by Jess Smith
Breakfast over with, beds made, bus tidied, Mammy in among the soap-suds taking advantage of a braw west coast wind (first thing on rising she always pulled back the curtain to check if the day’s wind was strong enough to dry her washing), found me and my wee sisters beach-combing.
Moudie-man (Daddy) and his helpers headed off towards the fields surrounding the Big Hoose.
‘Ouch! a midge bit me,’ cried Janey, swatting her arm.
‘Look, lassie, there’s no midges until the may’s out, and fine you know, ya bisom ya.’ Daddy was certain the pair would not undermine his authority, so he reminded them that the buds of the hawthorn bush (may) hadn’t even showed themselves, let alone flowered. ‘It will be the end of May before you see yon bonnie flower. Then there’s at least a week or two before the odd midge bites, so you’re working me if you think I’ll fall for that yin!’
‘I felt a bite from something too, Daddy!’ Shirley felt duty-bound to back up her sister.
‘Look, you two, it’s a windy day! No insects, all right! Now give me over the poison and shut your mouths.’
My reluctant sisters moaned and moaned, until poor Daddy, sick to the eyebrows, ushered them out of his sight. ‘Away and content yourselves beneath yon laburnum tree,’ he said, pointing at the hillside further on where the spreading tree drooped its branches. ‘I’d get on better doing the bloody job myself!’
They had won, and in doing so put him in a cracker of a mood. Now, whenever Daddy went into one of his moods, he talked constantly to himself. I think it was his way of dampening his temper. ‘Only women get me this roused,’ he would say to folk.
The lassies laughed and giggled as they lay under the shade of the big yellow umbrella tree, looking over at Daddy getting more and more roused because Mother Nature had cursed him with useless women instead of hardy sons!
Well, maybe that thought was one for the minute, because he was usually proud of his daughters, and told everybody so, but not on this day for sure. No, they were getting the lashings of his tongue for not partaking of the moudie-kill.
Now, reader, I want you, if you will, to put this picture in your head: a bunneted man with a tin and a stick. In the distance a shady laburnum tree. Now the man proceeds to poke the stick into a molehill, at the same time telling some wee wriggly worms inside the tin that they were necessary to entice Mr Mole. While he is pouring powdered worms from the tin into the molehill, every now and then he gives the tree dog’s abuse!
Well, I ask you, if you happened to be a couple of nurses having a fly fag round the back of the Big Hoose, what would you think on seeing our bunneted hero, eh? Aye, that’s right. That is exactly what they did! With my Daddy protesting all the way into the asylum!
My older sisters had a bit of explaining and convincing to do, before they eventually got the male nurses to believe them that their father wasn’t an inmate-to-be.
You can imagine the laughter our Dad’s wee bit bother caused when Mammy and the rest of us found out.
‘If you were kept in, Daddy, just think on the fun you and yon monkey could have, lowping among the trees!’ I joked.
‘That’s done it, no more moudie-hills for me,’ protested Daddy, adding, ‘did you see the width of yon nurses’ forearms? They were like ham shanks. Mighty me, Jeannie, if the lassies weren’t there I’d have had a devil of a job explaining my way out of that!’
‘Aye, I suppose they’re good for something then, Charlie, these useless women of yours.’
That night as we tried to sleep, the laughter from our parents’ ‘courie-doon’ kept us awake into the early hours.
We left Lochgilphead the next day. I think the family had had enough episodes with yon place, the Big Hoose.
Talking about ‘episodes’, have you ever wondered where soap operas originated?
Well, remember I told you about Uncle Wullie Murison’s tales of Jake the Adventurer? You don’t? Well, let me enlighten you, friend.
When night came and time for bed, traveller bairns were no different from any other kind of wean. Fighting and pushing each other for the best bit at the burnside to wash off the day’s grime, after a wrestling match for control of the ‘Lifebuoy’ soap, that is.
A drink of creamy milk, a handful of broken biscuits and the fun began. I used to envy the weans who summered in tents, because, weather permitting, they got to lay with their heads sticking out, enjoying the crack from the campfire. I, on the other hand, was shut inside the bus. So imagine my joy when Auntie Jessie would make room in beside my cousin Anna’s tent for one more body.
Some nights we were all hyped up, and carried on so much we couldn’t sleep—singing, telling jokes, whatever. This annoyed the big folks because we took over much of the evening, denying them their time for relaxation. This, then, was when the Master Storyteller took control. He was my favourite Uncle Wullie, with his tales of Jake the Adventurer! Gathering us into a circle round his feet, he proceeded to hold each of us spellbound.
‘Hanging from a slippy, slimy, ledge, a thousand feet below him giant crocodiles snapped and cracked hungry jaws and waited to devour brave Jake. His strong hands slipped, fingers loosened one by one until he hung by only the wee pinkie of his left hand, then by his pinkie nail, then, with a last attempt with his free hand, he grabbed a hanging vine, which just happened to blow his way.’
We sat on our hands and pushed them into the earth, as if vainly willing the brave Jake to save himself, when our storyteller would say, ‘Goodnight bairns!’
‘Och! Uncle, tell us what happens next, please, please, please,’ we screamed out, prompting our mothers to shuffle on their seats, obviously displeased that Wullie was having the opposite affect on us kids than they wanted.
‘The morra, I’ll tell you all tomorrow,’ he said, rising to his feet and walking off into the dark.
Protest followed protest, but nothing doing, we had to wait until the following night. We were still protesting when he wandered back from relieving himself in the nearby wood. ‘I told you, when I say tomorrow I mean it. It’s big folks’ time now.’ Then he’d add, ‘But remember, only if you behave yourselves. If I hear that any of you have been bad weans, then the lot of you will be put to bed “Jakeless”!’
Can you imagine what fate awaited the bairn who misbehaved, thus causing the rest of us to be denied the next thrilling episode?
The following night found angelic children sitting round Uncle Wullie, eagerly waiting the concluding episode.
‘Where was I?’ he asked us.
‘Crocodiles! Snap-happy crocs!’ I shouted.
‘No, he was hanging from his left pinkie nail!’ Anna cried out.
‘No, you’re all wrong, it was the vine, the blowing-in-the-wind vine!’ said cousin Wullie, who then almost choked himself on a broken biscuit.
Uncle Wullie’s eyes scanned each of us to see if we had paid attention from the night before, paused, then said, ‘Yes, the vine, well done ma lad. He grabbed the vine and pulled himself up from the wet, slippy ledge. As he lay on the ground peching, a roar from the jungle like nothing on this Earth told him to get a move-on! The giant tiger, the one with a permanent toothache, was on the growl, and needed something to rip!
Jake knew if he ran to the right, he’d run into sore jaws, and if he went left the snake people were sure to catch him—those crawling, disgusting, green and yella snakey folk.
Well, weans, what direction did he go?’
‘Left, left! Snake folk are no threat to our Jake!’ Anna screamed.
‘No, he could escape no probs from yon tiger, he went right!’ said I.
Again Uncle Wullie paused, drawing in a big breath, and we all did the same, thinking Jake’s fate was now to be decided. Then our rotten uncle would sicken us by pulling the plug, saying, ‘Now, if you lot do as good the morra as you did today, then you’ll find out, all right kids?’
There was only so much suspense us children could take to bed with us, so we began to chant, ‘Tell us what happens, tel
l us please.’ Our teller of tales rose slowly to his feet, obviously to visit the loo. When he got back we were still unbedded, in a circle, waiting to find out the fate of Jake, the intrepid man of steel. But no, we would have to go to bed and wait until the next night.
‘Och! Uncle Wullie, that’s not fair, come on, just a wee bit more please,’ we pleaded.
He gazed round us and thankfully relented. ‘Well now, let me think, I suppose another five minutes.’
‘Yippee, great, yon tiger and snake folk little know what’s about to happen to them, isn’t that right?’
‘Well, let’s see, did he go yin or yan? Neither, because with the length of time spent hanging, the blood was all in his feet, so what happened when he stood up?’
We gazed at each other, bottom lips dropping by the instant, dumbed and numbed.
‘Jake fell down and banged his brow. Wallop!’
‘Oh no!’ we cried in unison.
‘ “Where am I?” he thought, as he picked himself off the jungle floor. Too late, the snake folk caught him.’ This brought us closer to Uncle Wullie’s feet.
‘Hanging upside down from a banana tree, tied tightly by another vine, he caught sight of something slithering through the elephant grass. Well, blow me, a bloody big snake was giving him the evil eye. It was the queen slime of the jungle.
Anaconda looked up at Jake with hungry jaws, and said “I’ve seventy-five babies to feed. You’ll keep them quiet for an hour or so!” But before she devoured our hanging-upside-down adventurer, a great big striped tiger came bounding up the jungle path. It was sore-mouthed and growling mad. “You can forget him, Annie Conda! He’s my supper!” ’
‘He’s had it now!’ I called out.
‘He’ll get free, nothing can get our Jake, isn’t that so, Uncle?’ asked a traveller bairn who’d joined our group, a stranger, yet already he looked upon our uncle as his own.
‘Well, bairns, that’s what the morra will tell us. Off with you to bed!’
This, then, was the Master Storyteller at work. The Jake tale went on and on, night after night, and when it became time to part, yes, Jake’s fate hung in the balance, continued either in the following campsite, or the next year.
Did Jake get too old? No! Did he fall foul of his enemies? No! What did happen to our hero?
I’m sorry, folks, but I haven’t a clue.
Truth be, Uncle Wullie made him up each night as he went along, with our help if we but knew it! Each time he asked us what happened the night before, he wasn’t seeing if we’d remembered through paying attention. It was because he knew one of us would remind him.
When my own children were little I too found Jake a grand help at bedtime, and just the other night I heard my son tell Jake’s Adventures to his own wee lad. You never know, but maybe some bairn took our Uncle’s tales and turned the idea into what we now call soaps.
13
THE PIPER
A mile or two from Inverness, the engine of the bus gave a strange grinding sound, then another just as worrying one. ‘What in heaven’s name was that?’ asked Daddy, with a curse or three flung in. He called back to us that a night on the moor looked likely, and pulled onto a spot, yards along the way, flagging Mammy down.
‘Wait to see her face when she finds out the bus is broken!’ said Shirley.
The wait didn’t take long; when she heard the news, like thunder it was!
‘Charlie, if you think I’m biding on Culloden Moor think again. Drive further up to Inverness.’
‘Well, lass, I would if the bus would, but for some reason it’s not very happy today, so we’ll bide the night here.’
She gave him one of her sour looks, tutted, then set about preparing a fire.
Culloden Moor and yon great but awful historical event that changed Scotland forever was the subject of many a traveller’s campfire conversation, especially those from the Inverness area. There was always some hardy cratur who laid claim to being part of a line traced back to the battle itself.
‘My Mother’s great-great-granddad fought an’ died for freedom’s sword!’ were words I heard myself, from an old Inverness man who camped beside us once.
The battle stories told to Mammy by her own folks when she was a child upset her. This was the reason she felt so edged whilst biding anywhere near the moor. There was of course another reason, that the strawberries were ripening down at Blairgowrie, and she never missed the early ones because they made the best jam!
Next day she and the older lassies went hawking, leaving Daddy to fix the engine—or else! Try as he might, though, the fault could not be found. Mammy arrived back muttering something like, ‘The country hantel were not parting with much this fine day,’ meaning she had had a bad morning round the doors. This, coupled with the broken-down bus, told me her mood wouldn’t improve. That in mind, I took my wee sisters onto the moor for a play. After all, it meant nothing to children who Prince Charlie was or, to that matter, a Jacobite warrior neither! No, it was just another place for play, that’s all.
We played hide and seek, wearied of that, then I-spy, but apart from sky, trees and purple heather, there wasn’t that much to spy, not even a bird. You would think on a moor this size there would be plenty birds, but unusually birdless was Culloden. Apart from a screeching seagull flying high up in the clear blue, there was no other bird-sound. Strange that, do you not think?
So before long, boredom got hold and the wee ones began girning. Now, when I was a wean I could be a devil when boredom got the better of me, so in went the imagination and out went sense. Yes, you’re right in what you’re thinking, because that’s what I did—I ‘frightened and annoyed my wee sisters’.
‘You know this, you two?’ I said, gathering us into a circle, ‘I heard two wizened wives cracking with Mammy one day, they said the moor is haunted by a giant Heilander who runs along a sheep track through the heather.’
‘Is he wild and dangerous, Jessie?’ asked Renie, glancing in every direction.
‘Well, you know I never listen to words from the big folks’ mouths, but one said, and I strained my lugs to hear this, that many a traveller who went onto the moor was never seen again!’
‘Never?’ asked Babsy.
‘Not a single hair!’ I said, fingering her thick pigtails. God, I wasn’t half laying it on.
‘Was it us kind of travellers?’ said Renie, who by now was visibly shaking at the knees.
‘Any kind, if they just happened tae be out when “Red Donald” was zigzagging along the sheep track.’
‘Oh my, did you hear them say what he looked like, Jess?’
‘Well, Renie, Mammy sank me a look and told me to go and play, but before I did I heard one wife say that the said lad had long bushy hair, spark-red it was. One staring green eye, on account of the other being scooped from its socket by a redcoat’s sword. The wife said he stood seven feet tall, but not according to her pal, for she said he was nearer nine feet, and she swore by it!’
Wee Babsy was getting more and more frightened, as she darted her stare at the least noise. She clung on to my arm with her wee hands, trembling at the lip. I thought maybe I’d gone too far and had best tell them that I was only pretending, but I couldn’t resist one last kiddy-on.
‘He could well be eyeing us this very minute, lying on his belly watching to see if we’re all alone. Oh, and another thing you best know just in case, he has a faithful hound who, during the Battle o’ Culloden, ripped the throats from twenty hundred enemy sodgers! Now I ask you, what kind of a dog was that, eh?’
‘He’d use us like raggity dolls then. We’re away home—come on, Babsy!’
My, oh my, I’d gone too far. I might have known that these two feardies would go mental. ‘Come back, I was only pulling your legs.’
Renie took off across the moor, dragging screaming Babsy by the hand and shouting back, ‘You’re a pig, wait till Mammy knows you’ve been scaring us. She’s in a bad enough mood already. She’ll kill you—I hope she does.’ T
hen she added, ‘You had better watch your back, for the devil loves a liar!’
‘I’ve done it now,’ I thought. ‘Best stay away until things quieten down; I’ll be well skelpit if I go back too soon.’
So off I wandered and played at rock skip (jumping from one rock to another without touching the earth between), but I slipped and walloped my bum on a right sharp stone, putting a stop to that. I looked for grouse feathers, but finding none made me think that perhaps the moor was haunted, and any decent hen flew across the place rather than rear a chick near there! I lay in a heather clearing staring up at the cloud-scattered sky. One fluffy cloud made me think of a castle with Lion Rampant flags flying from granite turrets. Two clouds were heading for each other like big fat wrestlers, emerging into an explosion of cotton wool! Little clouds chased each other across the sky like baby cherubs needing fed. I watched them until my eyes filled with water as they met the glare of the sun’s rays. This brought me to my feet. Rubbing away the watery tears I caught sight of someone standing in front of me.
I rubbed my eyes again. The sight turned me to jelly, and brought a trickle of pee running down my leg.
For there was the very vision I had conjured up in my mind to frighten the life from my wee sisters. Red Donald himself! The devil loves a liar right enough. He’d sent me my lie in truth.
I slid onto my knees, numbed and speechless, I was at his mercy. The only part of me that moved was my eyes.
He stood tall, this ghost, in full Highland dress, Glengarry perched on the side of his head sporting a long feather and the white cockade of a great chieftain warrior. His plaidy hung over his shoulder, held at the chest by a large silvery crest.
I regained enough movement to clasp my hands together and murmur a prayer: ‘Lord, pick me up an’ run with me back to Daddy, for I am a dead duck when Red Donald whistles on his hound!’