The Men o' the Bothy.

RAIN ON MY WINDOW.

THE BOTHY MEN.

They have left a huge legacy of Bothy Ballads and song, particularly in the North East as I prefer to call Aberdeenshire and it’s neighbouring counties. This I cannot emulate, nor is there any point. But still I can recall what I can of those Bothy days at Whitehall in Stronsay, days when our father had single men in the Bothy, sometimes more, sometimes less. They were of course unmarried men and boys who made up part of the farm staff, married men each having a cottage on the farm. An occasional married man from another Island was sometimes housed there, harvest hands particularly. The Bothy was lower down the farm road from the farmhouse, had previously been a farm cottage in it’s own right and by our time had been turned into the Bothy. Flagstone floors in the ground floor rooms, sparsely if adequately furnished with basic needs such as a simple wooden table in the middle of the kitchen with a bit of wax-cloth on top, sturdy wooden chairs around it. A couple of battered old horse-hair stuffed armchairs sat either side of the fire, hand me downs from the farmhouse.

An open fire with iron firebars and a swee, which was a black iron swiveling bar which held the well smoked black kettle on a chain above the coals when needed, higher or lower as need be. Or swung off to the side to keep it warm on the back of the fire. A pot or two to boil some potatoes or make some soup.
There were the usual fire irons of poker and tongs and shovel, an old thick woollen sock hung on a nail at the right hand side of the wooden mantle-piece to use to lift the hot kettle or a pot off the fire. Saved burnt fingers. The fire was usually kept going overnight by slocking it with ashes and still alive come morning. A quick poke, some fresh coal, fill the kettle and leave it on the fire to boil while the men went to the stable to breakfast their horses, then back to the Bothy for their morning cup of strong sweet tea out of a well-smoked big brown porcelain tea pot. Toast or whatever else was available, a bit of oatcake or some bere bannock..
They had other basic utensils such as a frying pan and a flat iron gridle, some bothy boys were actually quite good cooks and they were always hungry as manual workers in the great outdoors usually are, if there are any left nowadays. So sometimes one or other would try his hand at some delicacy of his own invention. A good going fire could toast a slice of bread on a long fork, though I have seen a slice just laid on top of the glowing coals, smoked toast and not really as bad as it sounds. Just scrape off the burnt bits. The smell of toast was always hanging in the air, it was an easy thing to make and cut from a half loaf of baker’s bread bought from Swanney’s travelling van from the village. Butter was plentiful, usually from the farm dairy. A jar of jam always. Jam jars full of dripping, sometimes got from the farm house kitchen, usually from a roast shoulder of fat old ewe mutton, sometimes used for frying, sometimes just spread straight on a slice of bread. Mutton was really fat in those days, today one cannot get tasty mutton from the butcher at all, having to make do with tasteless fat-free immature lamb. Horrible.
I remember rows of jam jars being filled with dripping in the farm kitchen, sometimes it was just rendered down fat. Kept for ages. Even had some posted down to Inverness during the War to Drummond Park our school hostel.

A brander iron, and for the uninitiated that is an iron grid on a long iron handle on which a piece of anything could be laid and held over the fire to toast or roast. Quite often some fresh caught fish would be cleaned, split, coated in oatmeal and done over the hot coals, eaten at once of course with the fingers and at its absolutely best. Caithes in Orkney, cuddins in Caithness - a favourite, caught on an evening out on the sea in a small boat with a bamboo rod we called a wand and white goose feather flies hiding the three barbed hooks. And the tea pot, constantly in use.
Crocks from the farm house, often the remains of an old tea service or other broken sets of plates or such but good enough for the Bothy. A cupboard held such things as sugar in a jam jar with a lid on it salt, butter, milk, bread, a biscuit tin. Mice were usually their companions, so store food out of their reach..

Cups without saucers, maybe just a few odd saucers and sometimes we recognised a cup or two from a Farm house tea set that had been broken, spoiling the set for our mother but good enough for the bothy boys!!. Nestle’s Condensed Milk in a can with a hole punched in the top. Sweet stuff it was too. Our mother never allowed it in the Farm House so we begged a spoonful if we could. Stolen fruit is tastier I am told, and I cannot argue that one.
Their substantial breakfast was at eleven o’clock, taken in the farmhouse kitchen. And dinner at 6 p.m. Again we children liked to be in the kitchen when the men were there, just to feel a bit grown up and to listen quietly to their banter.

They usually had homes in other parts of the Island though one or two came out-with Stronsay, but they varied over the years. Though the distance to their own home could be quite short, never-the-less with no cars the men lived on the place anyway, though an occasional one came from nearby by bike. When the herring fishing was in full swing there might be an extra man in the bothy, but short-term while the fishing lasted as usually there was plenty of accommodation for herring workers in the Village.

The Bothy Men. Smells of red Lifeboy soap, soap suds, sweat, shitty rubber or tackety boots, working clothes. Fag smoke, Woodbines or Gold Flake or Players or Capstan for the hardy. Or roll your own. Not many pipe smokers in the Bothy, I remember none at all, more for the older married men. Usually grey ashes beneath the fire, fag ends among them. I never remember the ashes ever being totally cleaned out but they must have had a doing sometimes. Black well smoked wooden mantelpiece above the fire, odds and ends on it, a tinny alarm clock with a loud enough tick, strident if it went off. Sometimes it did. A cord slung across the mantelpiece, sometimes holding newly washed socks or a shirt hanging to dry. or a semmit or Long Johns.

There was a table in the window with a white enamelled basin, used for anything and everything such as washing plates, peeling potatoes, or for shaving with a small mirror hung at the side of the window or sometimes set on the window ledge. I think the morning wash and shave was standard, I cannot remember any of the Bothy men ever appearing for work unshaven. And always the smell of Lifeboy soap.

Either side of the stairs in the attic were two bedrooms, two beds in each, a couple of old wardrobes and a small table or two. Nothing on the wooden floors except a sheep skin rug or two, or maybe a bit of linoleum. Tin chanty pots under each bed for No 1s., No 2s were out the door and round the back to a small lean-to shed equipped with a thunderbox and a tin bucket and some torn newspaper spiked on a nail. Quite functional really if a bit drafty, one did not linger. We had a proper bathroom with hot water in the farm house but such luxuries were not for the men!!

The downstairs room opposite the kitchen was often the garage for a motorbike in various stages of repair, or disrepair. It had been the “ben room” of the former farm cottage, flagstone floored. There was a collection of motor bike parts and one whole machine, who owned it I cannot remember. Smells of oil and petrol. And push bikes, usually well kept and treasured, but again some bits and pieces of old time-served favourites. Spanners and oil cans and rags lying around.
A lean-to shed at the end of the bothy held their coal and firewood, and much else besides. A glory hole.

I remember some of them having a “boxy”, or melodeon, or accordion, call it what you will, sometimes a key board, sometimes button. Sometimes a fiddle. The most men I remember living there was four one harvest, but normally not more than two.

Latterly there were no bothy men, we children took over the bothy as our retreat, lighting the fire, making a memorable pot of leek soup with vegies pinched from the kitchen garden and other ingredients pinched from the farm kitchen. Tasted superb, better than anything our mother ever made!! There it was we smoked a fag begged from Wullie Peace the cattleman, or devised our many childrens games. It was ours.