Some years before his marriage the forester had been brought into our country by what was called the Glenmore Company, a set of wood merchants from Hull, who had bought the forest of Glenmore from the Duke of Gordon for, I think, £30,000. They made at the very least double off it, and it had been offered to my uncle Rothy, wood and mountain, glen and lake, for £10,000, and declined as a dear bargain. Mr Osborne, the gentleman superintending the felling of all this timber, brought Duncan McIntosh from Strathspey as head of the working gangs, and left him in that wild isolated place with no companion for the whole winter but a Mary, of a certain age, and never well favoured. The result was the birth of Sandy, a curious compound of his young handsome father and plain elderly mother. It was this Mary who was the cook at Inverdruie, and a very good one she was, and a decent body into the bargain, much considered by Mrs McIntosh. There was no attempt to excuse, much less to conceal her history; in fact, such occurrences were too common to be commented on. She always came to the Dell harvest homes, and after the more stately reels of the opening of the dance were over, when the servants and labourers and neighbours of that degree came in turns into the parlour, Mary came among the others, and I have seen her often, figuring away in the very same set with Mr McIntosh, his guidwife looking on with a very peculiar smile: too pretty and too good she was to fear such rivalry. She had brought little Sandy home at her marriage and as much as lay in her power acted a mother’s part by him; her children even accused her of undue partiality for the poor boy who was no favourite with his father. If so, the seed was sown in good ground, for Sandy was the best son she had. It was a very curious state of manners, this. I have often thought since of it.
We were accustomed to dance with all the company, just as if they had been our equals; it was always done and without injury to either party. There was no fear of undue assumption on the one side, or low familiarity on the other; a vein of thorough good breeding ran through all ranks, of course influencing the manners and rendering the intercourse of all most particularly agreeable. About midnight the carriage would be ordered to bring our happy party home. It was late enough before the remainder separated.
The Doune harvest home was very nearly like that at the Dell, only that the dinner was in the farm kitchen and the ball in the barn, and two fiddlers stuck up on tubs formed the orchestra. A whole sheep was killed, and near a boll of meal baked, and a larger company was invited, for our servants were more numerous and they had leave to bring a few relations. We always went down to the farm in the carriage drawn by some of the men, who got glasses of whiskey apiece for the labour, and we all joined in all the reels the hour or two we staid, and drank punch to every body’s health made with brown sugar, and enjoyed the fun, and felt as little annoyed by all the odours of the atmosphere as any of the humbler guests to whom the Entertainment was given.
We had no other ploy till Xmas eve, when we started for Belleville. Even now, after all the years of a pretty long life, I can bring to mind no house pleasanter to visit at. They were without servants, so to speak at this time, having now but a couple of maids of Kingussie breeding and the upstairs Drawing room floor had not been refurnished; they lived in their handsome dining room and the small library through it. The company, besides ourselves, was only one or two of the young Clarkes and a ‘Badenoch body.’ But we had so very kind a welcome. Belleville was a host in a hundred, Mrs Macpherson shone far more in her own house than she did in any other. For, being stiff in manner and shy in disposition, she had to be drawn out of her shell when from home. At home, her wish to put every one at ease produced ease in herself and then her lively conversation, and her good musick and her desire to promote amusement made her altogether a very agreeable hostess. We young people walked about all the mornings, danced and laughed all the evenings till the whist for the elders began, Belleville liking his rubber; and what particularly delighted Jane and me, we sat up to supper, surely a very sociable meal, one we never saw at our own house where the dinner was late. At Belleville they still dined early—five o’clock, and as the card playing was seldom over before midnight, the appearance of a well filled tray was not mistimed. Roasted potatoes only, fell to our share, and a bit of butter with them. We were quite satisfied, so much indeed did we relish them that we privately determined, when talking over our happy evenings up at the top of that large house in one of the attick rooms no amount of peats could warm, that when we had houses of our own we would introduce the supper tray, and roasted potatoes should, as at Belleville, be piled in the centre dish.
Miss Macpherson, who liked all of us and particularly liked their Badenoch acquaintance, was in extreme good humour during our whole visit. We remained till after the new year, and then returned home to make grand preparations for the passing of our Christmas time, Old style, the season of greatest gaiety in the highlands. It is kept by rejoicings and merry makings amongst friends, no religious services being performed on any day but Sunday.
1. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder (1784–1848) was a close friend whose literary reputation has not survived. The description she refers to is An Account of the Great Floods of August 1829 in the Province of Moray and Adjoining Districts.
2. This difference between the later Free Church and E.G.’S Church of Scotland was celebrated in the rhyme: The wee Kirk, the Free Kirk/The Kirk wi’out the steeple/The auld Kirk, the cauld Kirk/The Kirk wi’out the people.
3. Sound of the wind, hence rumour or gossip.
4. It was with the Disruption of 1843, when 470 of the 1,200 ministers of the Church of Scotland seceded, that the Free Church of Scotland was founded.
5. Intractable.
6. Approximately six imperial bushels amounted to one boll of corn, 48 gallons overall.
7. A reference to her astonishing ability to survive in the complicated political conditions ten years either side of 1700.
8. James Macpherson (1736–96) began the controversy with his publication in 1760 of his Fragments of
9. Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) was knighted for his services to science in 1831.
10. An old lady of severe principle in Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd (1725).
11. Oats and meal steeped in water for a week until sour, when they are strained; the jelly-like liquor is left to ferment and separate; the solid matter is sowans.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1813
CHRISTMAS, Old style, 1813 Belleville and Mrs Macpherson spent with us. They were company easily entertained. She worked and gossiped with my mother all the mornings, till the regular hour for her duty walk, a task she performed conscientiously as soon as it was too dark to thread her needle. He had one or two little strolls during the day, and plenty of old plays and newspapers to read. In the evenings they enjoyed our merry games and a little musick, before we young ones were sent to bed, almost as much as they did the rubber of whist afterwards. Miss Macpherson, also of the party, was quite our companion, being little accounted of by the rest. We had two dinner parties for our guests for it was an open Xmas, as indeed it mostly is in the highlands, the cold seldom setting in till the 10th or so of January. Balnespick and Mrs Mackintosh were with us one day, people who should have taken a higher place in the country than they actually occupied. He was highly born, his father very near a kin to the Chief of this old Clan, his mother sister to him, and Mrs Mackintosh was no very distant relation of the Chisholm. She was really a beautiful woman—fair, tall, slight and graceful, but oh so still—a word she never spoke, a look she never gave, a statue could not have been more impassive. When criticising her immobility and the excessive ugliness of her husband, a great big ungainly man with the head and face and teeth of the ‘Wolf of Badenoch,’1 how little did we dream that one of the sons of this slightly regarded couple would be married to a granddaughter of my father—married dear Janie M. to you, who first set me upon writing fair out of these memories of our race.2 Balnespick was a clever man, very useful in the neighbourhood, respected by all ranks, though hardly popular; he was a go
od father, a kind husband, an active farmer, he had married the beauty of Inverness, and was very proud of her. She had made a good marriage and turned out an excellent wife, all sides approving of the connexion. Her sister, of keener feelings, ran off from a northern Meeting, which my father and my Aunt Mary attended, with a young Subaltern of the regiment in garrison at Fort George, a crime quite inexcusable in her, such extreme of love being very rare in the calm characters we deal with, but perfectly excusable in him, for she was just as handsome a brunette as her sister was a lovely blonde; and the stolen wedding turned out, romance fashion, quite a hit—the poor Lieutenant was the heir of Rokeby.3 I have heard my Aunt say that the young runaways were kindly received and forgiven by the affluent friends in Yorkshire. Sir Thomas Lauder confessed to Jane and me that he had drawn the features of his Comyn hero4 from Balnespick’s countenance. The tusks were there, immense ones, and really gave the look of a wild boar or a wolf to the whole head. The peculiarity ran in the family, his only sister shewed these tusks very remarkably. She and her husband dined with us the same day and Mrs Macpherson declared that when she looked from the one mouth to the other, she felt as if she were sitting at table with wild beasts.
Balnespick’s sister was married to William Cameron, the only remaining child of our dear old Cousins at the croft. He had been unfortunate in business, his mercantile career in Glasgow had proved full of troubles although his father, my father and his wife had at different times stept in to save him. The bankruptcy came at last and there was no resource left but a return to the home his ill success had impoverished. He was really a good man William Cameron with a warm highland heart that beat true to the last of his kith and kin—it was the head that failed him. The wife, on the contrary, the niece of ‘my uncle Sir Eneas,’ had head enough. She failed in the heart line, keeping the poor one she owned rigidly within the limits of a small maternal horizen. She bore very ill the change from the flat in the city of Glasgow to the most modern of the two pretty cottages at the Croft, ever complaining of the loneliness of the country, though she had half a dozen children to look after, and of the uncomfortable ways of the old parents who had given her a home when upon the face of the earth she had no other. She amused Mrs Macpherson with her town airs, Glasgow airs, and not a little worried her brother.
The other dinner was to guests of less degree, Duncan McIntosh, his Wife, and one or two of the half pay Strathspey gentlemen. Mrs McIntosh never dined with us but once a year; it was quite enough for both parties, the poor good woman being quite astray playing company in a drawing room, away from her wheels, reels, kirns, and other housewifery. She could not read, she brought no work, had no conversation, so that the time must have hung very heavy after a sort of catechism between her and my mother was over—a whole string of questions concerning the webs5 and the dairy, duly answered in very simplicity.
The great event of the Christmas time was the floaters ‘ball. As the harvest home was given to the farm, this entertainment belonged to the forest—all engaged in the wood manufacture, their wives and families, being invited. The amusements began pretty early in the day with a game at Ba’, the hockey6 of the Low country, our Scotch substitute for cricket. It is played on a field by two parties, which toss a small hard ball between them by means of crooked sticks called clubs. The object of the one party is to send this ball to a certain place, a home, generally marked by a pile of plaids. The object of the other party is to prevent its getting there—a matter of difficulty on either side when the opponents are equally matched. The highlanders are extremely fond of this exciting sport, and continue it for hours on a holiday, exhibiting during the progress of it many feats of agility. There are always spectators in crowds applauding the fine strokes, many of the women taking a pride in the success of their particular friends at the Ba’ playing. Our people kept up the game till dark, when all the men, above a hundred, went to dinner in the barn, a beef and several sheep having been killed for them. The kitchens both of house and farm had been busy for a couple of days cooking this entertainment. The women, as they arrived, were carried into the Grieve’s house to tea, a delicate attention, fully appreciated. We delighted in the floater’s ball, so very large a party, such a crowd of strangers. Some splendid dancers from Strathspey, the hay loft and the straw loft, and the upper floor of the threshing mill all thrown open en suite. Two sets of fiddlers playing different tunes, punch made in the washing tubs, a perfect illumination of tallow dips. It is very surprising that the boards stood the pounding they got; the thumping noise of the many energetick feet could have been heard half a mile off.
When a lad took a lass out to dance, he led her to her place in the reel and ‘pried her mou’ before beginning, kissed her, she holding up her face quite frankly though with modesty to receive the customary salute, and he giving a good sounding smack when the girl was bonnie that could be heard generally above the warning scrape of the fiddler’s bow. At the conclusion of the set the same ceremony was repeated; seats being scarce, the ladies mostly reclined on their partners’ knees while resting—as the evening advanced the pairs were wont to cuddle up comfortably together in the plaidie, warm work I should suppose considering the temperature of the ball room. There was certainly some reform required in the very primitive manners of our society. Many happy hearts came to these merry makings that most surely ached before the year came to an end.
The number of people employed in the wood manufacture was very great. At this winter season little could be done in the forest beyond felling the tree, lopping the branches, barking the log, while the weather remained open, before the frost set in. Most of this work indeed was done in the autumn, and was continued while practicable. This was not a severe winter, but it set in early. We had a deep fall of snow, and then a degree of frost only felt among the mountains, putting a stop while it lasted to all labour. It was not unpleasant, for it was dry, and the sun shone brightly for the few hours of daylight, and after the first slap of the face on going out, sharp exercise made our walks very enjoyable. We bounded on over the hard ground for miles, indeed the distances people were able to overtake in weather of this sort would not be believed by those who had not tried it. Five weeks of frost and snow brought us over the worst of the winter, and then came a foretaste of spring which set us all at work again. The spade and the plough were both busy, and in the wood the great bustle of the year began.
The logs prepared by the loppers had to be drawn by horses to the nearest running water, and there left in large quantities till the proper time for sending them down the streams. It was a busy scene all through the forest, so many rough little horses moving about in every direction, each dragging its tree, attended by an active boy as guide and remover of obstructions. The smack of the whip used to sound quite cheerful in those otherwise solitary spots, and when we met, the few gaelick words we interchanged seemed to enliven us all. This driving, as it was called, lasted till sufficient timber was collected to render the opening of the sluices profitable. Formerly small saw mills had been erected wherever there was sufficient water power, near the part of the forest where the felling was going forward, and the deals when cut were carted down to the Spey. It was very picturesque to come suddenly out of the gloom of the pine trees, onto a little patch of cultivation near a stream with a cottage or two and its appendages and a saw mill at work, itself an object of singular interest in a rude landscape. A fuller concentration of labour was, however, found to be more advantageous to the wood merchant; they were finding out that it answered better to send the logs down nearer to the Spey by floating them, than the deals by carting them. The prettily situated single saw mills were therefore gradually abandoned, and new ones to hold double saws built as wanted, within a more convenient distance from the banks of the river where the rafts were made.
In order to have a run of water at command, the sources of the little rivers were artificially managed to suit floating purposes. Embankments were raised at the ends of the lakes in the far away Glens, at t
he point where the different burnies issued from them. Strong sluice gates, always kept closed, prevented the escape of any beyond a small rill of water, so that when a rush was wanted the supply was sure. The night before a run, the man in charge of that particular sluice set off up to the hill, a walk of miles partly over an untracked moor, and reaching the spot long before daylight opened the heavy gates; out rushed the torrent, travelling so quickly as to reach the deposit of timber in time for the meeting of the woodmen, a perfect crowd, amongst whom it was one of our enjoyments to find ourselves early in the day. The duty of some was to roll the logs into the water; this was effected by the help of levers—like Harry Sandford’s snow ball, Johnny screamed out the first time we took him with us. The next party shoved them off with longer poles into the current, dashing about often up to the middle in water when any cases of obstruction occurred. They were then taken in charge by the most picturesque group of all, the younger, more active of the. set, each supplied with a clip, a very long pole extremely thin and flexible at one end, generally a young tall tree; a sharp hook was fixed to the bending point, and with this, skipping from rock to stump, over brooks and through briers, this agile band followed the log laden current, ready to pounce on any stray lumbering victim that was in any manner checked in its progress. There was something peculiarly graceful in the action of throwing forth the stout yet yielding clip, an exciting satisfaction as the sharp hook fixed the obstreperous log. The many light forms springing about among the trees, along banks that were some times high, and always rocky, the shouts, the laughter, the gaelick exclamations, and above all, the roar of the water, made the whole scene one of the most inspiriting that either Spectators or Actors could be engaged in.
One or two of these streams carried the wood straight to the Spey or to some saw mill near it. Others were checked in their progress by a lake. When this was the case, light rafts had to be constructed, so many logs bound loosely together, and then paddled or speared over by a man holding a ‘sting’ in his hand standing on nothing more than a couple of small logs laid across the float of larger ones. The lake crossed, the raft was taken to pieces, some of the logs left at a saw mill, the rest sent down the recovered stream to the Spey. There the Spey floaters took charge of them. Our people’s task was done.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 31