The Horsieman
Page 14
So my cousin said, ‘Och, he’ll dae me fine. We’re on wir way. I was thinkin o movin tomorrow doon by Dundee anyway. We’re goin down there for the summer. And prob’ly I’ll no hae him that long anyway.’ But, his words were wrong. Because John did have him for a good long while after that. He had him all that summer, all that winter and kept him till the following summer again.
The old man says, ‘Well, we’re thinkin o movin away up by Alyth and back by Blairgowrie. Knock aboot there till the berries is started.’
John said, ‘It’ll be a while afore the berries yet!’
‘Ach, but,’ he says, ‘we’ll get something tae dae.’
So John tellt the young man, ‘Just lea the harness; I’ll get your harness in the morning, but I’m keeping ma float.’
‘Oh,’ the lad says, ‘I want to keep my ain wee cairt. I like my cairt best. Fine and handy for the bairns, they cannae faa oot with these rails roond the side.’ A float was only flat, and the bairns might fall out. So we cracked for a long while about everything and we bade the laddie good night. We tellt him we’ll see him in the morning.
So we came back home. We had some more tea in my auntie’s place and I sat and read the Western book to her. And she was quite happy.
John tellt me, ‘We’re goin to Dundee. I heard that my auntie you’ve never met, my Uncle Sandy and Aunt Katie and them, they’re aa bidin at the Hoolet’s Neuk15 at Dundee. We’re movin doon there for a while. You’ll have some o your ain friends there too.’ He knew that wee Sandy Townsley was a cousin to my mother and also a cousin to my father. He said, ‘You’ll like it doon there fine. And you’ll see plenty o horses there. The dealers come drivin up every Sunday for the sake o gettin swappin and dealin wi the travellers.’
So I felt good about this. I would have liked to see, get in among some other travellers for a while. Because I’d never had any opportunity before. But anyway, we got up early next morning. By the time we’d got up, the two Highland families had their tents and their carts packed and ready for the road. The horses weren’t yoked, but they were standing with their harness on them. And I noticed that the old man had the young horse that he had tried to swap for that night before! And the son had the white one. But my cousin never asked any questions or anything. So we walked up to get his own horse, to get his harness.
And the old man said, ‘We’re pullin oot, but we didnae want tae go without biddin youse laddies good morning.’ So they yoked their horses and pulled out on the road, bade us ‘good day’. Away they went. And I never saw these folk again.
So we weren’t long a-taking the old horse down. And oh, it was fat. It was really fat and strong. We put the old harness onto it. It just fitted his float and we packed it, covered it tip with the canvas cover. His two wee sisters jumped up on the side of the float and we walked along the road. I walked beside John and the other two walked behind the cart. Oh, this garron could travel. It was as fast at walking as some horses could trot. You couldn’t hardly keep up to it.
My cousin said to me, ‘Look, if you get tired . . .
I said, ‘How far is it to Dundee?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we’ll no prob’ly go the length o Dundee tonight. We’ll go the length o Invergowrie. It’s a good bit along the road, anyway.’ There was no bypass then. You had to go right through the village and in the middle was a great big green. The travellers could stay there. For twenty-four hours you were allowed to camp. So he says to me, ‘If you get tired, you can aye jump up and get a hurl . . .’
I said, ‘No me, I wouldnae feel fit to sit on the top of the float.’ So we travelled on and we stopped along the way and made some tea. We travelled on to Invergowrie and stayed on the green. The next day we made our way to the Hoolet’s Neuk.
The Golden Vanity
‘I have a ship, she sails on the sea
And she goes by the name of The Golden Vanity
But I doubt she’ll be sunk by a Spanish galley
As I sail by the lowlands low, low,
I sail by the lowlands low.’
Up stepped the cabin boy, a well-spoke lad was he
Sayin, ‘Captain, o captain, o what would ye gie
If the Spanish galley would trouble ye no more
As you sail by the lowlands low, low,
You sail by the lowlands low?’
‘Great gold I would gie, and silver in store
My pretty little daughter who waits by the shore
If the Spanish galley would trouble me no more
As I sail round the lowlands low, low,
I sail round the lowlands low.’
Straightaway the cabin boy bared his breast and dived in
He held in his hand an auger sharp and thin
He held in his hand an auger sharp and thin
He went swimming in the lowlands low, low,
He went swimming in the lowlands low.
He bored and he bored, he bored once or twice
While some were playing cards and some were playing dice
The water it rushed in and it dazzled in their eyes
And he sank them in the lowlands low, low,
He sank them in the lowlands low.
He swam and he swam crying ‘Captain take me in,
I am drowning in the lowlands low, low,
I am drowning in the lowlands low.
Throw me a rope, a rope,’ cried he,
‘O a rope, o a rope, you will never get from me
For you have sunk the dark girl, the Turk of Admiree
You have sunk her in the lowlands low, low,
You have sunk her in the lowlands low.’
He swam to the starboard side crying, ‘Messmates take me in,
I am drowning in the lowlands low, low,
I am drowning in the lowlands low.’
They threw him a rope, his messmates brought him in
Then they wrapt him in that old cowskin
Then they wrapt him in that old cowskin
And they sank him in the lowlands low, low,
They sank him in the lowlands low.
Traditional
CHAPTER SIX
THE HOOLET’S NEUK
I’ll always remember that time, that journey to Dundee with my cousin and his mother and his little family on our way to the Hoolet’s Neuk. Especially in Dundee, the largest town I’d ever seen. The thing that excited me most of all was the tram cars. When they started hissing along the main street it seemed strange, something out of a dream. Then there were the horses, so many horses, coalmen’s carts, carters of all description, rag-and-bone men, stick carts and fish carts.
I asked my cousin, ‘There must be an awful travellers about this place?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘in the toon itself there’s a lot of travellers. But they’re mostly all dealers, horse dealers.’ In the early 1940s there must have been between one hundred-fifty to two hundred in Dundee. They weren’t all travellers. They swapped and dealed with travellers. When a traveller was needing a deal he just drove into Dundee. If he went to one dealer and didn’t get a swap, something to suit him, all he needed to do was go two streets down to someone else.
I said to my cousin, ‘Have we far to go?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘we could take a roundabout, but seein you huvnae seen much o a big town, I’ll take you right through. Because I’ll prob’ly be leaving my mother in the toon. She’ll stay in Dundee and then follow on.’ That was the usual thing among the travelling people. When the women came to a town they never went on to the camping place. They stayed behind and did their bit hawking in the town, saved them making a double journey.
So we travelled through Dundee, and this was great, tram cars, horses and men selling brickets. I swore to myself someday I was going to go on one of these tram cars – how they used to flee along the street with the sparks coming from the wire at the top!
I asked my cousin, ‘Did ye ever travel on one of these things?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘They’
re cheap things to travel on.’ And this railway, the lines were on the street, and all these streets were cobbled. ‘But,’ John says, ‘these cobbles are no very good on the horse’s feet, because if a horse stays too long on them it gets cobble-beat, sore feet. I’ve got them often and they go lame with walking too much on the cobble. Once they’re a while out in the country, get on the grass, it goes away.’ The horses hooves were stunned with walking on the hard cobbles steadily. It affected the tendons in their feet. There were many’s a dealing man made an excuse.
If a horse was really sore and he tellt you, ‘Oh, it’s just cobble-beat. It’ll be okay, laddie, once it’s away a while off the cobbles.’ But it could have had a real complaint. They were always up to all these tricks! Anyway, we had our journey to make, through the main street of Dundee, right up the hillock Hilton, right out to the place they called the Hoolet’s Neuk.
‘There,’ my cousin says, ‘we’re going to stay for the winter. There’s a farm where they’ve got a lot of work.’ Travellers shawed the farmer’s turnips and he gave them a camping place for the winter. While they were working they could put their horses in the farmer’s field. But the reason travellers gathered there was that all the horse dealers came up from Dundee on the weekends. There they swapped and dealed on Sundays among horses.
If a dealer was needing a swap he would just say, ‘Och, we’ll drive out to the tinkers’ camping place and see what they’ve got about them.’ I remember one Sunday later while I was there, five horse dealers came out wanting swapping and dealing. Each dealer kept seven, eight, maybe nine horses at a time. He didn’t keep them in his stables; but had them in fields further along. Maybe he had one or two on hand and hired a field from the farmer, kept nine running outside. Every dealer had his own wee bit of farm where he could run the horses he couldn’t stable in his place.
We travelled right out to a place called the Murroes, then through Moncraigie and on to the Hoolet’s Neuk. This is the first place I ever met my mother’s cousin Sandy Townsley, wee Sapps. He and his wife, my auntie’s sister, were there. And then there was my auntie’s other younger sister and her son. He had lost his father when he was young too. And he had a white horse, a beautiful pony, the first horse I ever drove. But that’s later on in my story.
So we landed on the Hoolet’s Neuk that night and everybody made us welcome. There were about seven camps, seven gellies, for seven families, and everyone had horses. Wee Rabbie Townsley was there and Galen’s grandfather, John Townsley. All their horses were running loose in the field. They were all working at the turnips. This farmer didn’t have work for everybody, but he didn’t mind if you stayed on his ground if you went to work for somebody else. As long as somebody was working for him, he didn’t bother. Actually he didn’t own the camping place, but we could stay as long as he didn’t complain to the police. In these days, far different from now, the landowner just had to phone the police and then you were shifted right away.
I said to my cousin, ‘This is a nice place to stay.’
He said, ‘Aye, we’ll stay here for a while.’ We put up our gelly and we drove down to the farmer for some straw. That was the thing most hard to get in these days, straw for your bed. You carried a big tick with you and just filled it with straw to make a mattress. Because you couldn’t carry a mattress in a wee cart. And even suppose you did carry one, and then put it on the ground, once it was soaking, the next day it’d be no use to you. You’d have to chuck it away. So the travellers in these days just got fresh straw wherever they went from place to place; they filled a new mattress which was little trouble to them. All they needed to do when they shifted the next day was just shake it out and put a match to it.
After I gave my cousin a help to put up his tent, got the horse tethered out, got some sticks and did all our bits of work around the place to make it ready for my auntie coming home – she came home on the bus later from Dundee that evening, after she had got her messages in the town – I wanted to go round and speak to everybody. I was excited! When I was back home I’d never seen many travellers in one place. So I went round all the traveller camps, one after each other and got to know everybody. And in turn when they went to see their horses I went with them, admired and inspected – there were black horses, white ones, big ones and wee ones, Shetland ponies, about seven or eight. The most interesting person I met there was my mother’s cousin’s boy, just about my age. He had lost his father when he was only five or six years old. Charlie (Buggy) Reid and I got off just like two peas and later I was to spend at least seven years with him.
The next day, Sunday, was when the dealers came up from Dundee. This was their main day, their great day because they knew they would get all the travellers in. Nobody was working or doing anything. What the travellers used to do there on a Sunday, and they knew the dealers were coming; apart a good bit from the camps, away from where the women were cooking or washing the bairns or sorting the clothes or anything, they would kindle a big fire. And then all the men would gather round this big fire, crack about things. Then when a man drove up with a horse and cart he would loosen his pony out, and instead of going to the camps he would come to the fire! And stand and crack or talk at the fire. Maybe somebody would invite him in later for a cup of tea to one of the tents. He knew he wouldn’t be hungry being there all day. I’ve seen them coming up and staying the whole day, the local country men. I’ve seen one coming up with a horse, swapping that horse away, and he’d get one of the travellers’ horses. Then somebody else would swap him and he would get another traveller’s horse! Then somebody else would swap him again and he’d get another horse. There was always a few shillings changing hands. And as sure as heavens before he landed home that night, he was back with his own horse before he left! So this is where the dealing went on, round the fire. Perhaps he came for a deal and he couldn’t swap, couldn’t get a deal. But then, an hour later somebody else would drive in, somebody from the other end of Dundee who wasn’t a traveller at all, and these two men would deal at the travellers’ fire! It was a meeting place for the whole area.
Now these travellers didn’t keep their horses just for swapping and dealing. A tinker’s horse had to work. In these days travellers used the horse for hawking. They gathered rags, but they never gathered much scrap iron with a horse. Very few gathered scrap. But they hawked handmade baskets and flowers. And the thing was, in the big towns you could sell anything in these days. There were second-hand shops where you could sell clothes and boots and even books. There were so many of the local cadger folk in the town of Dundee itself, who hawked the town and sold to these small premises, that the people in the town were completely cleaned out. They didn’t have anything else to give. This is where the traveller gained an advantage. They had their horses and could yoke a pony in the morning, drive to Forfar and drive away down to Letham. And they could hawk the country and collect all the junk in the country, bring it back and sell it in Dundee at the weekends. They never actually hawked Dundee itself, because there were so many small hawkers around it wasn’t worth their while. It was nothing for a man to rise in the morning, and his wife, yoke a pony and drive twenty miles in the morning and twenty miles home hawking that way. She hawked the houses and he did too, and they collected every single thing. They collected dishes, they collected boots and books, and they sold flowers, they sold baskets and they sold scrubbers. There wasn’t any tin-making at that time there. The tin-making finished just as the war started. Tin was very scarce to get and that stopped all the tinsmiths. But the horses were most important.
If a man was broke and he didn’t have any money, but he had a horse, he said to his wife, ‘Well, there’s nae use o you gaun oot the day. I’ll go doon tae Dundee and I’ll maybe get a deal.’ As long as a traveller had a horse he never was broke, never stuck. This was always a trade to them. But the thing was, he never would sell it outright. But he would swap, swap to anything as long as it could walk on two legs. Because he knew there was always somebody wo
uld give him one that was worse than his. And he would always have to get some money along with it, money to boot.
And travellers loved their horses, but they never got really attached to them, like you would a pet. They were kind to them, treated them on the best. At that time I did think to myself, ‘If I ever own a horse, the first horse I get I’ll never part with it; I’m going to keep it all the days of my life.’ But when I got my first horse I only had it about twenty-four hours till I swapped it away again.
It was also the way with travellers that they would not swap with their relations, their own family. If the horse had something wrong with it, he wouldn’t give it to you if he thought it might not work or might break down in another couple of days. But they would give it to the dealer because the dealer would do it on them. They didn’t have any feelings for the dealer, but they had feelings for their own traveller folk. You wouldn’t give a horse to a traveller with a couple of kids, who might have given you his last penny about. Then he might try to yoke it, and it’s going lame with him, and he’s going to shift the next day. You had horses that wouldn’t pull, horses that would kick the cart or horses that would run away, horses that couldn’t eat, and you had some that wouldn’t lie down and they were always tired. The travellers knew all these complaints. And even suppose they knew that these horses had complaints, they would still swap to get them! (Because they knew in their own mind they were going to pass them on to somebody else.)
The very next day after arriving at the Hoolet’s Neuk, my cousin said to me, ‘It’s all right for them there, they’ve all got a wee bit something to dae. But how about me and you goin lookin for a bit job?’
I said, ‘Fine! That would be all right.’
He said, ‘We’ll go and look for some turnips to shaw.’ In these days shawing turnips by hand was a great thing among the travellers. They did a lot of this work, picking up the turnips, cutting the shaws and the roots off, putting them in rows so the farmer could lift and drive them out for the cattle. Now it’s all done by machine, but in the 1940s it was all done by hand. So we went and got a field of turnips from this farmer. And you made a bargain.