Highland Homespun E-Book

Margaret Leigh

• Herausgeber: Origin
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 570

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In May 1933 Margaret Leigh took over the tenancy of Achnabo farm, in a beautiful corner of the West Highlands overlooking the isle of Skye. In this unsentimental yet exquisitely written book, she recounts a year of farming life there, from the burning of the land and ploughing in March, through planting and sowing in April to haymaking and harvesting in September. Incidental details – such as a visit to the smithy, the arrival of some new bulls and the annual journey of the cows to the summer shielings – provide fascinating insights into farming life. Local characters and customs feature too, adding another rich dimension to this reflective and poignant memoir of a world now vanished forever.

Leseprobe

Highland Homespun

Highland Homespun

MARGARET LEIGH

This edition published in 2018 byBirlinn Origin, an imprint ofBirlinn LimitedWest Newington House10 Newington RoadEdinburghEH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published by Birlinn Limited in 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 91247 609 1eBOOK ISBN: 978 0 85790 298 6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Hewertext UK Ltd, EdinburghPrinted and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

TOG. AND A.M. FORBES OF FERNAIG

Contents

  1.   Foreword: Hail and Farewell

  2.   February: The Farmer’s Year Begins

  3.   February: Some New Arrivals

  4.   Interlude: A Winter Night

  5.   March: Burning and Ploughing

  6.   March: The Consummation of Winter

  7.   April: Planting and Sowing

  8.   Interlude: The Countryman Born and Made

  9.   May: The Long Days Begin

10.   June: Work and Play at Midsummer

11.   Interlude: What’s Your Hurry?

12.   July: Prelude to Haymaking

13.   Interlude on Cattle and the Art of Driving Them

14.   August: Making Hay While the Sun Does Not Shine

15.   Interlude: In Quest of Food

16.   September: Harvesting in the Deluge

17.   October: The End of the Struggle

18.   Interlude on Junk and Other Matters

19.   November: Port after Stormy Seas

20.   December–January: Hibernation

1

Foreword: Hail and Farewell

CURSED as we are with universal education, there are few people who have not at one time or another dabbled in literature. I am not speaking of professional writers, but of the numerous amateurs who have taken to writing either to fill the leisure of retirement or as a distraction from a business that is too dull, unprofitable, or depressing to claim their whole attention. Even the inarticulate race of farmers has been driven into print by the slump in agriculture, often to find that books pay better than the farm; for the British public, at last repenting of its long neglect of rural problems, seems to have developed an almost passionate interest in the land.

This book is about farming, but not perhaps about the kind of farming that most of us have known, and most certainly not the kind that must (alas for the necessity) prevail in the future. The farm I have called Achnabo is worked very much as it would have been in the days of Abraham. All operations are performed on a small scale and by hand, not for the sake of theory or as an experiment in apostolic simplicity, but because in our special conditions of land, labour, and climate, even a moderately mechanised system of farming would not pay. I have no axe to grind in the matter, and in praise of West Highland methods shall only say that the life, though laborious, is pleasant; and for young people intending to farm, no matter where or how, it provides an unrivalled training in the primitive manual operations on which their mechanical substitutes are based. It is of course possible to work a power loom intelligently without any knowledge of hand-loom weaving – it is done every day by thousands of mill-hands; but for a thorough understanding of the whole process of weaving, the man who can operate a handloom is in a greatly superior position.

There has been much discussion of late on the question of preparing boys for the Navy and Merchant Service. Some are in favour of a preliminary training in sail, on the ground that in no other way can resourcefulness and intelligence at sea be so thoroughly developed. Others argue that for boys who will serve on ships propelled by machinery, a training in sail would be an expensive waste of time. It is, however, significant that the Scandinavian countries, renowned in history for their skill in seamanship, have shown most interest in the old tradition, so much so that in Finland no one can qualify as an officer in steam who has not served an apprenticeship in sail. In its constant demand for resourcefulness, initiative, and a skilled weather sense, the primitive unmechanised farm is like a sailing-ship, and no one, I believe, can make proper use of agricultural machinery who has not first mastered the routine of horse and hand cultivation, and studied the habits of plants and animals with a detailed accuracy that is possible only with personal attention and small numbers.

The small hand-worked farm has another advantage – it teaches the beginner how to make do with what he has already, or if he must get something new, to contrive it himself out of any odd material lying to hand. A common fault in agricultural education is to provide the student with completely up-to-date, scientific, and fool-proof equipment of a kind that would never be found in practice except on the model farm of a millionaire. The natural result is that the beginner, fresh from his vision of harvest combines and white-tiled dairies, spends much of his working capital on unnecessary improvement of buildings and implements. Every agricultural college should have an improvisation course, with an instructor from the back-blocks of Australia or Canada, who would teach students how to use up the quantities of old iron, wood, bits of wire-netting, and so forth, that lie upon the scrapheap of every farm. If this were done, there would be fewer failures among agricultural students who take up farming on their own account.

I have used the word ‘method’ once or twice, but the beauty of Highland farming is that there is little or no method about it. This is not quite as feckless as it sounds, for the weather is so variable and the people so indolent that the most sensible and profitable thing is to throw method overboard and swim with the stream. The best-laid plans may be upset by a sudden change in the weather or the non-arrival of an indispensable casual worker, and it seems a waste of time to make them. So this book, like the course of our work on the farm, drifts idly along, following, it is true, the procession of the seasons, but otherwise moving here and there in pursuit of interest, just as a young dog on a walk follows his master’s general direction, but continually breaks away to investigate some new and seductive scent.

It is a book written at the kitchen table of a Highland farm, and describing the life that is lived there. But it is not a book about the Highlands. Of these there is an ever-increasing number, some good, some bad, but nearly all well illustrated, and perhaps justified by the beauty and interest of the pictures alone.

The glens and lochs of the north-west have been opened up to a large and intelligent public in the south, which demands topographical books of all kinds, from the chatty guidebook to the technical work on natural history, philology, or folklore. Thousands of people, though they may never have seen them, can distinguish the various peaks of the Cuillins of Skye, can name the varieties of seabirds found on the crags of St Kilda, or of wild flowers blooming on a machair in Uist. They know the meaning of Gaelic place-names, can sing Hebridean songs, are familiar with the ancient legends. A certain amount of this interest in Celtic things is literary or artistic, a transient fashion, sometimes merely a pose. But I am sure that it goes deeper than this.

Some years ago I was told of a London typist who, fired by the works of Fiona Macleod, spent her savings on a visit to Iona, where she was overtaken by the tide and drowned. A silly schoolgirl escapade; and the writer who inspired it is, to my plain Saxon taste, intolerably sentimental. But behind this silliness is the desire, strong and wholly reasonable, to escape from the stultifying bondage of our commercial civilisation. And it is this desire that makes people delight in reading of the wild country that still lies unspoilt, for our pleasure and refreshment, in the far northwest. Changing conditions of life have changed our values. A thousand years ago, the invaders of Britain preferred the flat and fertile south and east, and their choice was a sound one, for a rich living was to be found there. The vanquished were driven into the hills of the Atlantic seaboard, where there was little land worth cultivating. As late as the eighteenth century, Englishmen whose work took them to the Highlands pitied themselves for being condemned to a miserable exile. If they wrote books about the country, they were catalogues of complaints. Now we have changed all that: the horrors of the eighteenth century have become the beauties of the twentieth. No glen is too gloomy for us, no crag too beetling, no loch too grim, no strait too stormy. But if I may digress for a moment, are we sure, when we smile at the miseries of Johnson or Burt, that we are in a position to judge? For us, a visit to Skye means a comfortable journey by corridor train and steamer, or by luxurious car upon tolerably well-made roads, with a good bed at the end of it. No wonder that gloomy Sligachan has lost its terrors, and is no more than a fine piece of scenery to be glanced at with pleasure before ordering our dinner at the hotel. For them, it meant difficult and dangerous travelling on horseback through bogs and thickets, among rocks and precipices, or in small boats, at the mercy of wind and tide, their only shelter whatever hovel they happened to find when darkness overtook them. If at a blow we were to lose every amenity of modern travel, and be condemned to the use of ponies and rowing-boats, our attitude towards the sublime in scenery would, I feel sure, be rather different.

To return to our argument. Here, it seems, is the only place where you can walk all day without seeing anyone, wear what you like, work when and how you like (or not at all if you don’t like), never make plans, never carry a purse, never lock your door, leave things lying about because people are too honest or too indolent to take them. Blessed land of freedom and ease! No wonder that many of us, provided it is not for good, want to live in it, and that most of us want to read about it. For in reading we get much of the delight of travel and adventure without the danger and discomfort. I knew an old lady who dared not face the mildest cow; yet her favourite reading was of man-eating tigers. Is this one of life’s little ironies, or an example of the law of compensation? I neither know nor greatly care. Only I am sure that it is pleasant to sit at home and read of things remote and dangerous. Pleasant enough, until there is a cry of ‘The cows are in the corn!’ or ‘The potatoes have boiled dry!’ And then stark tyrannous reality swoops down upon us, and the exploits of gallant explorers or blubbery whalemen fade into the limbo of things forgotten and infinitely unimportant.

Why not, then, another book about the Highlands? Because, though I have lived for ten years in this seductive land, I know very little about it as a whole. These ten years have been spent in one district, doing my own work and living my own life. Most of the notable things, the things that people write and dream and talk about, are unknown to me. I have never seen the surf breaking on St Kilda, nor the flood-tide covering the fords of Benbecula, nor Loch Maree, nor Glencoe, nor the sun setting over Morar Bay. Of Gaelic I have but a few words, and only the haziest idea of the stories of Deirdre and Cuchullain. And there is worse. A topographical book should be written either by a native, to whose inside knowledge and natural sympathy many rare and interesting things are revealed, or by an observant stranger, who, provided he has sufficient insight, may often enjoy a clearer and less biased point of view. But the mere inhabitant, who is neither native nor visitor, has lost the latter’s freshness of outlook without gaining the intimacy of the former.

And so what is offered here is not a book about the Highlands, but an unsystematic bundle of reflections upon life on a Highland farm, where the workers, scenery, and temperament of the place give to the life lived there its own peculiar flavour. If I dare write of these things, it is because I have herded cows on Highland hillsides, hewn timber in Highland woods, worked side by side with crofters and shepherds, not as a social or literary experiment, nor with any Tolstoyan theories about the excellence of peasant life in itself, but just as it happened to fit best in the doing of my own work. This is a point I specially want to stress, because this book may seem to be the work of an intellectual temporarily surfeited by civilisation, who takes a spell of country life for medicinal purposes, as one might take a dose of salts after too full a meal. The idea is sound enough, but the books written by these people have something a little transitory and unreal about them. Today we are in Thule; but tomorrow we shall be (thank heavens!) back in Bloomsbury or Montmartre, writing in quite another strain. The cure is effected and we have no further need of cabbages or cows to soothe our frayed nerves or stimulate our jaded fancy. If forced to theorise, I would certainly admit that the simple life is the only completely rational life, because it is the only completely natural one; and man is superior to the beasts not in setting Nature aside, but in learning to work harmoniously within the limits it lays down; and this by no mere animal instinct, but by conscious and intelligent acquiescence. But beyond admitting this main principle, I have no taste for further argument. The simple life is desirable only as long as it is unself-conscious. The moment we begin to theorise about ourselves, we cease to live simply. Work is good, but theories of work are bad, if for no other reason than because the theoriser has to stop working in order to be able to talk.

Almighty God Himself cannot put back the clock. Neither can we, by force, preaching, or example, call back the past, and reduce our huge population to a level which would enable us to become a self-supporting agricultural community. We have reached an unpleasant stage of evolution. We may, as optimists suppose, be heading straight for the millennium. If so, it must be a madman’s paradise in which ever-increasing motion will have produced, as in some cosmic traffic block, a state of perpetual stagnation. But in any case we must go forward, not back. We cannot, if we would, abolish motor cars, blast furnaces, power looms, advertising, wireless, cinemas, jazz bands, and all the whirling clanking pandemonium that is called civilisation. It is doubtful if any of these have added one iota to the sum of human happiness; indeed there is even reason for thinking the reverse. But they have come to stay, at all events for a time; and if people want them they must have them. We can only believe that the sanity and common sense of ordinary people will in the end prevail, so that, unless too far hypnotised by advertising stunts and the daily press, not to mention a dozen other agencies of corruption, they will demand a quieter and more satisfying way of life than anything our speedomaniacs have to offer. Happiness is certainly, as we were told long ago, the accompaniment of activity, but not of an activity so frenzied that it leaves no time for enjoyment and reflection. In Heaven’s name, allow us to chew our cud.

In the meantime, while we await an opportunity to build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land (so much less green and pleasant than in Blake’s time, for he only foresaw as a prophet what we endure as a sordid reality, and all through our own fault), a few of us, far from cities with their grimy work and tinsel amusements, may try the experiment of living more simply and more slowly. But let us lie low, and be humble about it. There is no use setting up as a chosen people, especially beloved of God and assured of some particular salvation. Not merely shall we be disliked, but we shall miss the happiness that only comes by stealth to the unaware. And in any case it will give us a salutary shock to reflect that our freedom is possibly bought with the profits earned by producers of petrol, gramophones, and motor tyres. We are hypocrites. Perhaps: but we need not be. We can sell our own Shells and Dunlops, and invest our money in livestock. Prices are low just now, and with the possibility of a rise in the near future, the gamble might be worth making. What about it?

Before plunging the reader into the midst of our unsystematic life and work, it is only fair to introduce him to the farm itself and the way in which I came to occupy it.

Achnabo stands in an open position about 350 feet above the sea, with a hundred-odd acres of enclosed land and 600 more of woods and rough grazing. There had always been a few crofters on the spot, but about seventy years ago the proprietor cleared, fenced, and drained more land, and made the whole place into a home farm to supply his castle with produce. The enclosed fields were then in fine condition and carefully tilled in rotation. Machinery was not used, and armies of local people were employed to cultivate and harvest the crops. Not a rush, not a weed, was to be seen anywhere. Old people can still recall this glory, but now it has become an almost incredible legend. The fortune that wrested our land from the wilderness has been dissipated, the estate is in other hands, and Nature is rapidly recovering her lost dominion. The sleek fields bristle with rushes, thistles, and tansy. The flats have become sour and water-logged through want of lime and neglected drains. Fencing posts have crumbled to dust, wires are slack, twisted and broken, gates lie flat or hang ready to fall. The houses and buildings have been recently renovated, but everything else is hurrying back to the wild as fast as it knows how. And when we are gone it will probably go a bit faster, for unless the land is divided into small holdings, I doubt if it will be farmed independently again. For there is no hill ground for sheep, and no accessible market for the products of intensive farming; so that, unless the price of store cattle should rise to heights unknown today, the farm, with all its burden of long neglect, cannot be made to pay its way. It will probably be annexed by some powerful neighbour, to support a few sheep and a dozen or so of out-wintering cattle.

My tenancy of Achnabo began at the May term, 1933. The farm had stood for some time un-let, and I got it on very generous terms. My first idea had been to use Achnabo as a preliminary home for Poor Law children who would ultimately be passed on to the Fairbridge Farm School in Western Australia. This scheme, though encouraged by the Child Emigration Society itself, had to be abandoned, because the authorities would not send children to a district beyond the ordinary reach of their inspectors. I was then no stranger to the Highlands; we had come to settle there in 1925, and returned to England only for short occasional holidays. I had become more and more absorbed in agriculture, and the four years previous to my entry into Achnabo were spent on the farm of my friend at Strathascaig, whom we always call the Laird, because on his territory of 6,000 acres he does exactly as he likes, and has a paternally autocratic way of dealing with everybody and everything. He and his wife have been and always will be the dearest of friends and neighbours, and without their constant help and advice we should often have been in a sorry mess. Other neighbours are few: the nearest crofting village is nearly a mile away, and the nearest house is out of sight.

At the moment, the stock consists of seven cross-bred milk cows and suckers in the byre, six ‘Belties’, or out-wintering Belted Galloway in-calf heifers, nine calves of six months and over, a pedigree Aberdeen Angus bull, a horse, about a hundred head of Light Sussex and cross-bred poultry, and two dogs. This year we had nine and a half acres of oats, a quarter of an acre of potatoes, about twelve acres shut up for hay, and the rest pasture. The regular permanent staff is small enough – myself, and Peter, a public school boy of eighteen. In the summer, when there was no time for housework, I had Flora, a gnome-like little being from the village below, with a boundless devotion to everything and everybody on the farm, and an equally boundless indifference to time and order. The poultry were looked after by Mr Gordon, the tenant of the farm cottage, and during the haymaking and harvest season we employed another public school boy in the house who worked for his keep.

Apart from questions of profit and loss, Achnabo must be one of the most beautiful places in Scotland, and neither picture nor description can give an adequate idea of its charm. The photograph at the beginning of this book shows a view from a neighbouring hill, at the foot of which the farm with its fields and buildings lie spread like a map. In the midst is the L-shaped steading, the upright of the L consisting of a line of buildings – the cart-shed with granary above, the cow-byre and bull-house, with the Gordons’ cottage at the far end. At right angles to these, backing on the stackyard, is the sawmill, once built to house a circular saw for estate work, but now used as a good substitute for a Dutch barn. At a lower level can be seen the heifer shed, stable, and long barn, and away to the left, secluded in its walled garden, the white farmhouse, an ugly little box with an asbestos-tiled roof, but easy to work and for the time being our own. Round about lie the hayfields and cornfields, the lower pastures, and the rushy field where we keep our poultry, ringed by magnificent drystone dykes and the wire fences on which we dry our hay: and beyond the fields, the woods of oak and pine, and beyond them again the sea, and Raasay and Crowlin and the hills of Skye. A view to dream about, defying words or camera or pencil, but by good fortune the background of our daily life – of washing billowing in the gale, and calves fed by guesswork in the dark; of hay first cut in hope with new scythe-blades flashing in the sunshine of July, and moistly gathered by weary arms in the storms of late October. To the north-east, and out of the picture, is a group of pasture fields, well sheltered by woods and sloping to the shores of a large freshwater loch, useful for grazing, but with value much diminished by the ruinous state of the fences.

Every time I look upon this gracious scene, at whatever season of the year, I see some fresh beauty to delight the eye, and bind the heart more closely to a place that must inevitably be abandoned, either to solitude or to someone who need not make his living from the land. Left to ourselves, we would both stay here for good; but driven by necessity, we must seek some other farm where the work will be duller and more organised but the profits greater. Here there is plenty of land, but half of it useless because the fences are in ruins, so that you cannot keep your own beasts in or other people’s out. The Highland farmer depends for his living mainly on sheep; but we cannot keep sheep because there is no hill ground for them. With good fences, an adequate stock of cattle and poultry, security of tenure, and all the work done by the farmer and his family, the place could be made to pay. But meantime the fences are not there, nor the security of tenure, nor the farmer’s family. However hard-working she may be, the single woman is crippled by a comparatively large labour bill.

I suppose our next farm will be in the south. We are both English, and unless something very favourable turns up, shall in due course return to our native land. Exclusive Highland ladies, some of them half Sassenach, have questioned the right of an Englishwoman to settle in the Highlands. Why do so many Scottish people settle in Sussex? Presumably because they like it, and I have never heard any Englishman raise an objection. England is of course notoriously receptive of queer importations from abroad: but why should not Scotland be equally hospitable? If I like to be rained and blown upon all the year round on a bleak Highland hillside, instead of basking at Brighton with émigré Macgregors and Mackintoshes, why shouldn’t I? I came to the Highlands because I love the combination of mountain and sea, and that changing and delicate beauty of atmosphere which is possible only in a rainy climate; because I love space and solitude, and hate the noise and vulgarity which motor traffic and modern building development have brought to the land of my birth. I have lived for ten years in the Western Highlands, and would like, before I go, to give a picture of life as we have lived it on the farm, as remote from the sporting and social amenities of the rich and fashionable as from the childish enthusiasms of nationalist pipers and harpists. Unfortunately I have no Gaelic, but through working beside them and sharing their farming interests and anxieties, I have come to know something of the crofters and shepherds, their lives and problems. It has all been fresh, strenuous, and amusing, and, looking back upon our tenancy, I would not have missed a minute of it.

2

February: The Farmer’s Year Begins

THERE are people in the south who seem to think that in midwinter we have perpetual darkness, as they do at the Pole. Actually there is more daylight than in London, because of the rare purity of the air; and the situation of Achnabo is so open that we do not even lose the sun. But it is true that in the darkest months there is not much done on the farm. Autumn and winter ploughing is of little use, as the torrential rains of December and January would flatten the furrows, leaving a hard pan that must be broken again in the spring. Also, there is hardly any frost to break up the soil. Thus the farmer’s year does not really begin till February, when the days are longer and the weather as a rule a great deal drier, and sometimes too a great deal milder. Often the first month of the year comes in with gales and floods, and goes out in a dream of stillness, so that in early February, in these northern latitudes, the whole world is at peace, not in death, but with the certain hope of life’s renewal. A day of this kind, now several years past, remains in my mind as if it were yesterday. There was no actual sunshine, but the soft clouds were shot with opalescent gleams of palest blue, rose, and gold. The distances were veiled in haze, so that the hills of Skye were barely visible; in front of them a misty beam of light, such as in childhood I thought to be the eye of God, slanted down upon the sea. A faint breeze from the south-east brought with it a perfume which is peculiar to this wind but common to all seasons, the scent of the wilderness, the stored fragrance of a million acres of hill.

We were helping the Laird to prune the apple trees at Strathascaig. The orchard, fenced with hedges of beech and wild plum, sloped to a low stone dyke beside the river. The season had been unusually free from frost, and in this sheltered spot the sward, consisting mostly of tufted hardy cocksfoot, was still green. Here and there were clumps of snowdrops in bloom and daffodils in bud. The wild plum bore a few chaste blossoms, gleaming like pale stars upon the dark and spear-like shoots. Blackbirds and thrushes sang in the garden; the shrill notes of the robin were heard from the byre. The geese, who prefer to mate in the water, had gone down to the ford with much harsh clangour and flapping of wings. At the hives a few bees were making preparations for spring cleaning. Below the orchard the river purled sleepily over the stones. On such a day we could gladly pass from walking to standing, from standing to sitting, from sitting to lying, and then by slow painless transitions from dreamy drowse to deepest sleep, and thence to death, as a boat drifts with the tide, spilling our souls upon the milky air, with bodies left to make that green grass greener.

Peace absolute and, as it seemed, eternal. And yet we knew that many a lengthening day of piercing cold and blizzard, with blasted plants and dying lambs, lay between us and the solemn twilights of June. There was something uncanny about this soundless truce of Nature.

Yes, and in any case the fine weather would not last long, and we had better make the most of it. The orchard was a charmed enclosure, a place of seclusion in which to smell flowers and think poetically and at last fall asleep. But outside the air was full of the pungent odour of dung. To many people this scent is unpleasant. Now neither perversity nor a love of all things connected with the land will make me try to prove it a delightful perfume: it is not. But it is stimulating and suggestive, it evokes a host of memories of vivid manly things, like the smell of the seashore at low tide, of paint and tar on boats, of horse and harness in the hot sun. It is of the essence of spring; the stirring of life in the soil, the germination of seeds, the first springing of the tender young corn are all called up by a single whiff of this most pregnant aroma. The drowsy scent of hawthorn is full of spring’s languors, its careless and fruitful embraces; but the smell of dung means labour and stubborn conquest, and the slow and thrifty cycle of the farmer’s year, by which one natural process is made to serve another in the interests of man. Thus beasts restore to the soil some part of the goodness they have taken out, a process which culminates in the arable farmer’s fattening of cattle to manure his crops. Shovelling dung, loading it on carts, and flinging it about on the fields may seem a dirty and unworthy occupation, but it is just as important as the ploughing which the townsman considers the dignified symbol and crown of all husbandry. The Romans who summoned Cincinnatus to be consul found him at the plough. Had they come a month earlier, they might have seen him spreading dung.

The arrival of a mild and sunny spell in early February was the signal for an attack on the long dung-heap which faced the byre and (alas for our clean-milk enthusiasts) the dairy. After breakfast Peter went down to the stable to harness Dick. This beast was one of our daily crosses. A fine upstanding black horse, of about 15½ hands, something between a Clydesdale and the heavier type of Highland pony, he was a powerful creature, useful for all the labours of the farm, but spoilt by an unwilling spirit and a most inordinate greed – the walking belly, as Peter used to call him. He was expensive, too, for when I bought him the grass sickness was very prevalent, and horses scarce and dear. Also he cost a good deal to keep in winter, and lost an incredible number of shoes. Until in despair I took to having ready-made shoes put on by one of the crofters, someone had to take him to the smithy every two or three weeks. The nearest smithy was nearly four miles away, and the most reliable nearly twelve, while the maximum pace to be got out of our unshod Dick was about two miles an hour. The nearest smith was often drunk, sometimes completely dead to the world and sometimes merely silly, and even at his soberest made a poor job of it and charged eleven or twelve shillings a set. There was always a risk of finding him either too tipsy to do his work or away celebrating somewhere else, and one might have to carry on for another six miles. Here the smithy itself was near the road, but the smith’s house was on the farther side of a narrow sea loch, so that you had to shout and whistle until the smith happened to hear you, when he rowed across and did the job, and very well too. It is a long time since I took a horse to that smithy; on that occasion the old man was ill, and the work was done by his son, who had come home on holiday from Edinburgh, where he was a medical student. Later on I heard that this lad, who was an excellent smith, had abandoned medicine for the anvil. And a very good thing. Scotland is overrun with doctors and nurses, and unless the health of the population greatly deteriorates, most of them will find themselves unemployed, while people able and willing to do the ordinary work of the world are unobtainable.

To go back to the dung. As Peter opened the door of the stable, Dick turned to stare at him with an insolence all his own; and then when the collar was taken down and he realised that work was on the programme, he began to bite the manger in his fury, and then made an onslaught on the collar, until, when that was pushed securely home, he owned himself beaten, and merely kicked once or twice while Peter was wrestling with the stiff rusty buckle of the decayed belly-band.

I should have been ashamed of my harness. It was never cleaned nor polished; the straw lining of the collar was protruding through holes made by some enterprising rat; the bridle was mended with string, and the reins, having in the shortage of rope been made to serve for this emergency or that, were knotted in half a dozen odd places. The saddle was a little better, as the padding had once been neatly repaired by the shoemaker with a piece of leather adapted from one of his old aprons. When I first came to the farm, I vowed that my harness was going to be properly kept. But in time laziness and the custom of the country prevailed. Also the harness was a job lot, bought for a lump sum along with a crofter’s cart and a set of plough chains, and I concluded that it would not repay the labour. I hope that with a bit more string and careful treatment it may see us out.

The horse was harnessed and we got to work. The dung, soaked by continuous downpours and nearly unmixed with litter, was sloppy like porridge and very heavy to handle. Dick was in a bad mood. To make him stand, we had to tie up his head in an intricate fashion, and even so he would try to bite anyone passing in front of him. We filled the cart and rumbled off to the sawmill field, leaving deep ruts in the soft ground. Peter shovelled the dung off the cart while I spread it. The sun was shining brightly. There was no wind, and we soon got hot enough to work up a thirst, which was stayed with oranges. About half past twelve, when we had taken out several loads and were thinking of unyoking for dinner, a brilliant figure was seen approaching. It was Angus, Flora’s brother, resplendent in a multi-coloured pullover of which the prevailing colour was a stark Reckitt’s blue. He had lately been paid off from the forestry, and found time hanging heavily at home, where his father, uncle, and mother were more than able to cope with the work of the croft. Moreover Angus, being turned twenty and rather fancying himself with sheep and cattle, resented being ordered about by his elders. So he had come up to see if there was anything doing with us; he did not want any pay, but would give Peter a hand if we needed him. He had already had dinner, so we joyfully handed over the cart and went in.

In spite of conversational interludes with people on the road, carried on at long range from the cart in resonant Gaelic, he managed to take out several loads before Peter joined him. But he had no eye for judging distances, and the heaps of dung were of various sizes and spacing, so that when we came to spread them, there were many patches of grass that remained undunged, and had to be filled up later. I was always glad when Peter worked with one of the natives; they liked him, and told him all kinds of interesting things they would not have breathed to me, being doubly secluded as woman and boss. Some of these Peter retailed to me, but I daresay he kept a good many to himself.

The sight of Angus’ pullover made me reflect that at no very distant date the native handspun tweeds and woollens, so durable in wear and pleasing to the eye, so perfectly adapted to the climate and the lives of those who originally used them, will be worn only by the faddist or the rich Sassenach on holiday, while crofters and shepherds dress in ready-made slops from Manchester. Catalogues from purveyors of cheap factory clothes can be seen by the hundred in Skye and the Outer Islands, as these firms have an enormous postal business, so that grey flannel trousers and jazz overalls are rapidly becoming the daily wear of the farthest Hebrides. Nothing can stem this tide; it is part of the flood of dreary, graceless uniformity that is sweeping over the world, reducing everyone and everything to the same undistinguished level of vulgarity. Against this force the efforts of national enthusiasts and lovers of beauty and the old traditions will be of little avail. Stimulated from outside, tweeds will still be spun and woven by hand, but not to be worn by the people themselves. What is the influence of An Comunn Gaidhealach compared with that of the big commercial organisations, playing on the natural desire of the young to be in the swim?

Angus’ mother was a fine spinner, and he had more than one suit of the tweed she had spun. But Flora never wore such things, not even hand-knitted stockings. She had a wonderful array of flimsy and gaudily patterned dresses and aprons, each one uglier than the last and none of them mercifully in the least likely to last for more than a few weeks. As might be expected, the girls are the greatest innovators; many go to service in the big towns, and return in fashions that excite the wonder and envy of their sisters at home. Some years ago, when on holiday in the Outer Islands, I went down Loch Roag in Lewis in the mail motor launch. The passengers were mostly tinkers going to Bernera, but there was a bevy of elegantly dressed girls with smart composition suitcases, obviously crofters’ daughters in service returning home on holiday. These damsels were precariously landed at various points on jutting spits of rock, slippery with seaweed and encrusted with barnacles, to await the arrival of someone to help them home, for their heels were too high to allow them to walk far across the wet and stony wastes of Lewis. Luckily for them, the loch was calm and the weather fine.

To go back to the dung for a moment. The application to the sawmill field, which was to be laid up for hay, was very effective, and we had a much heavier crop in consequence. The rest of the dung was put later on to a field from which a crop of oats had been taken the year before, and the grass sown with it left down. On this rough and lightly cultivated land, first year grass is often too thin for mowing, and is better grazed. But the dung was rather a mistake, as the herbage grew too rankly to be palatable, so that the field was eaten down in patches. The horse manure from the stable was carted on to the other hay field, where it produced an early growth of grass, but owing to the excessive rainfall of July and August, this part of the field was badly laid and very difficult to cut.

About this time it became obvious that unless we bought another cow we should be short of milk. Besides ourselves we were supplying the Gordons and the Rattrays, and I liked to have plenty of cream and make our own butter. Most of our cattle were either young beasts or cows suckling calves, and by February we were milking only two cows, Dorcas the Red Poll who was supposed to be due in April and was now nearly dry, and a very old Shorthorn, the Fossil, who had come to us at the drop in the previous August, and should still have been milking well had she not had an attack of red – water in October which had seriously lowered her yield. This is not a dairying country, and it is almost impossible to get heavy milking cows locally. But the risk of importing cattle from other districts, except as young calves, is very great. The driving rain and wind, the herbage of the acid soil deficient in lime, seems only to suit acclimatised beasts, while red-water fever, spread by the ticks which abound on the pastures, is specially dangerous to strange cattle. A good many years ago, when there were still large farms in Skye, the Laird bought a bunch of Galloway cows from Glenbrittle, one of the wettest and wildest parts of the island. They throve splendidly. But recently, when the number of Galloways had been reduced to nothing by the breaking up of large farms into smallholdings, he had to buy in fresh stock from the neighbourhood of Dingwall, and in the course of a few years he lost two-fifths of them with red-water or congestion of the stomach.

With this in mind I had insisted on a cow from the West Coast. But this did not save her; from the start the poor old Fossil was dogged by disaster. She was a good-looking beast, and had obviously been an excellent milker in her day. But as so often happens, she was sent to the sale too near her time, and when she calved here a few hours after arrival, her calf, a fine heifer one, was born dead. In spite of this set-back she milked well until the attack of red-water, when she began to fall off very badly, although we kept her indoors from January onwards and stuffed her with food. So that the question of another cow became serious. It must again be a West Coaster, and if possible young. The difficulty of getting a local cow guaranteed sound and quiet, with more than a pint or two of milk and not old, can hardly be realised until you try. I put an advertisement in the North Star for a young cow or heifer, calving February, West Coast essential. This brought a number of replies, most of them from completely inaccessible places, and all offering veterans of various degrees of antiquity. One wrote: ‘I have a young cow twelve years old.’ Another with but little command of English, remarked that her cow ‘no care nor man nor woman is about her’. The most promising cow was at a place which though not very far away in miles, would have taken most of the day to reach, and I was just wondering what to do when a moon-faced lad came to the door announcing that his father, whom I knew by sight as a crofter in a township less than four miles distant, had a cow that might suit me. Tactful enquiries about the lady’s age made her out to be eight; I mentally added on three or four years and concluded she might be worth seeing (as I could go on foot) before answering any of the letters. I told the boy that I would come over the following afternoon. About the same time I heard by roundabout gossip that the Laird’s shepherd’s brother had a good cow which he intended to send to the sale at Dingwall next day. He would be driving her over the hill to catch the evening train. There was no time to communicate with the shepherd’s brother, but it was suggested that if I were to wait for him at a certain bridge six miles from Achnabo and one mile from the station, I could make (if so desired) my purchase, and he would bring the cow to me instead of taking her on to the train. The snag was that though I knew the time of the train, I had no idea when the shepherd’s brother was likely to pass the bridge, as the trucking of a cow is generally the occasion of a prolonged pow-wow with everybody you know at or near the station; so that it was probable that the cow would start very early in order to leave time for all this, especially as she would be old and therefore a slow walker. The upshot of it all was that I didn’t go to the bridge, and afterwards regretted that I had not, as the cow turned out to be a good cross Short horn, and most surprisingly, only six years old.

Next afternoon I walked over the hill to inspect the other cow. The moon-faced lad’s father, a cheery Skyeman with a cast in his eye, met me at his byre door, and we spent some time politely circling round the object of my visit in ever-narrowing conversational spirals, until we got to the heart of the matter, and went in together to look at the cow. The stall was very dark, and I had her driven outside, where she skipped about in the deep mud of the courtyard with a nimbleness that did not altogether deceive the eye. She was a black-polled cow, more than eight years old, but large and well-shaped, and obviously correct in teats. I thought I might do worse; the man was short of keep and anxious to sell, and after a spell of bargaining a price was fixed and the cow delivered at the farm the following day.

For some days she moped, standing at the farthest corner of the field nearest to her old home. Then she settled down and began to eat. In spite of her owner’s assurances, she did not look much like calving on 14 February. The Laird’s wife, looking at her with expert and critical eye, pronounced that she would be a long time yet. We sighed, as we were getting too short of milk to run the separator. Meantime we racked our brains for a name. Her late owner had called her just The Black Cow, but as we had several other black cows, this would not do, and in the end we named her Jessie after the schoolmistress, whom she closely resembled. I think that Flora’s sister, who was still at school, regarded this as not quite the thing. ‘Katie’, said Flora confidentially, ‘will not believe that the name of Jessie Macfarlane is on the black cow.’ In general, our names for the cattle – Priscilla, Dorcas, Brigid, Ruby, Pendeen, etc. – were unorthodox, and found but little favour with the natives. Alec, the first boy I employed, had a private set of names for his own use, while other people referred to the cows by some descriptive term – the Minister’s Cow, the Blue Cow, the Old Cow, and so on. Our worst mistake in nomenclature was when Peter christened his collie pup Donas Beg, which is the Gaelic for ‘Little Devil’. It was long before Flora would bring herself to call Donas anything but Puppy.

Time passed, and on the 13th Jessie looked less like calving than ever. But early on the morning of the 14th, when I went into the byre to milk the Fossil, who stood in the stall beside her, I saw that her shape had changed. She began to stamp restlessly. Peter had gone to feed the poultry, which at that time were housed at the bottom of the lower pasture. Spying Flora shaking a rug in front of the house, I gave her a shout, and she, ever alert where animals were concerned, dropped the rug and darted away to fetch Peter. But before they had time to return, Jessie, with masterly unconcern, had dropped a black heifer calf on the straw behind her. ‘My name should be on that calf’, said Flora in her solemn bass voice, when we had rubbed it dry and removed it to the pen; and it was called Flora.

The next job was to milk the cow. Having milked a good many in my time, I set to work without misgivings. The cow was quiet enough, but not one drop of milk could I extract. I laboured away, getting every moment hotter and crosser, but without success. Peter tried his manly grip – no result. Then Flora, but that was no better. The milk was there, but not one drop could we wring from her obstinate and rubbery teats. Meanwhile the calf, by now cold and hungry, set up a lamentable bawling, which we checked by ramming two raw eggs, shells and all, into her expectant mouth. Another attack on the cow met with no better fortune, so there was nothing for it but to call assistance. We sent for the wife of Rattray’s shepherd, who had a great power with cattle. I had seen her charm the most refractory beast into submission, but I hated sending for her, partly because she was stone deaf, and also because she had a great contempt for my methods, and always read me a homily on the folly and unkindness of keeping cattle, especially calves, so much out of doors.

She came, walking at a great pace in gumboots. I explained the circumstances in a voice loud enough to be heard all over the glen. She understood, tied on an apron of sacking, shook her head, talked to Jessie in tones that suggested an immense pity for the evil fate that had sold her to so unkind and inexpert a mistress, and then sat down and began. The milk came in little spurts, then in a steady flow. Obviously Jessie liked her, but even so it must have been hard work, for the muscles of the woman’s strong arms were bulging with effort. The calf was fed with something better than an egg, and the shepherd’s wife, promising to come down again next morning if we could manage ourselves in the afternoon, went home, shaking her head over our boundless ineptitude.

We did manage in the afternoon, taking the job in turns; but the toughness of this cow was such that from this time until the middle of June, when no longer needing her milk for butter, we put a Guernsey calf on her to suck; we counted the business of milking Jessie the worst and most exhausting job of a strenuous day. It was then that we started calling her Aunt Dammit, and this is her name today.

The shepherd’s wife came up again next morning, accompanied by her husband. At this time Duncan the shepherd daily visited some part of the farm, as Rattray had taken the wintering for his hoggs. He had the slow and gentle temper that is bred by a lifetime of walking on the hills and looking at sheep. But the Highlander, like other Celts, has queer fits of sudden anger, and I had seen Duncan himself in one of these furies. There was a croft attached to his house at the top of the glen in which he had his hay, corn, and potatoes. Having no horse, he used to get the land ploughed by the landlord. The first year I came to Achnabo, the whole estate was behind with the ploughing, and Duncan was told to ask me for a few drills for himself in my potato field. I gave him eight drills; he came and helped us to plant, bringing his own seed, but he got the benefit of my plough to open and close the drills, and of the potash fertiliser I was using in addition to dung. Later on he hoed his own drills, and was to have helped at the lifting; but the day I chose for this work clashed with a gathering of sheep, so that Duncan’s nephew, a swarthy young man with a disingenuous eye, was sent to take his place. The potatoes were lifted, but the question was what to do with them. We could not spare the cart to take them up the glen; so it was arranged that they should be clamped at the side of the field, and removed later.

The potato ground, being a half-acre strip at the side of the corn, was not fenced. According to our usual practice, a grass mixture had been sown with the oats, and there was by this time a nice bite for the cattle. The potatoes were lifted, and all was clear for turning them in; but Duncan’s two clamps were still there. So great is the passion of every class of stock for potatoes, that the clamps would have been torn open, rifled, and scattered in an hour. I sent up a polite message asking the shepherd to remove his potatoes as soon as convenient, and he would get my horse and cart to take them home. This was in the morning; by midday a fine drizzle had set in, and I was surprised to see Duncan and his wife working at one of the clamps. I went out to speak to them. They were grubbing away in grim silence; one clamp was nearly demolished and the contents put in sacks. I made some remark, which was answered by a grunt from Duncan, and a mutter from his wife about ‘having things on other people’s ground’. Something was badly wrong. As I stood there the drizzle became a downpour. It was silly to uncover potatoes in such weather; I told Duncan to get Dick and take the bags they had already filled into the shelter of the cart shed, and leave the second clamp for a better day. He growled something about getting a horse from the village, and made a feverish attack on the second clamp. I was really rather worried; he was obviously bent on sacrificing the potatoes to his bad temper, and I had no intention that he should. The wife was too deaf to hear, so I argued and pleaded with the man until he consented to leave the second clamp and take in the potatoes already bagged. The horse from the village was abandoned and Dick harnessed; and at the end of all this Duncan was himself again. A terrible to-do and all because he was asked to take home his potatoes! Next day the cattle went in. Deserting the young grass they made a bee-line for the potato strip, and began nosing about among the withered shaws on the chance of picking up a few tubers. But I had put the harrows over the ground, and there were not many left.

3

February: Some New Arrivals

THERE were two dwelling-houses at Achnabo – the farmhouse, and a cottage beside the bull-shed. This cottage, though intended for a ploughman or shepherd, was exactly like the farmhouse except that it was a little shorter and had no bathroom. Before Peter came my staff consisted of a girl friend who lived with me in the house, and a hired boy, Alec, who occupied a bedroom in the cottage, which was otherwise empty. By an arrangement that is common in Scotland for single farm servants, Alec had his meals in our kitchen, but was expected to clean his quarters in the cottage and make his bed. I used to go over once a week to change the sheets and retrieve various plates, bowls, and dishes which he had taken across with porridge for his collie and forgotten to return. The things to be seen in that cottage would have made a good housewife swoon with horror. Alec was a great letter-writer, and the floor, thick with the dust of ages, biscuit crumbs, silver paper, and nails, was liberally bespattered with ink. The rusty grate, in front of which was a stretched string full of damp decrepit stockings, was choked with ashes. The walls were hung with various articles of clothing, most of them in rags and all of them reeking of the byre. Downstairs, his litter had overflowed into the kitchen, which was full of newspapers, fish-hooks, cartridges, old boots, sticks, cracked cups, and rabbit skins in varying stages of decay. There are many lads who take a pride in keeping their quarters clean and tidy; and I think that Alec was perhaps unusually careless and messy. But except in lonely colonial farms, where such an arrangement is inevitable, the bothy system is a bad one. It takes an exceptional love of neatness and order to induce a boy, especially when alone, to keep his room and clothes in trim after a hard day’s work. I did not blame Alec, but made up my mind to get some woman into the cottage, who could look after him and do some housework for us as well. Hitherto we had managed alone, but with the approach of summer and all its claims, I began to long for someone who could do a bit of cooking and cleaning.