Isla group were bothy loons

James Howie’s postcard showing east Perthshire’s ‘Islabank Boys’ is yielding a few interesting remarks from Craigie readers.

Crieff dweller Jim Black emails to say he doubts that the – at least partly Irish – seven-strong line-up shown in the image we recently published would have been a musical group of some kind, despite an accordion being positioned foremost among their number.

He emails: “I have a collection of very similar photographs. Like them, the Islabank photo appears to show a standard

‘bothy loons’ photograph of a type taken in their hundreds in the 1920s and ‘30s by travelling photographers on farms all across the east and north-east of Scotland.

“The photographers encouraged the farm workers to pose with such visual props as the melodeon, for entertainment in the bothy; brose caups – held by the two seated men who wear knee-straps known in Angus as ‘Wull Tams’ or ‘Nicky Tams’; the axe used for hacking ‘panny’ (firewood) to heat the bothy but often jokingly placed beside a half-loaf to suggest it was used to cut the bread; the bothy pot with the name of the farm painted on it, for boiling the porridge; and a frying pan for the weekend sausages.

“The brooms were standard equipment for sweeping the farm close or the bothy – often a rare event!”

Meanwhile, James Lindsay gets in touch to tell us that he has a very close personal connection to the gang of men posing with various artefacts in the picture.

He explains: “I possessed the original postcard which I passed on to a deltiogolist friend. The man on the right of the photo is my grandfather James Lindsay.

“The postcard is dated February 22 1910. As far as I know, he was working at Hills of Bendochy, which is an adjacent farm to Isla Bank. He was later injured in the first Battle of Ypres and returned to work at the farm, where my father was born in 1916.

“I was not aware that my grandfather was musical, but my father – also James Lindsay – was and he went on to have a country dance band in the Blairgowrie area.”