No 69. STRONG MEN.

NO 69. STRONG MEN.

I wrote of physical strength recently when remembering moving grain from the thrashing mill and lofting it. A mere mention of just one task in passing. But a long time ago men had to shift and lift all their working lives. Women too.
You will not see many stout men in old photos of horses and men lined up with their carts outside a cart shed. The classic photo of that in Caithness was and still is the one taken at West Murkle about 1920, but there are many other very good photos still around. There were not many men around then with soft hands either.
In Stronsay my memory is of strong men down in Whitehall Village with loose salt to shovel, quarter cran baskets of herring to lift onto a cart, swinging them off the pier if the carts were too slow to get down for them to load direct from the boats. No time to hang around waiting with perishable herring. The wicker baskets came out of the the drifters’ fish holds usually in singles though I seem to remember clutches of them at times, doubles or triples. It depended how many men on the rope on un-assisted hand pulled rope pulleys or if they had a steam winch. There were barrels of cured herring to lift and shift, salt to move, loose herring to shovel, endless physical hard work but it all got done. Ships to load with packed herring barrels for Hambuig or Danzig or Russia.

The men on the pier on Steamer days had to handle full egg boxes, crates of lobsters, bags of feed, sacks of grain, timber for the joiner, iron for the blacksmith. Caithness roofing slates, cement, farm machinery, all sorts of odds and ends.
Bags of fertiliser came ashore in bundles in rope slings. Basic Slag, a by-product of iron smelting, came in quite small bags not too easy to get a grip on or your hands around, difficult to handle as it very dense and heavy. Very dirty too when spreading it on the fields, not a job the men liked too much on a windy day.
North African Phosphate came in 2 cwt bags, I think some of it might have been 2¼ cwt. It came in thick and very good jute sacks which were much treasured on the farm when washed and later used for other purposes. Most other fertilisers were in 1 cwt jute bags. Paper or plastic bags had not yet been invented.

Some goods were loaded directly onto carts standing ready but perishable bagged feed from Bibbys for hens and pigs had to be taken out of the slings, loaded on hurleys and wheeled into the store on the pier to be stacked high until someone came to collect it. The stacking was a three man job, two to swing the bag between them and “Hup” to a man on top of the heap storing it tidily.
Davie Miller was storeman in charge of everything and every body down the pier. There was no time to waste when the steamer was at the pier, load and unload, sort out the goods when the ship had gone. Everything needed for the Island had to come in over the pier, all had to be man handled.

There were livestock to handle, cattle, pigs, a horse with a bag over its eyes, two men with ropes to the halter at the head, two men either side behind with a sack or a rope held between them behind the rear of the horse to urge it on. A horse could weigh a good ton. Cattle with halters already tied on their heads were comparably easy though now and again one jumped off the pier into the sea and had to be caught by men in a boat, lassoed and towed ashore. Down the pier again with strong men hanging on the rope and on board.

The men on the coal hulks had coal to shovel all day, every day save Sunday. The coal had first to be shovelled into coal skips and unloaded from the colliers from Newcastle into the coal hulks lying at anchor in the Bay of Franks, normally before the season began, then done all over again to fill the coal bunkers of the herring drifters. We used to watch the men going out from the pier to the coal hulks in their small motor boats if we were down in the Village. Or coming back at the end of the day covered in coal dust. All hard hand work.

On the farm lifting was normal. In autumn cattle had to be lassoed and pulled into their stalls in the byre for the winter. We still did that into my earlier days in Isauld though to a much lesser extent. One byre held 8 cattle, one held 16, the rest were in loose bedded courts.
Sheaves had to be pitched, straw had to be carried, dung had to be loaded onto barrows and wheeled out of the byre and onto the dung midden. Later the dung had to be dug out of the midden with graips and forked onto carts, then to the fields for spreading..
Grain in the lofts had to be lifted into sacks with wooden scoop boxes about a bushel in size, weighed, the bags tied and stored ready for the Mill or for shipping. Four bushel jute sacks from Dundee were standard, holding 1½ cwt for oats, 2 cwt for barley (bere) . Then onto carts and away. All hand work.

Strength at times was recreational. A level space in the stackyard at Whitehall just outside the barn door was clear for putting the iron shot, throwing a 56 lb weight over a bar or just for distance. Johnny Peace practiced his long jump into a home made sand pit before the Stronsay Show. There was a large round boulder to lift and see how far you could carry it before dropping. . We could not even lift it !! Sometimes a wee game of football with jackets for goal posts. Everyone was a referee!!



The loft had its indoor entertainment. “Skin-the-cat” was one. Jump for the rafters, grip two adjoining couple backs and turn your legs through the intervening space until upside down, then turn back again. Jump two handed for one rafter back, feet off the floor, chin the rafter cross back and see how many times you could do it. See who could do the greatest number. No cheating allowed.
One miracle man whom our father told us of was at the Bu’ of Rousam in his
early days. Such was his strength of hand that he could grip the couple back
from underneath between thumb and fingers and lift himself up to chin it.
He had been a whaler in his younger days !!!