The Uncommon Herd

By Ian Platt

William Presslie's "The Uncommon Herd" brings the mid 19th Century rural poor of Aberdeenshire, Scotland to life. It is difficult to judge which was harder, the day to day unremarked cruelty of schooling or the unrelenting demands of labour on farms, in all weathers and all seasons. William's story is true history populated by remarkable characters from Wellington's disabled soldier, become schoolteacher, to the beautiful Belle and her successful elopement with the unknown lover. We learn how farm servants entertained themselves, in those days long before Radio and TV, with stories, songs, poetry and occasional dancing to the fiddle. Despite his hugely disrupted education it becomes clear that William's future lies in the pursuits of the intellect rather than the physical. Having built a of reputation for intelligence, reliability and perseverance, a previous employer recommends William for the position of man-servant to John Gordon of Cairnbulg in the House of Leask. Everything falls into place. Upstairs, Downstairs or connected to the House of Leask are various characters who through William's prose again engage, amuse or even outrage, our sensibilities. William himself embarks on an upwardly mobile learning curve, which will lead him from the Croft, eventually to the Manse, via his own Schoolroom, all achieved with dedication and some help from the influential Gordon family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Platt
• Release date: Jul 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476323282

Ian Platt

Following a career in advertising and the media, primarily in Marketing and Research, he left his position as Marketing Director of the commercial arm of one of ITV's regional broadcasters in the UK, to work for himself as a Consultant. His advisory work took him to many countries from Norway to Jordan and Russian Siberia to the Gambia. Having spent a large part of his life writing for commerce, he has now decided to spend time writing for pleasure and possibly, profit.

Book preview

The Uncommon Herd

by William Presslie

Edited and Published by

Ian W. Platt at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Ian Platt

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER I Childhood

CHAPTER II Boyhood

CHAPTER III - Advanced Boyhood

CHAPTER IV - Manhood

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

The author of The Uncommon Herd, the Reverend William Presslie, was born in 1832 in the porter-lodge of the House of Arnage, 5 miles North of Ellon, Aberdeenshire. His birthplace is best described In his own words: In addition to the porter-lodge, my father had a croft attached to it and kept two or three cows, a calf or two, a few sheep and some pigs and barn-door fowls. William had a younger brother and two younger sisters.

The family were close to the land and epitomised, not the hard working, hard-pressed middle about whom we are now hearing so much, but the hard working, dirt poor of the Nineteenth Century. Along with many rural boys of this period William’s rudimentary schooling was interrupted through the regular requirement to work on the farms in the area. William very quickly became an expert cowherd. Over the next few years he had many jobs of varying responsibility, all working on farms except one at the Mill of Ardlethen. There, at the age of twelve, William was conducting business, selling cloth from a horse and cart and trusted to travel alone around the villages of North East Aberdeenshire.

Following more farm work and garden work where he hired himself in the feeing markets held on quarter days twice a year, at the age of eighteen he finds himself hired for the last time, which was to prove the first real watershed in William’s life and to provide us with his fascinating, and at times amusing, story of his time in the House of Leask owned by a branch of one of Scotland’s most famous families.

The below stairs establishment in the house at this time consisted of the Butler, a Cook, a Groom, Upper Housemaid, two other maids and a younger scullery maid plus a non-resident gardener. The master, John Gordon, allowed his boy, the young William, to take advantage of his library and this act was to prove the catalyst for William’s decision to commit to a tentative step of upward mobility aspiring to become a schoolmaster. Despite John Gordon’s disappointment at losing a good and faithful servant he and his prestigious family nevertheless supported William in achieving his goal. He qualified, was appointed to a school in Aberdeen and embarked upon his new career within 20 months of leaving the House of Leask.

He wrote this, his life story: The Uncommon Herd, at the age of 24. Some twelve years later, another watershed, Bishop Suther of Aberdeen conducted the marriage of William to Jeannie Cruickshank. Soon after, William took a third watershed decision: to take Holy Orders and to become an Episcopalian clergyman. His ministry started in the Orkney Islands and then in 1872 began his 42 years of service as the Rector of St Drostane’s, Lochlee, Glenesk, until his death in 1914.

William had two sons: Thomas (known as Suther) who was to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a clergyman, eventually to become an Hon. Canon of Edinburgh Cathedral. His other son, John Reynard McQueen Presslie was my Grandfather, he served in the Boer War and later died in tragic circumstances in South Africa.

I must express my thanks to the late Miss Ruth Presslie, William’s granddaughter, who proved to be a hoarder. To my Mother, another granddaughter, who rescued the manuscript when Ruth changed her mind about the hoarding policy, and not least to my Secretary, Mrs Ann Callan, who, in her own time and with infinite patience transcribed the original hand written document. Finally thanks are due to my wife Nadine’s design of the Cover and for her mastery of modern technology to enable the production to reach the outside world, 156 years after William Presslie took up his pen.

Ian William Platt

CHAPTER I - Childhood

It is the necessary fate of autobiographies to be to a certain extent incomplete. For a relation of his circumstances previous to the time to which his memory stretches back the writer of his own life is indebted to the narratives of others for the materials with which he composes the history of his early years, while a few declining years and the story of his death must be added by another pen. I, in committing the chief events of the bygone part of my life to paper, shall very seldom have recourse to the accounts of tattling gossips: I shall chiefly depend upon my own recollection, and with this view I shall make a commencement at the most remote period to which my memory carries me back.

At this time I was perhaps four years old. I have faint and fairly indistinct recollections of myself running about in a long white and blue chequered slip and petticoats. My father and mother kept the porter-lodge on the approach to the House of Arnage, a real old feudal castle in miniature or rather as we say on a small scale, situated on the south eastern brow of a hill in the midst of a wood of considerable extent at a distance of somewhat less than five miles north from Ellon and about a mile to the west of the public road leading to New-Deer. The estate of Arnage is the property of John Leith Ross Esqr. and consists of about three or four hundred acres. In addition to the porter-lodge my father had a Croft attached to it and kept two or three cows and a calf or two with a few sheep and some pigs, barn-door fowls, etc.

My next recollections after those of the chequered slip are about my mother teaching me the letters and coaxing me to rock my brother’s cradle - this being the only way in which I could recompense her for the time she put off with me in the way of tuition. I never had any great predilection for nursing, - I verily believe I often handled my brother somewhat roughly, but when my labour in this department was increased by the appearance of my oldest sister the drudgery became unbearable. Whenever I grumbled my mother threatened to send me to school, where I was told there was an ill-natured master who thrashed all his boys with a great big leather strap that had a great lot of tails at the end of it; and one fine summer morning, after putting my brother to sleep in the cradle, she took my sister in her arms,·and me in her hand, and actually carried her threat into execution

The master to whom I was taken was an old man named James Johnston, who had squandered away his youth in trying to learn a multitude of things, and when he arrived at the age of about thirty he made the discovery that he had been unsuccessful in them all. About this time the terror of Napoleon had induced this nation to increase the number of soldiers, and James, who accounted for his past failures upon the supposition that he had hitherto in all cases mistaken his profession, took it into his head that perhaps his proper vocation was the army. Accordingly he lost no time in enrolling himself among those noble heroes who resolved at least to fight, and, if need were, to die for their country, and, as he used to say they dressed him in a red coat with a capital G.R. on the neck and buttons of it. It was either in the peninsular or continental war that James had the good fortune to get himself wounded in the left knee; in consequence of which he was discharged and a small pension awarded to him for life, so that he was able to return to his native place and live if not in opulence yet much more comfortably than he had ever done before he enlisted. James never had much love for any employment that was hard upon the body, so for the remainder of his life he resolved to turn schoolmaster, partly, I suppose, to keep off ennui, and partly as a means of increasing his creature comforts by honest industry. His qualifications for this occupation, according to modern opinions, were by no means extensive: but in his own mind they were of a very high order indeed. Had he not seen the world? Had he not been through Gibraltar, France and Spain? while the parish minister himself, a very high standard with the country people, had never, so far as any one there knew, been farther than Aberdeen where it seems he studied at the University! James would like to know who in all the parish, let alone the district from which he expected to draw scholars, could compete with him at teaching Geography, since he had seen so many of the places marked on the map of Europe.

I ought to have mentioned that before James became a soldier he had inveigled himself into the meshes of matrimony and had some children, one of whom during James’s absence had grown up to manhood and learned to be a blacksmith. On his return James came to live with this son who built a school for him on the end of his smithy. (For this information regarding Mr. James Johnson I am indebted to what I have characterised above as the accounts of tattling gossips.) James’s school was as I have said at the end of his son’s smithy, and the smithy was - is still though both James and his school are among the things that were - close upon the road between Ellon and New Deer, not far from the fourth milestone counting from the former place, and fully a mile from our house. James himself was taking his morning walk and I recollect being afraid of the crutch on which he leaned with his left arm. Preliminaries arranged, my mother returned home and left me with my first schoolmaster.

I have no very distinct recollections about my first day at school, nor do I remember anything whatever about my progress there that summer except that when I came home at night my father and mother took by turns the labour of teaching me the proper pronunciation of the letters, for it seems I was taught by James the old-fashioned way. Winter came with its short days, bad weather, and worse roads and put a stop to my schooling for a season; but no sooner did the brighter days of summer return than I was sent back again, and in this way I think I must have attended James Johnston ’s school three summers. There were generally from fifteen to twenty-five scholars all the year round. In winter the number of big boys was greater owing to a lot of boys attending during that season who had been herds all the summer when there were more small children who were unable to come through the winter. I learned the A B C from the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, which is usually printed with the Alphabet and some short sentences of monosyllables at the commencement. Farther advanced children had books of various descriptions. One had the Pilgrim’s Progress, another Robinson Crusoe, another Watt’s Hymns, another would have Baxter's Saints’ Rest, and another a book usually called The Collection, there being generally as many different classes as there were children, and every child just brought from home the most readable book he or she could lay hands upon. The highest class read from the Bible - very often Solomon’s Proverbs or some of the Gospels. The Shorter Catechism and some Paraphrases usually bound up with Bibles were duly learned by heart and a small portion repeated by some of the prime scholars every morning by way of prayer, for James, either from inability or diffidence or for some reason or another, never exercised himself in extemporary supplications, and to read a prayer from a printed book would have been deemed rank heresy and as a natural consequence have emptied his school. On Saturdays we did very little else but say paraphrases and the Catechism. As my parents were Episcopalians I was indulged with the privilege of being exempted from the Catechism and asked to say Lord's Prayer or the Belief instead. In the lessons that were said by heart there sometimes occurred words that surprised me very much. I remember how I wished to be able to read as fast as some of the older boys and girls, so that I could see those words in print. In vain I read or spelled through the fourth commandment for the following words the sea an dall tha tin the mis, and, as my search in other places for other clauses hidden under similar breaches of orthoepy was equally fruitless, I imagined that books revealed things to fast readers undiscoverable by such poor scholars as I was. I recollect quite well that I mentioned this suspicion to my mother, and she, doubtless with the laudable intention of making me exert myself to become a better scholar by taking advantage of my anxiety to gratify an excited curiosity, spoke to me in such a way as to confirm me in this belief. So much for the lessons taught there.

I must now describe the school furniture. This was of the most simple kind. The school - room was an oblong, four sided building. at one end - that farthest remote from the door - was the fireplace; at the opposite end the master’s bed, a wooden erection about four feet broad by six feet long, such as we see still in the farm-houses, with folding doors like a press; and close to the two walls that met at the right hand side of the fireplace stood a strong wooden chair. At the same side but in the corner where the foot of the bed met the side wall stood another chair. A third chair was placed at the end opposite to the fireplace nearly at the head of the bed. These three chairs formed a right angle, and upon them were laid the ends of two strong heavy planks, one extending along the side wall, and the other along the front of the master’s bed keeping the bed doors shut during the day. (I well remember how I pitied the poor chair that stood in the double corner and had an end of each plank to support with of course a double share of the children’s weight.) The side at the left hand of the fireplace remains to be mentioned. Here there stood a common deal table at such a distance from the wall as enabled the writers to sit on all the four sides of it. At the head of the table almost close by the fire was the rostrum, a huge high-backed, well padded armchair placed so that the master sat in it looking across the room diagonally. The entrance was by a narrow passage leading from the outer door along the head of the bed, in a straight line with which was the inner door just opposite to the foot of the writing table. There were three windows: one in each of the side walls, and one in the end at the master’s back, as in the corresponding place at the other side of the fire was a sort of wooden press for books, slates, etc. The room was perhaps about twenty-four feet long by eighteen broad, a huge stone set upright against the wall flanked by one of smaller dimensions on each side of it formed the fireplace, and the floor was of well-hardened clay. The children when reading stood in the middle of the floor at a little distance from the front of the master’s chair, but in such a way as to leave a passage, round their backs, from the door to the fire, for Bawbie, his daughter-in-law as well as his successor in the capacity of school-teacher, who usually made her appearance two or three times in the course of the forenoon to replenish the fire and cook the master’s dinner.

The mention of Bawbie leads me to note down a few lines to her memory. She was a curiosity in her way. By hearing her husband’s father teaching several times every day, and occasionally teaching the wee things herself, in the course of a few years she got herself initiated into all the intricate mysteries of school-craft; so that when her hoary-headed father-in-law took his departure she magnanimously resolved to fill the place of that important functionary to