Mair Fae Midmar by John Duff
Part 2
MAIR FAF. MIDMAR
2
JOHN DUFF
Auntie Carrie, who had the shop next door to our house, was a great one for ventures to make her wealthy, but none lasted long. The one I remember best was the Angora rabbits (she was going to sell the wool), which were kept in a black corrugated iron shed at the shop, and which I used to love to stroke and pet. My father remembered them too, but for a rather different reason.
When he first took the farm, he had a fee-ed loon, and the first one he had was Louis Emslie, son of the Road Section-man mentioned in the last article. When Louis moved on, he left my father with a big dog polecat ferret, which promptly bit him. I expect it was bad tempered and that was why Louis had left it in the first place. Euthanasia, or maybe just plain murder, was obviousIy called for, but for some reason Father backed off, and persuaded himself that if he let the beast go wild in the rough ground, it could easily live off rabbits, so doing him a good turn al the same time. He turned it loose.
A day or two later, Carrie burst into the house screaming to come quick with the gun, as there was a black white beast killing her angora rabbits, which had been put out in pens. Sure enough. there was the ferret, having a whale of a time. There was no hestitation this time, and the miscreant was shot and speedily disposed of, I don’t know what he told Carrie, but it certainly was not the truth, and she never did find out where the ferret had come from.
Louis’s successor was Johnnie Walker, from Muirton of Corsindae, and both of them in turn lived in the chalmer. For the uninitiated, the difference between a bothy and a chalmer is that a person living in a chalmer has his meals supplied in the farm house, whereas someone living in a bothy cooks their own. Most of the NE farms had chalmers, sometimes a room above the stable or elsewhere in steading, but very often a distinctive separate building with a pitched roof rather like a miniature cottage. The door would lead into a small entrance hallway and from there into the sleeping chamber, which varied in size of course with the number it was designed to sleep. These chalmers varied in quality from very comfortable to abysmal and verminous. Our one was very old, badly designed, and in the terminal stages of decay. It faced east, fronting on to the roadway in front of the shop, and had a single span roof which had too little pitch, so that the wind would blow rain up under the slates, making il permanently damp. Inside, both the roof and floor were rotten and sagging. The fireplace was a hole in one wall about the size or a biscuit tin. The plaster-work, where it had not fallen off, was distempered a bilious green colour, decorated in places with pencil drawings of cattle and horses which would have been a credit to any Neanderthal cave dweller. Johnnie Walker was last inhabitant, and after that it was used as an incubator house for hatching hens’ eggs, till it finally became completely unusable and was left to disintegrate. It was pulled down in the fifties.
Poultry, hens in particular, formed quite an important part or our economy, and we had what was called an Accredited Poultry Station, with Rhode Island Reds. All the hens were blood tested periodically, and any which died had to be sent off for post mortems (at any rate, that was the theory). The whole operation was supervised by a lady, always just known as the “hen wife” (this reminds me of you, Audrey), who also did the blood testing. I believe she was based at Craibstone, or perhaps it was Lasswade. If things went according to plan, hatching eggs could sold at a considerable premium, and it was at that time quite a profitable operation.
Speaking of hens reminds me of my tractor driving test, which I sat with the Fergie when I was 16. I don’t know what they do now, but at that time the tester came to the farm. On the appointed day, I had the tractor all polished up, and dog was shut in, just in case he disgraced himself. When the tester arrived, he turned out to a fine mannie who showed a keen interest in the hens scratching about at the neep-shed door. The old man came out, and they started discussing the respective laying merits of Rhodies and Leghorns. The war had been over for a year or two, but rationing was still very much in force, and fresh eggs to toonsers were like coloured beads to savages. Having torn himself away from the hens, the mannie asked me what side of the road I drove on, and what was the difference in shape between Halt At Major Road Ahead signs and Slow signs. He then told me to go to the road end, and come hack, giving all the correct signals: I drove off, waving my right arm like a demented dervish, while he resumed the poultry conversation. When I came back, he trustingly jumped in front of me for an emergency stop, a baggie of eggs appeared from somewhere, and I had passed my test.
Before the hens, however, there were the turkeys, hatched out by cloaking hens, and reared with difficulty, because turkey chicks are undoubtedly the dumbest of all farmyard animals, with an inborn death wish. In a thunderstorm they would happily stand outside and drown, and they didn’t have enough wit to get under cover at night, so a special shelter had to built for them. Naturally they had to be herded, protesting, into it every night. When they weren’t drowning in rain, they would search for suitable long grass to strangle themselves, and of course they were suckers for rats. If that didn’t work, they would get “Gapes” caused by some sort of parasitic worms in the throat, and were treated by dipping a feather in tincture of iodine and shoving it down their throats. To paraphrase Corporal Jones, “they didn’t like it down ’em”. Another. possibly unique, hazard they had to face at Birley was Bluey, our Irish cow, who had a taste for day-old turkeys, and once ate a whole hatching, which managed to survive to December and were done in by Father and Flo Anderson in a manner which I do not intend to describe (turkeys are big birds), and sold either to Willie Cruickshank at Comers, or some other poultry dealer.
Willie, always just known as Willie Cruickie, was farmer at Roadside, Comers and also dealt in poultry, rabbits and hares. At Birley we were almost equidistant from Cruickie’s and the Cottage shop, where John Smith also bought rabbits, so there was always a fine decision to made as to where to sell a rabbit the dog had scented in a dyke. After all, the difference of a a pound could mean a bottle of ale at Carrie’s or the Comers shop. Cruickie’s was better fun to go to in December, as there was usually a mixed company in the old house, feverishly plucking fowls for the Xmas market. The jokes would fly thick and last, many too earthy for us to understand, but we would always join in the guffaws and pretend to grown-up. The farm buildings were situated at the top of the Cruickic’s Brae, and just above the steading was a very bad double hairpin bend, now long gone. At the Shiels side of the bends was situated one of the old black and white rectangular wooden signs, saying, “Caution Dangerous Bends”, to which some bucolic wit had added, “Please Look Out For Crookies Hens”.
The Comers shop housed the Post Office, and outside was the only telephone kiosk. There was also a petrol pump, and the combination of these three vital elements made the Comers a pretty important place. The shop was quite a lot bigger and grander than Carrie’s, with the drapery counter on the left, the groceries on the right, and the Post Office counter at the far end. Posties, on their red bikes with the flat carrier in front, would often be coming or going, and in December it could quite a bustling sort of place, a little intimidating to us country cousins, who were not there very often. The superior effect was rounded off by the Postmaster. I can just remember someone called Fyvle, who was replaced by Mr Omand (he seemed much too important to have a first name), who had gold bands capping his teeth. We thought that he must be very rich. About 1943. the Omands and the Fordyces took over the shop.
At Easter in 1947 (the Rev W Douglas Chisholm, now retired of course, living happily in Oxfords-hire, assures me that it was Good Friday), I was working with my father at the school croft when we saw a heavy plume of black smoke coming from the Comers direction, obviously a serious fire of some sort. We had the new Ferguson tractor with us, and we headed flat out for the Comers, only to find that we were too late to be of any assistance. A few moments after we arrived the roof collapsed, and above the crackle of the flames could he heard the popping of shotgun cartridges exploding in the heat. It was a singularly unpleasant experience to have to watch a neighbour’s livelihood going up in flames. Fortunately the dwelling-house survived, family weathered the storm, the shop was rebuilt, and now Ernest and Joan Fordyce are worthy second generation proprietors of one of the few country shops to have survived. Long may they flourish.
Across the road from the Comers shop, just at the entrance to the Glen track, lived old Mrs Laird in a cottage with a corrugated iron roof. Mrs Laird was into her nineties, and was looked after by her daughter Maggie, herself no spring chicken. Maggie must been hardy, because of course there was no running water in the cottage, and she had to carry every drop in buckets from a spring situated at the roadside about 200 yards from the house, on the steep incline round the bend leading up to the smiddy. A stroup used to protrude from the bank, and Maggie always had a bucket filling there. The spring is still there, but the Stroup is gone. Just inside her cottage garden, and overhanging the fence at the roadside was a line of redcurrant bushes, and we used to surreptitiously steal handfuls of the juicy fruit as we passed en route to the shop.
Along the Glen lived the Elrick family at Glenwood Cottage, on the brae above the Comers burn. Jimmy was a journeyman joiner with Bill Adam at Shiels, and he and his brother-in-law, Sandy Greig, the Council lorryman, were keen shots. In fact, it would be technically correct to accuse them of being inveterate poachers, often accompanied by Bill Niven from Rough Haugh. To so accuse them, however, would be a libel on decent, hardworking men. They just genuinely liked to shoot and there was a lot of unkeepered rough ground in Midmar. They were about as far removed from the urban criminal poacher as it was possible to get. If they did stray over the legal line: if they did choose to sell wild pheasants they managed to bring down, to supplement their none too generous wages, then at least no-one could have pointed to any damage they had done, or to anyone who had suffered because of them. All of this of course was well known locally, but not commented on publicly. In wintertime, when the diminutive Mrs Elrick made the long trek from Glenwood to catch the Monday morning bus, lugging a big suitcase, and then headed for a butcher shop in the New Market, everyone knew what was likely to be in the suitcase but affected not to notice.
My father wasn’t much of a shot, but for some reason he liked to go out with gun on New Year’s Day. Needless to say he did not confine himself to his own land either. I had an old horse’s nosebag with a strap attached, and I used to trot after him with this for a game bag, eager to carry the kill. I don’t remember ever being overworked, but on one occasion, we were going round the edge of the Birley Hill, on Pat Carney’s land, when we brought down a cock pheasant. A couple of days later, Sandy stopped his lorry when passing, and congratulated him on the shot. We had seen non-one but Jimmy and Sandy had been there, saw us coming, and had withdrawn into the wood, putting up the pheasant the old man had shot. Sandy was short and stocky, and was universally known as “Greggy”. Unusually for a man of his build, he was particularly light on his feet, and had a considerable reputation as a ballroom dancer. Some years ago, I met his widow, Anne, and she told me that her husband had died suddenly, either with his beloved gun in his hand, or just after a shoot, I forget which. I imagine that is exactly the way would have wanted to go.
Pat and Mary Carney, an elderly childless couple, were tenants in the other Birley, having taken the lease after the retiral in the 20s of Jockie and Sandy Sharp, who had had both Birleys. Pat was a gweedless-ill-less, pleasant, kindly man with a big ginger mustache. He was also the only local man I can remember who always wore wal- tams, usually referred to nowadays as nicky-tams. It is a widepread belief that wal- tams were worn to prevent rats running up farm-workers’ legs, and while I not dispute that they would indeed have this benefit, it was certainly not their raison d’etre. Farm men walked for endless miles behind their horses, in fair weather and foul, and their breeks, very often heavy moleskin, would drag across the knees and chafe the skin, especially if they were wet, as they frequently were. The wal-tam strap above the calf preserved a slight baggieness at the knee, rather in the fashion of breeches, and helped prevent this chafing. Another function was to hitch up the foot of the breeks an inch or so, thus helping to keep them out of the dubs so common on a farm closs. A third function in springtime, when the cultivated land was dusty, was to trip keep the dust below the knee.
I suppose Pat was the tenant at Birley but Mary, who was inordinately proud that she was related to James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, was certainly the boss. She was what might euphemistically be described a not very enthusiastic housewife, and was usually to found about the steading somewhere, sporting a guano bag apron tied round middle with coir yarn, and supervising Pat. Guano was a colloquial descriptive term for all sorts of cheap hessian sackcloth such as potato bags, or the bags hens’ meal came in. In contrast to grain sacks, they were non returnable, and were utilised for all sorts of things. The name came from the sacks in which the original Peruvian guano fertiliser used to be delivered. Coir yarn or kyaar was a cheap, coarse, disposable farm rope made from coconut fibre.
The kitchen, with its box bed, and the fire on the floor, was always in a redd-up, and my father would never stay for dinner at the threshing mill. He swore that one day he went to the house for something, and found a big pot of cold tatties on the kitchen table with a Wyandotte cockerel enthusiastically scratching about in the middle of it.
If Mary was not greatest housewife, neither was Pat the most progressive farmer, and seemed to be always just managing and nothing more. When the blackout came along, Pat took it very seriously, and clorted all the byre windows with tar, although he used paraffin wick lanterns which gave scarcely enough light to be visible through the cobwebs. The byre doors were kept shut as well, which meant that the beasts spent all of the winter in almost complete darkness. When they were put out in the spring they nearly went mad in the sunshine.
The Carneys might have worked away for long enough, had not disaster struck. Pat slipped in the byre and broke his leg, and poor Mary went completely to pieces. From being the managing sort of body who could always tell Pat what to do and how to do it, she suddenly found that without him to order about, she no longer had any confidence, and couldn’t manage at all. The neighbours helped, of course, and my father spent a lot of time there, where she almost drove him to distraction, asking his advice about the simplest of things. She struggled on till Pat was able to hobble about again, when they sold up and retired. I never heard they went.