horse and gig days

HORSE AND GIG DAYS.
31 Dec. 2006
Long time ago, but really yesterday. Who today would believe in a time before cars, tractors, radios, T.V.s, electricity, tar sealed roads? Yet those were my early days at Whitehall Farm, Stronsay. Billy was my father's horse. I know not what breed he was, if any. Chestnut in colour. He did service for anything and everything, carrying my father on horseback, pulling in harness the two wheeled gig, the milk delivery cart. My earliest memory of going to Church three miles away was in our open two wheeled gig with Billy going along at a goodly clip. Unharness Billy from the gig at the Church, tie him with all the other horses to one of the many convenient wall rings with a nosebag of oats to help him through the sermon. Most people walked, and some for many miles at that, rain, shine or snow. We had leather gig rugs to cover our knees, good coats to keep off the showers. Then in 1935 our father got his first car, a Morris Ten 4-door pale green miracle with a starting handle at the front and the wonderful smell of new leather inside. Supplied by Charlie Tait of J. and W. Tait, Kirkwall, father’s first cousin through father’s mother and her brother James, Charlie’s father. Father then had to get a driving lesson from Sydney Swanney, one of the Whitehall villagers more versed in mechanics than he, though in those far away days there was no such thing as a driving test or licence. After that we went to Church by car. Wonderful. And how we listened to the engine, the whine of the gear box, wound the windows down and up, hid behind the seats in the back to steal a ride anywhere, though in a small island 7 miles long at greatest there were not too may places to go. We went a run with Father to Airy Farm which he had bought in 1933, 4 miles away, sold again in 1943 to the Spences of Millfield in preparation for leaving the Island. Sometimes he would be passing the Central School on his way home from Airy about the time we were getting out at 4 oclock and we would get a lift the two miles home.
The next miracle was in 1938. Father said there was a War coming, the farm men would be away, or some of them, and he would need a tractor. His uncles Dod and Alex Tait in Midgarth Farm next door, brothers of his mother Betsy Tait and all from Campston in Tankerness, already had one, a CASE, . So again Charley Tait, and a Massey Harris Pacemaker on iron wheels duly arrived on the Stronsay pier, hoisted out of the Earl Thorfinn by derrick and steam donkey winch. About half the Island population of about a thousand were there to see it!! With the tractor father also bought a power drive Massey Harris 7 foot binder for cutting the crops of oats and bere and a two furrow Massey drag plough. So he was now equipped for the coming War. Peter Stevenson, the farm foreman, got the tractor, and in no time at all was proficient. Start on petrol, and then change over to paraffin vapourising oil when the engine warmed up. Paraffin oil was delivered on the pier by the Earl Thorfin from Kirkwall in 40 gallon drums, collect it yourself. No oil tankers. Nothing fancy like a cab or a heater or low decibel rating or radio or soft sprung seat or anything else, just a tractor.The Massey came to Greenland Mains with the binder and the plough and Peter Stevenson in 1944, and I got the binder eventually when I went to Lower Dounreay in Nov. 1953, still working well. It was the beginning of the end for the horses, but not yet. Nor would anyone have thought that day that in but a few short years they would all be gone.
There was in the house an huge old cabinet radio that hardly ever worked other than squeaks and static and hiccups and silence, bought by our father’s brother our Uncle John, a surgeon in New Zealand, on one of his visits. Needed an out-of-doors aerial of immense length and batteries of various kinds. Never really used at all, and Stronsay was a long way from any transmitter, nor was our father radio inclined. But again in 1938 father said a war coming and he had better get a proper radio, though we called it a wireless. A Pye, lots of dials and knobs, a dry battery and a wet one called an accumulator, two really, as they were rechargeable and it was one on, one off to be recharged at Swanneys Shop in the village. It worked magically well and came to Greenland Mains with us, lasting there a long time. TV was never heard of then, naturally and thankfully!!
Electricity was not unknown on the Island, and some handy people had their own, worked by a small windmill and charging a bank of wet batteries. Or a small engine. I do not know what power was produced, it had to be small in output but another miracle. Lights only. We had none. The house lighting was with small paraffin lamps, trimmed and cleaned and filled in the “Lamp Hole”, a totally dark cupboard room with no windows, smelly. Their light must have been sufficient then, today no-one could or would read with them. There were some better lamps, double wicks, large glass or chimney, ornate, collectors pieces today if you can find one. Some were suspended centrally from the ceiling in the better rooms. Dangerous appliances when we think on it, and no doubt at all some were upset and a fire risk. In the sitting room we had an Aladdin Lamp on a tall stand, very good soft light but it had an inscandent mantle and at times it went silently up in flames if turned too high. Again, dangerous, though we never had a real catastrophe, just a very smokey room. Many houses had Tilley lamps, paraffin, pressurised, again with an inscandent mantle and a very good light accompanied by a steady and loud hissing. Quite warming too. The ubiquitous Tilley in the form of an outdoor windproof lantern did service in the farm steading, though I do not remember father spoiling the men with too many of these, the old square lantern with paraffin oil wick having to serve in most situations. Not until 1951 in Greenland Mains did we get electricity when we put in our own Lister diesel powered generator. Nice machine too, went to Stronsay eventually to work a bit longer.
Lastly tar sealed roads, or not. The first ones I knew were water bound, even in Whitehall Village, made up with small crushed stones from the quarry outside our Primary North School, now an implement shed, the quarry worked only when the roads were to be done, or to build up a stock pile of crushed and graded stone. The last coating was a layer of small fine stone dust, watered and rolled in with a heavy road roller, and actually lasted pretty well. Traffic was of course so very much less. There were several roadmen who did small repairs such as potholes and kept the verges clean with a scythe and maintained side cuts to let the water off the road. Ditches were cleaned regularly also. Neither done properly today I fear, or not at all mostly.
That was but four of the changes I remember, irreversible. They were the beginning of the end of a way of life and of a farming life that had been there for many long years unchanged, now nearly forgotten. So I remind you of it.