Steamboats on the West Coast of Scotland

Every month from April to October, the Friends of Innerpeffray Library hold a talk on a wide variety of topics with guest speakers, to raise funds for the Library. For every talk, the Keeper selects a book from the Collection to complement the subject of the talk.  Last Wednesday, the 8th of April, the subject was The Puffer, and the talk given by Eleanor Miller.  The chosen book was Sir Archibald Geikie's Scottish Reminiscences (1904), the extract is given below.

When Johnson and Boswell landed in Skye in the year 1773, there was not  road in the whole island   practicable for a wheeled carriage.  Locomotion, when not afoot, was either on horseback or by boat.  The inland bridle-tracks lay among loose boulders, over rough, bare rock, or across stretches of soft, sometimes treacherous bog. The boats were often leaky, the oars and rowlocks unsound, the boatmen unskilful; whiel the weather, even in summer, is boisterous enough to make the navigation of the sea-lochs and sounds difficult or impossible for small craft.  And such continued to be the conditions in which the social life of the West Highlands was carried on long after Johnson's time.  During the first thirty or more years of last century the voyage from the Clyde to Skye was made in sailing packets, and generally took from ten to fifteen days.  It as not until steamboats began to ply along the coast that the scattered islands were brought into closer touch with each other and with the Lowlands.  To the memory of David Hutcheson who organised the steamboat serice among the Western Highlands and Islands, Scotland owes a debt of gratitude.  The development of this service has been the gradual evolution of some seventy years.  Hlf a century ago it was far from havng reached it present state of advancement.  There were then no steamers up the West Coast to Skye and the outer Hebrides, save those which carried cargo and came round the Mull of Cantyre.  During the herring season, and about the times of the cattle markets, the irregularities and discomfort of these vessels can hardly be exaggerated.  When the decks were already loaded perhaps with odoriferous barrels of herring, and when it seemed impossible that they could hold anything more, the vessel might have to take  long detour to the head of some mountain-girdled sea-loch to fetch away a flock of sheep, or a herd of Highland cattle,  At most of the places there were no piers.  Passengers had accordingly to dismebark in small boats, sometimes at a considerable distance...
As the steamboat called at each place in summer only once, in later years twice, in a week, and in winter only once in a fortnight, the day of its arrival was eagerly looked forward to by the population, in expectation of the supplies of all kinds, as well as the letters and newspapers, which it brought from the south.  you might never be sure at what hour of the day or night it might make its appearance, and if you expected friends to arrive by it or if you proposed yourself to take a passage in it, you needed to be on the watch, perhaps for many weary hours. In fine weather, this detention was endurable enough; but in the frequent storms of wind and rain, much patience and some strength of constitution were needed to withstand the effects of the exposure.  The desirability of of having waiting-rooms or places of shelter of any kind is even yet not fully realised by the Celtic mind...
William Black, the novelist, used to tell of an English clergyman who, having breakfasted and paid his bill at Tobermory, was anxious for the arrival of the steamboat that was to take him north.  He made his way to the pier, and alkd up and down there for a time, but could see no sign of the vessel.  At last, accosting a Highlander, who, leaning against a wall,  was smoking a cutty-pipe, he asked him when the Skye steamer would call. Out came the pipe, followed by the laconic answer, 'That's her smoke' and the speaker pointed in the direction of the Sound of Mull.  The traveller for a time could observe nothing to indicate the expected vessel, but at last noticed a streak of dark smoke rising against the Morven Hills on the far side of the island that guards the little bay of Tobermory.  When at last the steamer itself rounded the point and came fully into sight, it seemed a much smaller vessel than he had supposed it would be and he remarked to the Highlander, 'That the Skye steamer! that boat will curely never get to Skye.'  The pipe was whisked out again to make way for the indignant reply, 'She'll be in Skye this afternoon, nothing happens to Skye.' The order of nature might concievably go wrong, but Hutcheson's arrangements could be absolutely depended upon.

Witchcraft in Strathearn

The practice of witchcraft was  widespread in 16^th and 17^th century Scotland. In 1563 during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots a law was passed making witchcraft a capital crime. Witchcraft was described as a “havy abominabill superstitioun”, “against the Law of God” “abusand the pepill”. In other words it was an offence against both God (and therefore the church) and society.

The passing of the Act did not immediately lead to a large scale witch hunt although there were a number of trials and executions between 1563 and 1590. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 took place during the reign of James VI who himself wrote his own work “Daemonologie” on the subject in 1597. The exact number of those executed at this time is unknown but believed to be about 200. This was the second of five nationwide witch hunts between 1590 and 1662. One of the most famous trials took place at North Berwick but many other areas were affected including Perthshire, Fife. Stirlingshire and specially Aberdeenshire.

“The Annals of Auchterarder and Memorials of Strathearn” recounts a record from the Register of The Privy Council on 1^st May 1610. ‘The Drummonds of the Kirktown of Auchterarder appear to have been a troublesome family. John Drummond came under notice of the Privy Council of Scotland and he and Duncan Neishe, Burgess of the Cannongait as his cautioner had to grant bond of £500 not to harm David and Robert Grahame of Callander. The fate of Alexander Drummond, probably the father of John, was a tragical one. Without being a practiser of witchcraft in the acceptation of the term he used unlawful acts which brought him within reach of the Act of 1563. His crime appears to have been using charms for curing sickness both in men and cattle which he did openly. He was brought to trial in January 1629 and on 3^rd July he was sentenced to death and suffered accordingly at the Market Cross of Edinburgh. One of the witnesses was Mr Freebairn, who was minister of Madderty from  1620 to 1657.’

This of course was in an age when medicine and doctors were not generally available so people turned to witches to cure illnesses and many of the herbs used then have now been shown to have medicinal benefits. Similarly in an age of ignorance some people thought that illnesses particularly in children such as epilepsy, convulsions and fevers were the work of witches. Often their fears were confirmed by unskilled Physicians.

Most of the persecuted were women, the traditional description of a witch as contained in “Scots Discover of Witchcraft “ 1665  which describes them as ‘ women which be commonly old, lame, blear eyed, pale, fowl and full of wrinkles’. A description which could be applied to many older women.

Scotland is estimated to have been Europe’s biggest persecutor of witches, in the 16^th and 17^th century it is thought that over 1500 people were executed, most were strangled then burnt. The last hanging for witchcraft took place in 1728.

PM

Explore books about witchcraft in the Library any time during our opening hours.

www.innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk

Every road leads to Innerpeffray…

Tucked away in the countryside, the white washed walls of Innerpeffray Library shining through the surrounding greenery are an unexpected but pleasant sight to the approaching visitor. Although off the popular tourist trail, every road in Perthshire seems to lead to the Library of Innerpeffray, and rightfully so since the Library in its long history has served the people of Perthshire near and far.

When we made our way to the Library for the first time to take up our positions as guest curators, we were captivated by the setting of the Library, but more so by its diverse book collection. Off the motorway and into the Strathearn countryside, on every new visit we seemed to get lost and enjoyed discovering new ways to get to the Library, which seemed limitless. Having come to do a project as part of our Masters course at the University of Stirling, our experience quickly turned from purely academic to a work we felt passionate about. We were given the opportunity to create two exhibitions for the 2014 season at the Library: The Battle of Bannockburn and Golf. Both topics are highly relevant this year for Scotland and for the local area and we were very excited to take up the challenge of presenting to the visitor what the more than 300 year old collection of the Library could tell about them.    

We spent many long hours in the first two months of the year becoming familiar with the collection to be able to pick just the few books which are now on display. The story of the Battle of Bannockburn has been told in different ways throughout the centuries, including songs, poetry, historic fiction and history books. A personal favourite is England’s Monarchs, with a great picture of a mean-looking Edward II and a brief description of his shameful defeat and flight from Bannockburn. In contrast to this unflattering portrayal, there is a heroic description and picture of his father, Edward I, of whom the author clearly has a more positive view, showing that the telling of history can be a matter of the author’s opinion. 

Golf has been taken up not only in popular chronicles such as the Scots magazine, describing one of the first Edinburgh Open’s, but also in fiction and satire. For example one of my favourites of the collection is a publication of the Punch magazine, including caricatures picking up on contemporary issues of the early 20^th century such as women’s voting rights and connecting it with the male dominated sport of golf.

As winter turned to spring and snowdrops surrounded the building, we became more and more aware of the multifaceted attractions of Innerpeffray Library in addition to its impressive collection; the beautiful, changing view from the reading room window and the surrounding Perthshire hills.

With the 1^st of March and the start of the tourist season, our work came to an end with an Opening Event attended by the Library’s Board of Governors and specially invited guests to whom we introduced our exhibitions. The work-based project has not only provided us with an expansive skill set useful for our academic studies and future employment, but also left us with a strong and lasting attachment to the Library of Innerpeffray and what it stands for.

Miriam & Joana

PS: Come and see the exhibitions, experience the collection and find your own road to the Library. A warm welcome is guaranteed! 

The Pleasures and Pastimes that the Wild Woods afford

It's been some time since our last post, and with the advent of Spring (hopefully), we thought you might enjoy a little 16th century thoughts on enjoying the great outdoors!

But the chiefe pleasure and pastime which commeth by wilde woods, is, that being joined to your house and champion habitation, (which is the place, where it must be seated or planted) it is pleasant to the sight: for by his diversitie of greenenes, it marvellously delighteth, and with great contentment recreateth the sight.

The second pleasure or pastime is, that the woodes (being neere unto your lodging) are alwaies full of all sorts of pretie birds, which might sing sommer and winter all the day long, and the most part of the night as nightingales and other such like, wherby their songs become joyful and delightsome to the eare, and so there is a pleasure and great contentment to the eare even to them in the house if it be neere unto.

Another pleasure us, that in the said woods there are alwaies great store of wood coists, popiniaies, stares, cranes and other sorts of bird which make you pastime to see them flie: there may also pleasure be reaped in taking of them with little engines, as with a call, nets, the tonnell, or others such like.

The fourth is, that in the woods are to be had conies, hares, squirrels, and other sorts of small beasts pleasant to behold, and of great service for the provision of vittaile.

The fifth is, that in hot seasons you may purchase a coole aire within the said woods, as those which will cover and defend you from the iniurie and vexation of the sunne, and contrariwise cooling you whether the heate will or no: and therein you have aklso to behold a comfortable greenenes, both upon the boughs and ground, which keepeth his grass greene through the cooleness and shadow of the trees.

The sixth is, that in winter being in the said woods, you are out of the iniurie and force of the winds and great cold, because they breake them off: and further in these woods you are solitarie, and may use your leasure, in reading, writing or meditating upon your affaires, without being disquieted or distracted, or drawne to cast your sight abroad over any far distant place of countrie, in as much as the sight cannot pearse through the boughs or bushes.

The Countrie Farm or Maison Rustique

Charles Estienne & Jean Liebault

1600

And now, for a bit of maths...

For centuries, humans have been arguing about ethics and morals. Is it ethical to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving children? If you find ten quid on the sidewalk, is it moral to keep it for yourself? Luckily, in 1725, Scottish Enlightenment scholar Frances Hutcheson came up with a foolproof way to measure the morality of your actions. In true Enlightenment fashion, Hutcheson applied rational thinking to a topic that has traditionally relied on emotion or religion. He actually created several mathematical formulas that, when applied, could show whether an action is more or less moral. For instance, take one of his simpler equations:

B=M/A

Hutcheson says that B stands for Benevolence (how virtuous someone is), M stands for Moment of Good (the positive action you perform), and A stands for Ability (how able someone is to perform a positive action). Therefore, in Hutcheson’s equation, benevolence or virtue is equal to the moment of good divided by a person’s ability to perform a good deed. That means that if a person’s ability is greater than the moment of good (for instance, if a millionaire gives only 20 pounds to charity), then the virtue of the moment is fractional. Hutcheson’s formula does make sense. We do congratulate people who give more than their ability may allow (such as someone who works a full day at the office and then also volunteers at a soup kitchen), and shake our heads at those who don’t perform to the fullness of their ability. However, the modern reader may easily find issue with Hutcheson’s approach. People and situations are so many and diverse; can a standardized formula really assert something as ambiguous as morality? If you’re in this camp, keep reading. Hutcheson’s formulas do get more complicated.

Hutcheson continues by adding another factor into his math: self-interest. He notes that some benevolent actions may actually be advantageous to the do-gooder, while others have the potential to harm the person performing the action. For these scenarios, Hutcheson creates two new formulas. First:

B=(M-I)/A

This equation is similar to the first, only it represents an action that may benefit the person performing it. In this case, Hutcheson subtracts I, or self-interest, from the moment of good, in order to “find the true Effect of Benevolence, or Virtue”. This means that an action will be less virtuous if it provides too many advantages to its performer. For example, if a student brings their teacher an apple to try to get a better grade in class, this action is less virtuous. On the other hand, Hutcheson also provides a formula for “laborious, painful, dangerous, or expensive Virtue”:

B=(M+I)/A

This represents an action which not only does not benefit the performer, but that is even potentially destructive. In this way, self-interest is contrary to benevolence, such as when a person donates their winter coat to a homeless person. Self-interest would dictate that the person should keep the coat to warm themselves, while benevolence says the opposite: give the coat away to someone less fortunate. In this equation, self-interest is added to the moment of good, and increases the virtue of the action.

Interestingly, even in Hutcheson’s rational, scientific approach, we can still see traces of emotion and religion. Even the language he uses—virtue, benevolence—is reminiscent of biblical lessons on morality. Studying theories like Hutcheson’s can show us a mixture of two great ideals in Scotland: religious and scientific enlightenment. We’ve seen Hutcheson take a conventionally religious experiment and modernize it into a mathematical experiment. But we may still be left with questions that can’t be answered with a simple experiment. This raises some questions: how far were the Enlightenment scholars from their religion? And how much did they actually lean on their religious teachings in order to scientifically advance Scotland?

Hutcheson’s ideas and equations can be found in the Innerpeffray Library’s copy of An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, pages 168-170. 

-Eliana

Recipes from the olden days

If I provided you with bread, onions, fish, eggs, and brandy, what would you try to make? Maybe you would come up with a nice slice of fish with breadcrumbs, or even some kind of a stew. Or, if you were from 18^th century England, you could cook up a steaming pot of typographic ink. Yes, ink! A book in the Innerpeffray’s 20^th century collection, A History of Printing Ink by C.H. Bloy, provides several recipes for the ink alongside of its history. Some of the ingredients may seem surprising to the modern reader. Take this 18^th century English recipe for ink:

Take 100 lb nut oil. Boil until like a syrup. Purify by adding 2 lb of coarse bread and 12 onions. Boil 35 lb of turpentine apart…When oil half cold, add turpentine and stir. The strength of the varnish should be gauged according to the surface of the paper to be printed.

For red ink, fish glue the size of a nut should be added, or brandy, or egg white.

This ink would have been used in a printing press to print text. I had to look up fish glue and turpentine, and found out that fish glue is the skin or bone of a fish that’s been heated in water, while turpentine is distilled tree resin. So it seems that most of these ingredients are either still available, or possible to make. If you’ve ever had the idea of printing up your own 18^th century-style leaflets, here’s your chance!

Going back even further in the history of printing, here’s a recipe for Chinese block-printing ink from 251 A.D.:

Lampblack was mixed in a mortar with a gum solution until it was like a paste. This was placed in moulds to dry and sold in sticks. The printer rubbed up a stick in a concave stone with some water. This ink was ideal for wood cuts and peculiarly. It was of no value for printing metal.

“Lampblack” is a black pigment made almost completely from carbon, collected as the soot of a burned substance, such as oil, fat, or resin. This is another ingredient that could still be obtainable today, albeit messily.

Books are made of more than the tales, poems, or histories that are printed on their pages. A book’s ink, paper, and binding each have their own interesting stories, and many artists devote their careers to papermaking or bookbinding. At the Innerpeffray, you can learn how many of our older books were made, peeking “behind-the-scenes” into what materials went into your favorite tomes. 

-Eliana

Scottish music, inside and out of the Innerpeffray

On Wednesday evening, the Friends of the Innerpeffray Library had the pleasure of attending a talk by Margaret Bennett, a Scottish folklorist and ethnologist. Ms. Bennett was discussing Scottish customs and traditions, as per her book, “Scottish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave”. Two of the loveliest points of the evening were when Ms. Bennet sang traditional Gaelic songs, one a lullaby, and the other a lament entitled “The Lament of Gregor MacGregor”. She reminded her audience of the importance of music in the milestone events of birth and burial. Lullabies, she noted, are a unique time of intimacy between a parent and baby as they interact through eye contact and the human voice. Ms. Bennett also taught us that in times of mourning, the ability to sing signifies the ability to live through tragedy. Some men and women even joined in with Ms. Bennett as she sang her lullaby and her lament, showing the threads of Scottish culture which ran through our group.

There are many traditional songbooks held in the Innerpeffray Library. On display now is the manuscript of a song written by Robert Burns, which was published in Perry’s Morning Chronicle on May 10, 1794. The song is written to Burns’ landlord’s daughter, Janet Miller, whom Burns affectionately refers to as Jeanie in his lyrics. “Wilt thou be my Dearie?”, writes Burns. “When Sorrow wrings thy gentle heart,/Wilt thou let me chear thee?” The page ends as Burns begs, “Jeanie say, thou loe’s me;/ Or if thou wilt na be my ane,/Say na thou’lt refuse me…” This song was inspired by a sweet folly of the heart, a bit different from the weightier subjects of birth and death inspiring the Gaelic tunes sung by Ms. Bennett.

Another offering from Innerpeffray is the tome “Ballad Minstrelsy of Scotland”, published in 1893. It describes a traditional Scottish ballad as “short narrative poems, each celebrating a real or fancied event, and suitable for singing or chanting to some simple natural melody”. We are strictly reminded that ballads “often are, but ought not to be, confounded with songs, which, properly speaking, are the more polished and artistic vehicles of ‘sentiment, expression, or even description’”. This book of minstrelsy provides us with such stories as “The Birth of Robin Hood”, “The Battle of Balrinnes”, and “The Lament of the Border Widow”, whose husband was slain by the king. We can see that these stories do mark lifetime events, such as birth and death, just as Ms. Bennett’s songs did, and perhaps you could even read the words with a “simple, natural melody” in mind.

Here is a wonderful interview with Margaret Bennett backed by several recordings of Gaelic songs, for those who missed her talk or for those who simply want more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLXd2wl2f-Q

-Eliana