THRUMS
Thrums is the name I give here to the handful of houses jumbled
together in a cup, which is the town nearest the schoolhouse. Until
twenty years ago its every other room, earthen-floored and showing the
rafters overhead, had a handloom, and hundreds of weavers lived and
died Thoreaus "ben the hoose" without knowing it. In those days the
cup overflowed and left several houses on the top of the hill, where
their cold skeletons still stand. The road that climbs from the
square, which is Thrums's heart, to the north is so steep and straight,
that in a sharp frost children hunker at the top and are blown down
with a roar and a rush on rails of ice. At such times, when viewed
from the cemetery where the traveller from the schoolhouse gets his
first glimpse of the little town, Thrums is but two church steeples and
a dozen red stone patches standing out of a snow-heap. One of the
steeples belongs to the new Free Kirk, and the other to the parish
church, both of which the first Auld Licht minister I knew ran past
when he had not time to avoid them by taking a back wynd. He was but a
pocket edition of a man, who grew two inches after he was called; but
he was so full of the cure of souls, that he usually scudded to it with
his coattails quarrelling behind him. His successor, whom I knew
better, was a greater scholar, and said, "Let us see what this is in
the original Greek," as an ordinary man might invite a friend to
dinner; but he never wrestled as Mr. Dishart, his successor, did with
the pulpit cushions, nor flung himself at the pulpit door. Nor was he
so "hard on the Book," as Lang Tammas, the precentor, expressed it,
meaning that he did not bang the Bible with his fist as much as might
have been wished.
Thrums had been known to me for years before I succeeded the captious
dominie at the schoolhouse in the glen. The dear old soul who
originally induced me to enter the Auld Licht kirk by lamenting the
"want of Christ" in the minister's discourses was my first landlady.
For the last ten years of her life she was bedridden, and only her
interest in the kirk kept her alive. Her case against the minister was
that he did not call to denounce her sufficiently often for her sins,
her pleasure being to hear him bewailing her on his knees as one who
was probably past praying for. She was as sweet and pure a woman as I
ever knew, and had her wishes been horses, she would have sold them and
kept (and looked after) a minister herself.
There are few Auld Licht communities in Scotland nowadays--perhaps
because people are now so well off, for the most devout Auld Lichts
were always poor, and their last years were generally a grim struggle
with the workhouse. Many a heavy-eyed, back-bent weaver has won his
Waterloo in Thrums fighting on his stumps. There are a score or two of
them left still, for, though there are now two factories in the town,
the clatter of the handloom can yet be heard, and they have been
starving themselves of late until they have saved up enough money to
get another minister.
The square is packed away in the centre of Thrums, and irregularly
built little houses squeeze close to it like chickens clustering round
a hen. Once the Auld Lichts held property in the square, but other
denominations have bought them out of it, and now few of them are even
to be found in the main streets that make for the rim of the cup. They
live in the kirk-wynd, or in retiring little houses the builder of
which does not seem to have remembered that it is a good plan to have a
road leading to houses until after they were finished. Narrow paths
straggling round gardens, some of them with stunted gates, which it is
commoner to step over than to open, have been formed to reach these
dwellings, but in winter they are running streams, and then the best
way to reach a house such as that of Tammy Mealmaker the wright,
pronounced wir-icht, is over a broken dyke and a pig-sty. Tammy, who
died a bachelor, had been soured in his youth by a disappointment in
love, of which he spoke but seldom. She lived far away in a town to
which he had wandered in the days when his blood ran hot, and they
became engaged. Unfortunately, however, Tammy forgot her name, and he
never knew the address; so there the affair ended, to his silent grief.
He admitted himself, over his snuff-mull of an evening, that he was a
very ordinary character, but a certain halo of horror was cast over the
whole family by their connection with little Joey Sutie, who was
pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whistled when he went past the
minister. Joey became a pedlar, and was found dead one raw morning
dangling over a high wall within a few miles of Thrums. When climbing
the dyke his pack had slipped back, the strap round his neck, and
choked him.
You could generally tell an Auld Licht in Thrums when you passed him,
his dull vacant face wrinkled over a heavy wob. He wore tags of yarn
round his trousers beneath the knee, that looked like ostentatious
garters, and frequently his jacket of corduroy was put on beneath his
waistcoat. If he was too old to carry his load on his back, he wheeled
it on a creaking barrow, and when he met a friend they said, "Ay,
Jeames," and "Ay, Davit," and then could think of nothing else. At
long intervals they passed through the square, disappearing or coming
into sight round the town-house which stands on the south side of it,
and guards the entrance to a steep brae that leads down and then twists
up on its lonely way to the county town. I like to linger over the
square, for it was from an upper window in it that I got to know
Thrums. On Saturday nights, when the Auld Licht young men came into
the square dressed and washed to look at the young women errand-going,
and to laugh sometime afterwards to each other, it presented a glare of
light; and here even came the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and
the showman, who, besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's
Bride," exhibited part of the tail of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's
ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince
Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's waxwork,
whose motto was, "A rag to pay, and in you go," were given in a hall
whose approach was by an outside stair. On the Muckle Friday, the fair
for which children storing their pocket money would accumulate
sevenpence-half-penny in less than six months, the square was crammed
with gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and monstrosities who
were gifted with second sight. There was a bearded man, who had
neither legs nor arms, and was drawn through the streets in a small
cart by four dogs. By looking at you he could see all the clockwork
inside, as could a boy who was led about by his mother at the end of a
string. Every Friday there was the market, when a dozen ramshackle
carts containing vegetables and cheap crockery filled the centre of the
square, resting in line on their shafts. A score of farmers' wives or
daughters in old-world garments squatted against the town-house within
walls of butter on cabbage-leaves, eggs and chickens. Towards evening
the voice of the buckie-man shook the square, and rival fish-cadgers,
terrible characters who ran races on horseback, screamed libels at each
other over a fruiterer's barrow. Then it was time for douce Auld
Lichts to go home, draw their stools near the fire, spread their red
handkerchiefs over their legs to prevent their trousers getting singed,
and read their "Pilgrim's Progress."
In my schoolhouse, however, I seem to see the square most readily in
the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones and
choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my
window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of
water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the
sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken it
in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the
square would be empty but for one vegetable cart left in the care of a
lean collie, which, tied to the wheel, whined and shivered underneath.
Pools of water gather in the coarse sacks, that have been spread over
the potatoes and bundles of greens, which turn to manure in their
lidless barrels. The eyes of the whimpering dog never leave a black
close over which hangs the sign of the Bull, probably the refuge of the
hawker. At long intervals a farmer's gig rumbles over the bumpy,
ill-paved square, or a native, with his head buried in his coat, peeps
out of doors, skurries across the way, and vanishes. Most of the
leading shops are here, and the decorous draper ventures a few yards
from the pavement to scan the sky, or note the effect of his new
arrangement in scarves. Planted against his door is the butcher,
Henders Todd, white-aproned, and with a knife in his hand, gazing
interestedly at the draper, for a mere man may look at an elder. The
tinsmith brings out his steps, and, mounting them, stealthily removes
the saucepans and pepper-pots that dangle on a wire above his
sign-board. Pulling to his door he shuts out the foggy light that
showed in his solder-strewn workshop. The square is deserted again. A
bundle of sloppy parsley slips from the hawker's cart and topples over
the wheel in driblets. The puddles in the sacks overflow and run
together. The dog has twisted his chain round a barrel and yelps
sharply. As if in response comes a rush of other dogs. A terrified
fox-terrier tears across the square with half a score of mongrels, the
butcher's mastiff and some collies at his heels; he is doubtless a
stranger who has insulted them by his glossy coat. For two seconds the
square shakes to an invasion of dogs, and then, again, there is only
one dog in sight.
No one will admit the Scotch mist. It "looks saft." The tinsmith
"wudna wonder but what it was makkin for rain." Tammas Haggart and
Pete Lunan dander into sight bareheaded, and have to stretch out their
hands to discover what the weather is like. By and by they come to a
standstill to discuss the immortality of the soul, and then they are
looking silently at the Bull. Neither speaks, but they begin to move
toward the inn at the same time, and its door closes on them before
they know what they are doing. A few minutes afterwards Jinny Dundas,
who is Pete's wife, runs straight for the Bull in her short gown, which
is tucked up very high, and emerges with her husband soon afterwards.
Jinny is voluble, but Pete says nothing. Tammas follows later, putting
his head out at the door first, and looking cautiously about him to see
if any one is in sight. Pete is a U. P., and may be left to his fate,
but the Auld Licht minister thinks that though it be hard work, Tammas
is worth saving.
To the Auld Licht of the past there were three degrees of
damnation--auld kirk, play-acting, chapel. Chapel was the name always
given to the English Church, of which I am too much an Auld Licht
myself to care to write even now. To belong to the chapel was, in
Thrums, to be a Roman Catholic, and the boy who flung a clod of earth
at the English minister--who called the Sabbath Sunday--or dropped a
"divet" down his chimney was held to be in the right way. The only
pleasant story Thrums could tell of the chapel was that its steeple
once fell. It is surprising that an English church was ever suffered
to be built in such a place; though probably the county gentry had
something to do with it. They travelled about too much to be good men.
Small though Thrums used to be, it had four kirks in all before the
Disruption, and then another, which split into two immediately
afterwards. The spire of the parish church, known as the auld kirk,
commands a view of the square, from which the entrance to the kirkyard
would be visible, if it were not hidden by the town-house. The
kirkyard has long been crammed, and is not now in use, but the church
is sufficiently large to hold nearly all the congregations in Thrums.
Just at the gate lived Pete Todd, the father of Sam'l, a man of whom
the Auld Lichts had reason to be proud. Pete was an every-day man at
ordinary times, and was even said, when his wife, who had been long
ill, died, to have clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Hip, hip, hurrah!"
adding only as an afterthought, "The Lord's will be done." But
midsummer was his great opportunity. Then took place the rouping of
the seats in the parish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the
seats being put up to auction were knocked down to the highest bidder.
This sometimes led to the breaking of the peace. Every person was
present who was at all particular as to where he sat, and an auctioneer
was engaged for the day. He rouped the kirk-seats like potato-drills,
beginning by asking for a bid. Every seat was put up to auction
separately; for some were much more run after than others, and the men
were instructed by their wives what to bid for. Often the women joined
in, and as they bid excitedly against each other the church rang with
opprobrious epithets. A man would come to the roup late, and learn
that the seat he wanted had been knocked down. He maintained that he
had been unfairly treated, or denounced the local laird to whom the
seat-rents went. If he did not get the seat he would leave the kirk.
Then the woman who had forestalled him wanted to know what he meant by
glaring at her so, and the auction was interrupted. Another member
would "thrip down the throat" of the auctioneer that he had a right to
his former seat if he continued to pay the same price for it. The
auctioneer was screamed at for favouring his friends, and at times the
roup became so noisy that men and women had to be forcibly ejected.
Then was Pete's chance. Hovering at the gate, he caught the angry
people on their way home and took them into his workshop by an outside
stair. There he assisted them in denouncing the parish kirk, with the
view of getting them to forswear it. Pete made a good many Auld Lichts
in his time out of unpromising material.
Sights were to be witnessed in the parish church at times that could
not have been made more impressive by the Auld Lichts themselves. Here
sinful women were grimly taken to task by the minister, who, having
thundered for a time against adultery in general, called upon one
sinner in particular to stand forth. She had to step forward into a
pew near the pulpit, where, alone and friendless, and stared at by the
congregation, she cowered in tears beneath his denunciations. In that
seat she had to remain during the forenoon service. She returned home
alone, and had to come back alone to her solitary seat in the
afternoon. All day no one dared speak to her. She was as much an
object of contumely as the thieves and smugglers whom, in the end of
last century, it was the privilege of Feudal Bailie Wood (as he was
called) to whip round the square.
It is nearly twenty years since the gardeners had their last "walk" in
Thrums, and they survived all the other benefit societies that walked
once every summer. There was a "weavers' walk" and five or six others,
the "women's walk" being the most picturesque. These were processions
of the members of benefit societies through the square and wynds, and
all the women walked in white, to the number of a hundred or more,
behind the Tilliedrum band, Thrums having in those days no band of its
own.
From the north-west corner of the square a narrow street sets off,
jerking this way and that as if uncertain what point to make for. Here
lurks the post-office, which had once the reputation of being as
crooked in its ways as the street itself.
A railway line runs into Thrums now. The sensational days of the
post-office were when the letters were conveyed officially in a
creaking old cart from Tilliedrum. The "pony" had seen better days
than the cart, and always looked as if he were just on the point of
succeeding in running away from it. Hooky Crewe was driver; so-called
because an iron hook was his substitute for a right arm: Robbie
Proctor, the blacksmith, made the hook and fixed it in. Crewe suffered
from rheumatism, and when he felt it coming on he stayed at home.
Sometimes his cart came undone in a snowdrift; when Hooky, extricated
from the fragments by some chance wayfarer, was deposited with his
mail-bag (of which he always kept a grip by the hook) in a farm-house.
It was his boast that his letters always reached their destination
eventually. They might be a long time about it, but "slow and sure"
was his motto. Hooky emphasized his "slow and sure" by taking a snuff.
He was a godsend to the post-mistress, for to his failings or the
infirmities of his gig were charged all delays.
At the time I write of, the posting of the letter took as long and was
as serious an undertaking as the writing. That means a good deal, for
many of the letters were written to dictation by the Thrums
schoolmaster, Mr. Fleemister, who belonged to the Auld Kirk. He was
one of the few persons in the community who looked upon the despatch of
his letters by the postmistress as his right, and not a favour on her
part; there was a long-standing feud between them accordingly. After a
few tumblers of Widow Stables's treacle-beer--in the concoction of
which she was the acknowledged mistress for miles around--the
schoolmaster would sometimes go the length of hinting that he could get
the postmistress dismissed any day. This mighty power seemed to rest
on a knowledge of "steamed" letters. Thrums had a high respect for the
schoolmaster; but among themselves the weavers agreed that, even if he
did write to the Government, Lizzie Harrison, the postmistress, would
refuse to transmit the letter. The more shrewd ones among us kept
friends with both parties; for, unless you could write "writ-hand," you
could not compose a letter without the schoolmaster's assistance; and,
unless Lizzie was so courteous as to send it to its destination, it
might lie--or so it was thought---much too long in the box. A letter
addressed by the schoolmaster found great disfavour in Lizzie's eyes.
You might explain to her that you had merely called in his assistance
because you were a poor hand at writing yourself, but that was held no
excuse. Some addressed their own envelopes with much labour, and
sought to palm off the whole as their handiwork. It reflects on the
postmistress somewhat that she had generally found them out by next
day, when, if in a specially vixenish mood, she did not hesitate to
upbraid them for their perfidy.
To post a letter you did not merely saunter to the post-office and drop
it into the box. The cautious correspondent first went into the shop
and explained to Lizzie how matters stood. She kept what she called a
bookseller's shop as well as the post-office; but the supply of books
corresponded exactly to the lack of demand for them, and her chief
trade was in nicknacks, from marbles and money-boxes up to concertinas.
If he found the postmistress in an amiable mood, which was only now and
then, the caller led up craftily to the object of his visit. Having
discussed the weather and the potato-disease, he explained that his
sister Mary, whom Lizzie would remember, had married a fishmonger in
Dundee. The fishmonger had lately started on himself and was doing
well. They had four children. The youngest had had a severe attack of
measles. No news had been got of Mary for twelve months; and Annie,
his other sister, who lived in Thrums, had been at him of late for not
writing. So he had written a few lines; and, in fact, he had the
letter with him. The letter was then produced, and examined by the
postmistress. If the address was in the schoolmaster's handwriting,
she professed her inability to read it. Was this a _t_ or an _l_ or an
_i_? was that a _b_ or a _d_? This was a cruel revenge on Lizzie's
part; for the sender of the letter was completely at her mercy. The
schoolmaster's name being tabooed in her presence, he was unable to
explain that the writing was not his own; and as for deciding between
the _t_'s and _l_'s, he could not do it. Eventually he would be
directed to put the letter into the box. They would do their best with
it, Lizzie said, but in a voice that suggested how little hope she had
of her efforts to decipher it proving successful.
There was an opinion among some of the people that the letter should
not be stamped by the sender. The proper thing to do was to drop a
penny for the stamp into the box along with the letter, and then Lizzie
would see that it was all right. Lizzie's acquaintance with the
handwriting of every person in the place who could write gave her a
great advantage. You would perhaps drop into her shop some day to make
a purchase, when she would calmly produce a letter you had posted
several days before. In explanation she would tell you that you had
not put a stamp on it, or that she suspected there was money in it, or
that you had addressed it to the wrong place. I remember an old man, a
relative of my own, who happened for once in his life to have several
letters to post at one time. The circumstance was so out of the common
that he considered it only reasonable to make Lizzie a small present.
Perhaps the postmistress was belled; but if she did not "steam" the
letters and confide their titbits to favoured friends of her own sex,
it is difficult to see how all the gossip got out. The schoolmaster
once played an unmanly trick on her, with the view of catching her in
the act. He was a bachelor who had long been given up by all the maids
in the town. One day, however, he wrote a letter to an imaginary lady
in the county-town, asking her to be his, and going into full
particulars about his income, his age, and his prospects. A male
friend in the secret, at the other end, was to reply, in a lady's
handwriting, accepting him, and also giving personal particulars. The
first letter was written; and an answer arrived in due course--two
days, the schoolmaster said, after date. No other person knew of this
scheme for the undoing of the postmistress, yet in a very short time
the schoolmaster's coming marriage was the talk of Thrums. Everybody
became suddenly aware of the lady's name, of her abode, and of the sum
of money she was to bring her husband. It was even noised abroad that
the schoolmaster had represented his age as a good ten years less than
it was. Then the schoolmaster divulged everything. To his
mortification, he was not quite believed. All the proof he could bring
forward to support his story was this: that time would show whether he
got married or not. Foolish man! this argument was met by another,
which was accepted at once. The lady had jilted the schoolmaster.
Whether this explanation came from the post-office, who shall say? But
so long as he lived the schoolmaster was twitted about the lady who
threw him over. He took his revenge in two ways. He wrote and posted
letters exceedingly abusive of the postmistress. The matter might be
libellous; but then, as he pointed out, she would incriminate herself
if she "brought him up" about it. Probably Lizzie felt his other
insult more. By publishing his suspicions of her on every possible
occasion he got a few people to seal their letters. So bitter was his
feeling against her that he was even willing to supply the wax.
They know all about post-offices in Thrums now, and even jeer at the
telegraph-boy's uniform. In the old days they gathered round him when
he was seen in the street, and escorted him to his destination in
triumph. That, too, was after Lizzie had gone the way of all the
earth. But perhaps they are not even yet as knowing as they think
themselves. I was told the other day that one of them took out a
postal order, meaning to send the money to a relative, and kept the
order as a receipt.
I have said that the town is sometimes full of snow. One frosty
Saturday, seven years ago, I trudged into it from the schoolhouse, and
on the Monday morning we could not see Thrums anywhere.
I was in one of the proud two-storied houses in the place, and could
have shaken hands with my friends without from the upper windows. To
get out of doors you had to walk upstairs. The outlook was a sea of
snow fading into white hills and sky with the quarry standing out red
and ragged to the right like a rock in the ocean. The Auld Licht manse
was gone, but had left its garden-trees behind, their lean branches
soft with snow. Roofs were humps in the white blanket. The spire of
the Established Kirk stood up cold and stiff, like a monument to the
buried inhabitants.
Those of the natives who had taken the precaution of conveying spades
into their houses the night before, which is my plan at the
schoolhouse, dug themselves out. They hobbled cautiously over the
snow, sometimes sinking into it to their knees, when they stood still
and slowly took in the situation. It had been snowing more or less for
a week, but in a commonplace kind of way, and they had gone to bed
thinking all was well. This night the snow must have fallen as if the
heavens had opened up, determined to shake themselves free of it for
ever.
The man who first came to himself and saw what was to be done was young
Henders Ramsay. Henders had no fixed occupation, being but an "orra
man" about the place, and the best thing known of him is that his
mother's sister was a Baptist. He feared God, man, nor the minister;
and all the learning he had was obtained from assiduous study of a
grocer's window. But for one brief day he had things his own way in
the town, or, speaking strictly, on the top of it. With a spade, a
broom, and a pickaxe, which sat lightly on his broad shoulders (he was
not even back-bent, and that showed him no respectable weaver), Henders
delved his way to the nearest house, which formed one of a row, and
addressed the inmates down the chimney. They had already been clearing
it at the other end, or his words would have been choked. "You're
snawed up, Davit," cried Henders, in a voice that was entirely
businesslike; "hae ye a spade?" A conversation ensued up and down this
unusual channel of communication. The unlucky householder, taking no
thought of the morrow, was without a spade. But if Henders would clear
away the snow from his door he would be "varra obleeged." Henders,
however, had to come to terms first. "The chairge is saxpence, Davit,"
he shouted. Then a haggling ensued. Henders must be neighbourly. A
plate of broth, now--or, say, twopence. But Henders was obdurate.
"I'se nae time to argy-bargy wi' ye, Davit. Gin ye're no willin' to
say saxpence, I'm aff to Will'um Pyatt's. He's buried too." So the
victim had to make up his mind to one of two things; he must either say
saxpence or remain where he was.
If Henders was "promised," he took good care that no snowed-up
inhabitant should perjure himself. He made his way to a window first,
and, clearing the snow from the top of it, pointed out that he could
not conscientiously proceed further until the debt had been paid.
"Money doon," he cried, as soon as he reached a pane of glass; or,
"Come awa wi' my saxpence noo."
The belief that this day had not come to Henders unexpectedly was borne
out by the method of the crafty callant. His charges varied from
sixpence to half-a-crown, according to the wealth and status of his
victims; and when, later on, there were rivals in the snow, he had the
discrimination to reduce his minimum fee to threepence. He had the
honour of digging out three ministers at one shilling, one and
threepence, and two shillings respectively.
Half a dozen times within the next fortnight the town was reburied in
snow. This generally happened in the night-time; but the inhabitants
were not to be caught unprepared again. Spades stood ready to their
hands in the morning, and they fought their way above ground without
Henders Ramsay's assistance. To clear the snow from the narrow wynds
and pends, however, was a task not to be attempted; and the Auld
Lichts, at least, rested content when enough light got into their
workshops to let them see where their looms stood. Wading through beds
of snow they did not much mind; but they wondered what would happen to
their houses when the thaw came.
The thaw was slow in coming. Snow during the night and several degrees
of frost by day were what Thrums began to accept as a revised order of
nature. Vainly the Thrums doctor, whose practice extends into the
glens, made repeated attempts to reach his distant patients, twice
driving so far into the dreary waste that he could neither go on nor
turn back. A ploughman who contrived to gallop ten miles for him did
not get home for a week. Between the town, which is nowadays an
agricultural centre of some importance, and the outlying farms
communication was cut off for a month; and I heard subsequently of one
farmer who did not see a human being, unconnected with his own farm,
for seven weeks. The schoolhouse, which I managed to reach only two
days behind time, was closed for a fortnight, and even in Thrums there
was only a sprinkling of scholars.
On Sundays the feeling between the different denominations ran high,
and the middling good folk who did not go to church counted those who
did. In the Established Church there was a sparse gathering, who
waited in vain for the minister. After a time it got abroad that a
flag of distress was flying from the manse, and then they saw that the
minister was storm-stayed. An office-bearer offered to conduct
service; but the others present thought they had done their duty and
went home. The U. P. bell did not ring at all, and the kirk gates were
not opened. The Free Kirk did bravely, however. The attendance in the
forenoon amounted to seven, including the minister; but in the
afternoon there was a turn-out of upwards of fifty. How much
denominational competition had to do with this, none can say; but the
general opinion was that this muster to afternoon service was a piece
of vainglory. Next Sunday all the kirks were on their mettle, and,
though the snow was drifting the whole day, services were general. It
was felt that after the action of the Free Kirk the Establisheds and
the U. P.'s must show what they too were capable of. So, when the
bells rang at eleven o'clock and two, church-goers began to pour out of
every close. If I remember aright, the victory lay with the U. P.'s by
two women and a boy. Of course the Auld Lichts mustered in as great
force as ever. The other kirks never dreamt of competing with them.
What was regarded as a judgment on the Free Kirk for its boastfulness
of spirit on the preceding Sunday happened during the forenoon. While
the service was taking place a huge clod of snow slipped from the roof
and fell right against the church door. It was some time before the
prisoners could make up their minds to leave by the windows. What the
Auld Lichts would have done in a similar predicament I cannot even
conjecture.
That was the first warning of the thaw. It froze again; there was more
snow; the thaw began in earnest; and then the streets were a sight to
see. There was no traffic to turn the snow to slush, and, where it had
not been piled up in walls a few feet from the houses, it remained in
the narrow ways till it became a lake. It tried to escape through
doorways, when it sank slowly into the floors. Gentle breezes created
a ripple on its surface, and strong winds lifted it into the air and
flung it against the houses. It undermined the heaps of clotted snow
till they tottered like icebergs and fell to pieces. Men made their
way through it on stilts. Had a frost followed, the result would have
been appalling; but there was no more frost that winter. A fortnight
passed before the place looked itself again, and even then congealed
snow stood doggedly in the streets, while the country roads were like
newly ploughed fields after rain. The heat from large fires soon
penetrated through roofs of slate and thatch; and it was quite a common
thing for a man to be flattened to the ground by a slithering of snow
from above just as he opened his door. But it had seldom more than ten
feet to fall. Most interesting of all was the novel sensation
experienced as Thrums began to assume its familiar aspect, and objects
so long buried that they had been half forgotten came back to view and
use.
Storm-stayed shows used to emphasize the severity of a Thrums winter.
As the name indicates, these were gatherings of travelling booths in
the winter-time. Half a century ago the country was overrun by
itinerant showmen, who went their different ways in summer, but formed
little colonies in the cold weather, when they pitched their tents in
any empty field or disused quarry and huddled together for the sake of
warmth: not that they got much of it. Not more than five winters ago
we had a storm-stayed show on a small scale; but nowadays the farmers
are less willing to give these wanderers a camping-place, and the
people are less easily drawn to the entertainments provided, by fife
and drum. The colony hung together until it was starved out, when it
trailed itself elsewhere. I have often seen it forming. The first
arrival would be what was popularly known as "Sam'l Mann's
Tumbling-Booth," with its tumblers, jugglers, sword-swallowers, and
balancers. This travelling show visited us regularly twice a year:
once in summer for the Muckle Friday, when the performers were gay and
stout, and even the horses had flesh on their bones; and again in the
"back-end" of the year, when cold and hunger had taken the blood from
their faces, and the scraggy dogs that whined at their side were lashed
for licking the paint off the caravans. While the storm-stayed show
was in the vicinity the villages suffered from an invasion of these
dogs. Nothing told more truly the dreadful tale of the showman's life
in winter. Sam'l Mann's was a big show, and half a dozen smaller ones,
most of which were familiar to us, crawled in its wake. Others heard
of its whereabouts and came in from distant parts. There was the
well-known Gubbins with his "A' the World in a Box:" a halfpenny
peepshow, in which all the world was represented by Joseph and his
Brethren (with pit and coat), the bombardment of Copenhagen, the Battle
of the Nile, Daniel in the Den of Lions, and Mount Etna in eruption.
"Aunt Maggy's Whirligig" could be enjoyed on payment of an old pair of
boots, a collection of rags, or the like. Besides these and other
shows, there were the wandering minstrels, most of whom were "Waterloo
veterans" wanting arms or a leg. I remember one whose arms had been
"smashed by a thunderbolt at Jamaica." Queer bent old dames, who
superintended "lucky bags" or told fortunes, supplied the uncanny
element, but hesitated to call themselves witches, for there can still
be seen near Thrums the pool where these unfortunates used to be
drowned, and in the session book of the Glen Quharity kirk can be read
an old minute announcing that on a certain Sabbath there was no
preaching because "the minister was away at the burning of a witch."
To the storm-stayed shows came the gypsies in great numbers. Claypots
(which is a corruption of Claypits) was their headquarters near Thrums,
and it is still sacred to their memory. It was a clachan of miserable
little huts built entirely of clay from the dreary and sticky pit in
which they had been flung together. A shapeless hole on one side was
the doorway, and a little hole, stuffed with straw in winter, the
window. Some of the remnants of these hovels still stand. Their
occupants, though they went by the name of gypsies among themselves,
were known to the weavers as the Claypots beggars; and their King was
Jimmy Pawse. His regal dignity gave Jimmy the right to seek alms first
when he chose to do so; thus he got the cream of a place before his
subjects set to work. He was rather foppish in his dress; generally
affecting a suit of grey cloth with showy metal buttons on it, and a
broad blue bonnet. His wife was a little body like himself; and when
they went a-begging, Jimmy with a meal-bag for alms on his back, she
always took her husband's arm. Jimmy was the legal adviser of his
subjects; his decision was considered final on all questions, and he
guided them in their courtships as well as on their deathbeds. He
christened their children and officiated at their weddings, marrying
them over the tongs.
The storm-stayed show attracted old and young--to looking on from the
outside. In the daytime the wagons and tents presented a dreary
appearance, sunk in snow, the dogs shivering between the wheels, and
but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were
lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent
into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through the
nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of
men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their
heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a
mockery the glare of the lamps and the capers of the mountebanks were,
and how satisfied were we to enjoy it all without going inside. I hear
the "Waterloo veterans" still, and remember their patriotic outbursts:
On the sixteenth day of June, brave boys,
while cannon loud did roar,
We being short of cavalry they pressed on us full sore;
But British steel soon made them yield,
though our numbers was but few,
And death or victory was the word on the plains of Waterloo.
The storm-stayed shows often found it easier to sink to rest in a field
than to leave it. For weeks at a time they were snowed up,
sufficiently to prevent any one from Thrums going near them, though not
sufficiently to keep the pallid mummers indoors. That would in many
cases have meant starvation. They managed to fight their way through
storm and snowdrift to the high road and thence to the town, where they
got meal and sometimes broth. The tumblers and jugglers used
occasionally to hire an out-house in the town at these times--you may
be sure they did not pay for it in advance--and give performances
there. It is a curious thing, but true, that our herd-boys and others
were sometimes struck with the stage-fever. Thrums lost boys to the
showmen even in winter.
On the whole, the farmers and the people generally were wonderfully
long-suffering with these wanderers, who I believe were more honest
than was to be expected. They stole, certainly; but seldom did they
steal anything more valuable than turnips. Sam'l Mann himself flushed
proudly over the effect his show once had on an irate farmer. The
farmer appeared in the encampment, whip in hand and furious. They must
get off his land before nightfall. The crafty showman, however,
prevailed upon him to take a look at the acrobats, and he enjoyed the
performance so much that he offered to let them stay until the end of
the week. Before that time came there was such a fall of snow that
departure was out of the question; and it is to the farmer's credit
that he sent Sam'l a bag of meal to tide him and his actors over the
storm.
There were times when the showmen made a tour of the bothies, where
they slung their poles and ropes and gave their poor performances to
audiences that were not critical. The bothy being strictly the "man's"
castle, the farmer never interfered; indeed, he was sometimes glad to
see the show. Every other weaver in Thrums used to have a son a
ploughman, and it was the men from the bothies who filled the square on
the muckly. "Hands" are not huddled together nowadays in squalid barns
more like cattle than men and women, but bothies in the neighbourhood
of Thrums are not yet things of the past. Many a ploughman delves his
way to and from them still in all weathers, when the snow is on the
ground; at the time of "hairst," and when the turnip "shaws" have just
forced themselves through the earth, looking like straight rows of
green needles. Here is a picture of a bothy of to-day that I visited
recently. Over the door there is a waterspout that has given way, and
as I entered I got a rush of rain down my neck. The passage was so
small that one could easily have stepped from the doorway on to the
ladder standing against the wall, which was there in lieu of a
staircase. "Upstairs" was a mere garret, where a man could not stand
erect even in the centre. It was entered by a square hole in the
ceiling, at present closed by a clap-door in no way dissimilar to the
trap-doors on a theatre stage. I climbed into this garret, which is at
present used as a store-room for agricultural odds and ends. At
harvest-time, however, it is inhabited--full to overflowing. A few
decades ago as many as fifty labourers engaged for the harvest had to
be housed in the farm out-houses on beds of straw. There was no help
for it, and men and women had to congregate in these barns together.
Up as early as five in the morning, they were generally dead tired by
night; and, miserable though this system of herding them together was,
they took it like stoics, and their very number served as a moral
safeguard. Nowadays the harvest is gathered in so quickly, and
machinery does so much that used to be done by hand, that this crowding
of labourers together, which was the bothy system at its worst, is
nothing like what it was. As many as six or eight men, however, are
put up in the garret referred to during "hairst"-time, and the female
labourers have to make the best of it in the barn. There is no doubt
that on many farms the two sexes have still at this busy time to herd
together even at night.
The bothy was but scantily furnished, though it consisted of two rooms.
In the one, which was used almost solely as a sleeping apartment, there
was no furniture to speak of, beyond two closet beds, and its bumpy
earthen floor gave it a cheerless look. The other, which had a single
bed, was floored with wood. It was not badly lit by two very small
windows that faced each other, and, besides several stools, there was a
long form against one of the walls. A bright fire of peat and
coal--nothing in the world makes such a cheerful red fire as this
combination--burned beneath a big kettle ("boiler" they called it), and
there was a "press" or cupboard containing a fair assortment of cooking
utensils. Of these some belonged to the bothy, while others were the
private property of the tenants. A tin "pan" and "pitcher" of water
stood near the door, and the table in the middle of the room was
covered with oilcloth.
Four men and a boy inhabited this bothy, and the rain had driven them
all indoors. In better weather they spend the leisure of the evening
at the game of quoits, which is the standard pastime among Scottish
ploughmen. They fish the neighbouring streams, too, and have
burn-trout for supper several times a week. When I entered, two of
them were sitting by the fire playing draughts, or, as they called it,
"the dam-brod." The dam-brod is the Scottish labourer's billiards; and
he often attains to a remarkable proficiency at the game. Wylie, the
champion draught-player, was once a herd-boy; and wonderful stories are
current in all bothies of the times when his master called him into the
farm-parlour to show his skill. A third man, who seemed the elder by
quite twenty years, was at the window reading a newspaper; and I got no
shock when I saw that it was the _Saturday Review_, which he and a
labourer on an adjoining farm took in weekly between them. There was a
copy of a local newspaper--the _People's Journal_--also lying about,
and some books, including one of Darwin's. These were all the property
of this man, however, who did the reading for the bothy.
They did all the cooking for themselves, living largely on milk. In
the old days, which the senior could remember, porridge was so
universally the morning meal that they called it by that name instead
of breakfast. They still breakfast on porridge, but often take tea
"above it." Generally milk is taken with the porridge; but "porter" or
stout in a bowl is no uncommon substitute. Potatoes at twelve
o'clock--seldom "brose" nowadays--are the staple dinner dish, and the
tinned meats have become very popular. There are bothies where each
man makes his own food; but of course the more satisfactory plan is for
them to club together. Sometimes they get their food in the
farm-kitchen; but this is only when there are few of them and the
farmer and his family do not think it beneath them to dine with the
men. Broth, too, may be made in the kitchen and sent down to the
bothy. At harvest-time the workers take their food in the fields, when
great quantities of milk are provided. There is very little beer
drunk, and whisky is only consumed in privacy.
Life in the bothies is not, I should say, so lonely as life at the
schoolhouse, for the hands have at least each other's company. The
hawker visits them frequently still, though the itinerant tailor, once
a familiar figure, has almost vanished. Their great place of
congregating is still some country smiddy, which is also their frequent
meeting-place when bent on black-fishing. The flare of the
black-fisher's torch still attracts salmon to their death in the rivers
near Thrums; and you may hear in the glens on a dark night the rattle
of the spears on the wet stones. Twenty or thirty years ago, however,
the sport was much more common. After the farmer had gone to bed, some
half-dozen ploughmen and a few other poachers from Thrums would set out
for the meeting-place.
The smithy on these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one
did not mark that at the time. The poacher crept from the darkness.
into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might
sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night. As a rule,
every face was blackened; and it was this, I suppose, rather than the
fact that dark nights were chosen that gave the gangs the name of
black-fishers. Other disguises were resorted to; one of the commonest
being to change clothes or to turn your corduroys outside in. The
country-folk of those days were more superstitious than they are now,
and it did not take much to turn the black-fishers back. There was not
a barn or byre in the district that had not its horseshoe over the
door. Another popular device for frightening away witches and fairies
was to hang bunches of garlic about the farms. I have known a
black-fishing expedition stopped because a "yellow yite," or
yellowhammer, hovered round the gang when they were setting out. Still
more ominous was the "peat" when it appeared with one or three
companions. An old rhyme about this bird runs--"One is joy, two is
grief, three's a bridal, four is death." Such snatches of superstition
are still to be heard amidst the gossip of a north-country smithy.
Each black-fisher brought his own spear and torch, both more or less
home-made. The spears were in many cases "gully-knives," fastened to
staves with twine and resin, called "rozet." The torches were very
rough-and-ready things--rope and tar, or even rotten roots dug from
broken trees--in fact, anything that would flare. The black-fishers
seldom journeyed far from home, confining themselves to the rivers
within a radius of three or four miles. There were many reasons for
this; one of them being that the hands had to be at their work on the
farm by five o'clock in the morning; another, that so they poached and
let poach. Except when in spate, the river I specially refer to
offered no attractions to the black-fishers. Heavy rains, however,
swell it much more quickly than most rivers into a turbulent rush of
water; the part of it affected by the black-fishers being banked in
with rocks that prevent the water's spreading. Above these rocks,
again, are heavy green banks, from which stunted trees grow aslant
across the river. The effect is fearsome at some points where the
trees run into each other, as it were, from opposite banks. However,
the black-fishers thought nothing of these things. They took a turnip
lantern with them--that is, a lantern hollowed out of a turnip, with a
piece of candle inside--but no lights were shown on the road. Every
one knew his way to the river blindfold; so that the darker the night
the better. On reaching the water there was a pause. One or two of
the gang climbed the banks to discover if any bailiffs were on the
watch; while the others sat down, and with the help of the turnip
lantern "busked" their spears; in other words, fastened on the
steel--or, it might be, merely pieces of rusty iron sharpened into a
point at home--to the staves. Some had them busked before they set
out, but that was not considered prudent; for of course there was
always a risk of meeting spoil-sports on the way, to whom the spears
would tell a tale that could not be learned from ordinary staves.
Nevertheless little time was lost. Five or six of the gang waded into
the water, torch in one hand and spear in the other; and the object now
was to catch some salmon with the least possible delay, and hurry away.
Windy nights were good for the sport, and I can still see the river lit
up with the lumps of light that a torch makes in a high wind. The
torches, of course, were used to attract the fish, which came swimming
to the sheen, and were then speared. As little noise as possible was
made; but though the men bit their lips instead of crying out when they
missed their fish, there was a continuous ring of their weapons on the
stones, and every irrepressible imprecation was echoed up and down the
black glen. Two or three of the gang were told off to land the salmon,
and they had to work smartly and deftly. They kept by the side of the
spearsman, and the moment he struck a fish they grabbed at it with
their hands. When the spear had a barb there was less chance of the
fish's being lost; but often this was not the case, and probably not
more than two-thirds of the salmon speared were got safely to the bank.
The takes of course varied; sometimes, indeed, the black-fishers
returned home empty-handed.
Encounters with the bailiffs were not infrequent, though they seldom
took place at the water's edge. When the poachers were caught in the
act, and had their blood up with the excitement of the sport, they were
ugly customers. Spears were used and heads were broken. Struggles
even took place in the water, when there was always a chance of
somebody's being drowned. Where the bailiffs gave the black-fishers an
opportunity of escaping without a fight it was nearly always taken; the
booty being left behind. As a rule, when the "water-watchers," as the
bailiffs were sometimes called, had an inkling of what was to take
place, they reinforced themselves with a constable or two and waited on
the road to catch the poachers on their way home. One black-fisher, a
noted character, was nicknamed the "Deil o' Glen Quharity." He was
said to have gone to the houses of the bailiffs and offered to sell
them the fish stolen from the streams over which they kept guard. The
"Deil" was never imprisoned--partly, perhaps, because he was too
eccentric to be taken seriously.