Ardnish Was Home Episode 13

Mother got to know all the shepherds in the area, and once a year would head off for the sheepdog trials with Flash and relish the craic with the others. I would go with her, but Father never did. “It’s your mother’s thing,” he would say.

All the shepherds but one were Catholic, and one, a mild and gentle soul, was called Donnie Macleod and he hailed from Harris.

Many of the people from the Outer Isles are known as ‘Wee Frees’, that is to say that they are members of a Protestant group who don’t drink and, on the Sabbath, nothing apart from praying happens.

The trials were always held on a Saturday, and the shepherds, apart from Donnie Macleod, would go along the previous night, have a few too many drams and talk about sheep.

The problem was that the incomer had great dogs, and every year for 10 years he would win. The laird of wherever the trials were that year would pass across the £10 prize money and the cup, and the other shepherds would curse under their breath.

Inspired

The Friday night get-together was particularly inspired one year. The shepherds decided that Saturday wouldn’t do at all, they were all far too busy what with one thing and another, and it would be far better if the trials were moved to the Sunday from then on. Mother and Flash won the next year.

My father Donald John is always called Donald John – never Donald or Donnie. It may seem slightly odd, as Gillies is a Macdonald name, so it is really Donald, son of Donald.

There’s a man in Kinlocheil called Alexander Alexander, known as Double Sandy. You could never be too serious with my father around; he has a way with him that brings people to a quick smile.

He is a kind and generous man, and my mother always said he would take the food from his famished children’s table and give it to a stranger rather than let him go on with an empty stomach.

She would say: “It’s lucky we don’t live on the Mallaig road, with all its passing traffic. We’d have starved by now.”

Father is tall and thin, has a mop of red hair streaked with grey, and a craggy smiling face. He’s 60 years old. He’s a piper, and although his fingers are a wee bit stiff now, he used to be the best in the land.

He was Pipe Major of the Lovat Scouts before I was born, and hoped that I, too, would be the same. There is no doubt, with this background, that he was much respected in the area.

Everyone knew him, the lairds acknowledged him as one at their level, and, when a tune was needed to be dedicated to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Fort William, it was my father who did the honours.

It is said in the family that I hadn’t even reached my first birthday when he had me on his knee blowing into a wee metal pipe that he had made into a chanter of sorts.

“Have you played yet?” he would ask me every morning, almost before my feet had touched the floor beside the bed. Or, as he wrote a new tune: “Do you think the birl would do better before the D or after it?”

He soldiered for about half his life, and it was during these years that there was some money around, but these didn’t coincide with my life as the regiment was disbanded after the Boer War and resurrected for this war.

Impaired

The beautiful hills and sandy beach around the village didn’t make for a living, and when the market for kelp died with the invention of a cheaper chemical that did the same job, half the income of the place was gone. That is when people had to leave.

But not Father. “I would rather stay here and die than follow Aunt Lexie to Canada, or head off to the shipyards in Glasgow,” he would declare loudly. “And in any case – ‘plays the finest Strathspey and Reel in the country’’ – would having that on my papers secure me a job?”

Not to mention the fact that he had a wooden leg, so his mobility was impaired. He did carpentry work at Roshven House quite a lot, creating the panelling and shelving in the library.

He took three years to do it, often spending a couple of weeks over there at a time.

He also did some seasonal ghillie work for Arisaig Estate. He had to watch the deer on the hills, establish where they had wandered off to when the stalking was on, and work with the ponies taking the stags back to the larder at the end of the day.

The ponies came to him to be saddled up, and he would ride one with his leg sticking out. The stalker for Ardnish was big Ewen Cameron who lived at Polnish, and it was him my father worked for.

Father was paid by the day and didn’t work for much more than a third of the year. But we did have the house rent free, and the factor allowed us three cows.

Ewen was known as Ewen Fiadhaich, which means wild Ewen, as in his youth he was as wild as a swarm of bees, getting banned from school, often wildly drunk and having tremendous fights over girls.

My mother in her determined way once pleaded with the factor for ways of getting more work to the village. “Soon everyone will have gone,” she said, “and Donald John will have us fade away.”

Improvement

When my father was out with the laird stalking, my mother followed them up and, with big Ewen off gralloching a beast, she told the laird how it was: “There is a 60acre field behind the village, which is too boggy for anything much more than rough grazing.

“You could make an improvement which would make it possible for us to continue to live there.”

And so it happened. We had eight men come and stay for a month, and with the four in the village helping as well, a massive trench was dug along the middle of the bog, running down to the sea.

A high fence was put around the field to keep the deer out, and grass seed was provided for us. The next year, we had a small farm, with hay and potatoes.

My father wrote a letter to the laird saying if he ever had need of a piper he would be delighted to play and would take nothing for it.

You could never be too serious with my father around; he has a way with him that brings people to a quick smile