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RAILWAY transport and sales
in large towns and
central places have almost effaced the old local fairs,
and reduced the Falkirk trysts themselves to mere
shadows. "Feill," often contracted to "Fil," meant
both festival and fair. The festival was in honour
of the patron saint of the locality, but the religious
gatherings led to secular business in early times,
and after the Reformation the saint element was
almost entirely forgotten except in a few Roman
Catholic corners. Cedd, one of the Saxon pupils of
Saint Aidan, was the patron saint of Fortingall, and
his festival, the Feill-ma-Chaoide, was a lamb market
held in August. Fill-Ceit, of course, means the
Catherine Festival or Fair, but I do not think that
it was a Saint Catherine that gave the fair a name.
I was told by Fortingall ancients that it was called
after a daughter of the Laird of Glenlyon, because
she had persuaded her father or brother to give a
better stance for what had been a small fair for the
sale of goats held at Balnauld at the beginning of
December. When changed it continued to be held
at the old date, and soon grew into importance.
When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall the Filkate,
as the Lowlanders called it, was rather a provincial
institution than a small parish fair. Thousands of
people gathered to it from five or six parishes.
Perth merchants flocked to it to settle accounts with
rural shopkeepers and farmers, and to get new orders.
Farmers paid servants' wages and made new contracts of services with them or renewed old ones.
It was quite a great feeing market; for it had grown
into a habit with male and female servants to put
off till Filkate closing engagements with employers
even when determined to stay on in their places,
and those who consented to be feed at home would
not be content without going to the Filkate to spend
more than arles there infairings and drink. The gathering was, to a large extent, a servant's saturnalia.
At it employers and employed were on a footing of
equality. A great deal of whisky was consumed, and
the pockets of the women were filled with sweets.
There were at times quarrels and fighting among a
few of the young men who were rivals in love, and
it might happen that old grievances among older-
people who had taken too much of the mountain
dew might find outlets in angry language. Still
the two or three policemen who assembled to keep
the peace had usually nothing more to do than
to look on and enjoy themselves as far as the
Highland people were concerned, but they had to
keep a sharper eye on some of the doubtfully
honest characters who came from beyond the pass
of Dunkeld or across the Highland line from other
directions. Mishaps of a serious nature rarely
happened, but a few years before my time a fatal
accident did occur. After the Filkate, a man from
Strathtay who attended it was discovered to be
missing. Suspicion of foul play arose, because on
the evening of the fair the boots and feet of a
prostrate man had been seen coming out of straw in
an empty stall of the hotel stable. The Procurator-Fiscal came to hold an enquiry in the village. Those
who believed that there had been foul play had two
theories. The first was that the man had got into
a tipsy quarrel, been accidentally killed, and that
his body had been put in the stable straw and
afterwards taken to some better hiding place. The
second that he had been waylaid, robbed, and killed,
and thrown into the river by some of the rogues
who had come to the fair from distant towns. No
one who knew him could believe that the stableman
had anything to do with the disappearance. He
was indeed capable of taking a dram too much on
odd occasions, and he admitted that this fair-day
was one of them. He had been working hard the
previous day and much of the night, felt weary,
took whisky to brace him up, and then laid himself
down in the straw to sleep. His straightforward
story was corroborated by fellow-servants. So the
stable story was reduced to nothing. The quarrel
theory also broke down. The missing man was of
a pacific disposition, and his acquaintances said he
had no enemies in the world. The enquiry of the
Procurator-Fiscal left the matter as it was before.
But far down its stream the river Tay, after some
time, rendered up the missing man's body, which
the Lyon had borne into it. There were no marks
of violence on the body, and in the purse found on
it were receipts for accounts he had had settled, and
the balance of the money he was known to have
taken with him to the Filkate. The night was
dark, and he must have stumbled into the Lyon,
then in flood, where it flowed close to the road
east of Drumcharry.
Among those examined by the
Procurator-Fiscal
was Peter Macdougal, one of the two tenants of
Balnacraig. Peter was called Paraig Eoghain
Peter the son of Ewan in Fortingall, but outside
the village he was widely known as Paraig na feile
Peter of the kilt because he habitually wore the
garb of old Gaul. Peter and his twin brother,
Alastair, were so closely alike in person, face, and
voice, that it would have been difficult to distinguish
one from the other if Peter did not wear the kilt
and Alastair trousers. Peter told the Fiscal that
he had had a talk with the missing man before noon
on the fair day, together with a friendly dram.
"Did you see him after six o'clock at night?" asked
the Fiscal. Peter's reply was prompt and thorough.
"Lord bless you, how could I, when before two my
son and daughter took me home shoulder high and
sent me to bed?" The shoulder high was a flourish,
but, no doubt, Peter had indulged in a good spree
before his son and daughter interfered. He was no
drunkard nor habitual tippler, but a light-hearted
social creature who could enjoy a bit of a spree now
and then. As Peter was a widower, his daughter,
Isabel, who was a religious Free Churchwoman,
ruled his house. She had an idea that the kilt was
not a fit garment on communion days, and, without
consulting him, got him a pair of sacramental
trousers. With much persuasion she induced him
to wear them at the next Kenmore communion to
which the Free Church people of Fortingall resorted
because they had then no church or minister of their
own. At that communion Peter caught the first
bad cold of his life. It sent him to bed for days,
and his first act on getting up was to throw the
trousers on the fire, from which Isabel rescued them
in a scorched condition. Peter was seventy-seven
when he went with his well-doing family and other
friends to Ontario. Before he went away people
told him, to tease him, that he would have to wear
the condemned but carefully stored garment on
board ship. He declared he would not, and asked
who would like to go out in clothes that would
smell like a singed sheep's head? Peter lived long
in Ontario. His people had taken up land and
settled near where the migrating myriads of pigeons
passed, and Peter with his gun and kilt annually
marched off to shoot the pigeons until he was a very
old man. |
