Tears for a Tinker

by Jess Smith

  TEARS FOR A TINKER

  JESS SMITH

  was raised in a large family of Scottish travellers. This is the third book in her bestselling autobiographical trilogy. Her story begins with Jessie’s Journey: Autobiography of a Traveller Girl, followed by Tales from the Tent: Jessie’s Journey Continues and concludes with this book, Tears for a Tinker. She has also written a novel, Bruar’s Rest, and Sookin’ Berries, a collection of stories for younger readers. As a traditional storyteller, she is in great demand for live performances throughout Scotland.

  First published in 2005 by Mercat Press Ltd

  Reprinted in 2005

  New edition published 2009 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Reprinted 2012

  Copyright © Jess Smith 2005, 2009

  The moral right of Jess Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978 1 84158 714 1

  eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 180 4

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Set in Bembo and Adobe Jenson at Birlinn

  Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1 MAMMY, WHAT NICE PICTURES IN THIS CAR

  2 A LOOSE MOOSE

  3 ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  4 THE BIG HUNTER WITH HIS POACHER COAT ON

  5 THE REAL LOCH NESS MONSTER

  6 MACDUFF

  7 THE CURSE OF A GOOD MAN

  8 IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

  9 CHAPBOOK TALES

  10 FATTY

  11 POT HARRY

  12 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

  13 MY POETS

  14 ENEMY AT THE DOOR

  15 THE MORNING VISITOR

  16 EWE MOTHER

  17 THE FOX, THE COW, THE DEAD MAN AND THE WEE LADDIE IN THE BARREL

  18 UNDER THE BLACK WATCH COAT

  19 CURSE OF THE MERCAT CROSS

  20 BAGREL

  21 THE DAY OF THE HAIRY LIP

  22 MY BROTHER’S SHARE

  23 GLENROTHES

  24 BELLS AND GHOSTLY CHAINS

  25 A STREET NAMED ADRIAN ROAD

  26 IN DEFENCE OF THE PEARLS

  27 A BRUSH WITH THE LAW

  28 ON THE GALLOWS’ HILL

  29 MY SILENT FRIEND

  30 STIRLING TALES

  31 FAMILY LIFE

  32 SPITTALY BANK

  33 THE GIFT

  34 MY TOP FLOOR HOME

  35 YELLOW IN THE BROOM

  36 JIP

  GLOSSARY OF UNFAMILIAR WORDS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Coronation of the Gypsy King, Charles Faa Blythe

  Camp of Highland travellers at Pitlochry

  Isabella Macdonald, tinsmith

  Nineteenth-century travellers at the berry-picking

  Strathdon tinkers

  A camp high in the hills

  Tinkers’ cave, Wick

  Jess’s father during the Second World War

  Jess’s mother and father in 1942

  Jess’s children—Barbara, Stephen and Johnnie

  Jess’s husband, Dave

  Jess with Johnnie and Stephen in 1983

  Jess today

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Once more, to the army of workers who shouted at me, prodded and hugged me, and phoned my ears into oblivion: thanks forever.

  To my family—well, what can I say?

  To Mamie, for allowing me to share her father Keith’s poem.

  To Douglas Petrie from Pitlochry for his river poems.

  To Martha Stewart for all her help, and her belief in Scotland’s travelling people.

  To cousin Alan for the Glen Lyon tale.

  To Bob Dawson, my radji gadji, who never sleeps.

  To Robbie Shepherd and his team for giving me a louder voice.

  To Caroline Boxer of the Strathearn Herald, a wee worker.

  To Alan Smith and family from Foggy.

  To John Gilbert for allowing me to use his grandfather’s poem.

  To the late Violet Jacob.

  Special thanks to Charlotte Munro (sister Shirley), for always being there regardless—‘Ye cannae sleep us away’.

  To Jenny and George—gone, but never forgotten.

  To Tom, Seán, Caroline, Vikki.

  Finally, thanks to the travelling people; my tinkers of the roads; the roots wherein I cleave.

  Come all you tramps and hawker lads,

  Come listen one and a’,

  An’ I’ll tell tae ye a roving tale o’ sichts that I hae seen,

  Far up and to the snowy north and doon by Gretna Green.

  —all gone now.

  I dedicate this book to my wee Mammy, who dedicated her life to her eight daughters

  INTRODUCTION

  Something niggled in my mind after I finished Tales from the Tent. It nagged and bothered me. I put on the kettle, poured a cup of tea and slumped down in that old tattered armchair of mine that refuses to die. Heidi, my cat of twenty or so years, curled into a ball of ginger and white fluff, licked her old, weak paw, yawned and settled for sleep. Then, as if a veil had lifted from my eyes, I saw in my mind what it was that so annoyed me. Remembering how brittle Heidi’s frame was, I gathered her into my skirt and darted back to the computer screen. Two tiny words leapt from the last page of my manuscript—‘The End’.

  How could it be?! I hadn’t shared the stories of my parents’ childhood with you, nor some whoppers about Dave and my earlier wanderings. What about Glen Lyon, and Daisy thinking the Germans during the last war would steal the washing off the dyke, so she kept it in? What did she know of Europe? To her Germany was somewhere north of Inverness! And those fearsome ghost stories? How many times did I laugh at my father’s tall tales, I did so want to tell you about them. Och, nae way could we part, you and I, after all this time, without telling you of my nit-infested wild man who drove Mammy mental whenever we saw him on the road. The story of the row of turnips I pretended to some towny bairns was a row of rabbits just had to be shared, and so many more happy days. No, it certainly wasn’t ‘the end’.

  Anyway how could I part from you? You’d become my good friends, fellow dog-walkers and tea-suppers.

  So, gently uncurling the half-dead fluff ball from the threads of my skirt and laying her on a fleecy blanket beneath the radiator, I finished my now cold tea.

  If you fancy another journey with me, settle back with your favoured beverage and let’s take once more to the road in: Tears for a Tinker.

  The reason for the title is a story in itself.

  My oldest son Johnny, then aged six, was not a happy chappie. You see, his wee pal Horace had died. This little pet, a goldfish his dad had spent loads of money trying to win at a fair, was our lad’s nearest and dearest in the entire world. He shared all his sorrows with that fish for the best part of a year, when one morning his heart broke at finding it tail-fin up at the top of its bowl. To take his mind off this tragedy we took the bus to Perth, the nearest town with toyshops. Christmas being round the corner, Perth was crowded and draped in sparkly lights. In the centre outside Woolworth’s, Johnny saw a poor travelling woman with four bairns round her coat hem. All the wee ones were in tears. Poor gentle-hearted Johnny said
to me, ‘Mammy, what is wrong with them bairns?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we get home,’ I told him, adding, ‘now stop staring at people.’

  That night after supper, with Horace laid to rest in a matchbox buried underneath a soft patch on the washing green, my little boy brought up the subject of the traveller and her sad, wet-eyed children.

  I knew the woman, not personally, but recognised her from her kin, who usually winter-camped in bowed tents near Lochgilphead. Sometimes they favoured Double Dykes. This was a large boggy field on the outskirts of Perth, and now, thanks to the efforts of hardy travelling folks, it had been turned into a properly-run caravan site.

  ‘Well, my lad,’ I said, sitting him on my knee and squeezing him gently, ‘that poor woman had no husband. Those bairns didn’t have a daddy like you to bring in money for food.’

  He asked where their dad was, but at six-years-old his young ears were not ready to hear that the man was burned to death in a warehouse fire in Glasgow. I simply said that he died of a bad illness. I know telling lies is not a good parent thing, but Johnny was a sensitive child.

  His little eyes widened, and I could see the brain cells painting a picture of kids without a dad. I went on, ‘those tears were caused by their mother rubbing onions around their eyes to make them cry.’ This seemed to horrify my child. He jumped off my knee, eyes wider than ever in disgust and wonderment. ‘How could a mother do that?’ he raised his voice. I looked into his little reddened face and calmed him down. ‘Son’, I assured him, ‘no mother loves her children more than a travelling mother, but those kids had to beg, and that was her quick and authentic way of doing it. Long ago—well, if after the last war was long ago—that woman’s menfolk would have owned tinkering tools to fix pitchforks and knives, pots and pans; in fact any kind of broken metal would have been sorted, and that would bring in money. She would have had a job if it were the olden days. They used to be called tinkers because of the noise their tools made as they carried them on horse bags or wee bogeys, and later, prams.’

  He didn’t understand much of what I told him, nor the word authentic, but he got enough of the explanation to learn that onions make you cry, and crying brings caring folks to part with a few coppers. ‘If that mother had begged for money, folks would have looked the other way. The tears unwittingly made them give generously. Tears reach our souls. And I know that for every person who gave, she would have blessed them with a prayer to God.’

  Silence followed, and both Dave and I could see our wee boy deep in thought. In time he went into the bathroom, and came out with tears flowing down his small face. ‘What in heaven’s name is wrong, laddie?’ asked his concerned father, whilst I was busy feeding Barbara, our youngest, who was three at the time.

  ‘Those wee tinker bairns without a daddy made onion tears. Well, I have cried some real ones for them.’

  Johnnie was cradling in his hand a photograph of his dear departed Horace.

  When our children grew older, I would often tell them stories of my own tinker childhood, and to this day they are proud that mother belongs to a cultural background rich in ballads, stories, and with a lifeline going back two thousand years.

  Well, where will I start? Yes, let’s go back to Crieff, just after Stephen, our second lad, was born. We were living in a rented flat, part of a large Georgian house. If you have refilled your cup, then let’s walk back again, back down memory lane.

  1

  MAMMY, WHAT NICE PICTURES IN THIS CAR

  Davie had a succession of jobs, but all paying next to nothing, and this meant very little money for anything other than the bare necessities. My in-laws, Margaret and Sandy, were super at keeping the kids in clothes, sometimes paying the odd bill when we struggled with other debts. Sandy worked at Naval Stores near Almondbank, three miles from Perth. In his spare time he excelled as a poulterer for John Lows, fishmonger in Crieff. Margaret had taken jobs cleaning hotels and offices. Davie had a younger brother, Alex, who was a wee brain-box. Much to his parents’ delight, he was always studying, head down in books. Alistair had been their oldest son, but at twenty-one years old, while serving in Germany with Her Majesty’s Royal Engineers, he was killed by an express train. Margaret never got over the loss of her boy, avoiding any conversation that might open her wounds. In her own way of dealing with his death, she kept quiet and to herself.

  I sometimes wondered if I was good enough for her son, me being from travelling stock, but she made me welcome from the first moment we met, and we stayed friends until her death of cancer many years later.

  Mammy and Daddy had uprooted themselves and headed for Macduff on the Moray coast. A picturesque house nestled at the top of the town became their home, and if memory serves me right the street they lived on was Patterson Street. Macduff is built on a steep hill, so the views of the ocean from that house were spectacular. When we visited them for the first time I didn’t want to go away, it was so fresh and beautiful. Even the sea-gulls had a kind of regal glide to their wings.

  Dave and I bought a cheap scrap-heap of a car for the journey, a white Ford Popular it was, from a ‘This is a bargain, honest, folks’ mate. From Crieff to Macduff is 140 miles, and how we survived that trip was a miracle to say the least. Round about Perth it became apparent that the vehicle had a few more openings than just the doors and windows. Johnnie sat alone in the back, and kept telling us he could see brown and black ribbons, and what a bonny picture they made at his feet, also that he wasn’t comfortable due to a lumpy bit on the seat. We ignored him, putting his remarks down to the vivid imaginings of a toddler. I sat in the front with Stephen on my knee. This was before seat-belts, and when I think on how dangerous cars were back then, I’m certain a higher being was watching over us. Outside Perth, Davie heard a rattling sound and pulled over to investigate. It was then he discovered that Johnnie’s ribbons were in fact the road beneath us. Our wee laddie had been staring down through a gaping hole in the car floor, which had given way not long into our journey. The rattling sound was another problem; the exhaust had decided to part company with us, causing the most horrendous roar all the way to Macduff. How the police didn’t get wind of our travelling beats me. When we at last arrived at our destination, Daddy was horrified by the state of our transport, and flabbergasted the car had made it.

  However we soon forgot about the car, because I was so happy being near my precious Mammy. After looking over her new home I thought, ‘she’ll be content here’.

  This was the first time in thirty years that my parents had slept in a bed that didn’t need folding up in the morning. Daddy felt uncomfortable at the change, and so spent most of his time scanning the horizon of the sea from a high wall circling the fine garden, like a mariner with a hand shading his eyes, rather than sitting inside at a nice warm fire. I must have got my travelling blood from him. Mammy, on the other hand, was in her element. She had her very own sink, oven, bath, washing line and much more. At long last she had arrived at her castle—a wee queen. She discovered, much to her delight, she had green fingers, and grew herbs, flowers and shrubs. She baked cakes. Boiled up, not just berries for jam, but countless pans of other culinary delights to store in large jars, which she delicately labelled and stored in the larder.

  Meantime my younger sisters, Renie and Babs, took on jobs living as any normal lassies would do, and never mentioned their rich cultural background as travellers.

  Daddy still had his health, and his spray-painting equipment that he used for contract work. He started up a small business, earning enough to live a comfortable existence. He furnished the house with all that was needed, and soon settled into the friendly neighbourhood. However, when asked if he was now a ‘scaldy’, he would reply, ‘Nae way am I a hoose-dweller. I’ll aye keep yin eye on the road, another yin on the sky.’ What that meant was that if the mood and the weather suited him, he would go.

  By then I couldn’t have seen Mammy going with him, though. She loved her bus-travelling days, no doubting that
, but now, older and stiffer, she’d settled for her cosy wee hoose. Anyway, she’d seen enough of Scotia’s bit fields and wood-ends in her lifetime. There wasn’t a B-road she didn’t know, nor a landowner she cared to know; a lifetime as a gan-aboot for my dear Ma was well and truly over.

  The only worry she had was that Daddy’s habit of leaving doors open at night stayed with him. When a boy, because of claustrophobia, he’d throw open the tent flaps at night, and according to Granny Riley they’d all be near frozen stiff. Even the bus door would get drawn back; frost-covered eyebrows he’d wake up with many a winter morning. So once more, even although he’d found a spacious bedroom to sleep in, the daft gowk insisted on leaving the house door ajar. Nothing scunnered Mammy more than thinking a wee mouse was inside her larder, scoffing all those cheeses and cakes she stored so meticulously. Many a time she scolded him, ‘Charlie, man, I’ll feed the mice-droppings tae ye if I find them at the fit o’ ma press. Honest tae God, I’ll pit them in yer stew and tatties.’

  He in turn would say, ‘I dinna want that bloody door locked if a fire breaks oot.’

  ‘Away an’ no be so silly’, she reminded him nightly. ‘The fire’s cinders and ash. Anyway, the safety screen is on.’

  We couldn’t drive home after that first visit because Davie was pulled up by the Banff police on account of our noisy exhaustless car. Banff is only a mile from Macduff, separated by a grand bridge. There’s a story from those parts about a certain fiddler I’ll share with you soon, but not until I’ve told you about our car. Driving along the road, Davie noticed he was being followed by a police car. The officer who pulled him over had a wee look under the vehicle, and when he stood up said to Davie, ‘Div ye ken there’s a burst spring in that car, loon? It’s a’ down on the one side.’

  My poor husband, who had not long had his driving license but acted like he knew all about motors, said, ‘Och no, officer, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s only a wee-er spring than on the ither side.’