Charles Reid's family history on Aberdeenshire farms; harves...
Track Information
Original Track ID
SA1980.104
Original Tape ID
Summary
Charles Reid's family history on Aberdeenshire farms; harvest meals; degrading social relations; payment in kind.
The farming population of Kennethmont was largely Episcopalian. As a child, Charles Reid went to the Presbyterian kirk [church]. He lists the farms where his mother worked as a farmservant before she was married. Three generations of Mr Reid's family worked at Middleton of Rora: his grandmother, mother and sister. When his grandmother was there she had to cook for seventeen men at harvest time. The food was taken to the field in enamel buckets on a yoke. There was soup-tatties [potato soup], rice pudding, oatcakes and milk.
Mr Reid lists the farms where his family lived when he was a child. His father stayed unusually long at each place. Mr Reid comments on how sad it was for some cottars to move every year. He also thought it degrading to have to stand for employment at the feeing market, and be looked over by a farmer, who might comment that a boy was not big-bodied and had been ill-wintered [badly fed over the winter]. The feeing markets died out and the farmers advertised in the press for workers. Various feeing markets are mentioned, including the Rascal Fair for men who had taken arles [earnest money] then broken their bargains. Cottars were paid partly in perquisites, in the form of bolls of oatmeal, potatoes and milk, with sometimes a gift of herring.
Item Location
County - Aberdeenshire
Language
English, Scots
Genre
Collection
Source Type
Reel to reel
Audio Quality
Good