Andy, who died soon after this photograph was taken. They are holding the hands of an older sister.
My famliy
This is another photograph which was sold as a postcard. It was sent to me recently by a cousin, whose mother had kept it.
It shows my mother on the left and my oldest sister Bella on the right. In front is my brother and the babe in arms is me.
At school
Me, taken by a visiting photographer at school, before the time my story begins in 1930.
This one, too, came from my cousin when I was asking my family and friends if they had any photographs to illustrate my story. I had forgotten that this one existed.
My sister Bella
My sister Bella with one of her three children. I am not sure if his is Donald, who died after a countrywoman ‘put her eye’ on him, but it may be.
My cousins
Cousins of mine with a ‘yoke’ of the kind used only by women and children. It was smaller than the men’s ‘yokes’ and was drawn by a ‘Shelty’ (a Shetland pony) or a ‘cuddy’ (a donkey).
(Sometimes some of the gentry or visiting foreigners would photograph travellers and return in a few days’ time with a copy for them. This is how this photograph was obtained.)