A Croft in the Hills (18 page)

Every croft house has its small flower patch by the door. It is difficult enough some years, goodness knows, to get even the crops to grow, and a little kail for the soup-pot. But it is only an
abandoned dwelling that hasn’t its little bush of roses:

‘...the little white rose of Scotland

That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart’,

its few pansies or marigolds, to greet the sun. Summer must be made the most of, must be received with at least a touch of ceremonial. That is why the croft-wife thumps her mats and hangs them
in the sweet air with such glad enthusiasm. Her life still keeps time with the natural swing of the universe. In a centrally heated, hygienically contrived flat, equipped with every labour-saving
device, there is no real need of a special turn-out in spring. No doubt it is at all times in almost immaculate state, and spring-cleaning has become little more than an accepted custom. For the
small house in the hills, it’s as though it were putting out fresh leaf and bud, as the heather does in May.

CHAPTER XIV

A DINNER OF HERBS

T
HE
sixteenth of June was a red-letter day in the life of the community. It was the day our bus service to Inverness was started. Once a week, on
Tuesday (market day), the small, red-and-yellow bus was to come nosing its way up the long, twisting hill to a point just above the school, where it would turn and await its passengers. The
Caiplich folk had a mile or more to walk before joining it, and some would harness up the pony and ‘machine’ for this part of the journey. The bus went off at eight-thirty in the
morning and left Inverness again at three in the afternoon. Later, the time of departure was put on to ten-fifteen, so as to give the women-folk time to get the morning work done. It was
impossible, at any rate in winter, to get the cow milked, the hens fed, the children off to school, dinner put ready for those left behind, and oneself changed by eight-fifteen, or earlier. So now
we leave in a state of composure at the back of ten and are home again at six-thirty.

These are changed days, indeed, for the women who remember having to be at the pier at Loch Ness-side at eight in the morning, or else having to jolt all the twelve miles behind a tired pony:
and for the men who remember walking home on market night, sometimes through chest-high drifts of snow, when they’d come across old friends and had missed the steamer!

There are people still not past middle-age who tell of mothers and aunts walking to Inverness with a great basket of eggs on their arm, which they would sell in order to buy scraps of comfort
for their families. Now, the egg-van passes every gate weekly and leaves his price in a neat envelope. Of course, fifty years ago the croft produced practically all the simple necessities of hard
living. The oats were ground at the mill, which still stands today, and were made into brose, porridge and bannocks. The cow gave milk, butter and crowdie, the fields potatoes and turnips, the
garden patch kail and cabbage. The rabbit made a tasty, nourishing stew. Whisky itself, the water of life, was made locally by those with skill and daring! In autumn the men from several
neighbouring crofts would set off with the horse and cart to fetch a barrel of salt herring from the west—and a fine holiday jaunt they made of it! There was a lot of honest-to-goodness
happiness about in those days. Those who could afford to do so would pickle a sheep or a pig for winter eating. Each district had its own shoemaker and sometimes its own tailor. These would often
give of their skill in return for a service or a load of peats from the hill. In a countryside where practically every family bears the same surname, it is essential to have some distinguishing
mark and the old trade names come in handy. This is Fraser country. We can easily tell which Fraser we are talking about, for one will be ‘the tailor’, one ‘the shoemaker’,
one ‘the mason’, or else it will be the name of his place we shall use— Rinudin, or Corry-foyness, or Ladycairn. A money economy has taken the place of the old self-sufficiency.
The crofter now sells all he can for cash, even his surplus potatoes and a few bags of oats; and spending facilities are not lacking. In addition to the grocer’s weekly visit, we have a call
a week from the Cooperative travelling shop and two from an Inverness butcher. But the old communal independence and self-reliance are still strong. The exchange of goods and services between
neighbours is looked on as part of the natural scheme of living. The handling of money still comes awkwardly to gnarled fingers and the older Highland mind still assesses things in terms of their
actual value in the fostering of life. A load of peats will warm his house; tatties, eggs and milk will feed the bairns; a stack of corn will keep cattle, horse and hens in good heart for many a
winter week; whereas money just seems to slip away, leaving no trace.

The crofter still doesn’t quite believe in the Welfare State. He’s glad enough of his pension, of course, when it comes, and of the doctor’s services, should they be needed.
But he has always had his own welfare assured by his own community. Should he fall sick, he knows that his neighbour will see to his cattle and his crops as though they were his own. Should his
wife be ill, his neighbour’s wife will come morning and evening to look after his household.

He would always rather be aloof from outside interference, and is even a little wary of it, however well it may be meant. And who can blame him? In the past, Government measures have done him
little good. In fact, the reverse has most often been the case. After the breakdown of the clan system, which had its measure of security, and the arrival of the moneyed, absentee landlord, who
sanctioned evictions of a most barbarous nature, the crofter felt lost and bewildered. Is it any wonder, when his roof was burnt about his head and he and his family were ‘compensated’
with a strip of shelterless bogland? The old feeling of resentment against an alien authority dies hard. Human dignity, when ambushed, takes many a queer twist but, thanks be, it is the last thing
to perish in the hills. The authorities find the crofter hard to regiment, he exasperates officialdom, but his sheer doggedness has carried him through. At last, with the passing of the
Crofters’ Act of 1955 and the establishment of the new Commission, with a man of imagination born of crofting stock at its head, the crofter is beginning to feel his way back to a real
status.

In an over-industrialised world where all sorts of artificial supplies clamour to create artificial demands, the validity of the crofter’s way of life may be in doubt. Has any man the
right to go on quietly cultivating his small fields, rearing his beasts, meeting most of his own needs, and thriving into the bargain? Is he not a bit of an anachronism? How can he be catered for
in a world where the cash nexus is supreme? Ought he not to be cutting out his neighbour, sharpening his wits, striving to capture new markets, making money surplus to his requirements, so that he
can buy the television sets, the labour-saving gadgets, the patent medicines which every man alive is supposed to need so urgently? In the name of progress, what is he doing, all alone on his plot
of wilderness? He’s simply minding his own business, working his own hours, keeping a clear head and a stomach free of ulcers, that’s all. And, heaven knows, that is a major achievement
for an industrial slave, be he machine-minder or company director these days. A country suffering from the effects of a top-heavy economic regime, now looks to the crofter to produce one extra
carcass of beef and mutton, one extra box of eggs, so that his place in the scheme of things may be justified.

As the summer wore on we began to wish, more fervently than we had ever wished for anything, that we had been born to crofting ways. Our notion of what was essential for a good working life was
still affected by our urban background. We had never been really ‘up against it’, as the crofter has, most of the time. We had spent nothing on luxuries, but when we needed an implement
we bought it instead of making do with a substitute. The tractor, though it had done much useful pioneering work in our early days, we now found was a continual drain on our resources. The cost of
running it was out of proportion to the benefits it bestowed. We should have done better to have made use of the Government tractor service for the big operations and relied on the horse for light
work. We had never imagined we could have become as adept as we actually had in managing Charlie and the horse-drawn implements.

We decided to sell most of our mechanical contraptions and with the proceeds from them increase our stock. The sheep were beginning to show a return. They produce two crops a year— wool
and lambs, but we hadn’t room for more than we were carrying. Cattle are slow to give a return; they are two or three years a-growing and nine months a-breeding and a hard winter can so
easily set them back. Our fattening pigs had done well and had given Jim a definite leaning towards a piggery. We had a sound spare barn along at the far steading. A good sow can produce two
litters of up to a dozen piglets a year, and the market was good. So it came about that on the fourteenth of July three Large White in-pig gilts were delivered to us by float.

They were magnificent creatures. Alec came along to see them the following day. He stood, slowly shaking his head and murmuring, ‘What pigs, what pigs! I never saw the like!’ Neither
had we. They were so pink and white and massive and self-assured, the very cream of the pig aristocracy. We felt we ought to apologise to them for the bareness of their new surroundings, for the
quality of the feeding we had to offer. To scratch their backs and murmur ‘porky, porky!’ into their pink, transparent ears seemed like sacrilege.

A week after their arrival, one of them produced seven piglets. A few days later, another had a litter of fourteen, two of which died at birth, and then the third produced a small litter of
five. Every spare moment found us leaning over the side of the pens, gazing at these twenty-four small, squirming youngsters. A lot depended on them. We had had to buy in some expensive feeding to
keep their mothers in good trim, and we were overdrawn at the bank to the limit the banker could allow. If the pigs could bring us in a quick return, which would carry us on till the sheep and
cattle really began to show a substantial profit, our vital corner would be turned. We were in our tricky year, and at the trickiest part of it. Spending money was short, as the hens were in their
seasonal decline and the new pullets would not be in production for another two or three months. We cut down expenses to the bone, literally to the bone! Instead of buying a small pot roast, or
stewing mutton, I went hunting for the beefiest-looking bones at the butcher’s and made potfuls of good soup with the tender garden vegetables. Milk could be turned into an endless variety of
dishes, and eggs and cheese gave us most of our solid protein.

The pigs made a lot of work, for their quarters had to be cleaned out daily and the potatoes that eked out their expensive rations had to be boiled. But they and their offspring throve. After a
few weeks, we moved them out into home-made arks on the heather, and it was rewarding to see them revelling in the sun and air. Slowly we began to gain confidence in the pig plan. Billy had left
school and was spending nearly all his time helping us. We decided to put the thing on a business footing by paying him a small weekly wage, which we managed to squeeze, somehow, out of the
housekeeping money. He certainly justified his keep, for he worked the same hours as we did ourselves. It was sometimes difficult to persuade him to go home. Even on Sunday mornings, he would come
over to feed the pigs, so that Jim could take it easier. After breakfast he would potter about, or go for a sheep that had strayed, or tinker with implements in the barn. In his own young, only
half-articulate way he was quietly yet stubbornly determined to make a life on his own terms.

The grass was cut by the man from ‘the Board’ that year. The weather was very mixed and we had a lot of heartbreak before the hay was made. It had to be turned and turned again, hung
on the fences to dry and left out in small coils in the fields for weeks. But what nearly broke our backs, as well as our hearts, was the turnip crop. The field was one of the worst on the place,
it had only had a scant harrowing in spring, owing to pressure of other work, and the tilth was not nearly fine enough. Through lack of moisture the seed had taken a long time to germinate and the
weeds, which, apparently, nothing will deter, had shot ahead of the tiny seedlings. By the time these were ready for singling, they were engulfed in a mass of flourishing vegetation of every
obnoxious kind. We slashed and battered at the drills, till every muscle in our bodies was stiff and aching. At the end of it all, we had about half a crop to show for our labours. I think the
punishment I should choose for my worst enemy would be a few weeks singling turnips in a field strewn with sods and boulders, and with weeds leering maliciously from every drill!

The nightmare of the hay and turnips was hardly over, when it was time to cut the corn. Jim and Billy had only just time to make the roads before the Board tractor came chugging into the field.
No sooner was the cutting done than the rain came down in torrents. There are few jobs as depressing as setting wet sheaves in stook. No protective clothing can keep you really dry; the rain pours
off your coat, seeps down the back of your neck and into your boots. As you lift the sheaves, the water runs up your sleeves and soaks you to the elbow. That was altogether a depressing
harvest.