The Horsieman

by Ducan Williamson

  They said, ‘Look, that pony was yoked before! That pony was broken in when you got it.’

  I said, ‘Look, that pony never was broken in. It never was in harness.’ But to this day they wouldn’t believe it. So we drove on to Fife and I left Uncle Jimmie in Dollar. And I left Uncle Willie and he made his way back to Stanley for the winter. I came up here to Kincraigie Farm. I turned my horse loose in the field and I put the harness in the old house. Jack went down to put his camp up in the wood. And I took this old house, and we settled down for the winter.

  Then one evening old Jack said to me, ‘Look, why is it we have got to go on with horses for the rest of wir days? Everybody’s takin motors. Why in the name of God can no one of the Williamsons get a car? The’re nane of the Williamsons have got a motor.’

  I said, ‘Brother, tomorrow morning I’m going to the School of Motoring and I’m going to sell my horse and get a car.’ And that I did. And Trixie was still running in the field here. I advertised Trixie in the paper for sale. But that’s ahead of my story.

  THE MAXIE RABBIT

  O I am a maxie rabbit

  And I sit here on the green

  My body’s full of trouble

  And there’s maxie in my een.

  So now my story you will hear, and you will agree

  Of what those greedy farmers have gone and done to me;

  When first we came upon the land no man was King but one

  The greyhound was not thought of and neither was the gun.

  Then man he came, he ploughed, he sowed with harvest for to reap,

  He needed all the grass for his greedy cows and sheep;

  They killed us for our skin, they killed us for our meat

  But no matter what they did, still we had them beat.

  And then at last they found a way to beat us at the fight

  They called it myxomatosis, some said it was not right;

  They injected us with maxie, then they turned us free

  For to wander round the green to spread disease and dee.

  So here I sit upon the green, my eyes are shut and sore

  My body full of maxie and I can hop no more,

  But before I go I hope some day below this very green

  Will walk some greedy farmer with maxie in his een.

  So if there is a heaven and a rabbit will ever gang

  I hope I will be there before very lang,

  For I have suffered plenty, I’ve had my share of pain

  As I sit here blind and hungry among the sleet and rain.

  Now man is just a creature made by the hand of God

  And just like me he will dee, us both will get the sod,

  My bones will lie upon the grass and his beneath the sod

  So why not leave the rabbits to the work of God?

  If nature did not want us, why were we born?

  For I am sure we are not to blame if farmer he grew corn,

  So if you see a maxie rabbit, don’t you be vexed

  You too could take maxie, it could be your turn next.

  But man I am sure will suffer

  I am sure you’ll all agree

  For what those greedy farmers

  Have gone and done to me.

  Duncan Williamson

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A GREAT HORSIEMAN

  In 1954 I had a wee piebald pony I’d bought from an old man down in Methil. Just before that I had this big chestnut with a silver tail and mane, and it was awful wicked – it would kick you! But this wee man with a piebald pony was selling sticks and he wanted to swap with me. The chestnut I had was the laziest horse you ever saw in your life. The man met me in the street and asked me for a swap. So he and I had a deal. I asked five pound about from him and a swap. He gathered rags and sold sticks and that. No, but we hemmed and hawed and then we managed to make a deal. He would give me three pound and his horse and harness for mine. So I swapped him.

  And I was staying at the Fife shore away down at a place they call Macduff, right down at the beach where old Macduff Castle is. There are a lot of great big caves you could turn a double-decker bus in on the shoreside. And we used to kindle a fire in them on the wet days. The shore is a walk for people coming along from East Wemyss. One day it was a terrible day of rain and these two old women passed with dogs. They stood and looked at my pony. And I had my gelly up and I had the fire going, you know. They never spoke. But they walked away up the road. About an hour after that down came the police.

  They said, ‘I’m led to believe, eh, you’ve got some ponies down here.’

  I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a pony.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘eh, I’ve had a complaint that the pony is sufferin doon here wi the cold. Why youse people . . . people like youse ought to have more sense. When youse keep horses, why could youse not take care o them?’

  ‘Well, officer,’ I said, ‘look. There’s the horse there. You go and look at it.’ Now this wee man who had had this horse only walked it when he sold his wee bits of kindlings and sticks. He’d fed it on all kinds of meat and broch and corn he could find. I guarantee you, it just took me to put it between the shafts of the cart – it was that fat!

  He said, ‘How long have ye had that beast?’

  ‘Och,’ I said, ‘I’ve had it fir a while.’ I never said how long.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s in good condition. But youse people are kind o daft. Youse build a tent fir yirsels – why don’t youse build one for the horse as well?’ He never had a clue!

  Ours was such a different way of life, see what I mean. Because you take these people in the villages. You’ve never seen five families on the road at one time and all these horses trotting on, just like cars driving past you. And maybe five in the one cart, six in the other cart, four in this cart. Now these village people believed that the travellers drove these horses all day like that! But we didn’t. We only drove these horses for a mile and then walked them for three, and drove another mile.

  In the 1950s and 1960s I used to leave Fife here and go to Inveraray, go right down to Lochgilphead which is exactly, from here the way I used to go, a hundred-twenty-five, maybe a hundred-thirty miles right there. Now I used to leave Fife, Leven or the Coaltown o Balgonie and make my way into Perth. Now that would take me at least five days then. But I had certain times of the year for going. I wouldn’t go when there was no grass because I knew fine the horse couldn’t travel without food, and I couldn’t carry enough corn to feed the horse on the journey. Once you got up there among the sheep farms, up in the hill country, they had no hay to sell you! Or none you could steal. And when you landed in Argyll, there was no grass because grass is late coming over there. You see, after a certain time, when the grass really came in the month of April, the travellers didn’t have to feed the horses; they just had to tether them out in a picket line and the horses could take care of themselves. All they needed was a drink of water. They never got corn during the summer. But they fed them on corn in the wintertime and hot drinks and that. Now I used to leave Leven and make my way right to Lochgilphead. And when I landed there that horse of mine was as fresh and as fat as the day that I started. The only thing that troubled us in the 1960s along the roadside was these people with their cameras wanting pictures and photos, stopping you along the road.

  It was really annoying. I was coming down Loch Lomond with Trixie, the last horse I ever owned. And just at Luss this Rolls passed by, and there were two ladies in it, an old gentlemen and a chauffeur. So when we came to the layby we stopped. And I had my four weans, Edith, Jimmie, Willie and Betty sitting on the top of the float – their hair as white as driven snow and curly. The pony was so beautiful, you know, and I kept my harness clean. It really looked nice. I was just walking it slowly leading it by the head when they stepped out in the road with all these cameras. And the chauffer had leggins on. This old gentleman, he looked foreign, like a German or a Jew or a Greek to me. I walked up to him.

  I said, ‘Look, did anybody
give you permission to take my picture? If you want to take a picture of this part of the road, you move past till I get by!’

  He never spoke to me, but the chauffeur came to me. He said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that!’

  I said, ‘Why no? If you want him to have any pictures, then you stand in the road and let him take pictures. It’s no right . . . if he had asked me to take pictures . . .’ And these ladies were flabbergasted. They thought that we should have stopped and let him have all these pictures.

  So, another time I was coming back this way from Crianlarich. And in these days, sister, the roads were very bad. You know, it was up hill, down hill, bends and turns. There were no good roads at that time. And you had all these wee ditches, for letting the water off the road.

  So we came round this bend and here was this lady, an old lady with a camera. And she’s standing, ready to take pictures! But we’re all sitting on the cart and the pony was just trotting on slowly, taking its time. And when she saw us coming she took out this camera. I put the stick to the horse, just touched it, and the horse started to trot!

  She ran along with the float, ‘Wait, wait, wait!’ she was shouting. ‘Wait, wait, wait!’ She was holding the camera and she went into one of those wee trinks head over heels! Oh aye. They thought, you know, that you should agree every time. If they had come to you and said, ‘I wonder would you let us take a picture of you and your horse?’ But in the early sixties they were all after you and they were more torment than anything else. Because you pulled into a camping place and you were making a wee cup of tea, then two or three cars pulled up. Before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’ there were half a dozen round you with cameras trying to take pictures of your tent. You couldn’t get peace up in the West Coast at that time, you know. And it was really embarrassing! It was hellish. Different if they would have given you something to help out the situation a bit. Times were really hard, really hard then. You only depended on what you could find along the way.

  As I was telling you, if it wasn’t for the horse or a pony, the traveller would never have survived so long. He couldn’t have survived so long because he had no other way. In these times there was no social security. They only depended on a few shillings they could make, a few shillings they could get from a deal, swapping and dealing. And there were people who had horses, who swapped and dealed every day. They would travel miles just for the sake of having one deal to get that day’s wage, even suppose that horse could hardly stand. And I’ve known a man to swap away a dead horse! You’d hardly believe that.

  Travellers who knew each other had what you’d call ‘sicht unseen deal’. You never saw my horse and I never saw yours. We were staying in different parts of the district and I would say to you, ‘Well, what kind o beast hae ye got noo? I haena seen ye for years.’ You would say, ‘Och, I’ve got no a bad kind o beast.’ ‘Oh well,’ I would say, ‘come on then we’ll hae a pint.’ This was the start off for their dealing. They had a pint and then they would start talking.

  So this man had dealed his way out, and he’s left with a mummy horse. That was a horse with teeth too long in the front and its grinders wouldn’t close at the back. It could pull the grass but it couldn’t chew. This horse was just able to stand and no more, just about dead. But the man, Johnie Macdonald was his name, a cousin of my mother’s; he wakened up one morning and there the horse was, down and out. It had died during the night. Now he had five of a family, and his wife and his cart and nothing to pull it and nothing to shift his camp. Well, the only thing you could get then was five shillings for a dead horse from the knackery. If you phoned the knackery they would come and pick it up, give you the five shillings for the skin. But he wouldn’t have this.

  He said, ‘I’m gaun to the toon, and I’m gaun tae get a deal!’ So away he goes and he meets this man he knew well. But he never picked a traveller. He picked a country horse dealer, a non-traveller man who thought he knew everything! And they had a wee drink together.

  He says, Well, Johnie, how many beasts you got aboot ye the noo?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve ane auld horse but he’s jist a wee bit on the big side for me. He’s kind o poor. Well, come on doon to the stable. Mebbe me and you can have a deal. I’ve a couple here – I’ve mair ’an I can feed.’

  ‘Well,’ Johnie said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll dae wi ye.’ He picked out a nice wee pony, beautiful wee horse. Now this is the truth I’m telling you. He said, ‘I’ll gie ye a swap tae that ane there, providin that the money’s right.’ So he swaps the dealer and draws two pounds on this nice wee fat pony for the one that’s lying back on the old road.

  He says, ‘Well, I’ll come oot for that pony in the afternoon, Johnie.’

  He says, ‘You dae that.’ He takes the pony home, ties it to the fence. And in the afternoon the dealer drives out with his gig and pony. They usually drove out with a gig, and if they came for a loose pony they just tied it behind and drove it back in. So they cracked for a while. Johnie says, ‘Come on, I’ll show you your pony.’ He took him up the old road and there the pony was lying. Dead. So Johnie says, ‘It was livin when I left. It was okay. I dealed it to ye; I was fair enough.’

  And the dealing man, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s in the trade. That’s all in the deal.’

  There’s no way to know that Johnie swapped away the dead horse. And that’s the God’s truth. Och, they all knew each other, and the dealing man had trusted him, you see. They had their certain clients whom they could deal with, some they wouldn’t deal with and some they wouldn’t give a swap to and some they would.

  Now, there were no bills of sale. In horse trade there was no such a thing as ‘comeback’. If you got a bad deal, there’s no way in the world you can turn round and say, ‘Look, I want my own horse back.’ Once you had the swap made, that was it. And woe be to you if you rue, ‘a rue bargain’. If I had made a deal with a man and said, ‘Look,’ and I’d swapped with the man, hit him fair [SLAP] and square and [SPIT] had spit on my hand and said, ‘Right, [SLAP] I’ll take four pound and yir horse aboot in a swap.’ And the next morning I wakened up and that horse was lame. If I had said, ‘I’m no havin this. I’m gaun back. I’m givin this back to him.’ And I’d walked back and said, ‘Look, you made a fool o me last night, you gied me that horse and it’s lame.’

  ‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘laddie, it’s your ain fault. You swapped wi me didn’t ye?’

  I’d say, ‘I know you swapped wi me, but look, I cannae dae nothing wi that horse. It’s lame. Ye gied me four pound. There’s yir four pound. Look, I want my ain horse back.’

  He’d say, ‘All right laddie, there you go. Go and tak yir horse back, go and take it back. But dinnae come back here nae mair!’ You see what I mean. ‘Dinnae think ye’ll ever deal wi me again. You made a rue bargain. Dinnae think ye’ll ever deal wi me again, because that’s, as far as I’m concerned, you are no a dealer at all!’

  If you couldn’t stand the crunch, you shouldn’t have been in the trade in the first place. And even suppose I had went back again and offered to sell that man a horse worth twenty pound for ten pence, he wouldn’t have taken it. That was the way of them. It was the same among travellers.

  I’ve seen many’s a good deal. The man dealed. They had a swap with each other and then the next morning the woman came. And there’s nothing worse a traveller man hated than dealing with a man, and the woman came in the morning saying, ‘Look, my man swapped wi you last night.’

  I’d say, ‘Aye, your man did swap.’

  She would say, ‘Ah, well, I dinnae think you had a very good deal and it wasnae his horse onyway, because he didnae work for it aa. Half of the money that bocht it was mine.’

  ‘Oh,’ I’d say, ‘missus, go and take your horse back. Oh, no, no, no, no. If that’s the way you want it, take your horse. I’ll take my ain. I’ll walk doon and take my ain horse back. Look, there’s – he gied me a couple o pound – there it is back to ye.’

  If a woman cock
ed the bargain it was the most shaming thing the man could suffer. The man wouldn’t even look at you the next day! It was the most hurting thing that a person could ever do on a human being, on a dealer, was for the woman to interfere. For the woman to interfere the next morning was the most shaming thing you could ever ask for.

  For a woman to come and try and deal with a man was out of the question. Even though he had a horse, if the woman had a good horse and she was wanting a deal. Even though he gave her the best of the deal, the travellers would say, ‘Och, he would deal with that poor cratur, that poor widow-woman. He took her wee beast fae her, and look what he gied her!’ Even suppose he gave her the best in a swap, the story would pass round.

  But two women could deal and that was okay. The man might say, ‘Look, I cannae deal with you, missus. But if the wife wants a swap with you, it’s up to her because that’s her horse. I gied it to her onyway.’ This is the acceptable way to back out of it. But he couldn’t deal with her himself ‘Oh,’ he would say, ‘no, I got that wee horse for her. It’s her horse onyway. She can dae what she likes wi it.’ He’d say to his woman, ‘You go and deal with her. Look, I gied that horse to you.’ Even suppose he never actually intended that; suppose it really was his own horse. If his wife then made a bad deal, well, it was up to the two women involved. But the funny thing was, if two traveller women dealed and they made a bad deal, they would never back out, no. And they became good friends. But I’ve seen some fights, too, among women with the horses.