The Spey floaters lived mostly down near Ballindalloch, a certain number of families by whom the calling had been followed for ages, to whom the wild river, all its holes and shoals and rocks and shiftings, were as well known as had its bed been dry. They came up in the season, at the first hint of a speat, as a rise in the water was called. A large bothie was built for them at the mouth of the Druie in a fashion that suited themselves; a fire on a stone hearth in the middle of the floor, a hole in the very centre of the roof just over it where some of the smoke got out, heather spread on the ground, no window, and there, after their hard day’s work, they lay down for the night, in their wet clothes—for they had been perhaps hours in the river—each man’s feet to the fire, each man’s plaid round his chest, a circle of wearied bodies half stupefied by whiskey, enveloped in a cloud of steam and smoke, yet sleeping soundly till the morning. They were a healthy race, suffering little but in their old age from rheumatism. They made their own large rafts themselves, seldom taking help from any of our woodmen, yet often giving it if there were an over quantity of timber in the runs.
My Mother and my Aunt when we were in arms had often enlivened the different scenes of the floating. We were now quite as much interested in all the exciting variety of the different stages in the wood manufacture. Mr McIntosh, who dined very frequently at the Doune, usually contrived to come the day before a log run, our particular delight, so we were sure of appearing in the very height of the business just before the noontide rest. When the men met in the morning they were supposed to have all breakfasted at home, and perhaps had had their private dram, it being cold work in a dark wintry dawn, to start over the moor for a walk of some miles to end in standing up to the knees in water; yet on collecting, whiskey was always handed round; a lad with a small cask, a quarter anker7 on his back, and a horn cup in his hand that held a gill, good measure, appeared three times a day among them. They all took their ‘morning’ raw, undiluted and without accompaniment, so they did with the gill at parting when the work was done; but the noontide dram was part of a meal. There was a twenty minutes’ rest from labour, and a bannock and a bit of cheese taken out of every pocket to be leisurely eaten after the whiskey. When we were there the horn cup was first offered to us, and every one of us took a sip to the health of our friends around, who all stood up on the cup being returned to Duncan McIntosh, and gave the Laird and all belonging to him a round of cheers right heartily. Sometimes a floater’s wife or bairn would come with a message to him at this time; such messenger was always offered whiskey. Aunt Mary had a story that she one day being of the Doune party to some of the forest business, a woman with a child in her arms, and another bit thing at her knee, came up among them; the horn cup was in due course handed to her, she took a ‘gey guid drap’ herself, and then gave a little to each of the babies. ‘My goodness, child,’ said my Mother to the wee thing that was trotting by its mother’s side, ‘doesn’t it bite you?’ ‘Ay, but I like the bite,’ replied the creature that could hardly speak. A young English girl like my Aunt could hardly fail to be astonished at the whole proceeding.
There were many laughable accidents happened during the merry hours of the floating; the clips would sometimes fail to hit the mark, when the overbalanced clipper would fall headlong into the water. A slippery log escaping from cold hands would cause as cold a sommerset, shouts of laughter always greeting the dripping victims, who goodhumouredly joined in the mirth, raised by their awkwardness. As for the wetting, it seemed no way to incommode them; they were really like a set of water rats. Sometimes the accident was beyond a joke. I know we were all sobered enough by one that befell us one day. Just below the bridge on the Loch an Eilein road, over the burn that flows out of the lake, a small basin of water had been allowed to form during a run, for the purpose of holding together a large quantity of logs to prevent them from going down farther too quickly, as from this point the stream was conveyed by a narrow conduit formed of wood, across the Milltown moor and on down a steep bank into the first of a pretty set of miniature lakes, concealed by the birch wood on the one side and the fir trees on the other, known as the Lochans. This conduit, called the Spout, was in particular favour with us, as along its course the fun was always at its highest, it was so difficult in that rush of water to keep the great hulking logs in order, send them singly on in regular succession. One would rise up here over a lazy leader, another there; above, two or three mounting up on end and choking the passage, stopping all progress and wasting the water. The clips were very busy here, the men lumping about with them hooking this log and sending it forward, hooking that log and keeping it back, screaming to one another as they skipped over the Spout. All of a sudden, Mary, the least active child I have ever seen, in fact heavy limbed and heavy headed, who never on any occasion exerted any one faculty of mind or body, made a spring and cleared the conduit. The shouts of applause this daring action was greeted with inspired her afresh, and actually laughing herself she prepared to spring back. This time she miscalculated the distance and fell plump into the stream, along which she was carried more rapidly than we could follow her, without a hope of rescue. Did she even escape being crushed by a following log she must have been drowned in that rushing torrent before being tossed down the steep bank into the lake. The presence of mind of one person often saves a life; hers required the presence of mind of two. The accident happened very near the little basin where the logs were collected previous to being sent off down the spout, by a narrow outlet in charge of a tall Murdoch Murray who stood there directing them with his clip. He had the wisdom to draw one log quite across the mouth of the conduit so that none could move, and thus all danger of her being followed by one and so stunned or crushed was at an end. A lad, whose name I have forgot but he died, poor fellow, of consumption, carefully tended by us all while he lived, leaped from his place, waited for her a little lower, seized her clothes, and dragged her out. She was insensible. Mr McIntosh then came up, carried her in his arms into a saw miller’s house close by, Sandy Colley’s it was, had her undressed, rubbed, laid on the bed wrapped in warm blankets, and then when she opened her eyes he gave her a glass of whiskey. Jane, as the sensible one of the party, was sent home to order up dry clothes, which she was to do privately, without going near my mother. Johnny and I sat by Mary, doing whatever Duncan McIntosh bid us, and Miss Elphick cried.
As soon as it was ascertained that ‘the bonny burd’ was living, grand cheering rent the air, and a dram all round, an extra, was given in honour of her rescuers. That dram was the highland prayer, it began, accompanied, and ended all things. The men wanted to make a king’s cushion and carry her home, but Mr McIntosh thought it better for her to walk. We were abundantly cheered on setting forth, and well scolded on getting home, though none of us but Mary herself had had any hand in the accident.
A more tragical event than most happily this ‘vaulting ambition’8 of poor Mary’s had turned out, occurred a year or two before at this same season. The only child of a poor Widow, a Christian Grant, a fine young man named Allan, had charge of the Loch Ennich sluice gates. A quantity of timber being wanted at Druie mouth for the Spey floaters who had come up to make their rafts, a run was determined on, and this lad was sent up to the Glen to open the sluice. It was a wild night, wind and hail changing to snow, and he had eleven or twelve miles to go through the forest, full of paths, and across the heath that was trackless. Poor old Christy. She gave him a hot supper, put up a bannock and a little whiskey for him, and wrapped his plaid well round him. She looked after him in the driving sleet as he left the warm house. Such risks were common, no one thought about them. Early in the morning down came the water, the weather had taken up, and the floating went merrily on, but Allan did not return. He had reached the Loch, that was plain; where then had he wandered? Not far. When evening came on and no word of him, a party set out in search, and they found him at his post, asleep seemingly, a bit of bannock and the empty flask beside him. He had done his duty, opened the water
gate, and then sat down to rest. The whiskey and the storm told the remainder. He was quite dead. The mother never recovered her reason. The shock brought on brain fever, and that left her strangely excited for a while. After that she calmed, was always harmless, sometimes a little restless, but never either wiser or sillier than the half simple state in which she existed to extreme old age. She had always been a tidy body, and had been called in often by Betty Campbell to help at the farm whenever there was a press of business. Once or twice at Company times she had assisted in the scullery at the House. The first sensible action she did after her long months of darkness was to arrive at the Doune one morning and set herself to pluck the fowl. Every one was of course kind to her, so she came next day, and from that time never failed to arrive regularly when the family was at home, about the breakfast hour, and remain till after dinner when the kitchen was put in order. She never would remain all night, preferring her little cabin on Druie side, to which she returned cheerfully except on stormy nights, when the maids said she would shake her head very sadly, and sometimes let fall tears. She never mentioned her son. My Mother never let her want for any thing; clothes, tea, snuff, all she wished for was supplied whether we were at home or absent, till the really good hearted Duchess of Bedford succeeded us at the Doune,9 when she took charge of Christy, gave her just what she had always got, and reinstated her as head of scullery. I can see her now, with her pale anxious face, her linsey gown, check apron, and very white cap always bound by a black ribbon, seated beside the old japanned clock in our cheerful kitchen, at some of her easy labours. She had very little English, just enough to say ‘my dear’ or ‘my jewel’ when any of us children passed. She always rose when my mother entered and kissed her hand, sometimes saying ‘bonnie’ when she saw how white it was. Poor old Christy, we used to work for her, help the maids to make her caps and aprons and handkerchiefs. It was Johnny’s privilege to carry to her the week’s supply of snuff. After her misfortune the men were always sent up the hill in pairs, for it had not come alone. The shepherds had their mournful tales to tell as well as the floaters, and here is one of them.10
They were not Rothiemurchus people, the young people of whom I am to speak. They lived up in Glen Feshie, a great way from our March, and they had not long been married. He was either a small farmer, or the son of one, or merely a shepherd to a wealthier man, I am not sure which, but his business was to mind a large flock that pastured on the mountains. During the summer when their charge strayed up towards the very summit of the high range of the Grampians, the shepherds lived in bothies in the hill, miles from any other habitation, often quite alone, their Colly dog their only companion, and with no provisions beyond a bag of meal. This they generally ate uncooked, mixed either with milk or with water as happened to suit the establishment, the milk or the water being mostly cold, few of these hardy mountaineers troubling themselves to keep a fire lighted in fine weather. This simple food, called brose, is rather relished by the highlanders; made with hot water or with good milk they think it excellent fare; made with beef broo’, the fat skimmings of the broth pot, they consider it quite a treat. Beef brose is entertainment for any one. The water brose must be wholesome; no men looked better in health than the masons, who eat it regularly, and the shepherds. These last come down from their high ground to attend the kirk sometimes, in such looks as put to shame the luxurious dwellers in the smoky huts with their hot porridge and other delicacies. They learn to love the free life of the wilderness, although there are many rainy days. Somehow rain don’t much interfere with the comfort of the highlander.
In the winter the flocks feed lower down, and the shepherd leaves his bothie to live at home, but not at ease. A deep snow calls him forth to wander over miles of dreary waste, in case of drifts that overwhelm, or cold that paralyses, or landmarks mistaken. In spring there come the early lambs, on whose safety depends the profit of the Sheepowner, and our highland springs retain so much of winter in them that the care of a flock at this harsh season entails about the hardest of all labouring lives on man. It was at this critical time, at the beginning of a heavy snow storm, that our young husband departed on his round of duty.
The wife was preparing for her first baby. She was also busy with her wheel, the first work of a newly married notable highland girl being the spinning and the dying of a plaid for the husband. She baked her bread, she trimmed her fire, she busked11 her house, then took her wheel, and by the light of a splinter of quick fir laid on a small projecting slab within the chimney, she wore away the long dark hours of that dreary winter’s night. Ever as the storm lulled for a while, she bent to listen for the voice she expected at the door, and which, poor young thing, she was never to hear again, for he never returned from those wild mountains. They sought him for days; no trace of him could be discovered. When the snow melted away, and the summer flowers burst into bloom, party after party set out in quest of his remains, all unsuccessfully. It was not till late autumn, when our gamekeeper was on the Braeriach shooting grouse, that he saw seated on a shelf of rock midway down a precipice a plaided figure. It was all that was left of the missing shepherd, little more than a skeleton, and his Colly dead beside him. He had wandered miles away from his own ground, deceived by the snow and must have died from exhaustion after a fall on to this sheltered spot. His Widow was past all knowledge of his fate; her anxiety had brought on premature child birth, fever ensued, and though she recovered her strength in a degree, her mind was quite gone. She lived in the belief of the speedy return of her husband, went cheerfully about her usual work, preparing all things for him, going through the same round as on the day she lost him; baking, sweeping, putting on fresh peats, and ending with her wheel by the side of the clean hearth in the evening. She would shew her balls of yarn with pride to the kind neighbours who looked in upon her, and the little caps she was trimming for the baby that was lying alongside the bones of its father in the kirk yard. Sometimes towards the evening, they said, she would look wearily round and sigh heavily, and wander a little in her talk, but in the morning she was early up and busy as ever. She was never in want, for every one helped her; but though she was so much pitied, she was in their sober way much blamed. The highlanders are fatalists; what is to be, will to be—philosophers—what happens must be borne and patiently. We must ‘dree our weird,’12 all of us, and ’tis a ‘flying in the face of providence’ to break the heart for God’s inflictions. They feel keenly too; all their affections are very warm and deep; still, they are not to be paraded. A tranquil manner is a part of their good breeding, composure under all circumstances essential to the dignity of character common to all of the race. How would a matron from Speyside be astonished, scandalised, at the impulsive nature and consequent exhibitions of her reputed kindred in dear Ireland.
I have wandered very far away from the floating—and the forest work did not end with the arrival of the logs at their different destinations. Those of them that went straight to Spey were seized on by the Ballindalloch men, bored at each end by an auger, two deep holes made into which iron plugs were hammered, the plugs having eyes through which well twisted wattles were passed, thus binding any given number firmly together. When a raft of proper size was thus formed it lay by the bank of the river awaiting its covering. This was produced from the logs left at the saw mills, generally in the water in a pool formed to hold them. As they were required by the workmen, they were brought close by means of the clip, and then by the help of levers rolled over up an inclined plane and on to the platform under the saw; two hooks attached to cables kept the log in its place, the hooks being hammered into the end of the log, and the other end of the cable being fixed to the frame of the saw. The sluice was then opened, down poured the water, the great wheel turned, the platform moved slowly on with the log, the saw frame worked up and down, every cut slicing the log deeper till the whole length fell off. The four outsides were first cut off; they were called backs, and very few of them went down to Garmouth; they were mostly used at
home for country purposes, such as fencing, out offices, even houses were made of them, roofing, or firing. The squared logs were then cut up regularly into deals and carted off to the rafts, where they were laid as a son of flooring. Two rude gears for the oars to move in, and rude oars they were, completed the appointments of a Spey float. The men had a wet berth of it, the water shipping in, or more, properly, over, with every lurch; yet they liked the life, and it paid them well, and then they had idle times great part of the year, could live at home and till their little crofts their own old lazy way, the rent being always made up by the floating.
Near Arndilly there was a sunken rock sometimes difficult to pass; this furnished a means of livelihood to several families living on the spot. It was their privilege to provide ropes, and arms to pull the ropes!, and so to help the floats through a rapid current running at high floods between this sunken rock and the shore. The dole they got was small, yet there was hardly more outcry in Sutherland when the Duke wanted his starving cottars to leave their turf huts on the moors to live in comfortable stone and lime houses by the sea,13 than my father met when some years after this he got leave to remove this obstacle by blasting.
The oars were to my Mother and us, Jane and me, the most important items of the whole manufacture. She had discovered that in the late Laird’s time, when the sales of timber were very small, a dozen rafts in each season, worth a few hundreds annually, the oars had been the perquisite of the Lady. A little out of fun, partly perhaps because she had begun to find money sometimes wanting, she informed good Mr Steenson that she meant to claim her dues. He used to listen quietly, answer with a smile blandly that next time he came up her claims should be remembered, but never a penny she got. Mr Steenson fell sick and died. A new wood agent had to be appointed, and he being an old friend, my Mother applied with more confidence to him. The new Agent was Dalachapple, Mr Alexander Grant of Dalachapple, nephew to the thrifty wife of Parson John—their son in law as well, but thereby hangs a tale. He had been connected in business with William Cameron in Glasgow, and failing like him had been living like him, with wife and bairns, plenty of bairns, at Abernethy waiting to see what would turn up for him. I declare these unfortunates all getting round my father and helping to manage his affairs when they had so signally failed in managing their own, always seemed to me like the lame leading the blind,—all in the end must fall into the ditch, for William Cameron had taken charge of the books as Factor to relieve his father of that part of the business and gradually he proceeded to relieve him of all the rest, salary included. He kept the books beautifully, in true mercantile order, and I never heard him complained of in his active duties on the property. Moreover, poor man, when money fell to his wife by the death of ‘my Uncle Sir Eneas,’ he lent it all to my father in the sure belief that whatever little difficulties might beset him at the moment, the forest would redeem all. Dalachapple, in like manner, invested the few thousands he inherited afterwards from good Parson John in the same bottomless pit, equally satisfied with the security and sure like his friend of a good rate of interest in the meanwhile, a matter of much consequence to them under present circumstances.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 32