THRUMS.
Thrums is the name I give here to the handful of houses jumbled together
in a cup, which is the town nearest the school-house. Until twenty
years ago its every other room, earthen-floored and showing the rafters
overhead, had a hand-loom, 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' 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 school-house 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 coat-tails 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 school-house 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 hand-loom 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 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 pedler, 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
some time afterward 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 tall 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 wax-work, 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 halfpenny 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 clock-work 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. Toward 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 school-house, 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-bye 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 afterward 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 afterward. 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, playacting, 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 afterward. The spire of the parish
church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the square, from
which the entrance to the kirk-yard would be visible, if it were not
hidden by the town-house. The kirk-yard 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 clasped 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 favoring his friends, and at times the group 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 who, 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 Tillie-drum band, Thrums having in those days no band of its own.
From the northwest 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 snow-drift; 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 farmhouse. 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 postmistress, 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
school-master, 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 post-mistress as his right, and not a favor on her part;
there was a long-standing feud between them accordingly. After a few
tumblers of Widow Stables' 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 post-mistress
dismissed any day. This mighty power seemed to rest on a knowledge of
“steamed” letters. Thrums had a high respect for the school-master; but
among themselves the weavers agreed that, even if he did write to the
Government, Lizzie Harrison, the post-mistress, 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 school-master'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 disfavor 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 labor, and sought to palm off the whole as
their handiwork. It reflects on the post-mistress 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 nick-nacks, from marbles and money-boxes up to concertinas. If he
found the post-mistress 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 school-master'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 post-mistress was belied; but if she did not “steam” the
letters and confide their titbits to favored friends of her own sex, it
is difficult to see how all the gossip got out. The school-master 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
school-master said, after date. No other person knew of this scheme
for the undoing of the post-mistress, yet in a very short time the
school-master'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
school-master had represented his age as a good ten years less than it
was. Then the school-master 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 school-master. Whether this
explanation came from the post-office, who shall say? But so long as he
lived the school-master 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 post-mistress. 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 school-house, 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
school-house, 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 business-like; “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 neighborly. 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 honor
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 re-buried 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 school-house,
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 upward 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 Established 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 dreamed 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-stead 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-stead 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-stead 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 peep-show, 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. “Aunty 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-stead 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 gray 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 death-beds. He christened their children and officiated at their
weddings, marrying them over the tongs.
The storm-stead show attracted old and young--to looking on from
the outside. In the day-time 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-stead 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 show-men 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 neighborhood 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
laborers 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 laborers 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 laborers 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 neighboring 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 laborer'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-parlor 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
laborer 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 whiskey is only consumed in
privacy.
Life in the bothies is not, I should say, so lonely as life at the
school-house, 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 yellow-hammer, hovered round the gang
when they were setting out. Still more ominous was the “péat” 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 spears-man, 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.