Anyway, I set sail into Aberdeenshire and I travelled up. I didn’t know the country very well, but I just kept going on. And I landed, before you get into Aberdeen, I saw this tent off the side of the road. It was just a big bow tent among a bing o whins17 at the roadside. I was needing a cup o tea. I walked over to this tent. And who was it? Uncle Sandy Townsley and Katie! The very folk I had left at the Hoolet’s Neuk in the spring. I was glad to see them. I had got word they were up that way, but I had never known where. Katie was my mother’s cousin too. And then they had the laddie Willie, Winkie we called him. He was younger than me, about nine. Then the lassie Isobel, thirteen. And wee Nellie was the baby at that time, about five. And Sandy didn’t have a horse. It was a handcart he had, a barrow. And I stayed with him from there on till the berries in July.
We travelled all through Aberdeenshire. Every part we were in – Donside, Deeside, Speyside hunting for white heather in the hills and going to all the games. Sandy was saving up, seemingly, to buy a horse. He could have bought one many times. And he played the pipes. But he seemed to be enjoying it because I pulled the cart for him, so he had no need for a horse. We had a great time in Aberdeenshire. But I was going to tell you this wee story.
Sandy had this big bow tent, and he said, ‘You’re gaunna stay with me?’
I said, ‘Aye, I’ll stay wi ye for a while, Uncle Sandy, and I’ll see a bit o the country. It’ll save me hikin on my own. So I made my bed in the bow tent, picked up plenty of dry grass. They pulled down the door at night and I made a bed in the front. It was fine for me, summer coming in. But it must have been about two o’clock in the morning, the first night. Sandy got up, he sat up in bed. And he started to whistle. Oh, I thought this kind o queer. I wakened up, lighted a match.
I said, ‘What’s wrong wi ye?’
He said, ‘Wheesht, brother! Don’t say a word.’
I said, ‘What’s wrong?’
He said, ‘There fairies!’
I said, ‘Fairies! Ye been dreamin?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m no dreamin. There fairies in below my ear playin pipes.’
I said, ‘Lie doon, man!” So Isa got up. She was lying away at the back of the tent.
She says, ‘There’s something wrong wi ma daddy, Mammy. Ye’d better get up and see!’
I said, ‘The’re nothing wrong wi yir daddy. He’s jist sleepin.’ But he swore as low as his father and as low as all belonging to him that definitely there were fairies in below his ear. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there is – what are the fairies playin?’
And he whistled me the tune the fairies were playing. And he lay back down. He says, ‘Come here. Haud yir ear doon there . . .’ He had a wee pillow, just had his boots down and his pillow on top of them to keep his head up. I put my head across the bed there. Nah! I couldn’t hear a thing! He lay back down. But no, he’s back up again. He said, ‘I’m tellin ye, man!’ And he started to punch the ground with his hand to get rid of them. He said, ‘That’s them, that’s them away!’
I said, ‘Definitely, you’re away wi the birds!’ No, Sandy never drank anything. Travellers never bothered much about drink in these times. But he swore. He started to whistle the tune again.
He said, ‘This is the tune the fairies played.’
I said, ‘It doesn’t sound like a tune to me.’
He said, ‘This is what the fairies was playin, as low as my faither!’ But anyway, he lay back down.
And I was always up in the morning early. It was clear about six o’clock. And with the rotten whins around the fire was just a pleasure to kindle. In two minutes I had a big fire kindled. And I got the can on to get the tea on. He got up. I said, ‘Come here, fairy man! Come here a minute.’
‘What is it?’ he said.
I said, ‘That was an awfae carry on18 ye had last night, you and your fairies!’
He said, ‘I’m tellin ye . . .’ And I wouldn’t tell you a word about him, he’s dead in the grave if God pleases, he said, ‘Brother, the fairies was definitely under my ear last night in this moor. I heard the pipes as plain as I could hear onybody playin.’ We were camped on a moor outside Aberdeen. The travellers called it the Twopenny Moor, because it used to be you paid three pence to stay on it.
So I said, ‘What was the tune the fairies ’s playin noo you were tellin me aboot last night?’ He and I were sitting at the fire. But if you gave Sandy a thousand pound, he couldn’t remember one note of that tune. And never could to his dying day. No, that’s the truth. I tormented him about it for years after that.
So we left there and went into Aberdeen, up by Bucksburn and then went up Deeside and Donside. Then we went to Old Meldrum Green and then to Huntly. I pulled the barrow, the handcart. It was made of bicycle wheels and was easy to run. We came to Huntly Green. So he and I were mending baskets. Katie went to the houses and she collected all these baskets that were needing mended, brought them back to the green. You could camp on the greens in these days right in front of the houses. Folk didn’t bother. You just kindled a fire. ‘No,’ they’d say, ‘it’s only tinkies in their campin place.’ And you could go to a house and get water. They didn’t bother you. Nobody paid attention. It was a pleasure to see the tinkers coming in about. The Aberdeenshire folk thought the tinkers were lucky. They believed that there were no trouble or anything would come to the town if the tinkers came to the greens. It’s when tinkers didn’t turn up that they thought there were some bad luck attached to the town, especially in Aberdeenshire. A lot of that happened in Argyllshire too in some places. They never sent for police to shift the tinkers in these days, especially one tent or that. They wondered how the ‘tinkies no turned up . . . there some’in bad aboot the place if you didnae come in aboot.’ This was their idea. They thought there was some illness coming to the town, a plague or something coming. Like the birds no turning up in the spring, something queer was going to happen if they didn’t turn up.
So, there was a great big tree. We were lying against it and we were sorting baskets. He said to me, ‘I’m tellin ye, there fairies in this bit tae!’
I said, ‘The’re fairies in every camp wi you – how many mair places got fairies?’
He said, ‘Ye see this tree?’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘it’s a great tree.’ It was a big beech. I was sitting with my back against it. I said, ‘You and your fairies. I dinnae want nae fairies the night!’19
‘Laddie, ye’ll no believe me, but the’re fairies in this camp tae here. This is Huntly Green and some folk says it’s haunted, but this is the fairies in this. This is where the wee man lay below this tree when the elf queen cam and took him awa tae Elfland. And I’m gaunna tell ye the story about Thomas the Rhymer. He was a fool, a toll that wandered aboot the toon daein nothing, lyin here and there. And a bonnie woman cam tae him on horseback and took him away tae Elfland. My faither used tae sing it, sing bits o it.’ And Sandy sang a wee bit o it to me.
We had a great time in that place and we must have stayed in Huntly for about a week. Then we moved back to Dufftown. I spent that whole summer with him right up till the berry time. I wanted to go to Blairgowrie because he had tellt me so many tales about all the travellers who went there. In that time it was a real heyday in Blairgowrie, they came from all parts and all over. They came with donkey yokes and they came with horses. And they came with carts and barrows, prams and bicycles, all to the berryfields. They had fights and they had arguments, they made love and they had marriages, they did every single thing under the sun. It was what you call a working fair. You could always make the price of your meat and have a good time. You could always go out, if you could pick berries at all and make two-three shillings to get as much as you could eat.
Then some of them went there just for the sake of swapping and dealing in horses. They never picked a berry. Some of them went without a pony and left with a good horse. Some of them went there with a good horse and left with a barrow. The horses were bought and changed hands – a horse could have m
aybe six owners in one day. And families went there with a barrow; maybe a father and mother and two-three sons and daughters with a pram, maybe a couple o prams, and they left with a good yoke. Anybody that had any kind o money could buy anything. There were good dogs for sale, good canvases for tents, sets of good camp sticks for sale. There were no caravans then. And they swapped lums and chimneys and elbows – that was when the gellies started coming in. And everybody wanted this great inside fire, the tank and lum inside the tents. And it was a pleasure to see some of these Skye MacDonald folk sitting making these. They could make them themselves out of sheets of tin, their own chimneys. They came and showed the Perthshire and Forfarshire travellers the right way to build a good long gelly tent. But those were the stories I was getting from Sandy. So I wanted to get my own experience of the berries.
Sandy said to me, ‘Laddie, you like runnin about the country – would you no be better wi a wee pony tae yirsel, a wee yoke?’
I said, ‘Aye, the next time, uncle, the next thing I’ll be needin tae masel will be a wife if I get that. I want to keep awa fae that! I dinnae mind havin a horse, I would like a horse. But I’m no wantin tae have nae horse yet.’ But it was before the berries, and Sandy wanted to go to this wee place, Aberlour.
That was a great place on Speyside for pearl fishing. I’d never done this in my life, I’d never even seen a pearl shell, apart from pearls in clabbydhus back home in Furnace, saltwater pearls. I wanted to have a go at pearl fishing.
We put our camp up at the side of the burn and Katie and wee Isobel went away to hawk the houses. We were making baskets because it was the summertime and the wands were all peeling. You just peeled them with a split stick, and there was a good trade for baskets. I used to make the bottom, put in the upsets, fling it to Sandy and he would fill it up. I would set up another one, he would fill it. We made the one between us, got on faster that way. My father had taught me how to make a basket when I was wee, and the stuff was good then. You could really make a good basket. We were making them, and Winkie, the wee laddie was peeling the wands.
Sandy says, ‘We’ll have to go pearl fishin.’ Old Katie came back and she had gone into the jeweller’s in Aberlour. There was a jeweller who bought pearls, any kind. She had asked the jeweller herself, because traveller women were always doing these things: if there were a shilling to be gotten, they would sure try it! She says, ‘I remember, Sandy, years ago the travellers used to get an awfae lot of pearls in this strip along here.’
‘All right, Katie,’ he said, ‘we’ll make a couple o pearl jugs tomorrow. Bring me back a couple of candles.’ I was wondering what he wanted candles for.
So true to his word, the next day away he goes. He had his wee bike and he cycled along to the village. He came back with two panes of glass from the joiner. He sat down and got a wire, a piece of iron and made it red hot in the fire. And he made a circle with the hot iron right round the pane of glass, tapped it right round and it came out like the face of a clock!
Then Sandy went and got two tins and cut the bottoms out, but left a flange around the bottom. He placed the glass on the flange and he lighted a candle. Next he melted the wax around the top of the glass, right round the whole way till the candle was finished. He left it sitting till the candle wax got hard, and he polished the glass.
‘Now,’ he said to me, ‘look through that!’ I’d never seen this done before. I looked.
I said, ‘It’s clear, I can see through it. What are ye gaun tae do wi it?’
He says, ‘Laddie, you dinnae understand. You’ve been reared in Furnace all the days of your life. You never kent nothing! You put that in the water and you look through it, and you can see the least wee thing. The glass magnifies the water.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘fair enough.’
He says, ‘I’ll make one for you.’ It was one of those big fruit cans. And he got a burlap sack, cut a bit off it and put a string on it. He says, ‘Put that in your bag. Now, wade oot to your waist.’ He got a long piece of stick, hazel, and he split it like a clothes peg. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘all ye need tae dae is when ye see a shell, if it’s too deep, tae save ye puttin yir hand into the water, just put this split stick on the top of the shell. Turn the stick roond and lift it up. The shell’ll be stuck in the split! Because the shells dinnae have much o a grip.
So he’s going out into the water, wading up to the waist and I’m wading beside him. ‘We’re picking up a shell here and a shell there and more shells. Putting them in this bag. Now when you think you have enough, what you can carry, you go out on the banking, sit down and open them all up. And you search the insides for a pearl. When you’re finished you throw them all back in the water to feed the eels and the fish, keep them from wasting.
But I was unlucky that day, never got a thing. Sandy got a couple of miniatures, pure wee seeds, and wee barrel-shaped ones. We fished it for about four or five days. I never got a thing. I got plenty of shell, but I couldn’t get a pearl. Sandy got a good handful. He had them in a wee box, not very big, the biggest one about the size of a head of a match. But saleable. They were bonnie and clear. Then we saw these two traveller men coming with a pony and cart. We came up, soaking to the waist. We stopped at the road. This was the MacMillans and they had a nice pony and a float. They kent old Sandy.
They said, ‘You pearl fishin, Sandy?’
‘Aye.’
‘Hae you any luck?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we never got a thing.’
‘Ah man,’ he said, ‘we fished that bit. It’s nae a guid bit. There plenty shell but there nae pearl in it.’ They had a droll way of speaking, these hantle, but they kent the good bits.
Sandy said, ‘I got two-three wee seeds! And he showed the man. And this laddie sitting in the cart put his hand in his pocket and took out a boot polish box. There was cotton wool in it, full to the top. Some of the pearls were as big as green peas. There must have been about three dozen, and they were beautiful! Just like drops of water.
He said, ‘We’ve been fishin all summer, cove, and that’s all we got, about twa-three dozen.’ Then that was about fifty or sixty pounds’ worth. Now, it would get you three or four hundred pounds, maybe more.
Well Katie, I think she got about three pounds for the wee handful Sandy collected. These wee seeds were used for brooches and rings, mixed pearls. And I began to get the pearl bug! Like the gold fever. I wanted to stay on because I believed that I was going to get . . . you see, every shell you lift you think you’re going to hit it lucky. Like digging for gold, but it really gets to you! Through time some travellers get the fever. Once they get into a burn it’s like drink – they cannae stop. Because from morning to night they still believe that around the next corner they’re going to hit the big thing. That man in Newburgh there, ten thousand pounds for one pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg! Mr Abernethy, largest pearl ever gotten in the River Tay, ever gotten in Scotland, about five or six years ago.
But anyway. Sandy says, ‘You’ve some nice pearls there, maister.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘Sandy, but we took a lot o lookin for them. Well, we’re gaun awa doon to the jeweller to see if he can gie us an offer for them. But he’s no as guid as the man at Grantown. The man at Grantown-on-Spey is a better payer for pearls.’
So I said, ‘Sandy, how about goin to Grantown?’
He says, ‘Aye, well . . .’
Katie says, ‘Aye, I like Grantown. It’s a good wee toon.’
So we made our way to Grantown and we camped in beside a golf course. The next day we would go and fish for pearl. Sandy said, ‘This is a good bit o burn, but ye’ve tae watch for these pot holes. A stone gets trapped and it runs roond, digs a hole and it gets deep. If ye’re coming along a suddent,20 ye cuid faa inta it.’ So we fished the Spey for about four days and I got one good pearl, a nice barrel-shaped one, but Sandy got nothing. I gave old Katie this pearl and she sellt it. She was doing awfully well with her baskets and she was telling us it would be far better
if we stopped fishing for pearl and went and made some more baskets, because hers were getting finished.
Now Sandy had sent for wands to some kind of factory, and he had them sent to the train station before him. Bought in stuff. And adding to this our cutting the wild stuff along the roadside, we had a good mix of wands. We could have made baskets. And we weren’t getting very much off the pearls. So that night Sandy took awful sick, and he took lumps on the back of his neck.
He sat up in the middle of the night and got delirious. He was telling old Katie to rise up, burn the pain out with matches. He was in an awful state. So I went along to the police and they phoned an ambulance. Sandy was taken away. They put him to Elgin, the nearest hospital.
I was left with Katie now and the weans.
So the next morning she says, ‘There only one thing we can dae. We cannae stay here wirsels any longer. We’ll have to make wir way back to Elgin. It’s a long journey. Wait a minute. I think the best thing we can dae is pack wir pram, pack wir barra nice and tidy, put all the stuff in it and send it by train tae the station in Elgin. It’ll save a long walk on the road and we’ll take the bus.’
So I went down to the station and booked the wee handcart with the stuff in it to go to Elgin. And we took the bus. But I don’t mind how many times we had to change buses along the way. It was late at night when we landed in Elgin. We went to the station to collect the pram, the barrow with all the stuff. There was nothing, not a thing there. Now the two lassies, Winkie, old Katie and me, we had nowhere to stay and not a thing with us. So Katie went and bought a kettle and something to make some tea. We walked out, and came to this quarry. I kindled a big fire. And there were these heaps of stuff, cloths that had been chucked out in the quarry, and they had tassels round them like things for covering a coffin, coffin covers. Winkie believed they were.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll lie on the ground first before I’d use any o these things.’ So I managed to make a shelter with these cloths, but none of them would sleep in it. They thought they were unholy things.
The Horsieman Page 18