Around the Rowan Tree, Day Four

It was said of the Carse land that it had neither water in the summer, firewood in the winter nor the grace of God all year round

At midnight the nurse examined me and said: “A while to go yet – perhaps tomorrow at midday.” I’d been having trouble sleeping of late so she gave me a sleeping tablet and with that and her reassuring words I fell fast asleep. Ronald came in about lam. I woke momentarily and told him what had happened and what the nurse had said.

“I’ll not disturb you,” Ronald said thoughtfully. “I’ll sleep on the sofa downstairs. Here’s my stick to knock on the floor if you need me.”

I woke up about 6am and suddenly knew the nurse was wrong. The birth wouldn’t be long. I banged frantically on the floor.

Ronald took a wee bit of waking but when he did, he dashed upstairs and then in no time was off to collect the nurse. “The quickest way to be sure of getting her,” he said.

It hardly seemed any time at all until they were back, the nurse and Mrs Hodge, the lady from the village who helped me from time to time. There was nothing she couldn’t turn her hand to.

She had had seven children herself. One of her children had been premature and had been put in a shoe box by the fire. She had grown to be a beautiful young woman who had seven children of her own, all born at home. Mrs Hodge was a lady of wide experience in that field. Laughing Finding the birth imminent, they phoned the doctor but baby wouldn’t wait and, with the aid of the nurse and Mrs Hodge, came boldly into the world.

Three minutes late the doctor arrived – very disappointed to be too late.

After seeing everything was in order, he disappeared downstairs and came back with a cup of tea, laughing his head off.

“It’s the rest of your kids,” he said. “They are all half dressed and sitting on top of the Aga.” He handed me the tea. “All I can do,” he said. It was the worst cup of tea I had ever tasted but I didn’t tell him that.

It wasn’t long before the bedroom was full of people. Ronald and the doctor having a dram, the nurse, Mrs Hodge and all the fully-dressed children having an apple juice to celebrate this new little girl.

Changes were coming gradually to the farm. East Inchmichael had 300 acres of good arable land. Much of it was sea clay which had been laid down a long time ago.

This heavy land could be very difficult to work – plough it or sow it at the wrong time or in the wrong weather and it became unworkable.

I remember once Ronald trying to put turnip seed into the ground in late May.

“Impossible,” he told me. “We had a lovely, fine bed waiting for the seed, then came the heavy rain and now drought and the field’s gone as hard as dry concrete.” He further explained: “It’s impossible to put seed in that.”

So that year we had to buy in neeps for the overwintering cattle.

The trouble was that you could never predict what the weather was going to be in unpredictable Scotland and often your best guess could be wrong and you would get the opposite to what you had been expecting.

I expect it had always been the same on the farm since first they began to cultivate the land back in the 16th Century when the monks from Coupar Angus Abbey walked over the Sidlaw Hills looking for the means to more revenue. Useless They were given this useless bit of land bordering the River Tay that was more or less all marsh.

The monks, however, saw potential where no other had and began draining the land by digging ditches, called pows, leading down to the river.

Gradually they formed patches of land for possible cultivation. These patches, or pendicles as they were called, were rented out to the people of the Carse.

The rent consisted of so much food for the abbey – barley and vegetables from the land and pigeons from the pigeon lofts with their three stone spires, one or two of which are still standing to this day.

There were also fish from the stanks. A stank was a pool of stagnant water in which fish were kept and bred, surely the precursor of the fish farms.

On my many walks around the farm I used to imagine how it must have been in those days when the elegant cranes still inhabited the wet land.

In my imagination I could picture these delicatelooking, white birds taking off and white wings disappearing into the incredible crimson and gold sunsets we got from time to time.

Or I would think of them emerging from the ghostly white mists we still got in the mornings when the ancient hawthorn bushes and willow trees bordering the pows took on strange shapes.

During the Reformation one clever abbot, a younger son from some Duke’s household, seeing what might happen, gave these pendicles to some of his illegitimate children and so gradually over time the farms grew. Inhospitable But the Carse then was an inhospitable place. There were no deep wells and people died of typhoid. There wasn’t much in the way of trees and so wood to make houses was short.

The earliest buildings were of clay bound together with horses’ hair.

It was said of the Carse land that it had neither water in the summer, firewood in the winter nor the grace of God all year round.

Two miles from our farm a village grew where weaving became the main trade until the looms from Dundee took over.

Not much was written down about this area so little is known for certain, but it has been said that once the tents of the army of General Monck were spread over the land.

When sand was being taken from our one hill by those that were making the railway, stone coffins from a much earlier date were found.

In the 1980s, after an aerial survey in a very dry year, evidence was found of a souterrain – a round circle on the ground.

So people had lived here on the higher ground from the early time when the Picts had inhabited Dunsinane Hill only a few miles off.

There was talk too of a hermit Gillie Michael who was given three acres of land by the local landed gentry.

It was a recognised custom to give living space to these holy men who wished to live the life of a recluse. In return the landlord got special prayers for the safety of himself and his family.

More tomorrow.

Margaret Gillies Brown