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Mary McGregor Baird (19-02-1887 to 30-09-1970)
l came to Tomatin in May, 1910 to spend a month’s holiday with my mother-in-law. My first child was a year old. My mother-in-law was Mrs. Murdo MacAskill and she lived in a cottage at Dell. I shall never forget the thrill I felt on arriving at Tomatin Station at 5 o’clock on Saturday morning. The sun was shining and everything looked lovely. The birch trees with their half grown leaves seemed to make a screen for the calm stillness that was everywhere.
My sister-in-law Mrs. Norman MacKinnon, Findhorn Bridge, came to meet us at the Post Office. The Post Office was in the shop that is still there. We arrived at her house and had a delightful breakfast of ham and eggs with ’sliechachs’ fried mashed potatoes. After a few hours rest we went along to Dell to my mother-in-law’s cottage, a small wooden house on the Kyllachy Estate. We found her baking oatmeal bannocks on a brander, a utensil something like a girdle but with open spaces. It took a lot of practice to become really good at laying the oatcakes on it. Many a cake of mine went into the fire before I got the knack of it. All the cooking and baking was down on a peat fire in the hearth and when the baking was being done the smoke seemed to like the inside of the house much better than the chimney. One seemed to be always working in a haze.
The cooking pots were the cast iron, three-legged type and like the brander they were hung on a ‘swee’ over the fire by means of a crook. The ‘swee’ was an iron bar fixed into the chimney and the height of the pot above the fire could be regulated by different sized crooks. Swee, crooks, pots and brander had all been made at the local smiddy (smithy). Most of the spoons used in the house were made of horn but some pewter spoons were also used. The knives and forks all had horn handles and many of these articles were made locally, often by the man of the house or by the tinkers. The mixing bowls were nearly all of wood again made by the man of the house. At this time, too, many of the chairs in houses like my mother-in-law’s were made by the men from tree trunks cut and suitably hollowed but left in one solid piece. Practically all the furniture was home made; tables and chests of drawers were sometimes made by the local carpenter but nobody went outside the glen to buy furniture. My mother-in-law’s house, typical of the houses of the common people, had a single story and three rooms, kitchen, living room and bedroom. The kitchen had an earth floor but the other rooms and the passage had board floors.
One of the rooms was laid with linoleum and there were a few home made rugs and that was all the floor covering. The furniture in the kitchen was a table, a few home made chairs, a home made box bed with a board roof used to store saws, axes, spades and other tools, a home made box called a ‘blanket kist’, a ‘press’ (a home made cupboard with shelves and fitted with a drawer for the cutlery and with a space at the bottom to hold two water pails and a spinning wheel. In the living room there was another press, a table, a chest of drawers, a few chairs, and an iron bed.
The bedroom was furnished with another homemade box bed, a chair, a chest of drawers and a trunk. The front door was the only door to the outside and each room had one window. Besides the hearth fireplace in the kitchen there was a brick fireplace in the living room with iron bars at the front. Water was brought — carried in pails — from a burn, which ran by the house. My mother-in-law paid £2 per year in rent and 2s. in rates for her house.
The reason that we came to Tomatin was that my husband had not been keeping well and his doctor thought that a return to his native strath would do him good. Ghillies were wanted for Coignafearn Shooting Lodge; he applied and was taken on for the season. The shooting at that time was let to a French gentleman who was very wealthy and who did everything on a very lavish scale. Motor cars were rare but he had several beautiful ones all of which were fitted with the most fiendish horns. Some of them sounded like the last war sirens. The old people hated them; they gave them shocks of fear. My mother-in-law used to shake her umbrella at the chauffeurs but they just laughed and hooted worse than ever. All the old folks were quite convinced that they were an invention of Satan and “anyway what could you expect of Frenchies?”
Life was very peaceful and we were all very industrious sewing and knitting most evenings. Our day began about 6.30am; mother-in-law always had a cup of tea in her bed at 7am every morning. After seeing to her wants I generally tidied the kitchen and made porridge for breakfast at 8.30am. The school children brought the 1d. worth of milk from Balnaboddach Farm about 8. For the 1d. we got about 1½ pints of milk. When breakfast was over we had worship for half an hour which consisted of reading one chapter of which ever book we happened to be at, and after that a metrical psalm, sometimes read but sometimes sung, and the Lord’s Prayer. The Bible was read from cover to cover; I cannot remember how often she had read it. If anybody happened to come to the door while the reading was going on nobody took any notice. Usually after they had knocked a few times they just went away. After the reading we were ready to do the work of the house by half past nine or ten. At 1 o’clock sharp dinner was ready and after that we would spin or knit for the rest of the afternoon.
Tea was at 5pm. In the evening we sewed or darned or knitted or spun as we thought fit. At 9pm we had a cup of tea and this was always followed by another reading from the Bible. By ten o’clock everybody was in bed. When any visitor came tea was always made and occasionally we had a late night when visitors stayed to the small hours ~ a ceilidh. My mother-in-law remembered the first quarter of tea that ever came into Strathdearn. The farmer at Morile bought it to celebrate the birth of his first child. Three other children were born to this man and tea from this first quarter did for them all.
We got letters every other day. The postman was a crofter from the Braes near Coignafearn. He had a horse and trap and was a very dour man with very little to say. Sandy Macintosh was his name. “A very decent lad, Sandy”, my mother-in-law used to say; he was about 60 then. The old women used to get a lift to the station with him on their few and far between visits to Inverness. They paid him with a three-penny bit.
MacBeath, the grocer, came every Monday from Inverness. He was a native of Tomatin. His shop in town was in Muirton Street. He had a long shaped, horse drawn van fitted with boxes on both sides where the goods were packed in. He stayed for the night at a farm and came back down the glen mid-day on Tuesday. He collected all the eggs and paid 5d. or 6d. a dozen for them. He also bought all the three month old cockerels giving a shilling each for them. We got mostly all our groceries from him. Here is a list of his prices:
- Ground Rice 3d. per Ib
- Tea 2/- per Ib
- Butter 1/1 per lb.
- Cheese 6d. per lb
- Jam 9d/10d per 2 tb jar
- Paraffin 1d per gallon
- Bread 8d. per 4 1b loaf
- Sausages 10d per Ib
- Bacon I/- upwards per Ib
- Whole Rice 2½d per Ib
- Barley 2d. per Ib
- Salt 1d. per Ib
- Sugar 2d per Ib
- Pepper 1d. per carton
- Kessock Herring 3 or 4d per dozen
- Kippers ½d each
- Dried Salf Cod 4d. per Ib
- Cocoa 1/- per Ib
- Candles 4d per dozen
- Soap 3d. per Ib
- Potatoes could be bought locally for 5/- per cwt and Oatmeal for 10/- per 10 stone bag.
Besides MacBeath’s van we could and sometimes did go to the local shops. There were two of them; one at Bridgend, now demolished, and the present shop. Both of these sold general provisions.
For clothes nearly everyone patronised two local tailors who made suits and coats and costumes from cloth usually supplied by the customer. Some of this cloth was still being woven in the strath. One of the tailors, Hugh Kennedy to name, lived in a little cottage at Bridgend. The men folk used to go to his place in the evening to get the latest gossip and to sing. He had a very nice voice and taught all the young men the psalm tunes. Nearly all his songs were Gaelic ones, Gaelic being the common language of the glen at this time although everyone could speak good English. The other tailor lived on the Station road and was named MacPherson. His daughter still lives there. He was not popular as he had originally come from Strathspey — a sufficiently good reason for most Strathdearners. Strathspey folk were always trying to take a rise out of the people from Strathdearn. Cloth and workmanship must have been first class if the time the clothes lasted is anything to judge them by.
Before I came to Tomatin the strath shoemaker had died but his son had a business in Pitlochry. He used to come round for orders and supplied hand made boots and shoes to most people in the glen.
Note: For those of you who do not know about or cannot remember £sd. There were 12 pennies in one shilling and twenty shillings in a pound.
- 3d = 1¼ new pence
- 6d = 2½ new pence
- l/-s = 5 new pence
- 2/-s = 10 new pence
- You can work out the rest!
The nearest Doctor then, as today, was in Inverness and there was no district nursing service or anything of that kind. There were two blacksmiths. One Duncan Davidson, at the Findhorn Bridge Smiddy and the other, a man named MacGregor, at the present smiddy. Duncan’s father was a smith too but when Duncan took over he started a great trade in cycles, selling new ones and repairing old ones. His business flourished for a number of years before the arrival of the motor car. He sold coal too and as his depot was at the station he was often away from the smiddy so his sister learned how to mend cycle tubes and do the repairs. She learned to ride a cycle and the younger generation who went to her to have their repairs done referred to her as Bicycle Jessie. She was very inquisitive and asked questions all the time she was working.
Duncan was precentor in the Free Presbyterian Church (The Seceders). He was widely read and could converse on most subjects. His accounts were beautifully detailed down to the last farthing; 1d for this and 2d for that. The young boys used to say that all he forgot was 2d for the black enamel dabs. He had a brother, a clerk in an office in Inverness who was noted for his meanness. He came to Tomatin occasionally but he wrote letters very often and his way of getting them delivered free was to come to Invemess station to the 5.15pm train to give the letter to any one of the Tomatin folk who might be travelling on the train to deliver the letter to Duncan. He was so well known for this that most people did their best to dodge him. The smiddy was well out of the way for most of them and it put them to a deal of trouble to be his postman. His name was Sammy and on one occasion he met my husband at Inverness station. He had the usual letter and tale of its importance and of his anxiety about getting it delivered to Duncan. My husband excused himself on the grounds that he was only going as far as Moy where we were by this time living. The only Tomatin passenger was an Angus Ross. a brother of the Rose’s, Ruthven wife. Sammy was not fond of Angus but failing anybody else he was compelled to ask him to deliver his letter. Angus agreed and the letter was handed over. Having given grateful thanks Sammy strolled away but in a few minutes was back at the carriage to remind Angus of the letter’s importance. Again he was assured it would be delivered but he returned soon after to say, “now Angus, you won’t forget the letter”. The guard waved his flag and the train moved off and back comes Sammy with “Now, Angus, remember the letter”. Angus, exasperated by his conduct, threw the letter back to Sammy shouting as he did so “deliver it yourself”.
Duncan also acted as the local Dentist becoming quite expert at pulling teeth with his nippers.
My mother-in-law was a Free Presbyterian and Sunday at her house was a nightmare to me; often I thought night would never come. The door was never opened except to go to church; you could not read a book of any kind except the Bible, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or The Crook in the lot. My mother in law always rose at 7.30 on Sunday, washed and dressed before breakfast and as long as she was able to walk she attended the Free Presbyterian Church, which is still at Bridge-end. The gaelic service started at 11 o’clock and immediately it was over, ie about 12.30pm, a short sermon in English was held which I attended when I could.
The preacher was a Mr. John Cameron, an ex-butler who belonged to Gairloch. He had spent most of his life in huge country mansions and was never tired of telling people of the wonderful things he had seen and heard in his life. He was very fond of eels and used to fish quite a lot on the Findhorn. He lodged above the church and once when his landlady was sick he came to stay at Bridge-end with a Miss MacDonald who kept the little shop then, removed when the road was altered for the new bridge. One Sunday evening when he was crossing the bridge to the church for the evening service he met the late Lord Kyllachy and his son. They had crossed the river at Clune and came along the riverbank and were now crossing the bridge on their homeward journey. Lord Kyllachy said “Good evening” to Mr. Cameron. His reply was “Woe unto the Sabbath breakers”. Lord Kyllachy laughed but his son was furious.
I used to meet Mr. Cameron on the road occasionally when I was out with the baby. He was very inquisitive and liked to hear all the gossip. One day he asked me “Do you know the most dangerous age for a woman?” I said I did not. “Well”; he said, “I’ll tell you — thirty. Up to that age they live in hopes of getting married: when that does not happen they turn to religion and then God help you”.
All the churches in Strathdearn held communion on the Sunday nearest the 10 July. The Free Presbyterians came from far and near. All the houses of the members were full up — people sleeping in every sort of make up. The first service was on Thursday; Friday was the day for the questions when the ministers and elders were at the church all day. Any member or adherent could ask about any passage or paragraph of scripture that puzzled them in any way. Several of Godly men would give their version of the passage. There was one service on Saturday; Sunday was the great day. People came from Strathnairn, Stratherich, Carrbridge and Coignafearn.
When the day was fine a service was held outside on the grass while at the same time a Service was going on inside the church. Some members took travelling rugs to sit on. An old crofter, MacLean to name, from Overbrough, was sitting on his plaid with a young nephew facing the preacher when, unnoticed by him, a woman, sat down on his plaid. MacLean turned round and saw her; he jumped to his feet, caught the plaid by the corners and shook the woman off into the ditch. They were all so churchy and narrow in their outlook. Heaven was meant only for Free Presbyterians first and Wee Frees a long way after. If you were Parish Church you were beyond redemption. When it was over the visitors who came for the Communion went visiting here and there in the parish and so put in the time until Communion started in some other place. Strathnairn’s was the week after Tomatin, Carrbridge the week after that, and so on, Many of the old women who attended them all must have been away from home for weeks and weeks on end.
In the homes of the Free Presbyterians Saturday was always a day of great activity. The Sunday dinner, which consisted of vegetable broth, was cooked, potatoes for Sunday were put ready in the pot, enough water was carried in to do until Monday and coal and peats for the days burning were also brought in. All boots and shoes were cleaned and all clothes brushed ready to be put on Sunday. No dish washing or cleaning of any description was allowed on Sunday but it was a different story on Monday morning with stacks of dirty dishes and every drop of water to be heated before they could be washed. The old style of Sunday was still kept on for a number of years after my arrival.
Sometimes a visitor would arrive at the house about teatime. After tea my mother-in-law would start story telling in Gaelic. Then they would sing lovely old Gaelic tunes. I did not understand their speech but I enjoyed their singing and their laughter at some of the stories. I used to go to bed about 10pm but the ceilidh would go on until 1 or 2 in the morning. During the ceilidh tea would be made two or three times and the whisky would flow too, Nearly every man and woman took snuff and never went anywhere without their box and most of the men smoked pipes — black twist was the popular tobacco.
The 5/- pension had been granted the year I came north and there was quite a number of old people in the Glen drawing it. There was always great excitement on pension day. Three other old women called once a month for my mother-in-law to go and collect their pensions. One of them was her cousin Shonadth MacQueen from Woodend Farm. She came in a high gig drawn by a big farm horse. The other two were sisters, one Mrs. Grant, the Glen midwife, and the other a Mrs. Mackintosh, a keeper’s widow. Her husband had been keeper at Clune Lodge for many years. They all climbed into the gig and set off for the Post Office. When they drew their pension each of them bought a bottle of whisky and whatever other goods they wanted. The bottle of whisky cost 2/- (10p in today’s money) and did them until next pension day a month later. From the shop they went visiting their friends in the Glen and had a good day out. They all looked forward very much to “pension” day and they kept it up until the outbreak of the 1914 war.
A local occupation carried on in most houses was wool spinning. After the clipping of the sheep the fleeces were given to anyone who was capable and who had the knowledge and gear to spin it into wool. First the fleece was washed in the burn, then it was roughly combed and then it was teased out by means of a large iron comb into ‘rowans’ — long lengths of soft clean wool. Finally this was spun into yarn on the spinning wheel and was ready for weaving or for knitting. The spinner got 3d per Ib from the farmer for processing the wool.
Two years before I came to the strath the last weaver had died. He was a Mr. MacPhee and he lived at Dell. One room in his house was taken up by his loom. On it he wove cloth for suits, coats and the like or blankets. It was a local custom that each farmer’s daughter in the glen had six pairs of blankets given her as a kind of dowry so the weaver would be kept busy at times. This was all finished when I arrived, no one having taken Mr. MacPhee’s place and the custom now was to send the wool to Brora in the north or Galasheils in the south to be woven. The blankets made locally wore very well. They were much heavier and harder than shop blankets. Some of these blankets are still in use. They all had borders of various colours made from local dyes. The women collected and boiled various leaves, roots and lichens to make the dye. A quantity of dyed wool would be sent with the white wool for the weaver to make the border. The same wool was used for knitting stockings for men and women and for some of their underclothes. For stockings crotal dye was used to colour the wool a reddish brown. This dye was made from lichens.
My mother-in-law was born and lived all her life in the Glen. She was 84 when she died in 1919. Her father, also a native of the Glen, John MacPherson had a croft at Woodend. As a young man he had gone to the United States to bring back a distant relative, a young boy orphaned in the States, to his grandmother in Strathdearn. They landed at Liverpool on the return journey and then the boy fell overboard but was saved by John MacPherson. His daughter Margaret, my mother-in-law, looked after a lime kiln when she was a young woman. The kiln was situated where Kyllachy House now stands. The kiln was filled with limestone from Kyllachy hill and with peats. It took 20 cart loads of peats for one burning and the kiln had to be kept at a steady heat until all the peats were burned. During a ‘burning’ she never went to bed but stayed all the time at the kiln. When the lime was ready she took it in loads to Inverness and sold it. In her younger days she had been a very strong woman and could keep up with any man at cutting peats or at any sort of farm work.
She once told me that when she was a young girl she was taking home a load of peats from the Woodend Moss. Her father had an illicit still at the peat moss and hidden under the peats in the bottom of the cart was a stone jar of whisky holding about a gallon. As they approached Woodend they saw two strangers on the road who first went to Balnabodach and then came along towards Woodend. Her father suspected that the strangers were excisemen and hurried on the horse to get home and hide his jar before they appeared at his croft. However he only managed to get the whisky into the byre before they came but his wife, a woman of great resource who was just about to milk the cow, seized the jar and using it as a stool sat down to milk the cow. The excisemen came in and searched the byre but found nothing. She courteously asked them if they would like a drink of milk and calmly waited, seated all the time, while her daughter brought cups for the excisemen to have their drink. When they finally departed the jar was safely put away.
Before the railway was made my mother-in-law used to walk to Inverness and to Glen Urquhart where her sister lived. The distance from Woodend, via Coraheshach, would be about 30 miles, including the width of Loch Ness. She was staying with this sister on the night of the Tay Bridge disaster.
Dr. Kerr from Inverness visited the district once a week. Patients who needed his services left their names at the shop at Ard so that when the doctor called on Thursdays he knew whom to visit. Each visit cost £2.10/- so one had to be really bad before asking him to call. The old people believed more in the curative powers of whisky than they did in any doctor. Dr. Balfour from Aviemore had a few patients in Tomatin but he did not come regularly. My mother-in-law used to tel] me how the children used to be vaccinated. Word was sent to the shop for all mothers of young children to be at Freeburn Hotel on a certain day with their children. The doctor didn’t come often and the children would be all ages, some being in school but other just months old. The mothers made little capes called tippets out of red flannel for the children between the ages of 2 and 4. My mother-in-law never tired of telling me how nice my husband looked in his tippet. I had a job to keep from laughing every time I pictured him in it. Grown ups wore an awful amount of clothes and always had flannel next their skin. When put on new it was worn for six weeks before being washed.
Another gathering that was held at Freeburn Hotel was when the tenants on the Mackintosh Estate came to pay their rent. The Moy Factor used to come to the hotel to collect this money. This was a half yearly event and was a great day for the crofters. Some came on foot, some rode on horseback and the rest drove up in gigs or carts. The crofters from Coignafearn would pass Dell going down the Glen about 10 in the morning. At the hotel they were handsomely wined and dined by the factor and it was generally 1 or 2 in the morning before they passed Dell again on their way home. They sang and laughed until the whole glen was awake.
The children attended the schools at Raigbeg and at Dalarossie as they still do but there was another small school at Coignascallon. In summer all children went barefooted and the rest of the year they wore hand knitted stockings and heavy boots. Otherwise the clothes they wore were similar to what children wear today — frocks for girls and jerseys and shorts for boys.
Most of the young men of the district were members of the Lovat Scouts and when war was declared in 1914 they all went. My husband joined the Cameron Highlanders in November of that year and went to the Barracks at Inverness. There he stayed for most of the war acting as batman to a Major MacPherson. He was a cousin of the Misses MacAndrew of Disthorpen House and he made his home with them so my husband went to live at the gardener’s cottage at this house when I joined him. Major MacPherson was employed in the censorship department at the Barracks and my husband had to take him there and back every day in a wheeled chair. Afterwards the Major was transferred to England and Captain Wm. Mackintosh of Kyllachy came in his place. My husband stayed at Inverness as batman to Capt. Mackintosh until two months before the end of the war when he was posted to Ireland. There he met the late Mackintosh of Mackintosh who offered him employment as an estate mason at Moy when the war finished.
In February 1919 we moved from Inverness to Moy where we lived in the Station Cottage at first but after four years moved to the, then, mason’s house at Moybeg. We spent the happiest years of our married life at Moy where my husband besides writing poetry spent a good deal of his spare time on musical activities. He was a good singer having a very nice tenor voice and he also played the fiddle being noted locally for his playing of Scots airs and dances. Among other things he formed and trained a four part choir which for years assisted with the services held in the Parish Church.