Tears for a Tinker (16 page)

That morning she went outside to wave at the ewe mothers, who for some strange reason had closed in around the house to graze. Little lambs bleated and frolicked in small rows, trying to mount
the dry stane dyke at the bottom of the field, making her smile through a mixture of fear and joy at what was to come.

In the late afternoon, claws of sharp tight pain shot up her spine, down her back and gnawed at her swollen abdomen. She screamed to Hughie, who was chopping firewood. He dropped his axe and was
by her side, apprehension mixed with hope. Such awful pains kept coming now, each one harder and seething worse than the last. Fast and furious, only minutes apart, they stole valuable breath from
her body, leaving her lungs tight and sore. Hours passed with anchors of stone on them, sweat oozed from her in buckets. His arms were torn as she clung on, then when she thought her heart would
burst she gave one last push: one final moment waiting on that first cry.

A small lifeless baby boy lay limp, not breathing. Morag bit into the pillow, screaming at cruel, cruel Mother Nature, wicked, evil, hateful nature, as Hughie carried yet another dead infant
from her. Tears ran over his face, shoulders heaved with torturing heartache. Nothing but a spark from the dimmed fire could be heard all through the lonely glen. Death had once more visited; would
he ever tire of this place?

Hughie wrapped the baby in a sheet; he would bury it down by the oak, but not tonight. Morag needed some comfort. Poor sad Morag, never to mother a child. As they lay in silence holding each
other, a ewe mother began bleating outside; the noise made when her lamb had died. Hughie thought the worse of his sheep, at a time like this to lose a lamb. He waited until his exhausted wife fell
asleep before investigating, and by then the animal was becoming quite stressed, constantly bleating. Putting on his heavy coat, for he had heard rain earlier, he stepped outside.

There, a sight never before seen, were thirty or so ewes all standing together as if waiting on news. One, however, wasn’t standing, she was lying on his door step, obviously the bleater.
It was dark, so to get a better look he opened his door. The elderly ewe sighed, gave a loud cough as sheep are prone to do and stretched her legs. Hughie opened the door further to reveal, lying
there naked with tiny fists punching at the air, a newborn baby boy, snuggled into his foster mother’s fleece for warmth.

The big shepherd instinctively looked upwards as he thanked whoever it was that had deemed his insignificant household worthy of a miracle! A gift had been presented to them that night. He
rushed inside with his tiny baby, and looked at the shawl which supposedly held the dead baby wrapped inside, but the shawl was folded neatly over his wife’s feet. There was no sign of the
other child.

Morag was stirring as he kissed her cheek. She opened her tired eyes to see Hughie hold something out to her. ‘A present for you, my love, from the ewe mothers.’

Morag stirred from her swing, one more glance at the ewes in the field and she pulled a woollen shawl over her shoulders and walked back to the house. Soon Hughie and their son Angus would be
home, hungry and needing fed. All life in the glen was a joy.

While on the subject of mothers, I want to speak a wee bit about my own dear blessed soul.

Mammy was, as mothers go, a gem. She wasn’t a strict mother, but we always knew when we’d overstepped the line. Punishment could range from a ‘you wash the dishes, ma
lass’, to ‘just you wait until I get my hands on you!’ I never remember a time when punishment wasn’t deserved.

Recently, while discussing a manuscript of mine with Carl MacDougall, a prominent Scottish writer, I was reminded by him that readers who had any knowledge of travellers knew it didn’t
make for an easy life. ‘Jess, don’t cover your pages with roses, because folks won’t believe it.’ But to me, life was a bed of roses; in fact it was simply marvellous. Being
chauffeured around the country in a bus, playing on picturesque hill-tops one day, miles of yellow-sanded beaches the next. If Daddy took the mood, off we would go, without a single tie. School
exemption certificates allowed us freedom to leave our learning books and fly away.

Mammy, therefore, had to have a similar attitude to her roots as he had. Not so much in the beginning when the bus life began—she preferred a house, one where her older daughters could
stretch their legs and enjoy a form of privacy not afforded in the bus. I loved it, though, and never grew tired of it, as you’ll have gathered from my previous books.

Being so close to my mother, I found it easy to study her ways. Sometimes she’d say things that had me in stitches laughing, for instance I remember once while we were hawking in Perth. It
was to the monastery on the hill we climbed. She said ‘if anybody will buy, then it’s the monks, no matter what the weather, the nice men wi’ cloaks will aye gi’e.’
That day, as always, she was correct, because they bought lace, threads, buttons, in fact everything in her basket—the only thing they kindly declined was to have their fortunes told. As we
walked away, she smiled and gave the man at the gate a wave. She turned to me, linked our arms and said, ‘I feel awfy sorry for the braw lads, Jess.’

‘Why, Mammy, there’s nothing coming over them. They’re living a life they chose.’

‘Och aye, fine I ken, but it’s still an awfy waste.’

‘They have a warm bed, home-grown food, aye, an’ by the colour o’ yon wee fat yin’s nose, a guid dram tae boot. God himself takes care o’ them, Mammy, how should
you feel sorry for them?’

‘Well, imagine how Daddy would feel if he didnae get his cuddles. He’d be a grumpy auld bisom. Poor craturs spending all their days like that!’

‘Like what Mammy?’

‘
Halibut
, that’s what! Could you see your father lasting without a cuddle?’

‘No, Mammy,’ I told her, ‘just as much as thon “
monkfish
” could go without a smoke or a drink!’

And there was that time, while I was recuperating in Perth Royal Infirmary, that she sent me a get well card addressed to Mrs Smith RIP (Royal Infirmary Perth)!

When Daddy met her, it was love at first sight. Ah, nice, I hear you say, but wait until I tell you about his own mother’s reaction. Well, it might come as a big surprise, but the class
obsession of Britain is prevalent throughout travelling folk as well. During Granny Riley’s time there were the high and mighty house-dwellers, who looked down noses at their kinsfolk for
still living in tents. The middle-class travellers roamed in bonny caravans, and there were the lowest class of tinkers who lived near rubbish tips. Mammy’s folks, according to Granny, were
the ‘midden rakers’.

‘Charlie, you can do better for yourself than her kind.’

‘No, mother, Jeannie and I were meant for each other, I love the lassie.’

And, of course, as history has witnessed, my parents stayed together until death. So my Granny, bless her, accepted Jeannie, but always kept her opinions to herself.

‘Two groups of people who will never lie to you are teachers and churchmen,’ she told us. ‘Teachers tell you what is in books, and preachers about the good book.’ Those
words of old-fashioned wisdom were her teaching to her brood. Many times we’d sit huddled around her black, shiny range at ‘Lettoch Beag’, the Riley home on the hill outside
Moulin, Pitlochry, listening to tales from the Bible.

‘Always question what folks say to you, except if it be a teacher or preacher.’

Now imagine my surprise when one day at school we were taught Darwin’s ‘Theory of Evolution’. I could hardly contain myself. ‘Granny must know this,’ was all I
could think of, ‘she’ll go pure horn moich when she hears what my teacher told us.’

So there I was, standing outside, not allowed in until she’d finished blackening her range. ‘Granny, wait till you hear what I have to say, hurry up and let me in.’

At long last the door was opened to me, and with strict orders to walk on the newspaper spread over the linoleum, I stepped in. She sat me down with a big piece of raspberry jam. ‘Well,
bairn, who disnae ken a thing about patience, what is it?’

‘You telt me that Adam and Eve are the mither and faither o’ a’ mankind, Granny, isn’t that true?’

Furrows wrinkled her wee brow, eyes narrowed. ‘Aye, and who has been filling yer heed wi’ lies?’

‘My teacher at the school, Granny, he said we’re frae “apes”. Every brother, mother, father, daughter and dog o’ us comes from monkeys, what dae ye think o’
that, Granny?’

I left my chair because although she was a wee cratur, there was still plenty power in the fist. Standing by a blue vase of flowers on the window ledge I waited.

For a while she said nothing, then, like a light bulb had lit up in her head, she smiled broadly and said, ‘Oh aye, Jessie, I ken what that nice teacher was telling you—he was
talking about your mother’s folk!’

Thankfully my salt-of-the-earth relatives have a sense of humour!

17

THE FOX, THE COW, THE DEAD MAN AND THE WEE LADDIE IN THE BARREL

I
want to take you back to my father’s life now, which according to him was a hard one, walking behind the horse pulling the heavy cart,
gutters and horse-dung caking onto his trousers with each cold step of the way.

As the song says:

My father wasn’t a great one for storytelling, but when it came, boy was it big. One of my favourite tales of sights that he had seen is this one. It’s as tall a tale as you’re
likely to hear, but I love it, and might I add that I’ve heard versions of it in Wales, London, Yorkshire, Norwich and on the banks of the Manchester Canal, all told by travellers.

‘James, ma boy, do your old father a favour and exercise these ponies on the moor for me.’

‘Aye, father, I’ll steer them over the moor, let them loose to graze.’

‘While you’re wandering, son, fetch your dear old mother a trout for tea.’

The moor was a cantankerous place: one minute there would be a clear blue sky, next a fog thick enough to throw cover over a field of cows a few feet from you.

James was a good lad, but much to the annoyance of his mother, a lazy streak had come upon him. With this in mind, she called after him, ‘don’t dare forget to guddle the trout;
there’ll be no tea for any of us if you do.’

A gentle wave of the hand saw him reach the brow of the hill; then he and the dappled ponies were out of sight. On the expanse of heather intermingled with patches of green grass, he sent his
ponies to graze at leisure. There wasn’t a single human being for miles. He sent his jaw into a giant yawn. ‘I’ll lay down here for a few moments while they fill their bellies,
plenty time to search for a burn. There’s enough of the day left to guddle trout for tea.’ Soon lazy James was fast asleep. The ‘kweek, kweek’ of a buzzard soaring brought
his slumber to a halt. He sat up, and oh my, had the thickest fog not covered the moor. Whistling and calling should have brought the horses, but it didn’t. Panic crept in. ‘Surely
they’ve not wandered off,’ he thought. ‘Father will tan my hide if I’ve lost his two newly-bought ponies that recently cost him an arm and a leg.’ Thinking about
limbs, his were shivering. This was a dreich cold fog, a right pea-souper.

Although it was still summer, he’d enough knowledge of the mist-shrouded moor to know if one got lost in it the situation could be hazardous and even fatal. ‘I’ll search for
the animals later, first off, best find somewhere to get a bit warmth,’ he said, rubbing his cold body. Fog over the moorland can be a devil, just what direction had he come and where was he
going? On and on he stomped, until, praise be, he saw a light; far off at the top of a hill, a flickering salvation awaited him. His step quickened; getting nearer he could just make out the
outline of a small cottage. At last he stood inspecting the door, then knocked wildly, hoping for a kind word and a wee bit shelter. He didn’t have long to wait before a couthie-faced woman
opened it. ‘What can I do for you, son?’ she asked.