MEMORIES OF MACHARIOCH
1916 - 1920
Gavin Ralston
Old men, they say, forget: but remembering is one of the pleasures of old age
I was born on February 19th, 1912, at Macharioch Farm where my father, Robert, had been tenant since 1901. Both my parents (my mother was a Reid) were, like so many other farming families of South Kintyre, directly descended from the Lowlanders who were brought from Ayrshire by the Marquis of Argyle in the middle of the 17th century to stabilise the rural economy of South Kintyre. The man who was appointed to lead those families was William Ralston of that Ilk.
Macharioch House and Farm are situated on the south-east corner of Kintyre looking over the Firth of Clyde to Ayrshire and Wigtownshire. These two buildings, together with the gardener’s lodge and the two cottages, constituted a small community. During the time of which I write, this small enclave of Kintyre was the home of between 35 and 40 people.
In the farm there were myself and my parents, two dairymaids and two workmen. In the cottages were Dougie Murray, the ploughman, his wife and four children, and Willie McCormick, the byreman, his wife and three children. The occupants of the ‘Big Hoose’ were Ina, Dowager Duchess of Argyll; her companion Lady Elspeth Campbell; Broadfoot, the butler; the cook, two kitchen-maids, a housemaid and a lady’s maid. In the lodge, Tom Davidson, the gardener, lived with his wife and two children. The Duchess was the only person over 50. In the years covered by these notes, there were three deaths - my father (49), pneumonia; Mary Davidson (6), diphtheria, and Jessie Murray (9), appendicitis.
The age at which events and happenings become imprinted on a child’s mind and available for recall varies. Compton Mackenzie said that he could remember events which occurred when he was in his pram! I cannot emulate this, but I can put a definite date on one of my earliest memories. One day I was passing through the kitchen at Macharioch and found a young woman, usually bright and cheerful, sobbing loudly and showing my mother a piece of paper. I went out to continue my play, but this strange scene stuck in my memory. I learned years later that this young woman’s husband had been killed at the Battle of the Somme. This was July, 1916. I was four years old.
Schooldays
I attended the village school at Southend from the age of five until I was nine, when we left Macharioch. Each day, I, along with four other children - the two Murray girls from the cottages and Tommy and Mary Davidson from the lodge - walked the three miles to school. This took over an hour. The return journey in the afternoon took longer. In winter it was dark when we left the house and dark again when we returned in the late afternoon. If the weather was very cold and wet we were taken to school in a farm cart. Two ‘battles’ of straw were spread out in the bottom of the cart. We piled in and were covered with a large tarpaulin. For lunch at school we had a ‘piece’, usually bread and cheese with a small bottle of milk.
In summer, we often took a ‘short cut’ home. We left the main road at Blasthill, passed through the chambered cairn - the significance of which we did not appreciate - down to the Craichen Burn, along past the partially ruined ‘Achrieduie’ and on to rejoin the road near the cottages. The vivid memory of those walks is of the bird life - ‘peesweeps’ in spring (we had to be careful not to walk over their nests) and corncrakes in summer.
I was not very happy at school; in this I was not alone. One of my classmates was Lachie Young, who in later life became one of Scotland’s leading educationalists. In his book, Mull of Kintyre to Moosburg, Lachie sums up the atmosphere of our primary school: ‘Harsh discipline ... sarcasm ... corporal punishment ... no humour ... no fun ... no laughter.’
Leisure
School being what it was, holidays were all the more welcome. As soon as school was over we took off our boots and stockings and ran about barefoot for the rest of the summer. Our soles became hard and leathery; nettle-stings were treated with the juice of a docken leaf. We had complete freedom to wander about the steading, the fields and the shore. We were not exposed to the risks that modern children have from mechanised equipment. We learned to keep away from the back end of a horse, we kept an eye on the bull and we were too scared to go into the engine-house. There were no cars or tractors on the roads.
Farm children are never bored; whatever the season there is always some form of interesting activity going on. I remember being quite excited when I watched Dougie Murray starting to plough a field using a new double-furrow plough pulled by three horses. I enjoyed going with my father in a cart to Machrimore Mill to collect a bag of oatmeal and see the miller at work. Or across to the Smiddy to see Dougie McCallum shoeing a horse. (Often, especially in the winter, we would, on our way home from school, go into the smiddy to get some warmth from Dougie’s forge. I can still hear the ring of his anvil.) I learned to ‘drive’ a horse and cart. The only aid to entertainment was a swing attached to the rafters of a loose box next to the piggery and we never had a football. Family holidays were unheard of.
For adults, there was not much time for leisure, but the men found some time for hobbies. My father enjoyed carpentry and made furniture. The wardrobe, dressing-table and chest-of-drawers in my bedroom at Macharioch were unusual, the wood being heavily grained pitch pine. In March, 1903, a three-masted Norwegian barque, the Argo, went aground on the Arranman’s Barrels and, despite the efforts of the Campbeltown lifeboat, became a total wreck. My father bought the mainmast and had it sawn into boards in the Campbeltown sawmill. From these he made the suite of furniture. I still have the chest-of-drawers in my house in Campbeltown. I remember my mother sitting down in the afternoon, usually darning socks or mending clothes. Dougie Murray caught moles and dried their skins by nailing them to a board in the sun. Willie McCormick kept a boat on Polliwilline shore and went fishing. I was never allowed to go out with him. One of the McCormick boys kept ferrets and I used to go with him when he was netting rabbits.
In winter, the live-in staff were keen card-players and some were keen on making music. The most popular instrument was the melodeon, a form of accordion. Less expensive was the harmonica or ‘mooth organ’. Gibby Broon, the stable lad, was an expert player of the Jew’s harp, which he called a ‘trump’.
Around Christmas time, there was a party for all the farm workers and their children. It was held in the cheese loft where my father showed slides on the white wall with a ‘magic lantern’. The food was huge piles of sandwiches, and for drink my mother made jugs of a soft fizzy drink called ‘Boston Cream’. Younger readers of these notes are reminded that in those days fun and entertainment had to be home-made. There was no electricity or gas, no central heating, no radio or television, no computers and no cars or buses to take people to the town. On summer evenings the younger farm workers would gather at some road-end and spend an hour or so in gossip and banter.
No 54 Autumn 2004
More next issue
Wee Drams E-mails, comments, queries and enlightenment from around the world
Page 2: Oatfield House - An Exchange of Emails
Page 3: Interesting Articles from the MOD (with permission)
Page 4: It Is a Small World After All
Page 5: The Italian Community in Campbeltown - A Memoir
Page 6: Memories of Macharioch
Page 7: By Hill and Shore - Angus Martin