Part 1
by John Duff
Three articles on Midmar and its characters, which appeared in Leopard a year or so ago, aroused a considerable amount of interest, tempting me to add to them. There was nothing about Midmar, which was in any way different from other country parishes in 30s, except perhaps in the extent of change between the hungry thirties and the present affluent and effluent age. Then, Midmar was pretty well the embodiment of “the back of beyond”, with its two buses per day to Aberdeen, but now, within easy commuting distance. It is a desirable place to stay, and I see that the settlement around the school now has a 30mph limit and street lights. Whatever next! As old Spuddy Duncan would have probably remarked, “It’s jist the waay o’ the waardle”.
I mentioned the hungry thirties, but in truth I never knew anyone in Midmar who was actually hungry, and the amount of loaf breid crusts discarded into the piece box at the school was testament to that. Having said that, I often think that if some of the ‘poor’ of today had to live the life that we were very happy with, they would certainly need counselling. What we did have to contend with was a shortage of hard cash, and while everyone had enough to eat, there was nothing much left over for fripperies. Those who had a hit more lived in the same way as everyone else, so their comparative wealth was never flaunted. If it had been, they would rapidly have been ostracised and become ‘ootlins’. The life for adults was hard and physically very demanding, there were few creature comforts and no artificial entertainment. The occasional concert and Saturday night dances provided the only organised recreation. Before the war, few people had access to wireless sets, and all national news was disseminated by the Press and Journal, with regional news by the weekly People’s Journal. The nearest Pub was at Echt, four or miles away, although the Cottage Shop, ‘Licensed to sell porter and Ale’, was a close, if unlawful, rival at weekends, and the ever present hazard of a raid by the Echt hobby added a special flavour to the Cottage whisky. There was always an exodus of farm folk to the mart on a Friday, when the bus was invariably packed, and or course there plenty of drams to be had there. If one devoted wife and mother regularly met the hamewith bus with the barrow, just in case her man was a bit unwell, and couldn’t quite make it up the brae, then that was their own affair: it affected no one else. There was a real community, and everyone with any sense made a point of getting on with their neighbours, because without friendly neighbours it would have been impossible to manage in time of illness or accident.
The old man into Birley in 1933. He had been a West Lothian miner, which was not a very auspicious start for an Aberdeenshire farmer, but Mother was local, so I suppose that made up for some of his genetic deficiencies. His father-in-law, John Murray at Mill of Hole, had helped them into the place, and had stood good at the Bank for him, but only a few months later, Granda died suddenly and the Bank demanded its money, which just about ended the venture before it had properly begun. It was start, at the height of the Depression, of years of trying to manage with nothing. In later years, my parents used to reminisce over how Father’s Aunt Kirsty, a genteel sort of body, who was to Lady Baillie or Polkemmet, gave my elder sister Carol £5. It was promptly commandeered to buy a sow, called Kirsty, who was a no-nonsense sort of pig. I remember on one occasion when the old boy was trying to take piglets from her, she burst through the pig-house door and chased him up across the road and round the hack of the house, finally ‘treeing’ him on the stone steps at the gable end of Carrie Murray’s shop. He wasn’t very tall, but he had a remarkably good turn or speed. Angry sows don’t take prisoners.
The chronic shortage of cash was reflected in the horses we had. Bob was an old wood horse from Mill of Hole. I mentioned him before – he was an old soldier, thrawn and with nothing at all to learn, but a gentle, docile beast. His land sider, Kate, was a different kettle or fish, being a nervous mare who would lash out without warning. On one occasion she caught the old man unawares, and just knocked him through the front of the corn kist. She had a big lump on her rear nearside knee, the result of some previous injury, possibly a kick. We were forbidden to go into the stable when she was there.
Soon after I stalled school, Kate went to the jing-a-ring, and Father arrived home, very proud, with a magnificent young gelding that he had got cheap. He might have known better: Aberdeen Corporation Cleansing Department had soId it, and they did not sell good young horses for no reason. We soon found out that he was totally unreliable, seeming not to understand commands, or perhaps just ignoring them. For some reason I decided to make pals with him, and I thought I was getting on quite well, so one day when he was out at grass, I went to him. I was standing in front or him, clapping his neck and speaking to him, quite proud of myself, when suddenly, without any warning he took off at a gallop, knocking me flying and going right over me, but by some divine intervention not trampling me. When I recovered my wits, I picked myself up. I was surprised to find that I was still in one piece and the only damage that had been done was a small three-cornered tear in the leg of one of my brand new wellington boots. I was scared I would get a row for going over to the horse, and certain I would get a row for damaging my wellington, so I said nothing about the escapade. I kept the boots out of sight till I thought they were old enough so that the damage could attributed to fair wear and tear.
I have forgotten that gelding’s name, and he wasn’t there for long. Father, anxious to get rid of his bad bargain and ill-able to afford the float fare, thought that if he walked him into the mart (about 17 miles), by that time he would a hit quieter and more biddable. At the next horse sale, he set off in the middle of the night and walked to Aberdeen. The stratagem worked, and he got rid of the gelding and bought Rose, a mare of uncertain age. By this lime he was a bit footsore himself. and decided to ride her home. He started off all right, but the next thing he knew was a bobby shouting and swearing at him for ignoring his point duty signals — he had fallen sound asleep. Rose was a fine, good-humoured beast, and stayed with us till after the War, when she foundered while ploughing a fleed in one of the school parks. The vet, who had to come from Alford or Inverurie or some such foreign place, shot her, and I was given the job of dragging the carcas to the gate for the knackery lorry with the Fordson tractor. It made the tractor grunt, and I was scared I would pull her head off.
Old Bob, too old to work any more, went during the War, and was replaced by Prince, an elderly cross Percheron gelding. At that time, Alec Donaldson, a semi-retired horseman, worked with us part time, and took a special shine to Prince, whom he always referred to as a ‘Persian’. Prince’s parlour trick was that if he lay down in the stable, he couldn’t get up and the first time he did it there was great consternation for a couple or days, with blocks and tackle from the rafters, slings, and all sorts. After that, he always had a canvas sling under him at night so that he could take the weight off his legs without lying down. After Rose’s death he was kept on, and was used for carting neeps and odd work till about 1949. when he too was mude redundant. The Ferguson tractor was just too handy and versatile a tool for a horse to compete with.
We got a new Fordson tractor early in the war, when it was impossible to get tractor tyres. The front wheels were of solid east iron with a central rim about an inch wide to run on, and the rear ones were of smooth metal with things called ‘spade lugs’, of chisel type cross section and about 4 inches deep, bolted on all round to provide traction. The trouble was that it was forbidden to go on the public road with the spade lugs as they damaged the road surface, and without them there was almost no traction. Since the public road bisected our farm and it was the most of a day’s work to remove and replace the spade lugs, we had a considerable problem. Father solved it by leaving on the lugs all the lime, thereby declaring war on Louis Emslie, the County Council Section Man responsible for our hit of road. Louis lived at Kirkstyle, a now derelict cottage below the road near the old kirk. Either by luck or good management, the old boy was never actually caught crossing the road, but of course the marks on the roadway were obvious, and I’m sure the roadie’s teeth must have been splintered and ground flat. The Fordson tractors came in two types — slow and slower, and were differentiated by a dab of different coloured paint on the differential housing. Our one was the slower model (orange spot, I think), and would do about 4 mph with a following wind. The other ones would do twice that — they were designed for fast road work.
After the war, when they became available, Father bought of the new Ferguson tractors, along with some power lift implements, and sold the Fordy, with the trailing plough and some other bits and pieces to Willie Esson. Willie was grieve to old Dod Shewan at Newton of Corsindae; in his spare time he did a hit of soutering, and was also hall-keeper. Dod was by this time housebound, and what the arrangement at the farm was I don’t know, but Willie was buying the tractor and implements on his own behalf. I think deal was for three hundred and something pounds, and one evening, Willie arrived with a biscuit tin full of money, mostly in change. He and the old boy sat at the kitchen table for ages, counting out all the half crowns, florins, tanners, thruppenies, pennies and maiks, along with a few pound and ten bob notes till they got it right. I can only think that Willie must have been saving all his soutering money in the biscuit tin, ready for the big spend.
Early in the War, to raise some cash, Father sold a small Scots pine plantation for pit props, and four or five woodcutters arrived, setting up a portable sawmill in the park next to the shop. Some of them lodged with Carrie Murray, but two of them bothied in a mobile van of the type that used to be commonly pulled behind traction engine outfits. They were young, friendly chaps, and in the evenings I (aged about 7) used to go and sit on a bench in their van while they got on with what passed for housekeeping and cooking. There was always a lot of good-humoured banter, and they would stoke up their iron stove till they had to tirr their sarks. They had a paraffin wick lamp which was usually reeky, and the combination or rippling muscles in dim light and the mixed smeIIs of rozzit, paraffin. fried sausages and sweat produced something as close to heaven as any little loon could wish for. There’s always a fly in the ointment, however, and this particular fly came in the form of Carrie’s maid, who used to come into the van to before my bedtime, and then took my seat. She was totally alien to that environment and I could not understand why could not see how she was intruding. I was sure the men didn’t want her there either, but were just too polite to say so and pretended to be pleased to see, and stinking of scent and it all. So it was that I would have to go and she would stay, skirling like a fool at their jokes. I hated her, and wished would fall down the van steps but she never did.
Near the end Of the felling of the plantation, one of the men, who came from the Six Mile somewhere, had an accident while snedding a tree and gashed his leg badly with his axe. They got him up to the shop, where the wound was bandaged after a fashion and he was sat down beside the counter, with his injured leg up on a bench, while he waited Dr Eddie to arrive from Echt. This took a while because first of all someone had to go half a mile or so, probably to the Schoolhouse to telephone. There was a growing pool of blood on the floor beneath him, and some sawdust was put down to soak it up a hit. The patient himself was pale, but trying to put a brave face on things, and doing his best to news to any customer who arrived at the shop in the meantime, He was taken to hospital, and we didn’t see him again.
Accidents were surprisingly frequent in such a rural area. During the time I attendd Midmar School, two boys were maimed, Alistair McAulay losing a finger to the big wheel of a binder, and the other, Jimmy Glennie I think, having his lower leg amputated by a mower. Jimmy was fitted with a peg leg, and soon became completely adept, being a particular menace at football, after he realised that his wooden leg was custom-built for cracking opposing shins. A year or two later, Ruth Hunter at Skybrae had Iong hair pulled off was lucky not to be scalped when she got it entangled in the crushing wheels of a corn bruiser.
My father had lost the little finger of his left hand in a freak accident with axe in 1933 and about 1939, he lost the index finger of his right hand. It was harvest time, and he was cutting com with the binder and a pair of horse. The binder’s mechanism was lowered by a single central broad wheel (the ‘big wheel’) which took all of the binder’s weight, and which could knocked out of grip or free-wheeled by operating a spring loaded clutch behind and below the horseman’s seat. This disengaged two pinions, and was normally used when running empty between cutting successive bouts. Not wanting to stop, the old man had been knocking it out of grip while still moving, and on this occasion the reins, wrapped round his hand, got caught up in the chain which drove the rollers, pulling his hand into the machinery. Before be could get the horses stopped, his index finger had been mangled and pulled partly off, and his thumb was not much better. He was trapped, of course. off balance and powerless to help himself and could only hope that the horses did not start up again, in which case his whole hand would have followed the fingers. Fortunately, Sidney Walker, dominie Walker’s son, who often worked with us during his holidays, and who was in his final year as a medical student, was stooking nearby. Hearing Father’s shouts, ran across and managed to cut him out, I think having to sever the remains of the finger to do so. The souter took him to hospital, where they managed to save his thumb, and at the same time removed his index knuckle. He was soon back to almost normal, but afterwards he suffered a lot from cold when working with neeps in frost and snow.
My father’s accident must have been painful enough, but it was nothing to what a farmer in a neighbouring area had to endure. Farms at that time all had barn threshing mills, either water or engine powered, and it was customary to completely fill the loft the rafters with sheaves prior to a thrash. Only the top of the mill itself and the cockpit where the operator stood would left uncovered, and he had to climb over the top of the sheaves to get to his stance. The drum of the mill, which was the part that actually separated the grain from the stalks, revolved at very high speed. It had a hinged safety cover which when in use was folded back to form a rest for the sheaves being fed into it. On this occasion, the farmer, unaware or forgetting that the cover had not been closed, stepped right into the drum. The doctor, when he arrived, had to amputate the leg to get him out.
Dr Eddie, who lived at had succeeded Dr Skinner at Skene. I have no personal recollection of Dr Skinner, who was apparently a very forthright character, but Mother often used to speak about him, and Father always said that he had saved his arm, if not his life, when he lost his little finger. The finger had been almost severed, but a doctor in the hospital had thought he could save it and sewed it back on. He had been attending the hospital, and thought things were doing all right, when one day he met Dr Skinner at Mill of Hole, and the doctor demanded to see it. Dad said that he took one look at the finger, squeezed it, and ordered old John Murray, who at that time had a bull-nosed Morris Cowley car, to take him back to hospital as fast as he could to have it amputated. Gangrene had set in.
A number of years ago on TV, an old retired doctor was reminiscing about Dr Skinner, and told the following story. The incident had happened before telephones were common, and anyone requiring urgent medical services had to send a messenger to the doctor’s house. At this lime, Dr Skinner’s home was Leddach House at Skene, and in the small hours one night he was awakened by someone throwing gravel at his window. Throwing up the window and sticking his head out, the irascible doctor demanded to know what was going on
“Can ye come to the wife richt awa, doctor. she’s affa nae weel”.
“Weel, fit’s like wrang wi’ her?”
“She’s got a terrible itch, doctor, she’s jist yokey a’ ower!”
This was too much. “Weel, ye silly bugger, if she’s yokey a’ ower, ging hame an’ claa her a’ ower, and dinna bather me!”