Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson December 2005
Shopping is not my bag. It really, really isn’t. Yet at this time of year it is impossible to avoid. I was peripheral to a retail expedition last week. Whilst my wife sought things that would spread happiness, I looked for a mousetrap of a particular kind. They usually nestle in one of the garden centres although I’d forgotten which one.
The first I tried had abandoned its normal function and filled itself with nothing but ‘gifts’, all utterly useless objects, many of them scented, bedecked in flowers, or edible if you fancy a tooth-rotting bush-tucker trial. To add to the horror the muzak consisted of a ditty new to me - Crusty the Snowman - which has an appalling, very sticky tune. Balamory is similarly sticky, but I’m delighted to hum that much of the day. Crusty set my teeth on edge.
The next gardening centre had done much the same thing. No tools just tat. I tiptoed nervously around looking for a mousetrap and nearly stumbled into a five-foot Father Christmas which waved its arms, said ‘Ho, ho, ho’ and then bellowed Jingle Bells at me. |
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I backed away and fell within the curtilage of a similarly-sized plastic snowman and the damn thing broke into Crusty. That was it. The mice can have a month’s dispensation over the festive season.
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I hold bucketfuls of old letters etc. written by folk who used to live in this area. One of the side effects is emails from across the globe from people researching their forebears. I find it quite fun helping them out but it can be tricky. Some, particularly American Midwesterners, get cross when you tell them no marriage was involved in the production of their ancestors. It seems a funny sort of concern these days.
An antipodean whose family originated in Fortingall has been corresponding with me recently. Her Stewart ancestors left for the Outer Isles where their nastiness was legendary and still well remembered. She is upset by this and is trying to rehabilitate them. She’s got no chance.
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My own antecedents had little in common but the magpie gene which prevented them from throwing away bits of paper. Amongst them are a fair proportion of shits, a murderer, a torturer and a woman drummed out of Pittenweem for being a common scold. Many others seem to have been worthy and rather dull. I don’t feel responsible for any of them but I am grateful that each enjoyed the night of passion that has resulted in me.
One, a Miss Sophie Stewart, left some letters written to her swain round 1812. Although much of her time was spent with her married sister at Derculich in Strathtay, her home was Shierglas, that sad house at the base of the quarry opposite Blair Atholl. There she acted as housekeeper for her bachelor brother. Her beau was in the army fighting in the Napoleonic War, stationed in England and then Portugal.
Her correspondence tried to keep the absent soldier up to date with family and local news. For instance his sister Betsy became ill in June. Dr Stewart of Findynate was called and he nearly came to grief when ‘the temporary Bridge across the Mill lead at Logierait gave way under his Gig’. He bled her and prescribed regular doses of mercury. She managed to recover by September.
What comes across is the tightness of the community. Then almost all depended on the land for their living. Everyone knew everyone else. Not only that but the same families had been here for generations and had mixed and intermarried with each other many times over the centuries. The kinship links created a society of extraordinary intimacy.
Communications played a part in this. If today we have a broad highway both physically and electronically, then they had the horse. Cross ferries on the Garry and Tummel, which was not advisable in winter, and you could catch the mail coach north or south. Letters and news came in by the same route, at the same speed. Several times Sophie mentions friends or acquaintances that have been killed or wounded. It took three weeks for details of the storming of Badajoz and its terrible casualties to reach Strathtay. Nowadays we can watch such events as they happen from our cosy houses.
Then who you knew was who you saw. Today many of us can easily go from day to day with no social interreaction with neighbours. The ease of modern communications allows us to nurture a world-wide social network of friends and relations and this can lead to semi-detachment from where we live. Then it was quite impossible not to be thoroughly enmeshed within the community. Even if you wanted to keep yourself to yourself, you still had to leave the house to collect the peat, cut your corn or even to relieve yourself, and the neighbours would see you and gossip would ensue, or some wee boy would chuck a clod at you for being a surly old fart, or a witch.
The most dramatic bit of gossip was about Tom Stewart of Blackhill, then a good-sized estate behind Cluny in Strathtay. His father died in 1812. Tom went galloping into Perth to inspect the will. Papa had left £3000 to each of his four beautiful daughters and they ‘will very soon feel the good effects in the increased number of their admirers’ , but Tom could not take over control until he was married. So he ‘took a post chaise, set out for Crossmount in violent haste, where he arrived that night - put the Question to Margaret, was happily answered in the affirmative - return’d immediately with the joyful news and told Mrs Menzies at Weem he would be back in a fortnight with his Wife !!!’ Poor Margaret was still single a decade later and Tom himself died unmarried and without heirs. His eldest sister inherited and the estate ended up with the family of Edradynate
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