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THE people who travelled about in these
far off
days were all newscarriers, who helped to keep
widely-apart Highland districts in living touch with
one another. They could be roughly divided into
two classes traders and beggars. But drivers of
cattle to Falkirk trysts and harvesters formed
another class, and so also did the drovers and
cattle dealers. In our district John Macdonald
from Badenoch, called the "Marsan Mor," or big
merchant, was seventy years ago at the head of
the traders. John travelled about with a cart
of drapery goods from Inverness to Callander on
the Lowland border. His twice a year visit was
something like an event in every glen between the
two places. He had been trained to the business,
for his father, Alasdair Baideanach, had been long on
the road before him. John might have prospered
like others to the west of his district, who, starting
in the same way, developed into Glasgow merchant
princes, landowners, and the fathers of sons who took
high positions in State and Church affairs. But
John gave long credits, and finally failed to gather
in the gear once within his reach. At a long distance
behind this honest, and too jolly and careless
"Marsan Mor," came the eident and also honest
Irish packman, Peter Bryceland, from Glasgow, and
the worthy northern packman, Iain Friseil. The
pedlars who came carrying boxes containing reels,
cotton balls, scissors, needles, thimbles, watches,
chains, and Birmingham jewellery were a less
individually marked because a more variable class.
Some of them came out as pedlars on commission for
the benefit of their health, or from love of scenery
and travelling, and they were sure of finding food and
lodging without money and without price, except
perhaps a trinket to a child or a thimble to the good-wife wherever they went.
I rather think our gipsies, although they
had a
sprinkling of Romany blood, and a knowledge of
the Romany lingo, should properly be called tinkers,
or travelling artisans. It seems to me that the
tinkers had been a feature in the life of the Highlands long before any "Lord of Little Egypt" with
his followers came to Scotland and imposed on
James V. and his Parliament, and that afterwards
gipsies and tinkers got to some extent intermingled
in the Highlands, but to an infinitely less degree
than they did on the Borders. In my young days
tinkers mended pots and pans, and made spoons out
of the horns of rams and cattle. In the time of my
grandfather, and even later, they still retained their
old repute for being capable silversmiths to whom
people brought silver and gold to be melted down
and to be converted into brooches, rings, and clasps
for girdles, or to decorate hilts of swords and daggers. The "Ceard Ross," whose grandson, Donald
Ross, I knew in Balquhidder, was famous over a
large district for the highly finished articles with old
Celtic designs which he turned out, specimens of
which were to be found in many households as long
as the old social order lasted. The tinkers of my
early days mended old ornaments but made few or
no new ones. With the end of plaid, girdle, and
buckled-shoe fashion among the Highland men and
women came the end of the demand for the neatly
finished and artistically designed ornaments the
tinkers had been making for untold generations, and
when the demand ceased, the art was soon lost. In
1800 there were four corn mills in Glenlvon where
there is none now. The sheep regime extinguished
the little one in the Braes soon after that date, and
when I was about ten, a spate from Ben Lawers
destroyed the Roro one, which was not rebuilt, but
St Eonan and Invervar mills were kept at work
many years later on. Of the two, the oldest, named
after St Adamnan or Eonan, and said to have been
built by him in the seventh century, was the last to
give up the ghost. It continued to grind on till
1880, or perhaps some years after that date. The
successive disappearance of the mills shows how the
sheep regime and large farms operated to restrict
the arable cultivation of the former times. This
digression about the corn mills is not so irrelevant
as it looks. The grain was dried for grinding in
kilns on the farmsteads, and these kilns provided
better lodgings for tinkers than tents, which few of
them carried about with them. The kiln which my
father and the neighbouring farmer had in common
was a fairly spacious and well-thatched building,
in which thirty or forty old and young tinkers could
lodge in what they called luxurious comfort. As it
was situated near the middle of the Glen, and at
the only bridge over the river, it suited them better
than any other "ath" except that at Innerwick,
which ranked second in their estimation. In child-hood I looked on the coming of the tinkers as a
great and welcome event. They usually had a
donkey or two with them, and I got liberty to ride
these animals. Peter Ruadh was a good piper, and
set people dancing. I liked to sit on the steps
leading down to the fire-place and watch them at
their work, men roasting horns and shaping spoons
out of them; women scraping and polishing the
moulded and sliced spoons, the better sort of which
were not without embellishment; other men making tin lanterns and cans, and
old cunning hands mending pots, pans, or rings and brooches. When trade
abounded, they were quite industrious. But when
money for work came in, they were apt to indulge
in a spree and be noisy. Still the quarrelling within
a band seldom went beyond words. The serious
fighting took place when one band trespassed on the
province of another. A ferocious fight took place
on one occasion between our kiln band, who were
old and usual visitors, and a band of new-comers in
the Innerwick kiln, and I think we were all glad
when the trespassers were well bruised and beaten
off the ground. The tinkers could well have saved
some of the money they earned at their trade if
prudence had ruled their lives, for their living cost
them nothing. They lived on the country where-ever they settled for a time. Their old women
and young children were persuasive and scientific
beggars. Their honesty was curiously crooked and
depended on locality. Our kiln band would not
touch a hen roost or steal anything within a pretty
wide limit of their dwelling-place. But beyond that
limit, say two miles on either side, let people be on
the watch against small tinker foraging.
Here may be related an exception which
goes to
prove the rule of limited and crooked tinker honesty.
Elijah was a lanky, delicate boy, who, both his
parents being dead, became attached to our kiln's
hereditary band, through his grandmother, a widow
with her two sons in the army, who properly
belonged to them. My grandmother had great pity
for Elijah, who, besides being then physically a
weakling, was supposed to be mentally wanting a
penny or two in the shilling. Elijah was therefore
invited to come up night after night to get a more
substantial supper than he was likely to get in the
kiln, where he was a sort of encumbrance, although
not ill-treated, but, as my grandmother thought, was
carelessly neglected. One winter night, when it was
snowing hard, Elijah came and had his supper before
the family sat down to table. Our farm servant,
Peter, had given the horses and cows their fodder,
and was passing the door with four bundles of straw
for stirks which were in another place, when he was
called in to supper just as Elijah had finished his and
was rising to depart. Our "scalag" had left the
straw at the door when he was called, and Elijah on
going out found it there, thought it would be nicer
than dry fern to sleep on, and forthwith lifted it and
took it with him. The "scalag" did not hurry over
his supper. On going out he was astonished to find
the straw missing. It was clear enough who had
been the thief, and he wished to go at once to re-claim it. My father said that by that time tinkers
would be sleeping on it, and that it was not worth
while to rouse the kiln at that hour of the night. My
grandmother wanted the kiln to be raided at once,
but other straw bundles were given to the stirks and
the kiln was allowed to sleep in peace, much to her
vexation. As she had specially patronised Elijah,
she was burning with indignation at his treachery
and ingratitude. Next day when an old crone
from the kiln came to beg a drop of milk for her tea
she was angrily refused, with the biting explanation
"Gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah" "Take
that for Elijah's theft!" The crone protested, when
she was told how Elijah had taken the straw, that
she had gone to sleep early, and till that minute had
known nothing about the theft, which was probably
true. The crone's report of our old dame's rage
about Elijah's little lapse from honesty must have
caused commotion and discussion in the kiln, for
without delay two younger women came as a
deputation to say that Elijah had misled the kiln
people by saying the straw had been given to him.
The excuse only added to the flames. "And if the
scamp said so, do you pretend to have believed his
falsehood?","In a hard winter, when food for beasts
threatens to be scarce, was it likely that, without your
even asking it, freshly-threshed straw should be sent
to you when you had already as much dried fern and
rushes as should content you? Be off with you, and
never come here again begging for anything! What
you deserve is to find on your next visit the door of
the kiln barred and locked against you." "Gabhadh
sibhse sin airson braid Elijah" "Take you that for
Elijah's theft." The men of the band then took the
matter in hand. They came to her with abject
apologies, pleading for "mathanas" (forgiveness),
urging that she knew well that no such lapse from
localised honesty had occurred for forty years before,
and promising that nothing of the kind would
happen again. So peace was made at last, but
"gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah" became a
proverbial phrase when a favour was refused to
anyone who had given previous offence.
Elijah grew out of his early delicacy, and
in time
got a wife and family. He lived to a patriarchal
age, with a very good name and character. In the
latter part of his life he was a sort of high priest
among his people. He married the young ones who
entered into wedlock with religious solemnity, for
he had learned to read the Bible and had a strong
turn for religion. The register might be the legal
glue in these unions, but they were not thought
complete without Elijah's religious seal and blessing.
"The craftsman of the kiln" which is "ceard na
h-atha," literally interpreted was no respecter of
the game laws, but, as he had no fire-arms, his
poaching did not go beyond snaring hares and
snaring or digging out rabbits. He was an expert
angler both by day and night. He added the deft
busking of hooks and making of horse-hair lines to
his tinker industry. He fished sometimes for pearls
in the Lyon, and to the indignation of our old bell-man, who looked on that fishing as his own
monopoly,
seldom failed to get some. It was assumed that
the kiln craftsman restricted himself to trout
fishing, which was pretty free to all at the time of
which I write, but I suspect that early in the season
salmon fresh from the sea was consumed in the
kiln when owners of streams and lochs could not
get that luxury for love or money. Whatever they
might do elsewhere, the tinker women did not dare
to spae fortunes in our district, because they feared
church denunciations. As herbalists they had a
knowledge which was frequently useful to sick
persons and beasts. Their eolasan or charms, spells
and incantations, had, if spoken at all, to be
muttered in dark corners and under promise of
secrecy. They were old heathen things to which
Christian labels had been incongruously attached
many centuries before the Reformation.
The tinkers that travelled back and
forward,
plying their vocations, called themselves by Highland clan surnames Maclarens, Macarthurs, Macalpines, Camerons, Toiseach or Mackintoshes, Rosses,
Mackays, Gunns, etc. If they were, as I think
they mostly were, the descendants of native travelling guilds of artisans who, late in their history,
became very slightly mixed up with the outlandish
Romany gipsies, their right to clan surnames may,
in many instances, have been genuine although the
clans were unwilling to admit it. At any rate they
went by the same surnames during successive
generations. But those of them who called themselves by the royal name were too numerous for
credibility in their Stuart descent. Perhaps it was
in consequence of James the Sixth's legislation
against "broken men" that so many tinkers put
themselves under the protection of the kingly
surname. The tinkers took their clannish pretension
seriously, and were hotly loyal to the surnames they
had inherited or long ago assumed. My grandmother, Catherine Macarthur who flared up about
poor Elijah's theft had, because of her surname,
and because she knew much about their past history,
the controlling influence of a patroness over the
band of Macarthurs that once or twice a year visited our kiln, as long as
they stayed there. She spoke with respect, and so did others, of Duncan Macarthur, the former patriarch of the band who were
nearly all his children and grandchildren and their
marriage relations. Duncan, it seems, read his
Bible, went to church in handsome clothes wherever
he stayed, managed in some way to get a little
education for his folk, and kept them under such
strong moral discipline that they behaved well
during all his days. Duncan's influence survived
his death, and sons and grandsons of his, I am
informed, took to farming and boating in Argyllshire,
where they levelled themselves up to honourable
positions among the population of that county.
About 1800, John Mor Macarthur, my grandmother's
brother, who was fifteen years younger than she
was, took a turn at buying and selling cattle. At
Dalnacardach Inn, then a great station, he and an
Atholl man got into a fierce dispute with half-a-
dozen men from the other side of the Grampians
who were boasting about their own districts and
pretending to run down the southern Highlands.
The local patriotism which Tacitus describes as
existing among the Caledonians, continued to be the
source of many a quarrel over drink down to modern
days. In the fight John and the Atholl man would
eventually have got the worst of it, if tinker Duncan
and his band, who happened to be crossing from
north to south, had not unexpectedly appeared on the
scene and threateningly intervened. When Duncan
declared that he and his would not allow Robert
Macarthur's son to be ill-used by any set of men in
their presence, peace had to be made on the spot,
for Duncan was master of the greater force, and
although not a quarrelsome, he was a resolute man
who would carry a warning to deeds. However
welcome it might have been at the time, John did
not at all like to be teased afterwards about the way in
which he had been rescued by "his tinker clansmen."
He had a high and noble traditional origin for the
Macarthurs of Breadalbane and Glenlyon, and
refused to entertain the idea that through that
traditional origin they might also have some far-off
tinker clansmen.
Dr John Stewart of Fyndynate was by no
means
so squeamish about admitting tinker claims for clan
ranking according to their surnames. He had been
a navy surgeon for many years, and when he came
home to reside on his small ancestral property in
Strathtay, and to establish for himself a medical
practice over a large district, he was found still to
be a Highlander of the Highlanders in language
and sympathies. He was one of the small lairds of
long descent who helped much to link all classes
together and to sweeten the social life of their
locality and their age. He gave the tinkers a
camping-place on his property, where they took care
to comport themselves so well that no fault could be
justly found with them by Justices of the Peace
of which body he was himself a member nor by
ministers, kirk sessions, or the country people. When
they encamped on his ground he looked to it that
they should send their children to school well cleaned,
and as decently clothed as circumstances allowed.
The camping ground was open to bands of all
surnames, but if two bands came at the same time
they had to keep the peace among themselves, or
woe to the offenders. The tinkers who used the
royal surname of Stewart and they were numerous
looked up to Fyndynate as their special or almost
heaven-born chief, and those of other surnames
were not much behind them in their devotion and
obedience to him. When the country had no rural
police, and kilns were numerous, and there was a
large and steady demand for horn spoons and tin-smith's work, the tinkers had a tolerably good time
of it, although their old silversmith work had come
to an end with the eighteenth century in most
places. As his part of the country was as orderly
and as law-abiding as could be wished, Fyndynate
did not see the necessity for Sir Robert Peel's blue-coated police. He soon came into collision with
the one who was stationed at Aberfeldy. He was
driving in his dogcart one day to visit a patient
whose house was some twenty miles up the country,
and when he reached the Weem toll-bar he met the
new policeman with a little tinker widow woman in
tow. She was a daughter of old Duncan, and her
proper name was Jean Macarthur, but she was
known on both sides of the Grampians by the
nickname of "Co-leaic," whatever that strange com
pound word might mean. Amazed at seeing the
harmless Co-leaic interfered with, Fyndynate pulled
up his horse, and in fiery wrath for his just
indignation at anything which looked to him like
oppression of the weak flared up like kindled tow
shouted to the policeman, "Let that woman go.
Why have you dared to stop her?" "I have
stopped her," replied the policeman, "because she
is a vagrant." "She is," was the stern retort, "what
she was born to be. She was at school with me.
She has brave sons in the British army. I know
her history, and will be her warrant that she has
always been a decent, harmless body. Let her go
at once if you do not want to get into trouble for
being over-officious." Then turning to the Co-leaic,
he asked her, "Where were you going when this
man stopped you?" She mentioned a farm some
miles further up the water. "I'll be driving past
it," said he, "so get up on the back seat and I'll
take you there." In this manner demure little Jean
was carried off triumphantly, and the over- zealous
policeman was left discomfited.
Politically a Tory of the Tories, our
worthy doctor
was practically a democratic feudalist with a
sympathetic heart, unpaid services, an open hand,
a voice loud in denunciation of oppression, and
persuasive in pleading for the poor and afflicted.
To take the tinker class as the lowest, I verily
believe he did more good among them by blending
kindness with scoldings and quarter-deck discipline
than any of the agencies for redeeming them which
have been since then set on foot. And they repaid
him with reverential devotion and worshipful loyalty.
I had in later years, when schoolmaster and registrar
at Fortingall, a singularly touching proof of the feelings his tinker people
entertained towards him. On a winter day, when the roads were slushy after a
heavy fall of snow, and showers were still falling, a young sprightly tinker
girl of twenty or thereabouts, who, if well washed and dressed, would have
been called a pretty girl anywhere, came to ray
house. She had a newly-born, well-wrapt babe
clasped to her bosom, and her errand was to get it
registered. She sat by the kitchen fire crooning in
the pride of young motherhood to the pink morsel of
humanity while I went for the register, and my
sister made tea for her. When questioned as to the
date of birth and other usual particulars, the story,
in all respects a true one, which she had to tell was
an amazing one. The child was not yet forty-eight
hours old, and yet she had, through the slushy roads
and snow showers, walked with it that day four
long Scotch miles to get it registered. She made
quite light of that feat of hardihood, but shuddered
a little when telling what preceded the child's birth.
She and her young husband were with the band to
which they belonged in Bunrannoch when she began
to think that it was nearly her time, and insisted on
going away with her man at once, that their child
might be born on Fyndynate's Land, where she had
been born herself. "When more than half way
over the hill the snowstorm," she said, "burst
suddenly upon us, and after struggling for a while
with the storm, I became weary-worn, and my
trouble began. Happily the hill barn above the
Garth farmhouses was near, and my lad, the dear
fellow, carried me and laid me therein. He ran
himself panting 'le anail na uchd' to the farm-houses for help. And good women, with blankets
and lights, for it was now mirk night, came to me,
and could not have been kinder if they had been
angels from heaven. My bairn was born in the barn,
but they soon carried us both to a comfortable bed
and warm fireside. It is a pity that the bairn was
not born at Fyndynate, but it is a mercy he is a
boy, and that he is to be baptised John Stewart."
"But," I hinted, "your husband does not call himself a Stewart?" "Well," she replied, "I am a
Stewart, and my first-born is to be baptised John
Stewart." When the entry was completed, she was
getting to her second cup of tea, and I asked her if
she would like an ember in it. "Oh," she said, "I
want to be a strictly sober woman all my life, but
to-day a drop of spirits would go down deas-taobh
mo chleibh the right side of my heart." So the
second cup was laced with whisky, and having
merrily thanked us and drunk it up, she went on
her way rejoicing. I hope John Stewart grew up
to be a hardy soldier; but I never afterwards came
across him or his parents, probably because when I
went to Balquidder I was outside their travelling
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