Random Recollections

Longtown Memories

Random Recollections of a Septuagenarian

Random Recollections of a Septuagenarian(Published in July and August 1878 in the Carlisle Journal)My friend the Septuagenarian ? though I say septuagenarian, he is four years over the allotted span of three score years and ten, and has all his wits about him ? is a Border Scotchman, partly reared in Cumberland, and besides this he is a man of great cultivation, and speaks good English at will. How can I, who am neither a Scotchman or a Cumbrian, hope to reproduce the picturesque mosaic of his interesting auld-warld cracks? Indeed I expect to do nothing of the kind, but merely set about to do the best according to my lights.Nobody ever owed me money but once, and I used to slink through any back street sooner than meet that man. I was far more ashamed than he was. But one day we met face to face at a corner. ?Hallo,? he said, ?I hevn?t forgot that money, but don?t be flait but what I?ll pay you.? ?Well, look here, John,? I said, ?I?m neither flait nor in a hurry for it, but just to have done with it ? gie me tae hauf, and you keep the other.? ?Nay, nay,? he said, ?I?se nut gan to rob you in that way.? . . . Did I ever get it? Nivver a haup?ny.Joe ---- was the best saddler in Carlisle, but when you?ve said that ----. The day after the great storm of ?39, Joe was going across Eden Bridge in the ?horrors.? He met the auld rector of Arthuret on horseback, and touched his hat. ?Well, my man,? said the rector, ?what?s the matter?? ?Oh,? said Joe, ?the storm blew my chimney down, through the roof, broke my wife?s leg and gave her the death o? cold. I would gan for a doctor, but we hevn?t a penny in the hoose.? ?Poor man,? said the rector, a kind hearted man and easily imposed on, ?here?s half a sovereign for you.? Joe went away gaily and drank it. Two or three days later I met him. ?Lend us sixpence,? was his first word. ?Well, Joe,? I said, ?I think you?ve had drink enough; you look half insane, man.? ?I?ll pay you back,? says Joe. ?I don?t doubt it,? I said, ?and if you wanted it for anything else you would be welcome to it.? ?Well, but look here,? said Joe, getting me by the button hole. ?I?se joost on the point noo; I?s as near to it as twopence; and when I get on the point my stomach won?t keep a drop o?drink; and then I loathe it for mebbe nine months and never taste a drop.? ?Here?s the sixpence, Joe,? says I, ?gang and get on the point as fast as thoo can, lad.?There was a whole village on Sir James Graham?s estate where not one could read or write. Strapping lads they were ? fit descendants of the men that wore the jack and carried the spear in the auld times. The lads wore petticoats till they were as big as you nearly, and lived entirely on porridge ? a gallon at a meal; they never saw wheaten bread. My brother and I herded cattle on Rowkly Moss when we were lads, and we aye took a book with us, and when those Mossband lads saw us they came helter-skelter with a great shout, slap through the Esk, wading and swimming ? they cared no more for water than spaniels. Then they crowded round us, and lying down ? heads in ? ?Read on,? they would say; they garred us read. Now and again they would exclaim, ?Aye, man, that?s fine,? or ?I wish I could read, but I don?t know my greet Au?s yet.? What did we read? Oh, ?Pilgrim?s Progress? and ?The Holy War.? Niver aught else that I mind on.The Esk is a mad sort of river. I mind when the Metal Bridge was building ? a? the woodwork was up anyway ? folks told the contractor, a Welshman, what Esk wad du if it came a flood. A flood did come, and the timbers swayed and swayed and at last crash they went, and a? the work was undone. The little contractor stood crying on the bank. I remember Esk once took a 12 acre field out of Sir James Graham?s lad like a slice off a loaf. It slipped gradually, and floods broke it up, and when I was a boy lumps of peat as big as elephants drifted up and down Rowkly marsh for years, wearing down in 20 years time to the size of horses and so on. Well, now, here?s a curious thing for you; last year (1877) when I was strolling on the beach at New Brighton I came upon one of those identical hunks of peat worn down to the size of a big salmon. There was just that one piece, and I could almost positively swear to it, as one of the lumps that knocked about Rowcley Marsh between 60 and 70 years syne.Murders, lad! Aye, mony a ane. I remember seeing a skeleton dug up in Rowkley ? banes an? a? complete; ay, and the buttons of his claes. I lifted up the skull, and in handling it broke in two. Auld Billy Geddes said, ?Man, thoo shouldn?t do that. If thoo?d murthered him the banes would ha? shed bluid. I knaw wha this man was,? said auld Billy; ?I kenned him bravely; he was a pether. Peggy Johnstone?ll nut look out this day, I?se warrant. And no more she did. All the village was round the skeleton, but Peggy, though her house wasn?t twenty yards away, never opened door. I sa? her dowter keeking past the blind, hooiver. Well, ye see, this pether ? peddler, ye ken- went about the country with a pack-horse. Peggy Johnstone kept a public house then, and he put up there. He was seen to gang in ane neet, an? he was nivver seen mair. His horse roamed about the common unclaimed till the girths rotted, and the pack fell off. This skeleton, I?m telling ye o?, was found when they were pullin? doon an old barn, and diggin? foundations for a new ane. That old barn belonged to Peggy Johnstone?s public house ? joined up to it. Peggy nivver turned out, I assure you, nor her dowter either till next day, and then when somebody asked the dowter if she?d seen the skeleton, she turned as red as a cabbage and said she?d never heard about it. Nay, there was nivver aught to do about that ivver I heard. Wha? was to make a to-do about it in them days?Oot, murthers were no that uncommon then. I mind of our folks gaun to chapel one Sunday morning, an? they came to a place where there was marks of blood across the road, and grass sprinkled over them. They thought nowt aboot it, but somebody after traced the stains, and there behind the dyke was a murdered man ? a Scotch drover or something o? that kind ? with his skull beat in. Aul Wull o?the Boats aye sware he had the murderer at his hoose that morning. (Aul Wull kept a public-house at the ford below Floriston) ?But tha knahs,? he says, ?I isn?t tied to let anybody in. So, I says, ?We is ta ony way?? without opening the dure. An? he says in an awesome voice, ?I?se a man as wants to be ower the watter quick.?? Old Wull was so scared with the trembling in the man?s voice that he darn?t open the door, but left him to fin his way ower the watter for himself.He was a queer old stick was auld Wull o? the Boats. ?Drink up, lads,? he would say in his reedy voice, ?drink up; I sell gude ale at sixpence a quart an? I mak a roond shilling be ivvery quart.? ?Hoo?s that, Wully?? they would say. ?Oh,? says Wully, ?I buy it at threepence a quart and nivver pay for?t; then I watter ivvery quart into two; an? then I drink tae hauf on?t mysel? at yower expense.? He was aye fond of a joke was Wull o?the Boats.Whuskey? Nay, nay, lad. I gat my lesson o? that stuff thirty years before you were born. Three months of horrible torment such as I never suffered before or since and trust may never suffer again, did a single glass o?t cost me. How? I?ll tell ye. My brother and I took the corn to Gretna Mill to grind, and the auld mill rattled away far too fast for us. We couldn?t winnow half fast enough. Sae, the miller?s son, a strang young fellow, says, ?I?ll tell ye what, lads, ye?re spoiling the meal. Look here, if ye?ll gie me a pint o? un-let-doon whiskey I?ll do it for ye. So we agreed to give him it, and fetched it. The young miller took a tot, and, says he, ?Mind, this is my whiskey, but I?ll gie ye a drink. Hae, tak? that,? and he handed me a tot ? perhaps a wineglassful. I drank it, and presently the auld mill went roond and roond, roond and roond, and down I fell on the floor. They carried me up into a loft, laid me on a cold floor ? it was i? the deep o? winter ? and put a sheet ower me. When I wakened, oh, the racking headache an the lassitude! Sae, I went hame, and they put me to bed, and the doctor came and bled me like ony pig. He bled me mony a time till I raly wondered whaur a?the blood came frae. But the hours an? days of delirium were terrible ? terrible. I mind o? some of the neighbour women coming to ask how I was one day, and I said, ?Women, tak care! There?s a great snake come in amang ye. See there! Oh, if it bite ye, ye?re dead women.? I saw the snake, sir, as plain as I see you ? as thick as your leg and four feet lang. Oh, it was a weary three months. Na? whuskey for me! Brain fever, typhus, or inflammation of the lungs? Well, mebbe ye?re right, an? it wasn?t the whuskey at a?. Yan suldn?t blame the innocent if it were the devil hissel?.Jwohn Wilkin expected he was marrying a woman that would come into some money, but when her father?s will was read, he?d only left the daughters a guinea each. Jwohn banged up as if a wasp had stung him, and said to his wife, ?Come away, Mattie, what?s ta sittin? there for. Burn your livers,? he added, glaring round at her relatives, ?she cost me three and sixpence, an? you can hev her back for half a croon.? Jwohn thought a deal o? Matty ? he wouldn?t have taken £500 for her ? but he couldn?t resist having a shot at her relations.You?ve heard of Tom G----? We went to school together. When Tom was a young fellow, grown up, he was awfully proud of his ploughing, and he used to say, with a deliberate tone of deep conviction, ?God may had med a man as could lay as nice a furrow as me, but he nivver med yan as could pleugh as straight.? And, without doubt, he could lay out the first furrow of a field as far as from here to Stanwix as straight as a gunshot.Unsatisfactory as we may think our present condition, sanitary matters have made a huge step towards perfection in Carlisle in my time. It?s the same all over England; we?ve banished the cholera. How that fearful disease used to scourge us and try to open our eyes. I mind when the passing of the first Reform Bill was celebrated in Carlisle ? there was a monster gathering on the Sands, and Mr Steel and a lot of gentlemen made speeches ? that night a man died of cholera, the first death. But before that visitation passed away, scores and hundreds died. An nae wonder. The gutters of Rickergate used to be choked with rotting filth and garbage, and the Shambles on a Sunday morning, as we went to Chapel, was just a reeking abomination of stinking blood and offal. The town was just full o? filth, and sanitary matters were utterly neglected.