Barrowsgate

Category: Stories

  • A Fishing Trip in South Australia

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    This is a straightforward, apparently factual account of a family holiday around 1923/4 from Adelaide to Cape Jervis. Jim, Janet and the two boys set off from Adelaide in a motor car, towing a boat, packed with camping equipment behind them. The story describes the journey there and how they caught different types of fish,…

  • Cross-Eyed Luck

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    This was published in the Buchan Observer in March 1937 (under the name “Anzac”) and describes an incident that Barrowsgate was involved in when in California in 1911. He was working as a horseman for an apple grower near Castroville and one of his jobs was to transport migrant Chinese apple pickers from the orchards…

  • The red-haired robber

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    “The Red-haired Robber”, broadcast in January 1937 as “Here Awa’ There Awa’” on BBC Scotland, recounts a story Jim that is told by Sam Goldberg in his eponymous saloon bar in a town called Condor. Some years previously a red-haired man had robbed Goldberg’s safe and escaped on horseback over the border to Canada. Many…

  • A veteran of the crook and plaid

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    This is a portrait of Hugh Rose Smythe, Barrowsgate’s uncle. “Aul Hughie” lived from 1858 until 1952 and, at the time of writing (1936), he was “only” 78. Seven years before the article was written, Aul Hughie received an award from the Marquis of Aberdeen and Tremair for sixty years’ service as a shepherd on…

  • Sold All Round

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    Weelum, a gamekeeper-turned-poacher had successfully evaded capture for years. The new Laird of Pulwiddie decides to put a stop to his activities and lays a trap. While the gamekeeper and Police scour the hillside for Weelum, some hand-reared pheasants disappear from an enclosure in the Head Keeper’s garden. Published in the Buchan Observer under the…

  • The Doctor’s Revenge (a.k.a. “Dr Bolton”)

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    This story of around 350 words was published in Buchan Observer in November 1936 under the name “Anzac”, and a typescript survives with the label “Burnfield, Rothiemay”, which indicates that it was probably typed up later – between 1943 and 1953. This story is likely to be based on events that happened during Barrowsgate’s time…

  • Boiled Herring

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    In Flanders, in 1917, a spy is suspected to have infiltrated the Allied lines. A sentry is posted at “the Gap” with orders not to let anyone through without a pass from the General. Before long, an officer by the name of Boyd Heron attempts to pass and is challenged by the sentry. Note: Barrowsgate…

  • The Gentle Warrior – Darling of Otaheiti

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    The subject of this story, published in the Buchan Observer in September 1936, is Ernest William Darling, who became famous as a result of meeting the novelist Jack London in Tahiti and was the subject of London’s own story “The Nature Man” published in an American magazine in 1908. According to London, Darling had studied…

  • Aul’ Wattie

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    This is a eulogy about a real character, William Watt, who worked for many years as ostler at the Balcarres Arms Hotel. It appeared in the Bon Accord but the original handwritten version is reproduced below. Barrowsgate describes a man of good morals and integrity who loved his animals and treated everyone equally. Barrowsgate contends…

  • Canadian Emigrant 1908

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    Jim’s apparently autobiographical story “A Canadian Emigrant” was serialized and published in four parts as “A Colonist in Canada Twenty-Five Years Ago” by “Hugh James” in the Bon Accord in May and June 1934. Jim revised it and it was published again as “Call of the Golden West – Recollections of Thirty Years Ago” by…