No 77. LIGHTING IN THE STEADING.
As the dark days of Mid-winter close around us, and I see lights from horizon to horizon, I think of my early days and the wee glimmers that saw us through a winter to next summer. You might see a light in a far off cottage window, or a dancing light as someone carrying a lantern crossed to the steading. We did not think on lighting in the steading, we knew no other than the square paraffin oil lantern and the occasional Tilley lantern possessed by many if not most of the farmers. There were also a number of other makes of Hurricane Lanterns, I cannot recall the makers.
The dwelling houses of course had good lamps, some very ornate indeed, at least good enough to read by. Single wicks and double wicks in some fancier ones. Green or clear glass oil bowls which let you see the oil level, clear glass chimneys in many forms from totally utilitarian to very ornate indeed. Glass bowl chimneys on some. Fancy shades on some, but the one at the top of the stairs sitting in a recess outside our bedroom door was quite simple, basic you could say. On his way to bed our father blew that one out. No more reading in bed through a chink in the door jamb with the book held sideways to catch the light. These are now collectors pieces.
We did not have a Tilley lamp but they did give good light. The steading ones were a bit heavy on fragile gauze mantles which did not stand too much banging around, but they were good stationary lights. There was a house version on a high stand for sitting rooms and one for setting on a table or sideboard, and of course the outdoor version capable of withstanding the fiercest storm. Most of the men had them, but I think our mother could not stand the everlasting hissing of the Tilley, soft though it was. She preferred Aladdin Mantle Lamps which gave a kindly and very good soft reading light, though capable of sooting up and actually going on fire. Could leave a room needing repapering, at least once to my recollection!!. Or was it a good excuse for some new wallpaper !!
The ubiquitous square red paraffin-oil lanterns would give a slender warm glow where-ever they were in the steading, but their range was limited. Every building had at least one, normally a lot more, hung on high from small pulleys with metal wheels or just a polished groove in a wooden pulley block through which a thin cord ran to raise or lower the lantern, tied securely to a small bracket high on the wall. These pulleys would be as high as possible to give the maximum spread of light, suspended either from the cross beams of the rafters or the couple legs themselves, high enough to be well out of risk of accidental damage. In the byres they were positioned more at the back wall out of the way of pitchforkfulls of straw or hay being thrown into the cattle hecks or racks over their heads.
The feeders byre, with the milking cows in their stalls at the end next the house and the dairy, our first stop on many a morning, had one next the connecting door into the adjacent turnip shed and four spaced along the byre. Most buildings had several along their entire length. A box of matches was obligatory. The thrashing mill had one just above the feeder at the drum to better let him see what he was doing, though his instincts were sharp. They needed to be. I knew one man, Bob Lennie of Nearhouse, who had a hand taken off at the age of 19. Years later his remaining hand was like a vice if you were stupid enough to shake it.
These lanterns were serviced in a wee shed well away from the rest of the buildings, part of the free standing cart sheds. Health and Safety would approve I think. Soft clean cloths to clean and shine the lamp chimneys and the glass sides and a can of paraffin lamp oil and a filler to refill the bowls. The paraffin was usually got from one of the Vans. There were always a few spare lanterns with newly trimmed wicks and ready filled, the total number on the farm must have been great. I think one of the house girls looked after them, neater and tidier than most of the men anyway!!!
In use the lamps had to be watched, a wick could get over exited and the lamp go up in smokey flame. Wicks needed fairly frequent trimming too, had to be level to give good light. .
The Annual Ploughing Match of Vintage Tractors with Andrew Mackay at West Greenland when the old timers get going, both men and machines in some cases, brings back to me the warm evocative smell of paraffin oil, not unlike that of the lanterns. The soft whisper of the old petrol / paraffin tractors is worth listening to in the field as a change from the hammering diesel of modern tractors. The starting handle sticking out the front is an added punctuation mark reminder of Times Gone By.
In Stronsay there were knackey men who fitted a small wind generator to their house gable end and had electric light from a bank of Sulphuric Acid batteries. I think Stroma was much in that category too.
Time moved on, and at Greenland Mains in the Spring of 1951 we finally got a Lister Electric Instamatic Generator. Farm House only. It started automatically when a light was switched on, stopped when the last light was switched off Installed by Aulds of Halkirk, who also wired the House. If any of us came home late, tiptoe in and DO NOT switch on a light. After the Hydro Board installed Mains power about 1953 that Lister Instamatic finally found its way to Stronsay, who got it I cannot recall. I think one is still working in Rackwick in Hoy where they have no Main Line electricity. We were at Rackwick last summer and I heard the old familiar Lister song from one of the nearby houses.
At Lower Dounreay we had a lighting plant with a really sweet diesel engine, put in pre War by the late Jack Davidson, running quietly for an hour or so a day to charge a range of large glass acid batteries to give us 110 volts for lights in the House, though no power points. No supply to the steading where we had what I grew up with, the ubiquitous paraffin lantern. Filled in the oil shed next the massive Campbell Thrashing Mill engine, but do not mix the paraffins. Lamp oil was cleaner.
Only in May 1956 when we moved to Isauld did we get Hydro Power. The Hydro Board said they would not put it into Lower Dounreay as we were scheduled to move out of our first home shortly anyway to make way for the U.K.A.E.A. Isauld House and Farm Steading were wired and we moved in to switches and floods of light everywhere. Power points too. Quite a change.
Friday 24 December 2010
Friday 10 December 2010
No 83. MOVING GRAIN FROM THE MILL..pb 10.11.2010
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
Moving grain from the Thrashing Mill.
There was a time when physical strength was a feature of farming. Far too great a subject to cover, but I might mention a few aspects. The word back breaking had real meaning. At Whitehall my earliest memories are of the everlasting lifting of the days before machines took over. Handling grain was one.
We start with the back of the Mill. There the grain came out of the delivery openings and into 4 bushel hessian or jute sacks, held open by two fixed hooks either side and a flyer. An eye had to be kept on that operation and there were two alternate openings with slides to open and shut and divert and direct grain into an empty sack while the filled one was being removed and replaced. Then the full sack had to be lifted away.
Take a good grip of either corner, lean back, take the weight of the sack on your knees, walk it, or shuffle it, over the floor to the wall and lean the sack against it. Make sure that it was firmly set on the floor. This was a full time job for one man while the thrashing progressed, though he would have time to move the chaff back and take a look at the strumps - (broken bits of straw and chaff) at the other end of the Mill so they did not build up and choke the outlet end.
.
When full the four bushel sacks held 1½ cwt of oats or two cwt of barley, or bere as our Northern barley was still called, though these weights were for selling. For ordinary thrashing and ease of working a bit less would do. .
. A spanker, a two-wheeled two-handled sack trolley still in use in many ways other than farming was always part of the barn fittings, usually several of them. First ones I knew were iron wheeled but later we got rubber wheels. They were used to wheel the bags across the floor but some men found it as easy to do without next the Mill. .
Edge the front plate under the sack, ease back with a steadying hand on top of the sack till balance was achieved, and wheel away to store against the wall. Take care that it was firmly seated on the floor, tip it inwards a little, otherwise it just might fall back and spill grain out of the open top. Did happen, annoying at the time, and hard words exchanged with the culprit.
. Sometimes a weighing machine was standing ready and bags were weighed as thrashing went on. There was just enough time for a man to do so, but only done when grain was to be sold or sent direct to the Mill for meal.
Filled sacks had to be taken up to the loft, often enough just on a man’s back and up the solid wooden stairs. Hard work and keep your balance with the sack balanced on your shoulders, a hand rail beside you for support. Or a very thick rope as a banister.
At Lower Dounreay and again at Isauld there was a simple winch upstairs made of a large motor bike wheel mounted on a round wooden roller axle, a rope on either making a good and effective windlass. Home made usually
It was fitted above the rafters above a loft floor hatch of two opposing lids that opened either way as the sack came up through the floor and then fell back once the sack was high enough, giving a solid floor to let the sack down to be taken away. Similar winches can be still be seen in many an old Meal Mill today, and much used in the past.
The sacks would then be wheeled along one or more lofts on a spanker, tipped onto the floor and the loose grain shovelled into a nicely shaped heap.
There would usually be ample space for storing different varieties, including seed oats at the far end, or sometimes into a special loft.
Progress saw elevators carry the grain upstairs, an endless belt fitted with grain cups. There it could be again bagged off in sacks to be wheeled along the lofts. Saved the labour of carrying full sacks up a stairs.
At Whitehall Davie Davidson of Scarths of Kirkwall fitted a shaking grain trough to take the grain under the rafter backs over the straw barn and through a stone wall into a grain loft that held the bruiser as well. The delivery end was high enough to hold a full thrashing with no need to clear away, saved a man for other work. It lay loose on the floor, take it away at your leisure ready for another day. Or bruise direct from the heap.
Later at Greenland Mains Davidson put in a grain carrier to take the grain along the Long Loft, hatches at salient points allowing grain to be delivered just where needed. An endless belt with wooden cleats dragged the grain along a trough.
At Lower Dounreay after Nov. 1953 when we went there no such aids were available. The bags were filled at the end of the Mill and then had to be laboriously carried away. There were two other lofts to be reached by carrying outside and again up stairs, a stone one across the yard and a wooden one to a small loft above a neep shed, and very handy for seed.
The same lifting of bags through the floor by windlass pertained at Isauld for our first year there in the winter of 1956 but by the next year we were very well fitted out by the UKAEA with a superb new Garvie Mill with all the trimmings, double fanners, wire sizing screen.
Two men could thrash, the sheaf trailer sitting just beside the Mill inside double doors which could be closed on a rough day. Sannie Sinclair on the trailer forking directly to Jamie Wares at the drum. From there the straw went by chain and flight trough carrier down the barn, dropping off by itself at the hatches, fill one and carry on to the next, automatic.
The grain was carried, by an endless belt and bucket elevator, upstairs onto a chain and flight grain trough carrier which ran the length of the loft, with various drop off points. . At the far end it could be dropped into a hopper for bagging and taking into a side loft, seed oats usually, needing an extra man.
There was a two way hatch which allowed grain to be diverted into the bruiser, the overflow still going along the loft, so bruising was done at the same time as we thrashed.
Then the combine came in the early 60s, the Mill sat unused in splendid isolation till a fire in August 1997 consigned it to a Viking’s Funeral.
But we had come a long way from humping heavy bags up the stone stairs.
Moving grain from the Thrashing Mill.
There was a time when physical strength was a feature of farming. Far too great a subject to cover, but I might mention a few aspects. The word back breaking had real meaning. At Whitehall my earliest memories are of the everlasting lifting of the days before machines took over. Handling grain was one.
We start with the back of the Mill. There the grain came out of the delivery openings and into 4 bushel hessian or jute sacks, held open by two fixed hooks either side and a flyer. An eye had to be kept on that operation and there were two alternate openings with slides to open and shut and divert and direct grain into an empty sack while the filled one was being removed and replaced. Then the full sack had to be lifted away.
Take a good grip of either corner, lean back, take the weight of the sack on your knees, walk it, or shuffle it, over the floor to the wall and lean the sack against it. Make sure that it was firmly set on the floor. This was a full time job for one man while the thrashing progressed, though he would have time to move the chaff back and take a look at the strumps - (broken bits of straw and chaff) at the other end of the Mill so they did not build up and choke the outlet end.
.
When full the four bushel sacks held 1½ cwt of oats or two cwt of barley, or bere as our Northern barley was still called, though these weights were for selling. For ordinary thrashing and ease of working a bit less would do. .
. A spanker, a two-wheeled two-handled sack trolley still in use in many ways other than farming was always part of the barn fittings, usually several of them. First ones I knew were iron wheeled but later we got rubber wheels. They were used to wheel the bags across the floor but some men found it as easy to do without next the Mill. .
Edge the front plate under the sack, ease back with a steadying hand on top of the sack till balance was achieved, and wheel away to store against the wall. Take care that it was firmly seated on the floor, tip it inwards a little, otherwise it just might fall back and spill grain out of the open top. Did happen, annoying at the time, and hard words exchanged with the culprit.
. Sometimes a weighing machine was standing ready and bags were weighed as thrashing went on. There was just enough time for a man to do so, but only done when grain was to be sold or sent direct to the Mill for meal.
Filled sacks had to be taken up to the loft, often enough just on a man’s back and up the solid wooden stairs. Hard work and keep your balance with the sack balanced on your shoulders, a hand rail beside you for support. Or a very thick rope as a banister.
At Lower Dounreay and again at Isauld there was a simple winch upstairs made of a large motor bike wheel mounted on a round wooden roller axle, a rope on either making a good and effective windlass. Home made usually
It was fitted above the rafters above a loft floor hatch of two opposing lids that opened either way as the sack came up through the floor and then fell back once the sack was high enough, giving a solid floor to let the sack down to be taken away. Similar winches can be still be seen in many an old Meal Mill today, and much used in the past.
The sacks would then be wheeled along one or more lofts on a spanker, tipped onto the floor and the loose grain shovelled into a nicely shaped heap.
There would usually be ample space for storing different varieties, including seed oats at the far end, or sometimes into a special loft.
Progress saw elevators carry the grain upstairs, an endless belt fitted with grain cups. There it could be again bagged off in sacks to be wheeled along the lofts. Saved the labour of carrying full sacks up a stairs.
At Whitehall Davie Davidson of Scarths of Kirkwall fitted a shaking grain trough to take the grain under the rafter backs over the straw barn and through a stone wall into a grain loft that held the bruiser as well. The delivery end was high enough to hold a full thrashing with no need to clear away, saved a man for other work. It lay loose on the floor, take it away at your leisure ready for another day. Or bruise direct from the heap.
Later at Greenland Mains Davidson put in a grain carrier to take the grain along the Long Loft, hatches at salient points allowing grain to be delivered just where needed. An endless belt with wooden cleats dragged the grain along a trough.
At Lower Dounreay after Nov. 1953 when we went there no such aids were available. The bags were filled at the end of the Mill and then had to be laboriously carried away. There were two other lofts to be reached by carrying outside and again up stairs, a stone one across the yard and a wooden one to a small loft above a neep shed, and very handy for seed.
The same lifting of bags through the floor by windlass pertained at Isauld for our first year there in the winter of 1956 but by the next year we were very well fitted out by the UKAEA with a superb new Garvie Mill with all the trimmings, double fanners, wire sizing screen.
Two men could thrash, the sheaf trailer sitting just beside the Mill inside double doors which could be closed on a rough day. Sannie Sinclair on the trailer forking directly to Jamie Wares at the drum. From there the straw went by chain and flight trough carrier down the barn, dropping off by itself at the hatches, fill one and carry on to the next, automatic.
The grain was carried, by an endless belt and bucket elevator, upstairs onto a chain and flight grain trough carrier which ran the length of the loft, with various drop off points. . At the far end it could be dropped into a hopper for bagging and taking into a side loft, seed oats usually, needing an extra man.
There was a two way hatch which allowed grain to be diverted into the bruiser, the overflow still going along the loft, so bruising was done at the same time as we thrashed.
Then the combine came in the early 60s, the Mill sat unused in splendid isolation till a fire in August 1997 consigned it to a Viking’s Funeral.
But we had come a long way from humping heavy bags up the stone stairs.
Friday 26 November 2010
No 38. ALL HANDS. pb 26.11.2010
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 38. ALL HANDS.
I have a double role at present as I find myself swinging between the Transcription of the Diaries of Wm Tait from 1880 to 1941 and my own “Rain on my Window” boyhood memories. Mine were mostly those of a small boy growing up just pre 1939 war. I write of many things but cannot quantify them from my own memory. . So carting ware – seaweed - from the Beach to use as fertiliser on the land I knew about, but just how much ware and just how many days per year the men worked at it I did not. Wm Tait’s Diaries opened Pandoras’s Box of just how much time and effort went into the farm work of 100 years ago.
It will take more than a little time to digest these Diaries which are now mostly available in printed form in Castlehill Heritage Centre, though final editing still has some time to go. I cannot help but refer to some aspect or other as I work through them, crossing as they do into my own early times. It is if the ghosts of the past have come alive as I read of this or that person whom I knew, or heard tell off, including my own grand father and my father, many others.
So very many things in the Diaries, but suffice today 26th Nov. 2010 [ ???] to mention the incredible number of people on yesterday’s farms. At the Bu of Rousam in 1996 in my grandfather’s day I will let the Diary of Wm Tait speak for itself.
SEPT 1896 At the Bu of Rousam, Stronsay. With David Pottinger, tenant. (brother –in-law.)
Sept 24 thur Cutting in Brecks all day, 6 scythes - showery day – 10½ hours.
Sept 25 frid Very rainey day – making simmins all day - evening dry
Sept 26 sat Cutting oats in Brecks & Myers - 6 scythes 19 hands - evening showery - 10 hours
Sept 27 sun Blank (Church Service )
Sept 28 mon Finished Myers, 6 scythes, 18 hands.
Sept 29 tues 6 scythes opening out Furrowend Field - 2 machines (horse drawn reapers) 2 yokes in Cutkelday field, - cut a bit in Doonatoon in evening.
Sept 30 wed 2 machines in Hagar field all day - fine day - 10 hours
Octr 01 thur 2 machines in Hagar field, finished 4 o'clock – - cut evening in Doonatoon – fine day – 10½ hours
And to finish with
Octr 27 tues Carting from Geogar. Finished leading today - 43 stacks - 3½ stacks thrashed
Octr 28 wed Finished potatoes today - thatching stacks - evening rainy - making simmins, dressing oats
Octr 29 thur Finished harvest today - 6 weeks - fine day, hands all intertained to tea & paid
So not one more day’s pay than need be.
Harvest hands at the Bu’. all 19 of them. Some were regular farm hands, most were taken on for the harvest. Some were local, some from elsewhere. Many of the men’s wives put in some hours, their time listed in the Wages Book of the Bu’ which we still have.
“ All hands aloft” was the old sea-faring call, often of desperation in a rising gale as sails threatened to blow to bits. Or actually did. We are not that far from the sailing ship era, and even at Lower Dounreay after we went there in Nov.1953 we saw a fair number of white-sailed four-masters pass along the Horizon, as beautiful as a passing cloud on a sunny day. But the Hands I write about were at the Bu.
Extra Hands came from many places, some outwith Stronsay, there to take up a harvest as casuals. Locals were available with the herring fishing moving on South to Wick, a tiny fishing Village in Caithness!!!. Women helped to take up many a harvest, well depicted in old paintings. A young child would get a little pay, maybe twisting the straw bands for the lifters or gathering forward the loose newly scythed stalks ready for tying into a sheaf. Such work is totally banned today but I do not think it did any of them any harm to get stuck in early to the Real World.
At The Bu’ of Rousam the Dairy tells of 6 scythes,19 hands. A team was one man with a scythe, two lifters gathering behind him and hand tying the sheaves with a quickly twisted band of straw. A heavy crop sometimes demanded just get the cut crop tied, leave the stooking till another day. It was mighty hard work, bent double all day, not many even of the fittest among us could do it now unless a sheep shearer!! .
A hard man would cut one acre a day, the steady sweep and sibilant hiss of the scythe laying the crop to his left to be then gathered. He cut from right to left in about six feet widths or bouts, maybe a little less. His feet shuffled forward with each steady stroke. They could and did go on all day, their only break being a minute now and again to stretch the back and sweep the long round scythe stone with easy practiced alternate strokes along the scythe blade to keep the edge. The stone was carried either in his hip pocket or more usually in the ruler pocket down the right leg of his dungaree overalls. I can close my eyes and still hear that thin grating sound, never to be forgotten. Do not let your edge go, a blunt scythe took a lot of getting sharp again.
Folk lore has it that the Gaelic speaking Highlanders came into Caithness from the West, Strathnaver in particular. They traditionally started at Sandside, sleeping on straw in the barn or on a bed of empty sacks in the loft, fed at the Big House. Perhaps in a Bothy if one was available.
On to Isauld, then Lower and Upper Dounreay, and so on across the County till they finished the harvest in the later area around Wick and the East of the County. Took about a month to get there. Reay was noted as being that much earlier a harvest, it generally still is!!
Or with the herring fishing finished by harvest time people were available.
The numbers of “Hands” appears frequently in the Diaries, not just at harvest time but for other farm tasks. The number of “Hoes” was often mentioned when singling turnips, extra hands much needed to get the work done before weeds swamped the young plants.
And singling turnips was the most entertaining, 19 hoes in a long line with much humour and banter for a tedious task.
No 38. ALL HANDS.
I have a double role at present as I find myself swinging between the Transcription of the Diaries of Wm Tait from 1880 to 1941 and my own “Rain on my Window” boyhood memories. Mine were mostly those of a small boy growing up just pre 1939 war. I write of many things but cannot quantify them from my own memory. . So carting ware – seaweed - from the Beach to use as fertiliser on the land I knew about, but just how much ware and just how many days per year the men worked at it I did not. Wm Tait’s Diaries opened Pandoras’s Box of just how much time and effort went into the farm work of 100 years ago.
It will take more than a little time to digest these Diaries which are now mostly available in printed form in Castlehill Heritage Centre, though final editing still has some time to go. I cannot help but refer to some aspect or other as I work through them, crossing as they do into my own early times. It is if the ghosts of the past have come alive as I read of this or that person whom I knew, or heard tell off, including my own grand father and my father, many others.
So very many things in the Diaries, but suffice today 26th Nov. 2010 [ ???] to mention the incredible number of people on yesterday’s farms. At the Bu of Rousam in 1996 in my grandfather’s day I will let the Diary of Wm Tait speak for itself.
SEPT 1896 At the Bu of Rousam, Stronsay. With David Pottinger, tenant. (brother –in-law.)
Sept 24 thur Cutting in Brecks all day, 6 scythes - showery day – 10½ hours.
Sept 25 frid Very rainey day – making simmins all day - evening dry
Sept 26 sat Cutting oats in Brecks & Myers - 6 scythes 19 hands - evening showery - 10 hours
Sept 27 sun Blank (Church Service )
Sept 28 mon Finished Myers, 6 scythes, 18 hands.
Sept 29 tues 6 scythes opening out Furrowend Field - 2 machines (horse drawn reapers) 2 yokes in Cutkelday field, - cut a bit in Doonatoon in evening.
Sept 30 wed 2 machines in Hagar field all day - fine day - 10 hours
Octr 01 thur 2 machines in Hagar field, finished 4 o'clock – - cut evening in Doonatoon – fine day – 10½ hours
And to finish with
Octr 27 tues Carting from Geogar. Finished leading today - 43 stacks - 3½ stacks thrashed
Octr 28 wed Finished potatoes today - thatching stacks - evening rainy - making simmins, dressing oats
Octr 29 thur Finished harvest today - 6 weeks - fine day, hands all intertained to tea & paid
So not one more day’s pay than need be.
Harvest hands at the Bu’. all 19 of them. Some were regular farm hands, most were taken on for the harvest. Some were local, some from elsewhere. Many of the men’s wives put in some hours, their time listed in the Wages Book of the Bu’ which we still have.
“ All hands aloft” was the old sea-faring call, often of desperation in a rising gale as sails threatened to blow to bits. Or actually did. We are not that far from the sailing ship era, and even at Lower Dounreay after we went there in Nov.1953 we saw a fair number of white-sailed four-masters pass along the Horizon, as beautiful as a passing cloud on a sunny day. But the Hands I write about were at the Bu.
Extra Hands came from many places, some outwith Stronsay, there to take up a harvest as casuals. Locals were available with the herring fishing moving on South to Wick, a tiny fishing Village in Caithness!!!. Women helped to take up many a harvest, well depicted in old paintings. A young child would get a little pay, maybe twisting the straw bands for the lifters or gathering forward the loose newly scythed stalks ready for tying into a sheaf. Such work is totally banned today but I do not think it did any of them any harm to get stuck in early to the Real World.
At The Bu’ of Rousam the Dairy tells of 6 scythes,19 hands. A team was one man with a scythe, two lifters gathering behind him and hand tying the sheaves with a quickly twisted band of straw. A heavy crop sometimes demanded just get the cut crop tied, leave the stooking till another day. It was mighty hard work, bent double all day, not many even of the fittest among us could do it now unless a sheep shearer!! .
A hard man would cut one acre a day, the steady sweep and sibilant hiss of the scythe laying the crop to his left to be then gathered. He cut from right to left in about six feet widths or bouts, maybe a little less. His feet shuffled forward with each steady stroke. They could and did go on all day, their only break being a minute now and again to stretch the back and sweep the long round scythe stone with easy practiced alternate strokes along the scythe blade to keep the edge. The stone was carried either in his hip pocket or more usually in the ruler pocket down the right leg of his dungaree overalls. I can close my eyes and still hear that thin grating sound, never to be forgotten. Do not let your edge go, a blunt scythe took a lot of getting sharp again.
Folk lore has it that the Gaelic speaking Highlanders came into Caithness from the West, Strathnaver in particular. They traditionally started at Sandside, sleeping on straw in the barn or on a bed of empty sacks in the loft, fed at the Big House. Perhaps in a Bothy if one was available.
On to Isauld, then Lower and Upper Dounreay, and so on across the County till they finished the harvest in the later area around Wick and the East of the County. Took about a month to get there. Reay was noted as being that much earlier a harvest, it generally still is!!
Or with the herring fishing finished by harvest time people were available.
The numbers of “Hands” appears frequently in the Diaries, not just at harvest time but for other farm tasks. The number of “Hoes” was often mentioned when singling turnips, extra hands much needed to get the work done before weeds swamped the young plants.
And singling turnips was the most entertaining, 19 hoes in a long line with much humour and banter for a tedious task.
Friday 12 November 2010
No 67. COUNTRY VANS . pb 2.10.2010
COUNTRY VANS, DOOR TO DOOR SERVICE.
Among so very many changes to Country Life in my time nothing has more changed than Country Vans. We lived with them. So many in Stronsay.
Jim Maxwell o’ Daisybank had one, Norman Burr in the Village had one, Swanneys had one. Maxwell o’ Dale had one, though he could have been the successor to Daisybank. Had a small shop there too.
Often the Van was used as a delivery service, perhaps a roll of linoleum tied on the side or on the roof. Perhaps a plank or two of wood. Or even just to take a message or something along the road if they were passing that way.
The first horse drawn Van I dimly remember was like an old long cart, perhaps it had been one on its time. Some had a cranked axle which allowed the body of the Cart/Van to be that much lower for convenience. Two small wheels at the front with the horse shafts on a turn-table, two large wheels at the back.
The old Conestoga Wagon of the Prairies, 1750 onwards, had a provenance in the old Country, see Constables Haywain, but were hugely improved and totally re-designed to withstand the rigours of trekking West though Indian Country, through the Rockies and on to California. Some of them! .
Vans often stopped at a road end rather than going down a rough track.
Some houses were a bit down a farm road, some had gates to open and shut, some were just barely walkable. Customers came the short distance with an egg basket over their arm, still. wearing their apron. No need to dress up for shopping.!! Van times were pretty accurate, and sometimes one would see two women patiently waiting at a road end and having a blether while doing so. Mustn’t miss the van.
There were plenty Vans in our early days in Caithness too. Jimmy Smith’s of the Barrock Shop was memorable among others. At least two of them, I think three at his best. Jack Shearer and Wm Mackay & Sons in Thurso, both butchers The Castletown butcher, I think it was run by the Co-op Society for a while. Mackenzie’s fish van. Davie Adamson’s van from Adamsons in Castletown. Christy Mackay, butcher in Keiss. And these were just the ones I saw around Greenland Mains where I spent my early days in Caithness before going to Lower Dounreay in Nov 1953. There were plenty in other parts of Caithness. And there are still a few keeping up the old tradition.
I have an old unprintable photo of a horse drawn Long Cart van with zinc pails and tin or enamel basins or kettles or other utensils hanging on the outside, some held in old herring nets. All sorts of other magical things. The patient horse stands slip-hipped between the shafts. There was no such thing as springs to soften the constant shoogling on the rough farm toads that they had to use, potholes and all. So whatever was on the shelves was retained by quite high upstands of wood at the edges.
The main road in Stronsay, practically the only road, had its very adequate share of potholes too. It was a water-bound road to my first memory and tar sealed roads did not come to Stronsay until I was at the North School, just prior to the 1939 War by a year or so.
.
There were also little shops all round the Island. Peace o’ Holin had one. The Grind in Rousam had one. Boondatoon had a shop. So too in Caithness, no superstores at all Many a house had an end room or a lean to outside shed devoted to a shop or a small Post Office. I can think of one still operating at Buldoo next door to Dounreay.
But the “Van” was an adventure for us. We just might get a small coin to spend, not too much to spoil us I may say!! Often earned by polishing boots and shoes or feeding the hens and getting the eggs home. Nothing for nothing in those days, we never heard of such a thing as pocket money though a visiting Uncle might help us out a bit!! I can still hear the admonition of “Mind on, dinna spoil the bairns !! “ Made me pretty tight I guess !!!
.I just remember the horse drawn van but very dimly. Most were motorised by my day and took many shapes and adaptions. Some were home made at first until vans appeared with custom-built fitted shelves and ledges outside for hanging odourous paraffin lamp oil and sticky treacle and salt cod and all the other runny or smelly things.
Inside the cramped space with the narrowest of central corridors were shelves on either side stacked miraculously with packets of this or tins of that. You name it, they had it. The aroma was delightful, an essence of tropical spices and salt cod and red Lifeboy soap. The old adage of sugar and spice and all things nice springs to mind.
Liptons Tea. Lyles Golden Syrup. Beechams Pills. Camp Coffee Essence or small tins of Bantam Coffee Granules which I liked better. A tiny spoonful went a long way. Cremola Foam for fizzy drinks. Lemonade in real glass bottles with heavy screw tops. Sometimes a snap spring top, hard to open at times. I think the lemonade was made in Kirkwall.
Castor Oil. Camphor Moth Balls. Fags. Capstan in two strengths with a sturdy sailor on the packet. Woodbines in green packs. Gold Flake on gold packs. Cigarette cards to collect from the men, to be assiduously traded at school. Collections to be completed. One card for two if lucky enough to corner the market. Some pretty hard bargainers too. Did well in later life!!! Fag card training at its best, and I really mean that !!
A coiled rolled length of sweet smelling totally black Bogie Roll Pipe Tobacco, just cut off a length. So much a foot, roughly measured. !! Balls of white cotton string. Or so much for a roughly measured fathom.(6 feet) Clothes pegs.
A shelf with new baked bread from Swanneys or from Jock Stout in the Village, great aroma. Currant cookies or plain. Sugared buns. Fancies. Half loaves, don’t see them now. Tins of sweet biscuits suitable for visitors, usually half sized.
A big egg box lay on the floor next the door ready for the few dozen eggs with which many a housewife paid for her groceries. Or a pound or two of home made butter if the cow was milking well. Or a farm made cheese.
Equally these delicacies or necessaries were for sale as the van progressed to other houses without such, certainly a door to door service.
Often the Van was used as a delivery service, perhaps a roll of linoleum tied on the side or on the roof. Perhaps a plank or two of wood. Or even just to take a message or something along the road if they were passing that way.
The first horse drawn Van I dimly remember was like an old long cart, perhaps it had been one on its time. Some had a cranked axle which allowed the body of the Cart/Van to be that much lower for convenience. Two small wheels at the front with the shafts on a turn-table, two large wheels at the back.
The old Conestoga Wagon of the Prairies, 1750 onwards, had a provenance in the old Country, like Constables Hay Wain paintings, but were hugely improved and totally re-designed to withstand the rigours of trekking West though Indian Country, through the Rockies and on to California. Some of them! .
The Van did not come every day, so there was such a thing as Van Day, even if they were different Vans. In Stronsay with horse drawn vans, any one van could only do perhaps the North End one day, Rousam one day, the South End one day. So they varied even when motorised. .
One lasting memory. No man could slip off from work to go to the Van. So Wullie Peace would give us a shilling to catch the Van for his packet of twenty Gold Flake. In return we would perhaps get a puff or two !!!. Or a fag end !!!. .
.
.
Among so very many changes to Country Life in my time nothing has more changed than Country Vans. We lived with them. So many in Stronsay.
Jim Maxwell o’ Daisybank had one, Norman Burr in the Village had one, Swanneys had one. Maxwell o’ Dale had one, though he could have been the successor to Daisybank. Had a small shop there too.
Often the Van was used as a delivery service, perhaps a roll of linoleum tied on the side or on the roof. Perhaps a plank or two of wood. Or even just to take a message or something along the road if they were passing that way.
The first horse drawn Van I dimly remember was like an old long cart, perhaps it had been one on its time. Some had a cranked axle which allowed the body of the Cart/Van to be that much lower for convenience. Two small wheels at the front with the horse shafts on a turn-table, two large wheels at the back.
The old Conestoga Wagon of the Prairies, 1750 onwards, had a provenance in the old Country, see Constables Haywain, but were hugely improved and totally re-designed to withstand the rigours of trekking West though Indian Country, through the Rockies and on to California. Some of them! .
Vans often stopped at a road end rather than going down a rough track.
Some houses were a bit down a farm road, some had gates to open and shut, some were just barely walkable. Customers came the short distance with an egg basket over their arm, still. wearing their apron. No need to dress up for shopping.!! Van times were pretty accurate, and sometimes one would see two women patiently waiting at a road end and having a blether while doing so. Mustn’t miss the van.
There were plenty Vans in our early days in Caithness too. Jimmy Smith’s of the Barrock Shop was memorable among others. At least two of them, I think three at his best. Jack Shearer and Wm Mackay & Sons in Thurso, both butchers The Castletown butcher, I think it was run by the Co-op Society for a while. Mackenzie’s fish van. Davie Adamson’s van from Adamsons in Castletown. Christy Mackay, butcher in Keiss. And these were just the ones I saw around Greenland Mains where I spent my early days in Caithness before going to Lower Dounreay in Nov 1953. There were plenty in other parts of Caithness. And there are still a few keeping up the old tradition.
I have an old unprintable photo of a horse drawn Long Cart van with zinc pails and tin or enamel basins or kettles or other utensils hanging on the outside, some held in old herring nets. All sorts of other magical things. The patient horse stands slip-hipped between the shafts. There was no such thing as springs to soften the constant shoogling on the rough farm toads that they had to use, potholes and all. So whatever was on the shelves was retained by quite high upstands of wood at the edges.
The main road in Stronsay, practically the only road, had its very adequate share of potholes too. It was a water-bound road to my first memory and tar sealed roads did not come to Stronsay until I was at the North School, just prior to the 1939 War by a year or so.
.
There were also little shops all round the Island. Peace o’ Holin had one. The Grind in Rousam had one. Boondatoon had a shop. So too in Caithness, no superstores at all Many a house had an end room or a lean to outside shed devoted to a shop or a small Post Office. I can think of one still operating at Buldoo next door to Dounreay.
But the “Van” was an adventure for us. We just might get a small coin to spend, not too much to spoil us I may say!! Often earned by polishing boots and shoes or feeding the hens and getting the eggs home. Nothing for nothing in those days, we never heard of such a thing as pocket money though a visiting Uncle might help us out a bit!! I can still hear the admonition of “Mind on, dinna spoil the bairns !! “ Made me pretty tight I guess !!!
.I just remember the horse drawn van but very dimly. Most were motorised by my day and took many shapes and adaptions. Some were home made at first until vans appeared with custom-built fitted shelves and ledges outside for hanging odourous paraffin lamp oil and sticky treacle and salt cod and all the other runny or smelly things.
Inside the cramped space with the narrowest of central corridors were shelves on either side stacked miraculously with packets of this or tins of that. You name it, they had it. The aroma was delightful, an essence of tropical spices and salt cod and red Lifeboy soap. The old adage of sugar and spice and all things nice springs to mind.
Liptons Tea. Lyles Golden Syrup. Beechams Pills. Camp Coffee Essence or small tins of Bantam Coffee Granules which I liked better. A tiny spoonful went a long way. Cremola Foam for fizzy drinks. Lemonade in real glass bottles with heavy screw tops. Sometimes a snap spring top, hard to open at times. I think the lemonade was made in Kirkwall.
Castor Oil. Camphor Moth Balls. Fags. Capstan in two strengths with a sturdy sailor on the packet. Woodbines in green packs. Gold Flake on gold packs. Cigarette cards to collect from the men, to be assiduously traded at school. Collections to be completed. One card for two if lucky enough to corner the market. Some pretty hard bargainers too. Did well in later life!!! Fag card training at its best, and I really mean that !!
A coiled rolled length of sweet smelling totally black Bogie Roll Pipe Tobacco, just cut off a length. So much a foot, roughly measured. !! Balls of white cotton string. Or so much for a roughly measured fathom.(6 feet) Clothes pegs.
A shelf with new baked bread from Swanneys or from Jock Stout in the Village, great aroma. Currant cookies or plain. Sugared buns. Fancies. Half loaves, don’t see them now. Tins of sweet biscuits suitable for visitors, usually half sized.
A big egg box lay on the floor next the door ready for the few dozen eggs with which many a housewife paid for her groceries. Or a pound or two of home made butter if the cow was milking well. Or a farm made cheese.
Equally these delicacies or necessaries were for sale as the van progressed to other houses without such, certainly a door to door service.
Often the Van was used as a delivery service, perhaps a roll of linoleum tied on the side or on the roof. Perhaps a plank or two of wood. Or even just to take a message or something along the road if they were passing that way.
The first horse drawn Van I dimly remember was like an old long cart, perhaps it had been one on its time. Some had a cranked axle which allowed the body of the Cart/Van to be that much lower for convenience. Two small wheels at the front with the shafts on a turn-table, two large wheels at the back.
The old Conestoga Wagon of the Prairies, 1750 onwards, had a provenance in the old Country, like Constables Hay Wain paintings, but were hugely improved and totally re-designed to withstand the rigours of trekking West though Indian Country, through the Rockies and on to California. Some of them! .
The Van did not come every day, so there was such a thing as Van Day, even if they were different Vans. In Stronsay with horse drawn vans, any one van could only do perhaps the North End one day, Rousam one day, the South End one day. So they varied even when motorised. .
One lasting memory. No man could slip off from work to go to the Van. So Wullie Peace would give us a shilling to catch the Van for his packet of twenty Gold Flake. In return we would perhaps get a puff or two !!!. Or a fag end !!!. .
.
.
Saturday 6 November 2010
Friday 5 November 2010
Sunday 31 October 2010
Friday 29 October 2010
No 85 GANSEYS pb 29.10.2010
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 85. GANSEYS
It was while visiting my sister in August that my jumper became a topic of conversation. Voss in Norway is her long time home.It is a great little Norwegian town and not a lot changed from the last time I was there over 16 years ago. Expensive though, my pounds were not worth a lot!!
In the Park Hotel of Voss I held the lift door open for an elderly Norwegian gentleman using two sticks to help his mobility after a dreadful car accident some years ago badly smashed both his legs.
I was wearing my favourite Viking knitted jersey, a gift from my Norwegian brother-in-law 40 years ago and nearly as good as new !! As I spoke English to him, he tapped my jersey and said “That is a good ganser. You cannot get them as good as that now.”
The name “ganser” hit me. At School in Stronsay we always called our jerseys “ganseys”. The fisherman wore them, dark blue and a heavy knit. The farm men wore them when dressed but not for work, much too warm on land. The patterns around them were many and varied. I believe every small fishing village had its own pattern. A sad aspect of that was that when a fisherman lost his life at sea, as all too many of them did, he could, if found after long immersion in the ocean, be identified by his gansey if by no other means. Even to a particular or peculiar family pattern.
My new found friend told me at breakfast next morning when I joined his table that the small opening at the neck with three frog fastenings was a “Ganser”, but one that opened all the way down, our Cardigan, was a “troice”, pronounced “troy-yah”. Now there’s a thing.
For long there are those who held that the name “Gansey” “ comes from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. I never did believe that, much too trite.
Guernsey a little Island some 6 miles by 4 miles lying 45 miles off-shore from France, much of it rocky. . Nonetheless, being of Viking Ancestry via Normandy, there is no reason why they should not use the word Ganser there too. A few days later on the open sea at high speed in a beautifully fitted out and extremely fast modern Catamaran en route Bergen to Haugesund to visit with our niece Susan and her family, I was similarly accosted. This time it was a young Icelander and his wife, both now working in England. They too took note of my “Ganser”, and the Icelanders also had the “troIce”. .
So right now when there is a “Gansey” project running and knitting experts are appearing from everywhere, dare I suggest the word has more of a Viking origin that a small almost French Island lying just off-shore to the South of the Cherbourg Peninsula.
The knitware of Norway is extremely good, and the whole of the Norwegian North Sea periphery has a great tradition of knitting the wool of the humble sheep into very special warm and breathable garments. Shetland, Fair lsle, Icelandic knitting, to mention but a few, have the greatest traditions of knitting going back several thousand years, as old burials in preserving peat mosses still show us.
In this age of expensive Central Heating and keeping old folks warm and Winter Heating Allowances a return to old-fashioned woollen garments just might save the Nation !!.
In Stronsay in my boyhood days we had on Whitehall Farm Mrs Peace, wife of Jock o’ Sound, our cattleman. We spent many a day in her house watching the magic as she turned raw wool from a couple of fleeces into the woollen thread needed for knitting. She would get a black fleece and a couple of white ones, blend the resulting threads of white and black into a speckled two-ply or even a three ply woollen thread. Her spinning wheel, older than she was, turned and whirred at a blurry and amazing pace under her practiced fingers, the raw wool vanishing under her hands onto the spindles of wool. By choosing whatever amount and thickness she wanted, a variety of colours and textures appeared.
On a rare occasion she dyed some wool. Not by the magic of natural old fashioned plants and oddities, but by Reckitts ready made dyes bought from the Van. She would collect a bucket of cow piss ( urine ?? ), catch as catch can !!!, to steep the newly dyed wool to fix the colours. In its own right an old fashioned practice. I do not remember the contents of the universal Chamber pot being used, but they used to be.
A rarity was for her to get a fleece of Shetland or North Ronaldshay or even a Holmey as the small island sheep were called that lived all year round on seaweed and fresh air on the many tiny Holms dotted around Orkney. That wool was special, used only for some very fine garment or shawl as a present for some christening or wedding or other. Fine as gossamer, soft as a baby’s cheek, warm as a beam of sunshine on a cold winter’s day.
More functional were her thick rubber boot stockings and the neck hugging ganseys she made. Using the mixed pepper and salt two-ply or three-ply wool, her fast fingers beat our eyes.
We tried to spin some wool under her direction, but either impatience or thick fingers undid us. Mind you, our fingers were nothing like as thick as her old work-worn ones, just that they felt so. When we did get a bit of wool to keep running for a bit we were over the moon.
After 1939 there was a War on and knitting became an Island passion for young and old as they turned out socks and balaclavas for the Forces.
Khaki and Airforce Blue and Navy Blue already spun and dyed wool was liberally distributed to anyone who could return a reasonable amount of finished articles. I think the Central School was the collecting point for all that activity but I would not stick too closely to that in case I get corrected. There were even classes to teach knitting to any who were willing. At Primary North School we were taught knitting , but few boys carried it any further !!! .
Foto published. A sketch of a shepherd knitting while watching his flock. Knitting is a skill that goes back thousands of years and was traditionally carried out by men as well as women.
No 85. GANSEYS
It was while visiting my sister in August that my jumper became a topic of conversation. Voss in Norway is her long time home.It is a great little Norwegian town and not a lot changed from the last time I was there over 16 years ago. Expensive though, my pounds were not worth a lot!!
In the Park Hotel of Voss I held the lift door open for an elderly Norwegian gentleman using two sticks to help his mobility after a dreadful car accident some years ago badly smashed both his legs.
I was wearing my favourite Viking knitted jersey, a gift from my Norwegian brother-in-law 40 years ago and nearly as good as new !! As I spoke English to him, he tapped my jersey and said “That is a good ganser. You cannot get them as good as that now.”
The name “ganser” hit me. At School in Stronsay we always called our jerseys “ganseys”. The fisherman wore them, dark blue and a heavy knit. The farm men wore them when dressed but not for work, much too warm on land. The patterns around them were many and varied. I believe every small fishing village had its own pattern. A sad aspect of that was that when a fisherman lost his life at sea, as all too many of them did, he could, if found after long immersion in the ocean, be identified by his gansey if by no other means. Even to a particular or peculiar family pattern.
My new found friend told me at breakfast next morning when I joined his table that the small opening at the neck with three frog fastenings was a “Ganser”, but one that opened all the way down, our Cardigan, was a “troice”, pronounced “troy-yah”. Now there’s a thing.
For long there are those who held that the name “Gansey” “ comes from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. I never did believe that, much too trite.
Guernsey a little Island some 6 miles by 4 miles lying 45 miles off-shore from France, much of it rocky. . Nonetheless, being of Viking Ancestry via Normandy, there is no reason why they should not use the word Ganser there too. A few days later on the open sea at high speed in a beautifully fitted out and extremely fast modern Catamaran en route Bergen to Haugesund to visit with our niece Susan and her family, I was similarly accosted. This time it was a young Icelander and his wife, both now working in England. They too took note of my “Ganser”, and the Icelanders also had the “troIce”. .
So right now when there is a “Gansey” project running and knitting experts are appearing from everywhere, dare I suggest the word has more of a Viking origin that a small almost French Island lying just off-shore to the South of the Cherbourg Peninsula.
The knitware of Norway is extremely good, and the whole of the Norwegian North Sea periphery has a great tradition of knitting the wool of the humble sheep into very special warm and breathable garments. Shetland, Fair lsle, Icelandic knitting, to mention but a few, have the greatest traditions of knitting going back several thousand years, as old burials in preserving peat mosses still show us.
In this age of expensive Central Heating and keeping old folks warm and Winter Heating Allowances a return to old-fashioned woollen garments just might save the Nation !!.
In Stronsay in my boyhood days we had on Whitehall Farm Mrs Peace, wife of Jock o’ Sound, our cattleman. We spent many a day in her house watching the magic as she turned raw wool from a couple of fleeces into the woollen thread needed for knitting. She would get a black fleece and a couple of white ones, blend the resulting threads of white and black into a speckled two-ply or even a three ply woollen thread. Her spinning wheel, older than she was, turned and whirred at a blurry and amazing pace under her practiced fingers, the raw wool vanishing under her hands onto the spindles of wool. By choosing whatever amount and thickness she wanted, a variety of colours and textures appeared.
On a rare occasion she dyed some wool. Not by the magic of natural old fashioned plants and oddities, but by Reckitts ready made dyes bought from the Van. She would collect a bucket of cow piss ( urine ?? ), catch as catch can !!!, to steep the newly dyed wool to fix the colours. In its own right an old fashioned practice. I do not remember the contents of the universal Chamber pot being used, but they used to be.
A rarity was for her to get a fleece of Shetland or North Ronaldshay or even a Holmey as the small island sheep were called that lived all year round on seaweed and fresh air on the many tiny Holms dotted around Orkney. That wool was special, used only for some very fine garment or shawl as a present for some christening or wedding or other. Fine as gossamer, soft as a baby’s cheek, warm as a beam of sunshine on a cold winter’s day.
More functional were her thick rubber boot stockings and the neck hugging ganseys she made. Using the mixed pepper and salt two-ply or three-ply wool, her fast fingers beat our eyes.
We tried to spin some wool under her direction, but either impatience or thick fingers undid us. Mind you, our fingers were nothing like as thick as her old work-worn ones, just that they felt so. When we did get a bit of wool to keep running for a bit we were over the moon.
After 1939 there was a War on and knitting became an Island passion for young and old as they turned out socks and balaclavas for the Forces.
Khaki and Airforce Blue and Navy Blue already spun and dyed wool was liberally distributed to anyone who could return a reasonable amount of finished articles. I think the Central School was the collecting point for all that activity but I would not stick too closely to that in case I get corrected. There were even classes to teach knitting to any who were willing. At Primary North School we were taught knitting , but few boys carried it any further !!! .
Foto published. A sketch of a shepherd knitting while watching his flock. Knitting is a skill that goes back thousands of years and was traditionally carried out by men as well as women.
Saturday 16 October 2010
No 86 Making Simmins. pb. 15th Octr 2010
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Friday 1 October 2010
NO 84. DIPPING THE SHEEP. 01.10.2010
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 84 DIPPING SHEEP. pb. 1.10.2010
Today we have wonderful automated systems for dipping sheep, or jet spraying them, just drive them through and job done. But my first memories of dipping sheep were not so.
At Whitehall there was a sheep dipper which passed through, or rather under, the byre wall. The sheep pen was outside the wall, and the poor ewes, massively heavy Half Bred ewes from Eday, were one by one caught and manhandled by two men backside first into the dipper from outside. This manhandling system on Dipping Day will be recognised by many older shepherds, and their often unwilling helpers.
Inside the byre the dipping man stood in a pit at the side of the dipper awash with dip but wearing rubber boots against the flood, and over them oilskin waterproof leggings. All encased in an oilskin worn back to front and buttoned down the back by someone else. At least it gave an almost waterproof front. Some wore an apron as well. Many a time it was an old heavy hessian bag to cover the more vital spots, held round his waist with binder twine and again tied behind him. It was a real Turkish Bath, a very proper sweat box in the humidity indoors. The whole ensemble was completed with an oilskin sou’waster, or just a bonnet or “kep” worn back to front.
There was a pit on either side of the dipper which catered for a left or a right handed man, the floor of the pit being at the same level as the bottom of the dipper. The dipper itself was made of slabs of heavy sawn Caithness Flagstone, tightly fitted, often with lead strip sandwiched between the flags to make it all waterproof. Water tanks of similar construction were in common use, there are still some around in many gardens even if not now being used to environmentally collect rainwater off the roof. Most outdoor laundries – or washhouses - had similar, there is still one at Isauld and one at Greenland Mains. These wonderfully constructed tanks were common around most farm steadings as well.
At Whitehall, and also still at Greenland Mains, the dipper was indoors so a real muggy atmosphere soon prevailed, memorably heavy and humid, with Carbolic and other tarry aromas and all the smelly things Dip Manufacturers though might work against the many pests sheep were prone to. The sheep stood in the byre for a time to let the dip drip before going outdoors again.
The man in the pit had to reach across in front of each ewe while it was still being held backwards by his helpers, grasp the far away front leg before they let go and turn the sheep over backwards in the dip. Not too heavy a task if the tank was reasonably full but when the last of the dip was reached and the last of the ewes came through it could be a heavy heave over. Still holding the far off leg right handed, left hand on the sheep’s brisket, he plunged the sheep twice under while still on its back.
Letting go of the leg, the ewe by a quick twist usually righted itself, though an occasional one might need a little help. The head had to go under twice when the sheep was on it’s back, if you did not catch the ewe properly it could be pretty heavy work to get the head completely under.
Topping up the dipper was fairly constant, a dip stick with 50 gallon marks cut into it so when down by 50 a barrel full of ready mixed dip was tipped onto the floor to run back in and keep levels at an easy turn-over level.
Intention to Dip had to be notified to the Police at least 7 days in advance and in theory the local policeman would attend, or at least put in an appearance. The magic proscribed time in the dip for an ewe was one minute, and the bobby sure could slow things down. I remember once with a stop watch. Butt he had other things to do and other places to go so as soon as his bike was off up the road things speeded up marvellously !!!.
After it’s proscribed minute the ewe climbed a slope out of the dipper with excess dip pouring from it, staggering with the weight of it if heavy-wooled in the Autumn dipping, shaking spray all around. There was a series of dripping pens to hold the soaking sheep, and they progressed up the building with less and less falling so at the far end the driest pen was allowed outdoors. The lambs were always separated so ewes and lambs rejoined with much bleating. .
From my first early knowledge at Whitehall of dipping under the sucklers’ byre wall our father moved on to putting in a swim bath at his other farm of Airy in Stronsay. Jimmy Moad, the foreman, was an expert with shuttering, concrete and cement. This was so successful a dipper that the sheep from Whitehall were driven the four miles to Airy Farm for dipping, I think there and back in
the same day. We would hear them bleating in passing the Central School going homewards on Dipping Day after an early morning start from Whitehall, so easy to drive back that they practically walked home by themselves, strung out over a mile or so of road. I seem to remember that the Airy dipper was used by some neighbours.
The swim bath was great step forwards. A “W” shaped crook on the end of a long handle, usually made of iron but sometimes wonderfully carved in wood, allowed the dipping man to stand, reach under the chin of the sheep, turn it over and plunge it down with the crook in the back of it’s neck. No longer so back breaking and no longer with his arms immersed to the elbows in dip all day.
The first dipping in Caithness was of the lambs with the August Lamb Sales approaching, a few weeks being allowed for the dip colour to mellow slightly. The ewes got theirs later.
Dips used which I remember were Coopers Border Dip and Coopers Bloom Dip, coloured to a degree of pinkish orange. This was not bright enough for some people so Bloom Powder was added till the required shade of bright orange was achieved This was used for the Half Bred lambs for the dipping approaching the August Lamb Sales and a car run through Caithness in July brought many a bright shade to grace the landscape. Some were quite notable. The theory was that it made the lambs look even prettier as they went through the Sale Ring, and a whitening of their faces added to the fashion parade. Bloom Dipping is no longer used, the Wool Board saw to that by penalising stained fleeces, but whitening faces is still in vogue.
The N.C.Cheviot lambs got a more muted brown shade, umbre being added to the Dip in huge quantities. Some dips were in paste form and had to be liquefied in a huge boiler, the fire lit by the shepherd well before dawn on dipping day to get ready. The Greenland Mains boiler is still there, beautifully built, great for boiling taties now I believe!!!.
.
.
No 84 DIPPING SHEEP. pb. 1.10.2010
Today we have wonderful automated systems for dipping sheep, or jet spraying them, just drive them through and job done. But my first memories of dipping sheep were not so.
At Whitehall there was a sheep dipper which passed through, or rather under, the byre wall. The sheep pen was outside the wall, and the poor ewes, massively heavy Half Bred ewes from Eday, were one by one caught and manhandled by two men backside first into the dipper from outside. This manhandling system on Dipping Day will be recognised by many older shepherds, and their often unwilling helpers.
Inside the byre the dipping man stood in a pit at the side of the dipper awash with dip but wearing rubber boots against the flood, and over them oilskin waterproof leggings. All encased in an oilskin worn back to front and buttoned down the back by someone else. At least it gave an almost waterproof front. Some wore an apron as well. Many a time it was an old heavy hessian bag to cover the more vital spots, held round his waist with binder twine and again tied behind him. It was a real Turkish Bath, a very proper sweat box in the humidity indoors. The whole ensemble was completed with an oilskin sou’waster, or just a bonnet or “kep” worn back to front.
There was a pit on either side of the dipper which catered for a left or a right handed man, the floor of the pit being at the same level as the bottom of the dipper. The dipper itself was made of slabs of heavy sawn Caithness Flagstone, tightly fitted, often with lead strip sandwiched between the flags to make it all waterproof. Water tanks of similar construction were in common use, there are still some around in many gardens even if not now being used to environmentally collect rainwater off the roof. Most outdoor laundries – or washhouses - had similar, there is still one at Isauld and one at Greenland Mains. These wonderfully constructed tanks were common around most farm steadings as well.
At Whitehall, and also still at Greenland Mains, the dipper was indoors so a real muggy atmosphere soon prevailed, memorably heavy and humid, with Carbolic and other tarry aromas and all the smelly things Dip Manufacturers though might work against the many pests sheep were prone to. The sheep stood in the byre for a time to let the dip drip before going outdoors again.
The man in the pit had to reach across in front of each ewe while it was still being held backwards by his helpers, grasp the far away front leg before they let go and turn the sheep over backwards in the dip. Not too heavy a task if the tank was reasonably full but when the last of the dip was reached and the last of the ewes came through it could be a heavy heave over. Still holding the far off leg right handed, left hand on the sheep’s brisket, he plunged the sheep twice under while still on its back.
Letting go of the leg, the ewe by a quick twist usually righted itself, though an occasional one might need a little help. The head had to go under twice when the sheep was on it’s back, if you did not catch the ewe properly it could be pretty heavy work to get the head completely under.
Topping up the dipper was fairly constant, a dip stick with 50 gallon marks cut into it so when down by 50 a barrel full of ready mixed dip was tipped onto the floor to run back in and keep levels at an easy turn-over level.
Intention to Dip had to be notified to the Police at least 7 days in advance and in theory the local policeman would attend, or at least put in an appearance. The magic proscribed time in the dip for an ewe was one minute, and the bobby sure could slow things down. I remember once with a stop watch. Butt he had other things to do and other places to go so as soon as his bike was off up the road things speeded up marvellously !!!.
After it’s proscribed minute the ewe climbed a slope out of the dipper with excess dip pouring from it, staggering with the weight of it if heavy-wooled in the Autumn dipping, shaking spray all around. There was a series of dripping pens to hold the soaking sheep, and they progressed up the building with less and less falling so at the far end the driest pen was allowed outdoors. The lambs were always separated so ewes and lambs rejoined with much bleating. .
From my first early knowledge at Whitehall of dipping under the sucklers’ byre wall our father moved on to putting in a swim bath at his other farm of Airy in Stronsay. Jimmy Moad, the foreman, was an expert with shuttering, concrete and cement. This was so successful a dipper that the sheep from Whitehall were driven the four miles to Airy Farm for dipping, I think there and back in
the same day. We would hear them bleating in passing the Central School going homewards on Dipping Day after an early morning start from Whitehall, so easy to drive back that they practically walked home by themselves, strung out over a mile or so of road. I seem to remember that the Airy dipper was used by some neighbours.
The swim bath was great step forwards. A “W” shaped crook on the end of a long handle, usually made of iron but sometimes wonderfully carved in wood, allowed the dipping man to stand, reach under the chin of the sheep, turn it over and plunge it down with the crook in the back of it’s neck. No longer so back breaking and no longer with his arms immersed to the elbows in dip all day.
The first dipping in Caithness was of the lambs with the August Lamb Sales approaching, a few weeks being allowed for the dip colour to mellow slightly. The ewes got theirs later.
Dips used which I remember were Coopers Border Dip and Coopers Bloom Dip, coloured to a degree of pinkish orange. This was not bright enough for some people so Bloom Powder was added till the required shade of bright orange was achieved This was used for the Half Bred lambs for the dipping approaching the August Lamb Sales and a car run through Caithness in July brought many a bright shade to grace the landscape. Some were quite notable. The theory was that it made the lambs look even prettier as they went through the Sale Ring, and a whitening of their faces added to the fashion parade. Bloom Dipping is no longer used, the Wool Board saw to that by penalising stained fleeces, but whitening faces is still in vogue.
The N.C.Cheviot lambs got a more muted brown shade, umbre being added to the Dip in huge quantities. Some dips were in paste form and had to be liquefied in a huge boiler, the fire lit by the shepherd well before dawn on dipping day to get ready. The Greenland Mains boiler is still there, beautifully built, great for boiling taties now I believe!!!.
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Friday 3 September 2010
No 82. RULE OF THUMB. pb 3rd Sept. 2010
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 82 RULE OF THUMB. pb. 3rd Sept. 2010
“Rule of Thumb”. Such a well known phrase, such a challenge to determine just what it is, or was. So what is it?
My earliest recollection of Rule of Thumb was the way in which the farm hands measured their requirements. Rules and measuring tapes were unseen, though perhaps sometimes a bit of string out of a deep pocket came in handy. Some men had a three foot 4 piece folding wooden ruler down the special narrow ruler side pocket on the right leg of dungaree overalls, but many a time just measured by span of hand.
At school on the playground we experimented with a piece of string, quoting and paraphrasing Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726.
“They measured my right Thumb, and desired no more; for by a Mathematical Computation, twice round the Thumb is once around the wrist, twice round the wrist is once round the neck, twice round the neck is once round the waist.” And so the Lilliputians made a shirt for him that fitted perfectly. I may say that formula did work with us at school. I tried it today, and it did not work on my waist !!!
Women knitters seemed to know just exactly what they needed, how many stitches to drop, how many to add on. Always magic to watch, impossible to explain the unseen mental template doing it’s work, but work it did. Tailors used much the same standards for long enough, adding the “ell” to the sequence, 40 ins. The measure of an “ell” varies over time and country, and over many hundreds of years, but with us was reckoned to be from elbow to fingertip, hence “ell” from elbow. You do not have to believe that, but the ell was much used in my early days, especially for measuring cloth.
Farm hands used Rule of Thumb with uncanny accuracy. A thumb breadth was an inch, so thumb above thumb was used to measure a small distance, sometimes measuring some article and making an exact copy. The blacksmith never seemed to use a rule, just a quick glance, perhaps the span of his hand, and the horse shoe was made. Or chosen from the many horse shoes already made and hanging handily on spikes on the smiddy wall. There was no standard, a shoe might need a tiny touch this way or that to fit the many differing hooves of farm Clydesdales. A quick heat in the forge, a tap or two on the anvil, and a perfect fit time after time. Quite uncanny, and utter magic to watch.
A hand was 4 inches, the span across the palm of the hand. Used to measure the height of a horse to the shoulder, still used in horsey circles. A riding horse of 16 hands is quite high, not for beginners. Cart horses were measured the same way, from the ground at the fore foot of the horse to the crest of the shoulder. No marking needed, just hand over hand upwards from the ground. Still used, but at horsey shows arguments are settled by a Judge, or by a Vet on his day off, by use of a special measuring stick. The hand over hand method is not quite accurate enough when a red First Prize Ticket is in prospect, or indeed the Challenge Cup. The same measurement was the length from the knuckle to the tip of the first finger, 4 inches. Again, I have often seen that method used.
Next came the span of eight inches. Spread hand and measure from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. Do not over-stretch, just an easy spread of an average hand. Men with huge hands soon learned just how far to stretch their hand, adjust it to the “use and wont” system.
Next to my memory was the cubit, elbow to fingertip. Biblical in use, many measurements were so many cubits high, or long. One arm only, with the fore finger tip of the other hand marking the last point, end over end. And so on and on. A cubit is the first historically recorded unit of length and was one of many different standards of measurement used throughout history. It was originally based on measuring by comparison to one's forearm length, though it varied over the centuries. For our use the forearm did well enough.
Finally, still making use of your arms, the fathom. Outstretched arms, finger tip to finger tip, 6 feet Imperial Measure. Used if course by seamen with a wealth of “Full Fathoms Deep”. Depths at sea were measured in fathoms, also ropes, rigging and anchor cables. Ships were tied at Staxigoe with 50 fathom cables to either side of the narrow harbour, suspending the ships to load their cargoes of grain, exported from Caithness to merchants in Edinburgh through it’s port of Leith, to Norway, Glasgow and Strathnaver, that sad though beautiful Strath who even in 1734 could not feed its population without grain from Caithness. [ Aeneas Bayne 1734 ]
But on land and on the farm we also used the fathom. Stacks were measured by pulling out a handful of straw as a marker, then fathom by fathom round the stack till the marker was again reached. Valuers gave their opinion of the yield of the stacks on change of a tenancy in November, a valuer being appointed for each tenant with an oversman to sort out any disagreements. Valuers took great pride in working out the answer between them without need of a referee to adjudicate. They measured the circumference of the stack by the fathom, a quick glance at it’s height, and then estimated what the yield would be. By such rudimentary methods a yield was agreed.
A 12 ft wide stack steddle as favoured by Caithness was just over 6 fathom, a 14 ft stack steddle – steathe - as favoured by Orkney was just over 7 fathom.
Harvest time. New ropes for the carts where needed were usually 6 fathoms, cut from a huge ball of rope home-made earlier in the loft. For tractor trailers, as we later moved to, ropes were normally 7 fathoms. Two to a cart or trailer, tied at the back and then thrown over the completed load to be fastened tight to the cart shafts or to rings or hooks in the case of trailers. A skilled man would splice the new cut rope ends to stop fraying, sometimes so neat you could hardly see it.
Not to forget the feet. Toe to toe, end over end, 12 inches a time. Not for nothing is a foot called a foot !!! The yard, or pace, was a good long step, practice made perfect, The foreman would set out the bags of seed along the top of the field, and come exactly right. At times a field was not square, but no matter, he still placed them in the exact spot for filling the broadcast sower.
And the ultimate field measurement, setting out your starts for the plough. No tape measure, just that easy pace across the land, and when the finish was near and the strip of land narrowed, rarely was any adjustment needed. The final narrow strip of land might be measured by the foot, just to get the inches right for a perfect finish.
.
No 82 RULE OF THUMB. pb. 3rd Sept. 2010
“Rule of Thumb”. Such a well known phrase, such a challenge to determine just what it is, or was. So what is it?
My earliest recollection of Rule of Thumb was the way in which the farm hands measured their requirements. Rules and measuring tapes were unseen, though perhaps sometimes a bit of string out of a deep pocket came in handy. Some men had a three foot 4 piece folding wooden ruler down the special narrow ruler side pocket on the right leg of dungaree overalls, but many a time just measured by span of hand.
At school on the playground we experimented with a piece of string, quoting and paraphrasing Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726.
“They measured my right Thumb, and desired no more; for by a Mathematical Computation, twice round the Thumb is once around the wrist, twice round the wrist is once round the neck, twice round the neck is once round the waist.” And so the Lilliputians made a shirt for him that fitted perfectly. I may say that formula did work with us at school. I tried it today, and it did not work on my waist !!!
Women knitters seemed to know just exactly what they needed, how many stitches to drop, how many to add on. Always magic to watch, impossible to explain the unseen mental template doing it’s work, but work it did. Tailors used much the same standards for long enough, adding the “ell” to the sequence, 40 ins. The measure of an “ell” varies over time and country, and over many hundreds of years, but with us was reckoned to be from elbow to fingertip, hence “ell” from elbow. You do not have to believe that, but the ell was much used in my early days, especially for measuring cloth.
Farm hands used Rule of Thumb with uncanny accuracy. A thumb breadth was an inch, so thumb above thumb was used to measure a small distance, sometimes measuring some article and making an exact copy. The blacksmith never seemed to use a rule, just a quick glance, perhaps the span of his hand, and the horse shoe was made. Or chosen from the many horse shoes already made and hanging handily on spikes on the smiddy wall. There was no standard, a shoe might need a tiny touch this way or that to fit the many differing hooves of farm Clydesdales. A quick heat in the forge, a tap or two on the anvil, and a perfect fit time after time. Quite uncanny, and utter magic to watch.
A hand was 4 inches, the span across the palm of the hand. Used to measure the height of a horse to the shoulder, still used in horsey circles. A riding horse of 16 hands is quite high, not for beginners. Cart horses were measured the same way, from the ground at the fore foot of the horse to the crest of the shoulder. No marking needed, just hand over hand upwards from the ground. Still used, but at horsey shows arguments are settled by a Judge, or by a Vet on his day off, by use of a special measuring stick. The hand over hand method is not quite accurate enough when a red First Prize Ticket is in prospect, or indeed the Challenge Cup. The same measurement was the length from the knuckle to the tip of the first finger, 4 inches. Again, I have often seen that method used.
Next came the span of eight inches. Spread hand and measure from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. Do not over-stretch, just an easy spread of an average hand. Men with huge hands soon learned just how far to stretch their hand, adjust it to the “use and wont” system.
Next to my memory was the cubit, elbow to fingertip. Biblical in use, many measurements were so many cubits high, or long. One arm only, with the fore finger tip of the other hand marking the last point, end over end. And so on and on. A cubit is the first historically recorded unit of length and was one of many different standards of measurement used throughout history. It was originally based on measuring by comparison to one's forearm length, though it varied over the centuries. For our use the forearm did well enough.
Finally, still making use of your arms, the fathom. Outstretched arms, finger tip to finger tip, 6 feet Imperial Measure. Used if course by seamen with a wealth of “Full Fathoms Deep”. Depths at sea were measured in fathoms, also ropes, rigging and anchor cables. Ships were tied at Staxigoe with 50 fathom cables to either side of the narrow harbour, suspending the ships to load their cargoes of grain, exported from Caithness to merchants in Edinburgh through it’s port of Leith, to Norway, Glasgow and Strathnaver, that sad though beautiful Strath who even in 1734 could not feed its population without grain from Caithness. [ Aeneas Bayne 1734 ]
But on land and on the farm we also used the fathom. Stacks were measured by pulling out a handful of straw as a marker, then fathom by fathom round the stack till the marker was again reached. Valuers gave their opinion of the yield of the stacks on change of a tenancy in November, a valuer being appointed for each tenant with an oversman to sort out any disagreements. Valuers took great pride in working out the answer between them without need of a referee to adjudicate. They measured the circumference of the stack by the fathom, a quick glance at it’s height, and then estimated what the yield would be. By such rudimentary methods a yield was agreed.
A 12 ft wide stack steddle as favoured by Caithness was just over 6 fathom, a 14 ft stack steddle – steathe - as favoured by Orkney was just over 7 fathom.
Harvest time. New ropes for the carts where needed were usually 6 fathoms, cut from a huge ball of rope home-made earlier in the loft. For tractor trailers, as we later moved to, ropes were normally 7 fathoms. Two to a cart or trailer, tied at the back and then thrown over the completed load to be fastened tight to the cart shafts or to rings or hooks in the case of trailers. A skilled man would splice the new cut rope ends to stop fraying, sometimes so neat you could hardly see it.
Not to forget the feet. Toe to toe, end over end, 12 inches a time. Not for nothing is a foot called a foot !!! The yard, or pace, was a good long step, practice made perfect, The foreman would set out the bags of seed along the top of the field, and come exactly right. At times a field was not square, but no matter, he still placed them in the exact spot for filling the broadcast sower.
And the ultimate field measurement, setting out your starts for the plough. No tape measure, just that easy pace across the land, and when the finish was near and the strip of land narrowed, rarely was any adjustment needed. The final narrow strip of land might be measured by the foot, just to get the inches right for a perfect finish.
.
Monday 30 August 2010
No 77. STRAW FROM THE MILL..
No 77. STRAW FROM THE MILL.
Straw, such a normal aspect of farming that we might take it for granted and so it might get overlooked. Yet I have seen so many changes in the handling of straw over so many years, produced by the Biblical flail on a croft in Rousam in Stronsay to the monster combines of today.The handling of straw comes to mind, easiest is to quote what I saw from my own experiences.
First was the Mill at Whitehaa in my early days, rebuilt by Davie Davidson and mentioned previously. Mainly the high speed drum and the grain carrier through the thick stone wall at the back of the barn.
Equally important was the straw end of the mill on the ground floor at the far end from the drum in the sheaf loft. The newly thrashed sheaf, now just a mix of loose straw, good grain and soft chaff, made its way over and along the well named straw shakers to sift out and collect the grain, then the straw went down over the end. No change at all in that system to today’s combine harvestors.
There at the end of the mill lay the apparently simple task of carrying away the straw from the end of the mill. It could be and was hard work with a four-toed graip fork or a two-toed pitchfork. Keep the end of the mill clear of straw, stack it in the barn for future use, pitch it up to someone building the straw in bouts across the barn, or carry some away from the end of the mill direct to the byres and sheds. If the cattleman had some time available he would lend a hand. It saved him time later on, stacking it in handy corners for later use, or just chucking it over into the cattle courts to be later spread for bedding.
When we came to Greenland Mains straw was laboriously stacked in the lowish barn as per usual. Then our father had a straw blower installed at the end of the Mill by Davie Davidson of Scarths in Kirkwall. The straw dropped into a fairly high speed four-bladed blower and on into a round section pipe which went round various corners and across various spaces to deliver the straw at suitable points in the steading. Along the way were a succession of hatches at various drop off points, a short section of square box with a two way movable panel to intercept the straw, open it to deliver the straw or close it to let the straw carry on to the next drop off point.
.
There was the occasional choking of the pipe or of the blower, but handy slides allowed the blockages to be easily cleared. A safety feature was that a choke in the blower itself just meant the flat driving belt being cast off and no damage. It needed overseeing, but the changing thumping sound soon gave away a blockage.
The straw went many ways at Greenland Mains, straight ahead into the straw barn, right into the clipping shed under the main grain loft, left through the milkers byre to the far away sheds, a diversion into the Back Court where a stockade was erected to hold the straw, giving easy access for the cows.
The blower saved a great deal of straw carrying through narrow doorways and corridors. The blower was quite similar to the grain blowers we still have, but very much larger.
Next came the straw carrier. First one I saw was at Lower Dounreay, put in there before me, a shallow wooden trough about 5 feet wide with an endless chain and cross flights that dragged the straw along the trough to a convenient series of hatches to drop it where needed. The chain and flights returned above the straw. It worked straight ahead from the mill, and was made by Garvie in Aberdeenshire. We moved the whole assembly from Lower Dounreay to Isauld in 1956, adding a further length to extend it to 90 feet to carry the straw to a lofted area over the indoor silage pit. With all the hatches open it dealt unattended with the straw, as each dropping off point filled up to the hatch it just carried on to the next. Did very well though attention was needed to adjust the tension of the chains to avoid jumping a link. It did sterling service for many a year until the mill was superceded by the combine harvester, for us sometime in the 1960s. That straw loft was very handy as the straw just had to be pushed over the open sides down into a straw feeding passage on either side, no carrying at all. Bedding the courts could also be easily done from the loft, though the final spreading in the courts was with a graip or with some helpful cattle!!
Next came the buncher. We never had one, but a buncher was often used by various travelling mills, though not on the first ones I saw. This took the loose straw at the end of the mill and fed it into the buncher, just a larger version of the binder sheafing mechanism but a double assembly with two twine needles.
The buncher tied the straw into convenient sized bundles or sheaves. The action was similar to the binder, packing fingers and a pressure trip mechanism. It made handling the straw from the travelling mill a lot easier, especially on a windy day in the stackyard,
The buncher was also installed on various farms at the end of the mill. My brother Steven had one when he was in Baillie. The bunches still had to be carried though the steading to various byes and stables but were ready for the cattleman to carry, to use or to store in handy corners as thrashing went on. They were also handy for pitching over the cattle’s backs into the straw rack on the wall in front of them, saved walking up between every two cattle to fill the rack. Store some in the straw barn, carry some to the byres to handy corners as thrashing went on, it all depended on how many people were available, or if the cattleman had a spare moment. .
The bunches were close in appearance to the hand tied windlins we used to make in Stronsay to carry straw to the byres and the stable, and were most useful.
A quite extra use was to load it with a pitchfork like sheaves onto a cart to sell or to give a load to someone else, perhaps a neighbour, perhaps a crofter needing a bit of straw. It made for easier loading and building on the cart than loose straw which was a devil to work with on a windy day.
Today we have forgotten all these methods. The thrashing mill is an antique if it still exists. Some do, silently gathering dust in a forgotten corner of some steadings. We now have huge round balers swallowing up the harvested straw faster than the combine can produce it. Even the little square bale is seldom seen now though it is by no means entirely gone.
The big round straw bale is dumped into a machine that disintegrates it and blows it direct into the cattle courts. Untouched by human hand!!
Straw, such a normal aspect of farming that we might take it for granted and so it might get overlooked. Yet I have seen so many changes in the handling of straw over so many years, produced by the Biblical flail on a croft in Rousam in Stronsay to the monster combines of today.The handling of straw comes to mind, easiest is to quote what I saw from my own experiences.
First was the Mill at Whitehaa in my early days, rebuilt by Davie Davidson and mentioned previously. Mainly the high speed drum and the grain carrier through the thick stone wall at the back of the barn.
Equally important was the straw end of the mill on the ground floor at the far end from the drum in the sheaf loft. The newly thrashed sheaf, now just a mix of loose straw, good grain and soft chaff, made its way over and along the well named straw shakers to sift out and collect the grain, then the straw went down over the end. No change at all in that system to today’s combine harvestors.
There at the end of the mill lay the apparently simple task of carrying away the straw from the end of the mill. It could be and was hard work with a four-toed graip fork or a two-toed pitchfork. Keep the end of the mill clear of straw, stack it in the barn for future use, pitch it up to someone building the straw in bouts across the barn, or carry some away from the end of the mill direct to the byres and sheds. If the cattleman had some time available he would lend a hand. It saved him time later on, stacking it in handy corners for later use, or just chucking it over into the cattle courts to be later spread for bedding.
When we came to Greenland Mains straw was laboriously stacked in the lowish barn as per usual. Then our father had a straw blower installed at the end of the Mill by Davie Davidson of Scarths in Kirkwall. The straw dropped into a fairly high speed four-bladed blower and on into a round section pipe which went round various corners and across various spaces to deliver the straw at suitable points in the steading. Along the way were a succession of hatches at various drop off points, a short section of square box with a two way movable panel to intercept the straw, open it to deliver the straw or close it to let the straw carry on to the next drop off point.
.
There was the occasional choking of the pipe or of the blower, but handy slides allowed the blockages to be easily cleared. A safety feature was that a choke in the blower itself just meant the flat driving belt being cast off and no damage. It needed overseeing, but the changing thumping sound soon gave away a blockage.
The straw went many ways at Greenland Mains, straight ahead into the straw barn, right into the clipping shed under the main grain loft, left through the milkers byre to the far away sheds, a diversion into the Back Court where a stockade was erected to hold the straw, giving easy access for the cows.
The blower saved a great deal of straw carrying through narrow doorways and corridors. The blower was quite similar to the grain blowers we still have, but very much larger.
Next came the straw carrier. First one I saw was at Lower Dounreay, put in there before me, a shallow wooden trough about 5 feet wide with an endless chain and cross flights that dragged the straw along the trough to a convenient series of hatches to drop it where needed. The chain and flights returned above the straw. It worked straight ahead from the mill, and was made by Garvie in Aberdeenshire. We moved the whole assembly from Lower Dounreay to Isauld in 1956, adding a further length to extend it to 90 feet to carry the straw to a lofted area over the indoor silage pit. With all the hatches open it dealt unattended with the straw, as each dropping off point filled up to the hatch it just carried on to the next. Did very well though attention was needed to adjust the tension of the chains to avoid jumping a link. It did sterling service for many a year until the mill was superceded by the combine harvester, for us sometime in the 1960s. That straw loft was very handy as the straw just had to be pushed over the open sides down into a straw feeding passage on either side, no carrying at all. Bedding the courts could also be easily done from the loft, though the final spreading in the courts was with a graip or with some helpful cattle!!
Next came the buncher. We never had one, but a buncher was often used by various travelling mills, though not on the first ones I saw. This took the loose straw at the end of the mill and fed it into the buncher, just a larger version of the binder sheafing mechanism but a double assembly with two twine needles.
The buncher tied the straw into convenient sized bundles or sheaves. The action was similar to the binder, packing fingers and a pressure trip mechanism. It made handling the straw from the travelling mill a lot easier, especially on a windy day in the stackyard,
The buncher was also installed on various farms at the end of the mill. My brother Steven had one when he was in Baillie. The bunches still had to be carried though the steading to various byes and stables but were ready for the cattleman to carry, to use or to store in handy corners as thrashing went on. They were also handy for pitching over the cattle’s backs into the straw rack on the wall in front of them, saved walking up between every two cattle to fill the rack. Store some in the straw barn, carry some to the byres to handy corners as thrashing went on, it all depended on how many people were available, or if the cattleman had a spare moment. .
The bunches were close in appearance to the hand tied windlins we used to make in Stronsay to carry straw to the byres and the stable, and were most useful.
A quite extra use was to load it with a pitchfork like sheaves onto a cart to sell or to give a load to someone else, perhaps a neighbour, perhaps a crofter needing a bit of straw. It made for easier loading and building on the cart than loose straw which was a devil to work with on a windy day.
Today we have forgotten all these methods. The thrashing mill is an antique if it still exists. Some do, silently gathering dust in a forgotten corner of some steadings. We now have huge round balers swallowing up the harvested straw faster than the combine can produce it. Even the little square bale is seldom seen now though it is by no means entirely gone.
The big round straw bale is dumped into a machine that disintegrates it and blows it direct into the cattle courts. Untouched by human hand!!
No 78 Travelling Mills.
1889 illustration.
No 78. Travelling Threshing Mills.
The earliest reference to thrashing mills on a personal note I have taken from the Diaries of William Tait of Ingsay, 1880 to 1939. These Diaries are going to intrude into my notes as time goes by. They accentuate much of what I have already written in Rain on My Window about yesterday.
William Tait, finally of Ingsay in Birsay, Orkney, was my father’s mother’s brother, bred off Caithness stock. His father was John Tait, born in 1820 in Grotistoft, Hill of Barrock, now a roofless ruin after being cleared in May 1843 by James Traill of Rattar. His mother was Janet Steven, born in Dunnet. They emigrated to Orkney circa 1850. These Diaries I knew about many years ago, had an occasional look inside them, but they are not mine. They possibly belong more to Archival History than to any one family, though Wm Tait’s grandson Sandy Scarth in Twatt in Birsay has present claim. But they are in my present care as I transcribe them into this marvellous computer age, making the contents available to a wider readership. I am now half way through the work, pencil written in old and old-fashioned farmers’ diaries full of much useless bits of information, such as M.P.s and the Right Honourable Members of the House of Lords !!! Interesting enough in it’s own way. The pencil writings are faint, but we are making progress.
Still much unfinished with 25 Diaries still to go by late May 2010, but at least over half of them are already done and are printed out and available for viewing and perusal in a green backed folder in Castlehill Heritage Centre. I am getting some help from them, so if anyone wants they can have a look into the past of farming in Orkney around 100 years ago, which was much the same as in Caithness. They still need a final editing but that is only a touching up to correct my typos. I will pick and choose from the Diaries from time to time, without apology, but this article at least introduces them to John O’ Groat readers.
The Diaries are nearer to me than I thought. Until I began transcribing them I did not know that from1894 to 1900 Wm Tait was farm manager at Rousam in Stronsay, farmed then by David Pottinger my grandfather and his brother-in-law. From 1907 to 1919 Wm Tait farmed at the Bay Farm next door to Rousam. So we have a span and a wonderful look back into 25 years of Stronsay farming either side of the turn of the last Century.
In Nov.1888 Wm Tait took over the farm of Work just outside Kirkwall as tenant. The system then was the in-coming tenant was bound to thrash down the crop for his out going predecessor. The straw was normally steelbow, a term to describe that the straw was bound to the farm and went to the incoming tenant for no payment. In the case of Work farm, as described in the Diaries, Wm Tait had to pay for the straw. This was balanced by reverse transaction on outgoing. And the thrashing down by Wm Tait in 1889 was done by a Steam Travelling Mill.
I have already written about barn thrashing mills and straw handling, but I wondered how far back our travelling thrashing mills went. I found a wonderful illustration on the internet of a horse powered travelling mill of 1881, easily downloaded if we cannot print it.
My first experience of travelling mills was at Greenland Mains. The ones I remember were owned by Wildy Allan from Mey and Donald (Injun Donald) Gunn from West Greenland, but there were many more. The excellent Museum at Kingussie is full of these old timers, the Mills I mean!! . But here in Wm Tait’s Diary for 1889 I came on the following entries, and the steam travelling threshing mill that thrashed down the crop.
I quote the Diaries, editing out most of the entries save on the Steam Mill :-
1889.
jan 30 wed Thrashing with Steam Mill - thrashed two stacks - stormy day.
jan 31 thur Orrow horse carting straw to Jas. Gunn - carting dung & turnips.
feb 01 frid Steam Mill thrashed two stacks.
feb 02 sat Very stormy - gathering up blown down straw in forenoon.
feb 04 mon 3 carts at Kirkwall with grain - catching up straw & 4 carts with grain
to Kirkwall in afternoon with oats - 28 qrs in all. (a Qr is 3 cwts, 150 kg. )
feb 05 tues Start the mill for a few minutes but was too windy.
feb 07 thur Steam mill thrashed in afternoon.
feb 09 sat Very stormy, taking in straw in forenoon, dressing oats in afternoon.
feb 12 tue Steam mill thrashed 8.1/2 hours - fine frosty day - ground covered with snow.
feb 13 wed Steam Mill Thrashed 8 hours - fine day.
feb 15 frid Two carts at Kirkwall a.m. with grain, 8 qrs. –
one with straw to Mrs Skea, 34 windlings - took in some straw a.m. -
feb 16 sat Taking in straw to the barn, a.m. - finished dressing oats today.
MEMO- 197 qrs & 1 bushel is all the grain of the crop of Work Farm.
Bought 4 qrs 2 bu. oats from R. Marwick, 32 lb. per bu. @ 11/- a qr.
[The Valuation Roll for 1888 lists Robert Thomas Marwick, farmer, as tenant of Work farm
hence the outgoing tenant. - M.P..]
feb 18 mon 4 carts carting oats to Kirkwall, 16 qrs.
MEMO:- Straw of 197.1/8 qrs at 6/- is £59.2.9d
So Wm Tait had thrashed down all the crop and dressed all the oats and carted all the sacks to Kirkwall for sale for the outgoing tenant. For that he had the privilege of paying the sum of £59.2.9d for the straw. Not too easy an entry for a new tenant, but those were the terms on So in 1889 we know that a team of steam engine and thrashing mill was travelling around Orkney.
. Many farms had some stacks left after the winter ended and the cattle went out to grass, a very nice state of affairs to be in but not too often seen after a hungry winter. The outside of summer stacks was usually covered with chaff and bits of half eaten grain surrounding the many visible holes of the inhabitants. Rats could make a motorway of tracks zig zagging up the outside of the stack, an easy way of getting around rather than burrowing a tunnel. So before the rats and mice could totally destroy the stack over the long summer, thrashing down was required.
In Caithness we had the travelling mills which were taken round the county to the various stackyards and moved along the line of stacks to thrash them down. The thrashing mill coming down the road meant a busy few days, both outdoors and in the farm kitchen.
.
This outdoor thrashing meant building a gilt which was a long stack of straw, covered by stack nets when finished and left for another winter until carted in to the cattle courts as a layer of bedding. Or some other winter At least it used up surplus straw and made it into useful dung.
Or sometimes a gilt was forgotten about, left in solitary splendour at the far side of the stackyard forever !!!.
No 78. Travelling Threshing Mills.
The earliest reference to thrashing mills on a personal note I have taken from the Diaries of William Tait of Ingsay, 1880 to 1939. These Diaries are going to intrude into my notes as time goes by. They accentuate much of what I have already written in Rain on My Window about yesterday.
William Tait, finally of Ingsay in Birsay, Orkney, was my father’s mother’s brother, bred off Caithness stock. His father was John Tait, born in 1820 in Grotistoft, Hill of Barrock, now a roofless ruin after being cleared in May 1843 by James Traill of Rattar. His mother was Janet Steven, born in Dunnet. They emigrated to Orkney circa 1850. These Diaries I knew about many years ago, had an occasional look inside them, but they are not mine. They possibly belong more to Archival History than to any one family, though Wm Tait’s grandson Sandy Scarth in Twatt in Birsay has present claim. But they are in my present care as I transcribe them into this marvellous computer age, making the contents available to a wider readership. I am now half way through the work, pencil written in old and old-fashioned farmers’ diaries full of much useless bits of information, such as M.P.s and the Right Honourable Members of the House of Lords !!! Interesting enough in it’s own way. The pencil writings are faint, but we are making progress.
Still much unfinished with 25 Diaries still to go by late May 2010, but at least over half of them are already done and are printed out and available for viewing and perusal in a green backed folder in Castlehill Heritage Centre. I am getting some help from them, so if anyone wants they can have a look into the past of farming in Orkney around 100 years ago, which was much the same as in Caithness. They still need a final editing but that is only a touching up to correct my typos. I will pick and choose from the Diaries from time to time, without apology, but this article at least introduces them to John O’ Groat readers.
The Diaries are nearer to me than I thought. Until I began transcribing them I did not know that from1894 to 1900 Wm Tait was farm manager at Rousam in Stronsay, farmed then by David Pottinger my grandfather and his brother-in-law. From 1907 to 1919 Wm Tait farmed at the Bay Farm next door to Rousam. So we have a span and a wonderful look back into 25 years of Stronsay farming either side of the turn of the last Century.
In Nov.1888 Wm Tait took over the farm of Work just outside Kirkwall as tenant. The system then was the in-coming tenant was bound to thrash down the crop for his out going predecessor. The straw was normally steelbow, a term to describe that the straw was bound to the farm and went to the incoming tenant for no payment. In the case of Work farm, as described in the Diaries, Wm Tait had to pay for the straw. This was balanced by reverse transaction on outgoing. And the thrashing down by Wm Tait in 1889 was done by a Steam Travelling Mill.
I have already written about barn thrashing mills and straw handling, but I wondered how far back our travelling thrashing mills went. I found a wonderful illustration on the internet of a horse powered travelling mill of 1881, easily downloaded if we cannot print it.
My first experience of travelling mills was at Greenland Mains. The ones I remember were owned by Wildy Allan from Mey and Donald (Injun Donald) Gunn from West Greenland, but there were many more. The excellent Museum at Kingussie is full of these old timers, the Mills I mean!! . But here in Wm Tait’s Diary for 1889 I came on the following entries, and the steam travelling threshing mill that thrashed down the crop.
I quote the Diaries, editing out most of the entries save on the Steam Mill :-
1889.
jan 30 wed Thrashing with Steam Mill - thrashed two stacks - stormy day.
jan 31 thur Orrow horse carting straw to Jas. Gunn - carting dung & turnips.
feb 01 frid Steam Mill thrashed two stacks.
feb 02 sat Very stormy - gathering up blown down straw in forenoon.
feb 04 mon 3 carts at Kirkwall with grain - catching up straw & 4 carts with grain
to Kirkwall in afternoon with oats - 28 qrs in all. (a Qr is 3 cwts, 150 kg. )
feb 05 tues Start the mill for a few minutes but was too windy.
feb 07 thur Steam mill thrashed in afternoon.
feb 09 sat Very stormy, taking in straw in forenoon, dressing oats in afternoon.
feb 12 tue Steam mill thrashed 8.1/2 hours - fine frosty day - ground covered with snow.
feb 13 wed Steam Mill Thrashed 8 hours - fine day.
feb 15 frid Two carts at Kirkwall a.m. with grain, 8 qrs. –
one with straw to Mrs Skea, 34 windlings - took in some straw a.m. -
feb 16 sat Taking in straw to the barn, a.m. - finished dressing oats today.
MEMO- 197 qrs & 1 bushel is all the grain of the crop of Work Farm.
Bought 4 qrs 2 bu. oats from R. Marwick, 32 lb. per bu. @ 11/- a qr.
[The Valuation Roll for 1888 lists Robert Thomas Marwick, farmer, as tenant of Work farm
hence the outgoing tenant. - M.P..]
feb 18 mon 4 carts carting oats to Kirkwall, 16 qrs.
MEMO:- Straw of 197.1/8 qrs at 6/- is £59.2.9d
So Wm Tait had thrashed down all the crop and dressed all the oats and carted all the sacks to Kirkwall for sale for the outgoing tenant. For that he had the privilege of paying the sum of £59.2.9d for the straw. Not too easy an entry for a new tenant, but those were the terms on So in 1889 we know that a team of steam engine and thrashing mill was travelling around Orkney.
. Many farms had some stacks left after the winter ended and the cattle went out to grass, a very nice state of affairs to be in but not too often seen after a hungry winter. The outside of summer stacks was usually covered with chaff and bits of half eaten grain surrounding the many visible holes of the inhabitants. Rats could make a motorway of tracks zig zagging up the outside of the stack, an easy way of getting around rather than burrowing a tunnel. So before the rats and mice could totally destroy the stack over the long summer, thrashing down was required.
In Caithness we had the travelling mills which were taken round the county to the various stackyards and moved along the line of stacks to thrash them down. The thrashing mill coming down the road meant a busy few days, both outdoors and in the farm kitchen.
.
This outdoor thrashing meant building a gilt which was a long stack of straw, covered by stack nets when finished and left for another winter until carted in to the cattle courts as a layer of bedding. Or some other winter At least it used up surplus straw and made it into useful dung.
Or sometimes a gilt was forgotten about, left in solitary splendour at the far side of the stackyard forever !!!.
Np 79. THRASHAN DOON & BUILDAN OOT.
No 79. THRASSAN DOON “ AN “BUILDAN OOT”
At Whitehaa I remember some Springs when “Building oot “ was done. By no means every Spring were stacks left over after a hard winter, but sometimes. This meant a run of days of thrashing down stacks left in the stackyard after winter end before the rats and the mice completely demolished them. Sometimes there were more, sometimes there were less, sometimes there were none at all.
Obviously the straw would have to be built outdoors, the barn could not hold it all. So a clear level space in the stackyard just beyond the barn door was made ready. We actually had two hard standings of many flat flag stones set out for that purpose, ever so slightly raised above ground level to keep the straw dry.. One was in the stackyard, one was inside the Square, both as near to the opposing barn doors as reasonable, not too far to carry the straw. The one in the Square is to be seen in the photo we previously published of Billy the Horse in the square with the bairns, including myself !! Obviously a space was left in the stackyard between the gilt and the barn wall to let the carts get in to the sheaf window. No travelling steam mills were available in Stronsay so threshing doon was a homer with your own thrashing mill in the barn. A dusty job too at winter’s end.
Extra hands were needed if the straw was to be carried direct from the mill as thrashing progressed, hauled in burdens out of the door. It needed two men to carry the straw from the mill, one man with a pitchfork at the gilt to pitch up to one man on a half loaded cart used as a platform on the way up. Pitching straw from the ground to any height at all was a no-go, especially on a windy day..
The cart we used was usually the Long Cart, handy if you had one, less shoogly and a longer platform, the shafts sitting on a barrel. It was better to have two men building on the gilt if you could get them.
Otherwise if not enough hands were available the straw was first stored in the barn on thrashing day, and then another day it was tediously carried out. and pitched up onto the gilt. Not too often was there enough people to keep everything going at the same time, so many days the straw just had to be barn stored. but it was double handling. Often enough that was the method when but few people were available
At Whitehall our father could usually rustle up enough extra hands to do both thrashing and carrying out at the same time. Sometimes a neighbour came to help to thrash down the left over stacks. A cart load of straw might be his wages, if you could call it that, loaded direct at the barn door and saving a bit of building into the gilt. A tricky building job, straw was not as easy to build on a cart as sheaves but I remember some mighty good loads being built, then tied tightly down with a couple of ropes thrown over the finished marvel. At Greenland Mains a certain Mr Campbell from Castletown was very good at so doing, never missing a chance of a free load of straw in return for his help. High entertainment thrown in as an extra.
He used to cart herring for our father in Stronsay in the fishing days gone by. Fancied himself as a good horseman, and it was so. Except for the time he backed a young horse in the cart into the sea to wash both the horse’s legs and the cart. after a day’s herring carting. The horse would not stop backing further anhd further into deeper water until Cammelly’s bum was under water, as helpless with laughing as the on dry land spectators. There was more to a load of straw than one would think!!
More often the extras were some hands from the Village. There was a nicely balanced barter system of setting some drills of tatties for a Villager, the favour being returned with a bit of occasional work when needed. We had another farm at Airy, four miles away, and the men interchanged when needed.
Not all stacks were at risk from rodents, only those built on the ground level steathes. I remember not needing to thrash stacks built on special raised stack steathes, or steddles to give the Caithness name. These steathes were usually kept for the seed oats, they were more or less rat and mouse proof.
They were built on stone pillars, or fancy bought-in iron pedestals on a few farms, with wide flagstones laid flat over the pillars so no varmints could climb into the stack. They were usually kept for the seed oats, always grown on the clean-land, a a field after a crop of turnips the previous year. They were used before winter’s end anyway as the seed was normally all needed. Any left over on raised steathes could be safely left unthrashed to next winter. That clean land crop was usually pretty free of weeds, shorter in straw length, more often cut standing and more regular and indeed giving a better and cleaner seed oat than any crop of lea, which usually, being very heavy, was prone to being flattened by bad weather.
.
But don’t count on total safety. Rats were wonderfully self reliant. There is the oft told story of the two rats night raiding the hen house. One rat lay on its back and held the desired egg on its stomach, the other rat gripped its tail and sledged the rat with the egg to the rat hole, or under the hen house. I never saw it done myself, but, as they say, “I knew a man who knew a man who had a wife etc.” Nuff said, believe it if you will. I do know that when we moved a hen house in the field there was always a number of eaten out egg shells underneath. So sometimes even a stack on pedestals would have a tenant. These rats must have grown wings.
Thrashing down left over stacks made use odd days of spare time for the men, a day of wind and rain mostly when land work was impossible. Or better, if all the land work was so up to date that time was available.
Straw gilts were a different kind of building than the sheaf building of harvest time when the outer ring of sheaves had a downward slope which ran off the rain. Even if not thatched, which I never saw in the North of Scotland, a well built stack was rain proof.
So too with the straw gilt. Keep the heart high, tramp it hard, place the loose straw with practiced care just so, pat it down into shape, keep an outward convex curve to the gilt topsides. Two men on top of the gilt, one keeping the incoming straw clear, the other doing the careful building. Stack nets over the gilt to keep it all down when finished. An art form.
We previously published a photo on the 11th June Groat issue of a gilt being built, have a look back unless the editor can reprint it. Good old photo too !!!
At Whitehaa I remember some Springs when “Building oot “ was done. By no means every Spring were stacks left over after a hard winter, but sometimes. This meant a run of days of thrashing down stacks left in the stackyard after winter end before the rats and the mice completely demolished them. Sometimes there were more, sometimes there were less, sometimes there were none at all.
Obviously the straw would have to be built outdoors, the barn could not hold it all. So a clear level space in the stackyard just beyond the barn door was made ready. We actually had two hard standings of many flat flag stones set out for that purpose, ever so slightly raised above ground level to keep the straw dry.. One was in the stackyard, one was inside the Square, both as near to the opposing barn doors as reasonable, not too far to carry the straw. The one in the Square is to be seen in the photo we previously published of Billy the Horse in the square with the bairns, including myself !! Obviously a space was left in the stackyard between the gilt and the barn wall to let the carts get in to the sheaf window. No travelling steam mills were available in Stronsay so threshing doon was a homer with your own thrashing mill in the barn. A dusty job too at winter’s end.
Extra hands were needed if the straw was to be carried direct from the mill as thrashing progressed, hauled in burdens out of the door. It needed two men to carry the straw from the mill, one man with a pitchfork at the gilt to pitch up to one man on a half loaded cart used as a platform on the way up. Pitching straw from the ground to any height at all was a no-go, especially on a windy day..
The cart we used was usually the Long Cart, handy if you had one, less shoogly and a longer platform, the shafts sitting on a barrel. It was better to have two men building on the gilt if you could get them.
Otherwise if not enough hands were available the straw was first stored in the barn on thrashing day, and then another day it was tediously carried out. and pitched up onto the gilt. Not too often was there enough people to keep everything going at the same time, so many days the straw just had to be barn stored. but it was double handling. Often enough that was the method when but few people were available
At Whitehall our father could usually rustle up enough extra hands to do both thrashing and carrying out at the same time. Sometimes a neighbour came to help to thrash down the left over stacks. A cart load of straw might be his wages, if you could call it that, loaded direct at the barn door and saving a bit of building into the gilt. A tricky building job, straw was not as easy to build on a cart as sheaves but I remember some mighty good loads being built, then tied tightly down with a couple of ropes thrown over the finished marvel. At Greenland Mains a certain Mr Campbell from Castletown was very good at so doing, never missing a chance of a free load of straw in return for his help. High entertainment thrown in as an extra.
He used to cart herring for our father in Stronsay in the fishing days gone by. Fancied himself as a good horseman, and it was so. Except for the time he backed a young horse in the cart into the sea to wash both the horse’s legs and the cart. after a day’s herring carting. The horse would not stop backing further anhd further into deeper water until Cammelly’s bum was under water, as helpless with laughing as the on dry land spectators. There was more to a load of straw than one would think!!
More often the extras were some hands from the Village. There was a nicely balanced barter system of setting some drills of tatties for a Villager, the favour being returned with a bit of occasional work when needed. We had another farm at Airy, four miles away, and the men interchanged when needed.
Not all stacks were at risk from rodents, only those built on the ground level steathes. I remember not needing to thrash stacks built on special raised stack steathes, or steddles to give the Caithness name. These steathes were usually kept for the seed oats, they were more or less rat and mouse proof.
They were built on stone pillars, or fancy bought-in iron pedestals on a few farms, with wide flagstones laid flat over the pillars so no varmints could climb into the stack. They were usually kept for the seed oats, always grown on the clean-land, a a field after a crop of turnips the previous year. They were used before winter’s end anyway as the seed was normally all needed. Any left over on raised steathes could be safely left unthrashed to next winter. That clean land crop was usually pretty free of weeds, shorter in straw length, more often cut standing and more regular and indeed giving a better and cleaner seed oat than any crop of lea, which usually, being very heavy, was prone to being flattened by bad weather.
.
But don’t count on total safety. Rats were wonderfully self reliant. There is the oft told story of the two rats night raiding the hen house. One rat lay on its back and held the desired egg on its stomach, the other rat gripped its tail and sledged the rat with the egg to the rat hole, or under the hen house. I never saw it done myself, but, as they say, “I knew a man who knew a man who had a wife etc.” Nuff said, believe it if you will. I do know that when we moved a hen house in the field there was always a number of eaten out egg shells underneath. So sometimes even a stack on pedestals would have a tenant. These rats must have grown wings.
Thrashing down left over stacks made use odd days of spare time for the men, a day of wind and rain mostly when land work was impossible. Or better, if all the land work was so up to date that time was available.
Straw gilts were a different kind of building than the sheaf building of harvest time when the outer ring of sheaves had a downward slope which ran off the rain. Even if not thatched, which I never saw in the North of Scotland, a well built stack was rain proof.
So too with the straw gilt. Keep the heart high, tramp it hard, place the loose straw with practiced care just so, pat it down into shape, keep an outward convex curve to the gilt topsides. Two men on top of the gilt, one keeping the incoming straw clear, the other doing the careful building. Stack nets over the gilt to keep it all down when finished. An art form.
We previously published a photo on the 11th June Groat issue of a gilt being built, have a look back unless the editor can reprint it. Good old photo too !!!
No 80 WIRD O' MOOTH.
No 80 “WIRD O’ MOOTH”. Pb 09.07 2010
We forget today that news actually did travel, a phrase we still use by saying “Bad News Travels Fast”. Still all too true I fear.
Funerals were notified by “wird o’ mooth”, a man coming to our house, often on foot or on his bike, possibly with a horse and a gig, and in all sobriety and with due formality giving the Man o’ the Hoos a “Bid” to the funeral. Sometimes that was also the first intimation that someone had died, though in some cases it was “ expected”. The man on the door step in his best dark suit and black tie told it’s own silent story.
The bid was never passed on over the doorstep, considered unlucky.
“Come in, Wullie, come awa in.” Courtesy dictated that a dram was offered to help the messenger on his way. Not always accepted and a dangerous courtesy anyway, with in some cases predictable results. It was a sober occasion, if I can use that word, and I remember the bearer of the news being ushered into the dining room by our father and spending a little time with him before going further on his sombre way. No doubt they would have a “bit o’ a news” as well.
Newspapers in Stronsay came in bundles, a feast and a famine. The Earl Thorfinn came out from Kirkwall on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Earl Sigurd came out some Tuesdays but not to every Island. She, as we always called a ship, normally served Rousay, lying out to the West a bit on its own. On Fridays, but not every Friday, it did a “Round the Isles” sailing, a sort of “Touch and go”, with little cargo being handled, almost no livestock unless to another Island, beginning and ending in Kirkwall. It always was curious to me that the service was called a “sailing” though there were no longer any sails to drive the ship. It is still so called even today. How a word lingers on even after it’s immediate use has become outdated.
.
So newspapers came when they came, and several days newspapers would come in the same bundle, delivered by the postman. Many years later at Lower Dounreay and then Isauld we still had newspapers delivered by post from Malcolm and Tait in Thurso, postage 2d a time old money, less than a decimal penny now. Later Jim Ferrier, servicing Dounreay with the papers, threw ours out passing the Isauld road end, no extra charge. But we got them, with the occasional rainy day !!!
In Stronsay our regular paper was the Glasgow Herald. Others stuck religiously and vigorously to the Scotsman. Local papers were the Orcadian and the competing Orkney Herald, the latter now gone. I guess as his journey progressed the postman’s burden would get lighter. He also passed on much news by the well known “wird o mooth”.
Wm Tait of the Diaries in March 1915, in the Bay in Stronsay, paid 6s 8d. to W. Slater, Kirkwall, for the Scotsman delivered by post for a year. That is 33p. today, not bad for a year’s supply right to your door. In 1918 the Scotsman for 6 months cost him 4s 4d. Meeting the postman was always an adventure, and we vied as to who would get the letters and the newspapers. They came well wrapped too.
.
The postman delivered much else, parcels of clothes from Patrick Thompson on North Bridge in Edinburgh, a suit for our father from P.L.Johnston in Stromness, his brother-in-law, catalogue orders, though our mother generally frowned on that source. Still, catalogues were much used by many people far from still unborn shopping malls and filled a most useful need in remote Islands, sometimes with a local catalogue contact.
And books. Always books. Our mother subscribed to the Book Society, and I think there was a Reprint Society as well. Every month a new book came in a neat cardboard container. To be the first to open the small parcel was a competition between us. We also had and looked forward to the Childrens Newspaper, founded and edited by Arthur Mee, a brilliant man who also compiled and edited the Children’s Encylopedia. That was a quite incredible compendium of good information, I read it in its 8 volume entirety. A red leather bound set was in Whitehall, I remember when it arrived, then on to Greenland Mains, then on again to Isauld and so on down the family. A very old green leather covered set from Keiss also appeared, my late wife’s teacher Aunt Anne on the Robertson side. That set, a bit battered, is now in New Zealand with our daughter Janet and on to her children. I do not know if they read it, I suspect too many outdoor interests in that green and pleasant land.
Finally, the “wire”. In Wm Tait’s Diaries when he was farming, in Stennaquoy in Eday, 1900 to 1907, the first wire I found was an entry in 1907:-
jan 22 tues Sandy horse at Smiddy, got shoes on hind feet - 1 pair carting neeps a.m. thrashed p.m. - got wire word of James death - dry windy day.
[ James was his elder brother, founder of J. & W.Tait, born in Caithness in Inkstack in Dunnet Parish }
jan 24 thur W. S. Tait went to Kirkwall to James funeral .
jan 26 sat W. S. Tait came home today.
And that was that !!
There were submarine cables connecting the Islands with Kirkwall, dog legging on land over one Island and then diving under the sea to the next, coming onshore to various small buildings which are still there. The telephone line in Stronsay went by two wires in wooden telephone poles from land fall at Linksness past Whitehall Farm and down the road to the Post Office in Whitehall Village where, in a back room, Jim Fiddler, Postmaster, took care of them. Morse code knowledge required, and a light touch on a Morse key tap tap tapping the message. We used to hear the two wires singing as they passed Whitehall Farm and imagined the words actually passing along the wires.
Jim’s Norwegian wife Bertha often carried a bunch of telegrams - wires - in their unmistakeable buff envelopes to the Fish Mart, putting them in the desk boxes of various fish buyers and curers. Telegrams were delivered by messenger, not waiting for the regular postman but delivered by just anyone who would carry it. Sometimes a handy passing boy would get the honour. A far cry from the cell phone constantly at the ear of a well known local fish buyer down at Scrabster, as seen on T.V.!!!
The sadder part of the life of the “wire”, or the telegram, was the all too frequent carrying of sad tidings from War, the first notification of all too many deaths. Woundings were also notified by wire, and the first our grandfather knew of his Dr. son David’s injury in France in 1915 was a wire Notification from the War Office that he had been wounded. David himself had not thought fit to tell his parents, considering it not worth worrying them. He was honoured with an M.C. for that episode in No Mans Land, out with a stretcher party succouring wounded men.
During both World Wars the sight of a boy with a telegram was heart stopping in a small Island, the tidings all too frequently guessed in advance.
And Caithness was there too in the early days of telegraphy and the “wire”. In 1843 Caithness man Alexander Bain, credited as from Watten though born in Thurso Parish, invented and patented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires.
(Wikpedia) “Alexander Bain and his twin sister Margaret were born in October 1811 of humble parents in the little town of Thurso, at the extreme north of Scotland. Their dad was a crofter, and he had six sisters and six brothers. They grew up in a remote stone cottage at Leanmore, a few miles north of Wick”
Caithness can justifiably be proud of him. He went a long way from “Wird o’ mooth”.
We forget today that news actually did travel, a phrase we still use by saying “Bad News Travels Fast”. Still all too true I fear.
Funerals were notified by “wird o’ mooth”, a man coming to our house, often on foot or on his bike, possibly with a horse and a gig, and in all sobriety and with due formality giving the Man o’ the Hoos a “Bid” to the funeral. Sometimes that was also the first intimation that someone had died, though in some cases it was “ expected”. The man on the door step in his best dark suit and black tie told it’s own silent story.
The bid was never passed on over the doorstep, considered unlucky.
“Come in, Wullie, come awa in.” Courtesy dictated that a dram was offered to help the messenger on his way. Not always accepted and a dangerous courtesy anyway, with in some cases predictable results. It was a sober occasion, if I can use that word, and I remember the bearer of the news being ushered into the dining room by our father and spending a little time with him before going further on his sombre way. No doubt they would have a “bit o’ a news” as well.
Newspapers in Stronsay came in bundles, a feast and a famine. The Earl Thorfinn came out from Kirkwall on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Earl Sigurd came out some Tuesdays but not to every Island. She, as we always called a ship, normally served Rousay, lying out to the West a bit on its own. On Fridays, but not every Friday, it did a “Round the Isles” sailing, a sort of “Touch and go”, with little cargo being handled, almost no livestock unless to another Island, beginning and ending in Kirkwall. It always was curious to me that the service was called a “sailing” though there were no longer any sails to drive the ship. It is still so called even today. How a word lingers on even after it’s immediate use has become outdated.
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So newspapers came when they came, and several days newspapers would come in the same bundle, delivered by the postman. Many years later at Lower Dounreay and then Isauld we still had newspapers delivered by post from Malcolm and Tait in Thurso, postage 2d a time old money, less than a decimal penny now. Later Jim Ferrier, servicing Dounreay with the papers, threw ours out passing the Isauld road end, no extra charge. But we got them, with the occasional rainy day !!!
In Stronsay our regular paper was the Glasgow Herald. Others stuck religiously and vigorously to the Scotsman. Local papers were the Orcadian and the competing Orkney Herald, the latter now gone. I guess as his journey progressed the postman’s burden would get lighter. He also passed on much news by the well known “wird o mooth”.
Wm Tait of the Diaries in March 1915, in the Bay in Stronsay, paid 6s 8d. to W. Slater, Kirkwall, for the Scotsman delivered by post for a year. That is 33p. today, not bad for a year’s supply right to your door. In 1918 the Scotsman for 6 months cost him 4s 4d. Meeting the postman was always an adventure, and we vied as to who would get the letters and the newspapers. They came well wrapped too.
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The postman delivered much else, parcels of clothes from Patrick Thompson on North Bridge in Edinburgh, a suit for our father from P.L.Johnston in Stromness, his brother-in-law, catalogue orders, though our mother generally frowned on that source. Still, catalogues were much used by many people far from still unborn shopping malls and filled a most useful need in remote Islands, sometimes with a local catalogue contact.
And books. Always books. Our mother subscribed to the Book Society, and I think there was a Reprint Society as well. Every month a new book came in a neat cardboard container. To be the first to open the small parcel was a competition between us. We also had and looked forward to the Childrens Newspaper, founded and edited by Arthur Mee, a brilliant man who also compiled and edited the Children’s Encylopedia. That was a quite incredible compendium of good information, I read it in its 8 volume entirety. A red leather bound set was in Whitehall, I remember when it arrived, then on to Greenland Mains, then on again to Isauld and so on down the family. A very old green leather covered set from Keiss also appeared, my late wife’s teacher Aunt Anne on the Robertson side. That set, a bit battered, is now in New Zealand with our daughter Janet and on to her children. I do not know if they read it, I suspect too many outdoor interests in that green and pleasant land.
Finally, the “wire”. In Wm Tait’s Diaries when he was farming, in Stennaquoy in Eday, 1900 to 1907, the first wire I found was an entry in 1907:-
jan 22 tues Sandy horse at Smiddy, got shoes on hind feet - 1 pair carting neeps a.m. thrashed p.m. - got wire word of James death - dry windy day.
[ James was his elder brother, founder of J. & W.Tait, born in Caithness in Inkstack in Dunnet Parish }
jan 24 thur W. S. Tait went to Kirkwall to James funeral .
jan 26 sat W. S. Tait came home today.
And that was that !!
There were submarine cables connecting the Islands with Kirkwall, dog legging on land over one Island and then diving under the sea to the next, coming onshore to various small buildings which are still there. The telephone line in Stronsay went by two wires in wooden telephone poles from land fall at Linksness past Whitehall Farm and down the road to the Post Office in Whitehall Village where, in a back room, Jim Fiddler, Postmaster, took care of them. Morse code knowledge required, and a light touch on a Morse key tap tap tapping the message. We used to hear the two wires singing as they passed Whitehall Farm and imagined the words actually passing along the wires.
Jim’s Norwegian wife Bertha often carried a bunch of telegrams - wires - in their unmistakeable buff envelopes to the Fish Mart, putting them in the desk boxes of various fish buyers and curers. Telegrams were delivered by messenger, not waiting for the regular postman but delivered by just anyone who would carry it. Sometimes a handy passing boy would get the honour. A far cry from the cell phone constantly at the ear of a well known local fish buyer down at Scrabster, as seen on T.V.!!!
The sadder part of the life of the “wire”, or the telegram, was the all too frequent carrying of sad tidings from War, the first notification of all too many deaths. Woundings were also notified by wire, and the first our grandfather knew of his Dr. son David’s injury in France in 1915 was a wire Notification from the War Office that he had been wounded. David himself had not thought fit to tell his parents, considering it not worth worrying them. He was honoured with an M.C. for that episode in No Mans Land, out with a stretcher party succouring wounded men.
During both World Wars the sight of a boy with a telegram was heart stopping in a small Island, the tidings all too frequently guessed in advance.
And Caithness was there too in the early days of telegraphy and the “wire”. In 1843 Caithness man Alexander Bain, credited as from Watten though born in Thurso Parish, invented and patented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires.
(Wikpedia) “Alexander Bain and his twin sister Margaret were born in October 1811 of humble parents in the little town of Thurso, at the extreme north of Scotland. Their dad was a crofter, and he had six sisters and six brothers. They grew up in a remote stone cottage at Leanmore, a few miles north of Wick”
Caithness can justifiably be proud of him. He went a long way from “Wird o’ mooth”.
No 81 Boys Knives
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 81 Boys Knives
Every boy needed a knife. Back to my first schooldays in the North School again, though I still have to do the Central School where I did my last three years at Stronsay Schools. And in this present day “no knives” culture, we lived then when the ownership of a knife was such a distinguishing mark of a very young boy’s growing up. To own one was a matter of great pride.
At School we had slate pencils of course, mentioned in the North School article of 18th April 2008, which sometimes needed a bit of sharpening. And lead pencils which needed frequent sharpening as the lead either wore down or broke.
Pencils came in many guises, thick, thin, hard, soft, AA, BB, crayon and coloured pencils. An indelible pencil of a purplish shade which was frowned upon as it could not be rubbed out with any ease at all.
They all needed sharpening, and all the boys had penknives, though some were a bit older than others before getting one, and the trust of their parents. My very first one was a present from my surgeon Uncle John who had a professional interest in knives anyway!!! I was rising six in 1935 when he came on a visit home from Invercargill in New Zealand, and I had just recently started the North School. Mother-of-pearl handle, two bladed, neat, one large blade at one end, one smaller blade at the other. It made for a certain deal of self importance which I have never lost – so they say !!!.
That I now had a knife like the other boys and like my father made for a feeling of being quite grown up. To be trusted with a knife was great.
With the knife came instructions and demonstrations on its use, do it this way, do not do it that way, and shown the reasons why. How to open and close your knife without cutting yourself. How to sharpen your knife. What kind of stone off the beach made the best sharpener. Whetted with a bit of spit when needed. Learning to do simple every day things then was a part of life which seems to be getting neglected in some ways today in this computer age, but all is not yet entirely lost.
And so to School, able now to sharpen my own pencils. There were many ways of so doing. A really sharp knife worked well with the away stroke, but we had to go to the iron stove to do so and sharpen the pencil into the coal bucket to keep the floor clean. A blunt knife was still usable, but not with the away stroke, you were guaranteed always to break the new point just as you had got it properly sharp. !!
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Still, even a blunt knife had it’s own method. Support the pencil tip with your thumb and with the knife held in the curled four fingers of the same hand cut towards the thumb. Amazingly, and H.S.E. would not allow such a thing today, it was just impossible to cut yourself or your thumb this way. Your thumb supported the tip so you could cut towards yourself without danger. Total control. Done carefully there was no breaking of a treasured newly sharpened point, and to have a really sharp pencil point was again a matter of honour. Some boys had a talent for pencil sharpening, Jim Stout from Linksness comes to mind. A good seaman and coxswain of the Stronsay Lifeboat later in life. Some, myself included, just got by.
.
A razor sharp knife was a matter of pride. Frequently someone was challenged as to who had sharpened his knife, and in my case it was Ould Pat Shearer who was the magician. He always had and treasured a special small beach stone in his pocket, just the right shape, a shallow groove worn into it from much use. The stone had come from the beach at Skaeval, a superb sheltered picnic spot on the Westside of Rousam Head, one of our favourite spots. A peculiar hard pebble stone could be found among the many others on the beach.
Spit on the stone, a few rubs and razor sharpness. Yet when we tried it ourselves we could not do it. Never ever. The final test was to be able to cut a hair, or with grown men to shave a little hair off their forearm, showing off a bit. I do not think modern knives are made of the same steel, and will not take or keep the same edge, too soft.
Pencil sharpening by the girls was totally different. No knives but here and there one of the girls had a pencil sharpener. They were actually very efficient but infectious pride forbade any of the boys from using one, cissy.
The penknife had many other uses. Surreptitiously carving your initials on many a long suffering school desk was one, difficult to deny to the teacher when the initials were your own and on your own desk. Some desks in the old school were really a lexicon of bygone scholars, some we knew but were now grown men.
Pick out a thistle from your finger, a careful job. Or a splinter of wood. Clean and trim your finger nails!!. Dissect a flower to see how it worked. Peel the outer sharp bristles from a Scotch Thistle flower head to get at the tiny tasty cheese inside. Skin and gut a rabbit caught in the dyke on our way home from School, presenting our mother with an oven ready carcase. We were always humoured by having it cooked, tasted like good chicken if the rabbit was young enough, just above half grown was best.
Pick a tiny hole with the sharp point of the small blade in either end of a bird’s egg to blow it and add it to our small amateurish collection. A hanging offence today of course, but birds do seem to be much less plentiful now. We were taught never to take more than one egg from any one nest, leave the others to hatch in due course. We were indeed environmentalists before the word was invented.
And whittling. Find a bit of drift wood on the beach that looked like something or other and better shape it. Carve a wooden pipe and bore a hole through the stem with a thin wire heated at one end in the farm smiddy forge. Time consuming and a few burnt fingers. Gouge out the bowl with the brace and bit in the farm workshop. When completed cadge a bit of baccy from Jock o’ Sound the cattle man to try it out. Sick as a dog afterwards. Put me off smoking for life. A good cure.
There were many other uses for a knife of course, but far too many to try to enumerate. A boy’s life long ago without a knife was just impossible.
.
No 81 Boys Knives
Every boy needed a knife. Back to my first schooldays in the North School again, though I still have to do the Central School where I did my last three years at Stronsay Schools. And in this present day “no knives” culture, we lived then when the ownership of a knife was such a distinguishing mark of a very young boy’s growing up. To own one was a matter of great pride.
At School we had slate pencils of course, mentioned in the North School article of 18th April 2008, which sometimes needed a bit of sharpening. And lead pencils which needed frequent sharpening as the lead either wore down or broke.
Pencils came in many guises, thick, thin, hard, soft, AA, BB, crayon and coloured pencils. An indelible pencil of a purplish shade which was frowned upon as it could not be rubbed out with any ease at all.
They all needed sharpening, and all the boys had penknives, though some were a bit older than others before getting one, and the trust of their parents. My very first one was a present from my surgeon Uncle John who had a professional interest in knives anyway!!! I was rising six in 1935 when he came on a visit home from Invercargill in New Zealand, and I had just recently started the North School. Mother-of-pearl handle, two bladed, neat, one large blade at one end, one smaller blade at the other. It made for a certain deal of self importance which I have never lost – so they say !!!.
That I now had a knife like the other boys and like my father made for a feeling of being quite grown up. To be trusted with a knife was great.
With the knife came instructions and demonstrations on its use, do it this way, do not do it that way, and shown the reasons why. How to open and close your knife without cutting yourself. How to sharpen your knife. What kind of stone off the beach made the best sharpener. Whetted with a bit of spit when needed. Learning to do simple every day things then was a part of life which seems to be getting neglected in some ways today in this computer age, but all is not yet entirely lost.
And so to School, able now to sharpen my own pencils. There were many ways of so doing. A really sharp knife worked well with the away stroke, but we had to go to the iron stove to do so and sharpen the pencil into the coal bucket to keep the floor clean. A blunt knife was still usable, but not with the away stroke, you were guaranteed always to break the new point just as you had got it properly sharp. !!
.
Still, even a blunt knife had it’s own method. Support the pencil tip with your thumb and with the knife held in the curled four fingers of the same hand cut towards the thumb. Amazingly, and H.S.E. would not allow such a thing today, it was just impossible to cut yourself or your thumb this way. Your thumb supported the tip so you could cut towards yourself without danger. Total control. Done carefully there was no breaking of a treasured newly sharpened point, and to have a really sharp pencil point was again a matter of honour. Some boys had a talent for pencil sharpening, Jim Stout from Linksness comes to mind. A good seaman and coxswain of the Stronsay Lifeboat later in life. Some, myself included, just got by.
.
A razor sharp knife was a matter of pride. Frequently someone was challenged as to who had sharpened his knife, and in my case it was Ould Pat Shearer who was the magician. He always had and treasured a special small beach stone in his pocket, just the right shape, a shallow groove worn into it from much use. The stone had come from the beach at Skaeval, a superb sheltered picnic spot on the Westside of Rousam Head, one of our favourite spots. A peculiar hard pebble stone could be found among the many others on the beach.
Spit on the stone, a few rubs and razor sharpness. Yet when we tried it ourselves we could not do it. Never ever. The final test was to be able to cut a hair, or with grown men to shave a little hair off their forearm, showing off a bit. I do not think modern knives are made of the same steel, and will not take or keep the same edge, too soft.
Pencil sharpening by the girls was totally different. No knives but here and there one of the girls had a pencil sharpener. They were actually very efficient but infectious pride forbade any of the boys from using one, cissy.
The penknife had many other uses. Surreptitiously carving your initials on many a long suffering school desk was one, difficult to deny to the teacher when the initials were your own and on your own desk. Some desks in the old school were really a lexicon of bygone scholars, some we knew but were now grown men.
Pick out a thistle from your finger, a careful job. Or a splinter of wood. Clean and trim your finger nails!!. Dissect a flower to see how it worked. Peel the outer sharp bristles from a Scotch Thistle flower head to get at the tiny tasty cheese inside. Skin and gut a rabbit caught in the dyke on our way home from School, presenting our mother with an oven ready carcase. We were always humoured by having it cooked, tasted like good chicken if the rabbit was young enough, just above half grown was best.
Pick a tiny hole with the sharp point of the small blade in either end of a bird’s egg to blow it and add it to our small amateurish collection. A hanging offence today of course, but birds do seem to be much less plentiful now. We were taught never to take more than one egg from any one nest, leave the others to hatch in due course. We were indeed environmentalists before the word was invented.
And whittling. Find a bit of drift wood on the beach that looked like something or other and better shape it. Carve a wooden pipe and bore a hole through the stem with a thin wire heated at one end in the farm smiddy forge. Time consuming and a few burnt fingers. Gouge out the bowl with the brace and bit in the farm workshop. When completed cadge a bit of baccy from Jock o’ Sound the cattle man to try it out. Sick as a dog afterwards. Put me off smoking for life. A good cure.
There were many other uses for a knife of course, but far too many to try to enumerate. A boy’s life long ago without a knife was just impossible.
.
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