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 How a word lingers on even after it’s immediate use has become outdated.
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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”.