THE CAMPBELTOWN AND TARBERT MAIL COACH.
Information from articles in "The Campbeltown Courier" and other
papers, and from the Young family, is gratefully acknowledged.
To us a mail coach conjures up a picture of horses in pairs, abreast, in a gaily coloured coach, with cheerful travellers milling around in an inn yard with innkeeper, ostlers, the driver with his long whip, and the guard with his horn. Why this should have become a symbol of Christmas we do not know. The coming of the railways sounded the death knell of the coaches radiating from London, and other large towns, and by 1846, the last London based coach, that to Norwich, had stopped running, and gradually coach services were only to be found where the railways had not penetrated. A quarter of a century later, the Campbeltown to Tarbert Mail Coach began a run which was to last for 42 years, under its first and only contractor. Mails from the mainland of Scotland came to Campbeltown and Tarbert by ships from the Clyde. Although Kintyre is a peninsula it was for most purposes until the emergence of the motor, little more than an island. Indeed Magnus Barefoot, who by treaty with the King of Scotland,obtained the islands - the land he could sail round - sat in his long ship with his hand on the tiller, and had his men pull him across the isthmus from the East Loch to the West Loch, Tarbert, and so Kintyre was his.
Before 1871 Her Majesty's Mails were carried over that 40 mile stretch of road of Kintyre by a gig, but the time came when a better system of transport was needed. The two most influential men of Kintyre, Mr. John Stewart, the Chamberlain of Argyll, and the Laird of Largie, representing as it were the Clans of Campbell and MacDonald, took action and an agreement was made in 1871 with Mr. William Young, who might be said to represent the Lowland population of Kintyre.
Mr. Young, born in Beith, was the son of an Ayrshire farmer, who, like so many more at different periods, emigrated to Kintyre, where to this day the majority of the farmers are of Ayrshire or Lowland descent. In addition to being contractor, Mr. Young drove the coach himself, and also became tenant of the Drum Farm, and afterwards of Glencraigs, farms today owned by his descendants.
The coach carrying inside and outside (top) passengers was drawn in the French fashion by three horses abreast. At 6 a.m. on weekdays the coach left the Post Office at Campbeltown for Tarbert 40 miles north, and arrived back at its starting point at 6 p.m. This was said to be the longest coach run in the British Isles. Mr. Young lived at the Drum, 4.5 miles from Campbeltown, and drove that additional distance in the morning and again at nights.
The first change of horses was at Ballochantuy, and those same horses were yoked again to the coach on its return journey and so returned to their stable in Campbeltown. An ostler and change horses were kept at Tayinloan, Clachan and Tarbert. While the horses were being changed the driver took his mail bag to the village post office, while his passengers gladly refreshed themselves at the inn. Provision had been made for travellers over a century previously for "Tippling Houses at Stages on the Main Road," by the Kintyre Road Trustees, but the comfortable inns of the coaching era were far removed from their primitive origins. Mr. Young, however, was never known to accept the drinks offered to him. Here was a driver who, had the drink and driving regulations of our day then operated, would never have been required to take the breathaliser test! On one occasion his economical sense suffered. An attractive girl, getting off at an intermediate stage, got the better of him. "What is the fare?" she asked, and got the ready answer, "A kiss from you, my bonnie lassie." Quickly she kissed him and made off, leaving him breathless and fareless!
Little time was wasted at the inns and soon the coach was on its way again. At the bottom of the many steep and winding hills, the worst of which have been improved or bypassed in our time, the horses were whipped up and covered as much as possible at a gallop. The coach would not stop for a letter or a commission at the foot of the hills, and the bearer would place his letter in a cleft stick and hold it out to he picked up without the coach needing to stop. Letters carried in cleft sticks by natives was the normal method of communicetion between isolated farms in the pre-telephone times in Africa, and nearer home does not the mail train on the London to Scotland route rick up without stopping mail bags suspended above intermediate station platforms!
When supplies for farm or household were needed, a list was given to the driver, and the requested goods would be dropped off on the return journey, or when possible. In fact the coach served the purpose of a modern shopping service! Those living near the coach route, it was said, had no need of clocks, so regular was the passing of the coach. All kinds of goods were carried from one point to another, but eventually the Post Office instituted the Parcel Service, when the contractor was compensated by an increase in the contract fee. But passengers continued to be carried, and the seat of honour was that on the box next to the driver, although some might prefer the comfort and warmth of the interior, as did one school girl on her way to a holiday in Gigha, who was displaced from her seat in the interior to accommodate a calf, which could hardly be expected to sit up outside! Outside and inside, these terms linger even in London buses, and the conductor's "Outside only," may seem to strangers a peculiar way of referring to the covered top seats. Or maybe the modern conductors have ceased to use this exprqssion or more likely do not know it!
So for 42 years the coach remained to the end of its days the recognised means of communication between village and village, and village and the outer world - the bringer of news, good and bad - in its accident free way. Only once it is said was the coach unable to complete its run in a snow storm. In the autumn there was the special traffic of the shooting season, when the shooting tenants with their guns and dogs, men and maid servants arrived, and the whole district benefited by the additional business, or was enlivened by the influx of strangers, in addition to the not unimportant contribution the rents of the "shootings" made to the lairds' finances. Many were the men, famous in politics, the church or business, who sat on that box next to Mr. Young.
Time plays strange tricks: who could have predicted that Tarbert to Campbeltown would become merely one stage in the present-day bus service between these towns and Glasgow, with the disappearance of the steamboat services on the Clyde to Tarbert ~nd Campbeltown?
THE TAI
LORS.
(The Prose)
At one time all clothing and other sewing was done in the homes of the people. Before the arrival of the useful sewing machine, all sewing had to be done by hand - a wearisome task. In all villages until this century, in addition to a schoolmaster, a cobbler, an innkeeper, and a carter, there was a tailor. Sometimes the tailor worked at home, but more often he went to his clients' houses, and stayed there until he had clothed all the family, or as many of them as the homespun material available served.
A tailor usually had one or two apprentices, and their arrival at a farm or township was an event. Naturally the tailors fed with the family, and the amount and quality of the meals provided a well-known man, called Baldy, with scope for his wit. As Mr. J. Ross tells in his reminiscences, Baldy would look around the table, when asked to give a blessing by the master of the house, and would compose one to suit the fare.
"Come, Baldy, say awa"' said the master of one house.
Baldy shut his eyes, and lifted his two hands, and said very solemnly :-
"Gracious and glorious, such a morsel for four o' us.
It 'twadna sair twa o' us. I would eat it a' mysel"'
On another occasion when the meal was scanty he
said:-
"Oh Thou wha blessed the loaves and fishes,
Look down on these poor empty dishes;
And though the tatties are but sma',
Make them sufficient for us a'.
And if they do our bellies fill,
"Twill be a kind of marakill."
Not so long ago, in this century, there was an old man living in one of our glens, who had three suits, all made from the same web of home spun cloth. When the eldest of the three brothers died his suit was only slightly worn; this served the eventual survivor for Sundays; later the second died, and his half worn suit was donned for market days in Campbeltown; while his own well worn suit was the everyday wear of the last brother.
The stockings everyone wore were hand-knitted in black wool. As soon as a woman's other work was done out came her knitting, and no one sat by the light of the peat fires with empty hands or needles. Some men too knitted, and I am told my Grandfather used to knit for Christmas, a pair of stockings for his two youngest daughters, with a row of holes as decoration!
THE TAI
LORS.
(The Poem)
Once upon a time, in Campbeltown,
And all the country round,
The tailors went from house to house,
Wherever work they found.
Each tailor had a 'prentice lad,
And sorne of them had two:
So where he went they went all hands,
And did what was to do.
And where they wrought they got pot luck,
Whatever that may be;
To speak again of what they got,
They one and all made free.
Sorne of the tailors then in town
Were douce and decent men;
But others liked fun, and they
Must have it now and then.
Neil was a douce and decent man,
But Baldy was a wag;
Of tricks he played, and fun he made -
'Twas his delight to brag.
So Neil, when asked, would say the grace,
As well as he was able;
But Baldy made the grace to suit
What he saw on the table.
Page 2: The Great Pestilence in Kintyre
Page 3: Crops Grown in Kintyre Around 1800
Page 4: Campbeltown's American Trade in the 18th Century
Page 7: Campbeltown Dialect
Herring Fishing Regulations
in 1811