Biographical and family history information about Christina...
Track Information
Original Track ID
SA1972.217.B4; SA1072.217.B5; SA1972.217.B6
Original Tape ID
Summary
Biographical and family history information about Christina Stewart; her brother James; Davie Stewart, the Iron Man.
Christina Stewart lists the types of work she has done: at the flax, the peat moss, the harvest and the potato lifting, and for thirty-six years at the mill at a farm near Fetterangus. Auld Maria, Jeannie Robertson's mother, was Christina's cousin. Jane Turriff comments that they are all friends [i.e. relations]. Christina travelled as far as Inverness and Tomintoul, and the Goat Hill when she was a child. Her mother's family all went barefoot and were all healthy. Her father and all her brothers were pipers. Her husband served in the Gordon Highlanders in the First World War. Her two sons served in the Second World War, and her daughter in the NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes]. Her elder brother, James Stewart, served in the Boer War, having joined the army aged sixteen and came home to Aberdeen with a canary and a parrot. He married an Irish woman and lived in Ireland for a long time. He died aged sixty-two while preparing to play his pipes in the Gallowgate in Aberdeen.
Hamish Henderson recalls a story about Jeannie Robertson's brother who was known as the Iron Man. He was pursued after a fight in an Aberdeen bar and fell into a vat of glue in a factory. Christina Stewart identifies the factory as a place where combs were made.
Item Notes
A few Travellers' Cant words on track. In another telling of the story of the pursuit of the Iron Man it is a vat a soap that he falls into.
Item Subject/Person
Stewart, Christina; Stewart, James
Recording Location
County - Aberdeenshire
Parish - Old Deer
Village/Place - Fetterangus
Language
Scots, Traveller Cant (Scots/Romani)
Genre
Collection
Source Type
Reel to reel
Audio Quality
Good