Recipes from Pairc from the 70's
A new addition to our publications, this recipe book was originally compiled by Pairc Community Association in the late 70’s and is now reprinted by Pairc Historical Society.
Dec
13
Oct
03
Photographs from the Estate of Mary MacIver
The enclosed photographs are from the Estate of Mary MacIver, Verdun, Montreal ( Mairi Anndra) of 15 Gravir. Most of the photographs seem to be taken in Gravir and include family and neighbours.
Apr
19
Weddings – Old Style
Customs associated with marriage continue to evolve and fascinate. The following extract is taken from the writings of the late Angus ‘Ease’ Macleod of South Lochs and describes typical rural weddings in the early part of the 20th century. .
“Weddings were one of the highlights of the winter social round. Most of the weddings were celebrated at home with an all night barn dance. Sometimes the dance was held in the school if it was convenient. The wedding celebrations extended over a period of weeks, beginning with the betrothal party (reiteach) or engagement party at the home of the bride. Then the preparations for the wedding feast, when all the neighbouring women and some of the men were on hand to carry out any chores that were to be done, including the preparation of large quantities of food for the wedding feast. After the wedding was celebrated in the time-honoured fashion, there was the house warming party (banais-taigh), which was exclusively for the neighbouring senior citizens.
Some weddings took place at the east coast fishing ports. Practically all the young people, male and female following the herring fishing found it convenient to get married at the end of the fishing season. On occasion, boy met girl at the fishing for the first time and one of the parties might be from another area of the island or further afield. On one occasion in the early 1850s three men from Marvig married girls from Sutherland at the Wick fishing. They married in Sutherland at the end of the summer fishing season and the brides came home to Marvig along with their husbands on the fishing boats. At that time it was customary for Lewis fishing boats to go to the Caithness herring fishing every summer. The three girls married were Barbara MacDonald from Bettyhill who married Donald Maclennan of 6 Marvig who moved to 26 Lemreway later on, and her sister Betty MacDonald, who married Alistair MacFarlane of 10 Marvig. The third girl was Jean Munro from Melvich who married Roderick Finlayson of 8 Marvig. They all raised large families in Lochs.
Apr
04
Travels With My Tammy
From an article in Tional by Cathie Lockie
Three and a half years old and about to have my first remembered memory of our annual holiday on the Hebridean island of Lewis, isle of the heather and ‘land of my fathers’.
Three o’clock in the morning with myself seated on our cabin trunk, wearing my new white tammy resplendent with long white tassel – my pride and joy. Excited. We were a family of five, my parents, my sister, my brother and me. We awaited the arrival of the Glasgow taxi, which was to take us to Buchanan Street Railway Station, where the ‘Great adventure’ would begin…..
The 4.15 train for Mallaig arrived and with lots of other passengers and a proliferation of cases and more important things like fishing rods, we clambered aboard. Three to four hours later and half-asleep, we left the train to walk across to Mallaig harbour. There was the steamer which was to transport us north to Kyle of Lochalsh – a journey of some 2/3 hours. Warm and sunny weather and warm enough to be on deck, open up our flasks and sandwiches and have a late lunch. Sail over and we were now on the pier at Kyle. We would wait with our luggage until the ‘Sheila’, the Stornoway steamer, would dock. Another hour would pass as cargo and luggage preceded the passengers and rucksacked tourists were allowed on board. The sea breeze had become a stiffening wind by this time, threatening to ‘de-tammy’ me. I have this memory of great anxiety about this.
Mar
22
Gaelic students visit Gravir Museum
A group of Gaelic students spent an interesting week in the Pairc community as part of a new initiative by Co-Chomunn na Pairc.
The residential course was based at Ravenspoint in Kershader with students staying in the on-site hostel. Each day the students had a Gaelic class in the morning and in the afternoon they visited Gaelic speaking homes to allow them to join in Gaelic conversation. In the evenings they visited locations like the Gravir Museum where members of the Comunn Eachdraidh described many of the artefacts and their uses in Gaelic. Local artists provided the entertainement for a celeidh on the final evening. Posted by cepaircadmin | 0 comments
Mar
14
The Best Kind of Education
The Angus Macleod archive, now accessible to everyone at the Ravenspoint Centre, Kershader, South Lochs, contains much material on the early history of education in Lewis, and particularly the Pairc area where the late Angus ‘Ease’ Macleod was born at Calbost in 1916. Visitors can read about the first parish school of Lochs established in Keose in 1796, the Gaelic schools opened in Gravir, Marvig, Loch Shell, Cromore, and Kershader between 1822 and 1832, and the five schools in South Lochs following the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 which once had over 500 pupils under the age of 14!
But perhaps the most memorable item on education in the archive is the following short story told in Angus’s own words and written in his own hand:
‘They say that the home is the main and best source of education. For some unknown reason the following incident which happened to me while I was still a very small boy of probably five or six years old remains in my memory as vividly as the day it happened about 80 years ago. Certainly, I was not more than seven years old, because my grandfather, John Macleod, died in 1924.
My paternal grandparents’ thatched house was close to our own house and there was as usual a small window at the top of the wall in the thatch in the byre end of the house, consisting of a single pane of glass of about one foot square. Probably it was a portable window for the purpose of letting the hens in and out of the byre (uinneag nan cearc).
Boys will be boys, and idle hands are mischievous hands. Seemingly I felt challenged to aim a stone at this window. It took me quite a while and a lot of stones before I eventually scored a direct hit and crashed a stone through the glass. It was then that I realised my guilt and the folly of my action, and I ran to hide under the nearby rock, much the same as the story of Adam and Eve.
After a suitable while I innocently popped my head up to see if all was clear, and lo and behold, there was my grandfather, a tall quiet dignified man, reputed to be an unusually strong person. There was nothing for it but to face the consequences. To my surprise he did not scold me as expected, but said quietly: ‘Angus, you should not have broken the window.’
Then we both walked away silently. That was my first and abiding practical moral lesson in right and wrong. The old man was then over 80 years, an experienced man. As a young Gaelic speaking child whose mother passed away when he was very young, he emigrated to Canada, in the service of the Hudson Bay company.He used to say he learned to read his Bible sitting under a tree in Canada. In his old age he was a man of the Book and read it regularly and preached from it as a local Church Elder in the Village Prayer House both on Sunday and weekday prayer meeting.’
The above extract from the Angus Macleod archive is reproduced by kind permission of Angus’s family. The archive has been made available to the public at the Ravenspoint Centre, Kershader, South Lochs as part of a project led by The Islands Book Trust and Comunn Eachdraidh na Pairc.
Mar
08
A Brief History of Donald Smith, Cromore
An extract from our ‘Aig an Obair’ series published in our newsletter, Tional and based on an original recording in Donald’s own words.
Here is a brief history of the life of Donald Smith, 15 Cromore. His father was Finlay, son of ‘Big John Muldonaich’, and his mother was Ishbel, daughter of Roderick.
“I was born in Cromore in 1907 where I went to school at five years of age. The headmaster was Mr Duncan. Many people made out that he was no use, but looking back I am not of that opinion. It is said that his predecessor, Mr Bruce, was good at teaching Gaelic. When Mr Duncan came he was of the opinion that the children were fluent enough as they naturally spoke in Gaelic, but they were in need of being taught English. When the Gravir minister came to give us a test he didn’t agree. There were only two or three able to read and write Gaelic, and he was wild. The two fell out, and the headmaster ordered the minister to leave. When the argument was over, Mr Duncan said, “Well, if that man is in Heaven, I’ll walk out.” Mr Duncan was good at teaching us psalms. I learned more English psalms in the day school than I did in Sunday school. I still remember five or six of them. There was one that our Finlay always requested when the headmaster gave us a choice of which one to sing, and this is it: –
‘When he cometh, when he cometh
To make up his jewels
All his jewels precious jewels
His loved and his own.’
I was about seven years of age the first time I went to Stornoway by boat. There was no road round the loch then. We slept in the home of Donald, Kenneth’s son of 19 Cromore. At that time they were living on Mackenzie Street. We came home in a small boat belonging to Alastair the Tailor. We left from the Battery in Stornoway with my father and another two or three men, rowing to Cromore.
When I left school I worked at home on the fishing, the croft and odd jobs round about.
When they started building the Nurse’s cottage in Gravir they took a lorry from Stornoway to take supplies from the quay to the house. My father thought it would be handy to have one based in the community. And that was what happened. He brought over a one tonne truck from Callanish. She arrived in Cromore on the boat ‘Good Hope’. She was put ashore at the point where the quay is now. My father steered her home up the hill. He would let me drive her. It wasn’t long before I wrecked her. I would go round the district with her, but since the road was not complete, I couldn’t go past Habost with her. I remember going to Kershader to take people to Lemreway for the wedding of Iain, son of ‘Domhnull Chalum’ and Mary, daughter of ‘Domhnull Bhig’.
Feb
03
An Island Dresser
The following account of a traditional dresser is taken from a publication by The Islands Book Trust ‘Back to the Wind, Front to the Sun’, a richly illustrated description of croft housing by Caroline Hirst based on the collections of the late Angus ‘Ease’ Macleod of Calbost, South Lochs. The book was launched on 18 October 2005 when Professor Jim Hunter gave the second annual Angus Macleod memorial lecture in Pairc school, Gravir.
On entering the living room (aig-an-teine), the most prominent piece of furniture would have been the dresser, which stood against the wall facing the central fire. It acted as both a work area for the housewife and a display area for the family’s precious items of china and other cherished items collected on travels away from the croft. The standard Highland design of dresser consisted of a base with either a two-door cupboard or an open area with a place to store large pots, above which would have been two drawers. The top of the dresser base would have acted as a work area for baking and the preparation of food. The display area was in the form of a plate rack, which sat above the base with three or four shelves. A distinctive feature of Scottish dressers is that each shelf incorporates a rail against which the plates lean and also prevents them from falling off.
Their leaning position would have also stopped the soot, which accumulated from the peat smoke, from collecting on the face of the plates. Like the box beds, the top of the dresser incorporated a sloping top, a further design feature to protect drips from the roof and soot spoiling the display area. On a regular basis the dresser would be taken outside and scrubbed, which over time gave it a bleached appearance. It was also a common practice to decorate the edges of the plate-rack shelf edges with lengths of scalloped newspaper as Angus showed in a photograph taken by himself of a fine example of a Lewis dresser from the Calbost Collection whilst still in Calbost.
Angus made in depth notes about this particular piece of furniture:
Posted by cepaircadmin | 0 commentsIt is a typical Lewis dresser which I found in Calbost. It has two drawers and two cupboard doors in the bottom part. The top and bottom parts are constructed separately and then married together into one unit by the two arm boards at each side. There were three shelves, which were used in a practical way to hold dishes (as well as a display cabinet). The large plates at the top, then the medium plates in the centre and the small plates in the lower shelf. Eggcups, salt and other nick-nacks were placed on the two top shelves including ornaments. On the lower shelf the big bowls and very often the small ones were placed on top of the big bowls. The surface of the bottom part of the dresser was the working top where the housewife prepared the food in conjunction with the table. The food was served from the working top of the dresser and after the meal the dishes were washed at the dresser and put away, in other words the dresser functioned as a kitchen.
All crofts had at least one domestic cow and very often two. The domestic cow was a form of factory. It produced in the first place milk from which a variety of other items of food were generated such as cream, crowdie, sour milk and buttermilk. Jugs and bowls were therefore used extensively and the milk itself was set in basins of white and brown clay in the bottom part of the dresser and in a portable cupboard. You will see the jugs on the inner side of the working top of the dresser.
You will see a large ‘ashet’ or blue tray in the centre of the dresser. That blue traditional pattern was used as the crockery of almost every house. Once the girls began to follow the fish gutting round the Scottish and English ports, they brought home with them nice ornamental glassware and many other trinkets, very often stating ‘A Present from Wick or Yarmouth.’ There are some such items in the Calbost Collection.
Do not overlook the Bibles on the right hand side of the dresser surface, the clock that was my Grandfathers, was bought in 1896 for 7/6, which today would cost £37.50 and is still going. Also the English lever breast watch and chain belonged to the man of the house when duly dressed. Hanging on the left of the dresser is a small period shaving mirror. It was common for the dresser top to be decorated with ‘scalloped’ newspaper edging.
Jan
28
Memories of Caversta
Reminiscences of Ruaraidh Rob Mackinnon, 2 Garyvard, who was born in Caversta in 1909. Translated by Elizabeth MacGowan from the articles in Tional in 1992/93
It was from Cluthar in Harris that the Mackinnons on my father’s side came. Domhnull Mhaoil Domhnaich came to work in Crobeg. At that time, Caversta, Torostay, and Orinsay belonged to Crobeg. When crofts were allocated in Caversta, one of Domhnull’s sons, Ruairidh (my grandfather) got No 4.
I remember an old ruin in Caversta on croft 2 that belonged to my grandmother’s family. It is known as “Tobhtag Nic Ailean”. Anna Macsween was her correct name. She also worked in Crobeg. She originally came from Harris. I remember the ruin still with a roof on it. Many an hour myself, Nobles and Louis Fhearchair spent there. It was there that the local bull was kept. Many a night I tumbled over him making my way home in the dark. If they had not brought him in, he would lie on the road that was going down to our house.
Anna Macsween was a poor woman. I remember my father saying that when the men were landing their catch from fishing, that her share would be allocated before the share of the crew. There was another lady in Caversta called Raonaid, but she must have been there long before Anna, as her ruin had fallen down in my time.
There was another man in Caversta called Fearchair. He had a big house. It was built during the time of the fishing. It was Ruairidh Cubar from Keose that built it. They had collected all the stones for it before they left for the fishing, and the house was built by the time they came back. He got paid around four pounds for building it. I have never seen such beautiful stonework; he was a wonderful stonemason. He was well respected in those days. The house was about thirty feet long, and had a stair in it as well. Fearchair had a big family of ten, and some of them are still living. Read More» Posted by cepaircadmin | 1 comments