Isabella’s Story, Part 2: ‘my intended spouse’

Living with their widowed mother at the small farm at Alcaig, it is unlikely Isabella and Jane had an exciting social life. They did, however, have strong family and social connections with many local ministers. It may have been through this group that Jane met the Mr Fraser whom she would marry, and where Isabella met a young missionary minister who was stationed in Caithness. Alexander Sage was six foot one inch tall, with broad shoulders and a deep chest. He was strong and had a temper. With good connections all over the far north, he had been brought up in Lochcarron and sent to school in Cromarty, just north of where Isabella had passed her childhood. At the age of twenty three Alexander had gone to Aberdeen to study at Kings College where he was friendly with several Ross-shire heirs. It may have been these schoolboy and college connections that eventually put Alexander in Isabella’s path. After Aberdeen he took his mother to live with him in Tongue where he took up the position of schoolmaster. The young man was following the usual pattern for ministers and indeed, in 1779, he was licensed by the Presbytery of Tongue to become an assistant to the minister in Reay. It must have been during this time that he met Isabella. The minister’s health was failing: latterly he had to be carried into the pulpit. Alexander must have hoped that when the inevitable happened, he would succeed him and offer Isabella the stability and prestige of the manse at Reay. Local politics intervened and another man was appointed when the minister died in 1784. Instead, Alexander made a sideways move into a vast mission in ‘a wide and populous district within the boundaries of the parishes of Reay, Halkirk, and Latheron’. He itinerated, taking services and visiting the people at Dirlot, Strathhalladale, and Berriedale. The less attractive offer of living by this ‘heathy moor, full of quaking bogs’ does not seem to have deterred Isabella. On the 19th March 1784 she married Alexander Sage.

The route Sage would have taken into ‘heathy moor, full of quaking bogs’ (photo: Elizabeth Ritchie)

It was not the custom to marry in church. Thirty three year old Isabella and thirty one year old Alexander tied the knot at the farm in Alcaig. The service was conducted by her brother, minister of Kirkhill, and her father’s replacement at Urquhart, Charles Calder. Four days previously, as was normal among gentry families, they drew up a marriage contract. Alexander’s portion was in the form of a letter addressed to her brother, Dr. Alexander Fraser:

‘Revd. dear Sir, As your sister, Miss Isabella Fraser, and I have agreed to enter upon the married state, from a principle of mutual love and affection, and as I am not as yet possessed of an Established Church benefice with which to provide her as I would wish, I hereby oblige myself to bequeath to her all the subjects and effects belonging to me in case I should die before I am provided with a stipend on the establishment. I also hereby exclude any other person to intermeddle with any part of my subjects except the above Miss Isabella Fraser, my intended spouse alenarly. For the further security, I also bind myself to extend this security on stamped paper any time required. As I grant this, my obligation, from my special regard for your sister, so I hope she will be pleased to give a similar security to me in case I should survive her, and I am, Revd. dr. Sir, your mo. obedt. Servt., Alexander Sage.’

On her wedding day, Isabella responded

‘I, the above-designed Miss Isabella Fraser, in consequence of the affection expressed for me in the above letter, do bequeath to Mr. Alexander Sage, my intended husband, all my effects that shall pertain to me at my death, in case I shall predecease him, and exclude any other person from intermeddling with them: in witness whereof I have subscribed these presents, at Alcaig, this nineteenth day of March, xvii. and eighty-four, in presence of these witnesses- Mr. David Denoon, minister of Killearnan, and Mr. John Grant, merchant in Inverness.’

Marriage tended to be the defining decision in an eighteenth-century woman’s life. Isabella had chosen Alexander, and after their wedding they made their way further north than she had ever been before, away from fertile Easter Ross to the ‘region of mist and quagmire’.

‘The Glutt’, between Dirlot and Dunbeath – midsummer 2014 (Photo: Elizabeth Ritchie)

Source:
Donald Sage, Memorabilia Domestica

The Mysteries of Croick Church

This week’s post is submitted by Graham Hannaford who is studying from his home in Australia for his Masters in ‘Highlands and Islands History’ at the University of the Highlands and Islands. He recently visited Sutherland to attend the ‘Land and People in the Northern Highlands’ conference in Bettyhill. On his way north, he stopped by Croick.

Croick church, dating from 1827, is twenty-four miles due west from Dornoch. A Thomas Telford-designed church, its place in history was cemented in 1845 as the scene of an infamous episode of the Highland clearances.

Croick Church (photo: Graham Hannaford)

In 1842, James Gillanders, factor to an absent landlord, attempted to evict the Glencalvie tenants for sheep. His efforts finally succeeded on 24 May 1845 when eighteen families were cleared from their homes. The Times report of the events was quoted on 12 June 1845 in the UK Parliament during the often-times acrimonious debate on the Poor Law (Scotland) Amendment Bill:

Mr Crawford MP: He referred to the dispossessment of the tenantry of Ardgay near Tain, Ross-shire, parish of Kincardner [sic], the inhabitants of Glencalvie. “These families, consisting of ninety-two individuals, supported themselves in comparative comfort without a pauper amongst them; owed no rent, and were ready to pay as much as anyone would give for the land, which they and their forefathers had occupied for centuries. With the exception of two individuals who were permitted to remain, the whole of the people left the glen on Saturday afternoon and took refuge in their churchyard. They had been round to every heritor and factor in the neighbourhood, and twelve out of the eighteen families had been unable to find shelter. Behind the church a long kind of booth was erected, the roof formed of tarpauling stretched over poles, the sides closed in with horsecloths, rugs, blankets, and plaids. This was the refuge of the Glencalvie people. With their bedding and their children, they all removed late on Saturday afternoon to this place of temporary shelter. A fire was kindled in the churchyard, round which the poor children clustered; two cradles with infants in them were placed close to the fire. Of the people who passed the night in the churchyard with most insufficient shelter, twenty-three were children under ten years of age, seven persons were sickly and in bad health, and ten above sixty years of age, about eight are young married men; there are a few grown-up children, and the rest are persons in middle life, from forty to fifty years of age. On the Monday following they met the agent, who paid them the amount agreed upon for their stock, and their proportion for going out peaceably. The sum they had to receive is evidence that they were not in the condition of paupers; but this sum will soon be spent and then they must become paupers.”

Perhaps the refugees chose to shelter in the churchyard rather than in the church itself because that would have seemed to them a desecration. In 1843, following a schism, the congregation in the established church had shrunk to ten and most of those for whom the church was built had joined the Free Church whose ministers were quick to draw attention to the Glencalvie evictions. Was the church refused to them as a place of refuge because of the schism? Perhaps, more pragmatic considerations prevailed: did the placement of pews in the church render it unsuitable for even a temporary residence for so many people?

Pews inside Croick Church (photo: Graham Hannaford)

Messages scratched on the church windows include: “Glencalvie people was in the churchyard here May 24 1845” and “The Glencalvie tenants resided here May 24 1845” and, most poignantly, “Glencalvie People the wicked generation Glencalvie”. They are in copperplate handwriting, in English. The reporter to The Times claimed he could not speak to the people, as they knew only Gaelic and he only English. However the New Statistical Account of the parish, written only five years before these events, recorded that, while Gaelic remained the dominant language, “the greater proportion” of the thirty-five pupils at the parish school, which was then situated beside the church, could read and write English as well as Gaelic. The long existence of the parish school, and the sporadic appearance of Gaelic Schools in the glen itself since the mid 1810s, suggests that a good number of the Glencalvie people could read or write one or both languages. We will never know which individuals took the time to inscribe those messages in such a permanent way.

Ironically, the sheep for which the people were cleared have now long gone. Glencalvie is now part of a sporting estate.

Landscape around Croick Church (photo: Graham Hannaford)

Sources:
http://www.croickchurch.com
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/bonarbridge/croickchurch/
http://www.scran.ac.uk/
New Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh: 1845)
Richards E., A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions1746-1886 (London: Croom Helm, 1982)
Richards E., The Highland Clearances (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008)
For the full debate on the Poor Law (Scotland) Amendment Bill see http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/sittings/1845 (The text quoted above was been slightly amended to improve readability.)

High Days and Holidays at Inver School

In 1857 the women of Inver, a fishing village in Easter Ross, tried to cram themselves into a school which was not even big enough to hold the pupils. The minister and the school inspector had already arrived. There was to be a public examination and everyone wanted to see the children perform. Many of the men were away, presumably working on the boats, however ‘all the inhabitants of the village who were at home, chiefly females’ got as close as they could, crowding ‘both ends of the house and the passage’ and jostling for position at the door and windows. Unlike school inspections today, this was a festive community event.

The Inver inhabitants were, quite literally, ‘bought into’ to the school. One of the great strengths of the Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools was that the community had to be committed. This resulted in high attendance and a fair degree of success. A locality interested in having a Gaelic school had to provide a school building and a house for the master while salary costs were borne by the Society, which was funded by charitable donations. In many places the men built a house, but in Inver they had purchased and fitted up two pre-existing buildings, costing them more than £15. Perhaps funds did not allow it or they had underestimated its popularity, but the school was too small for the pupils, let alone the crowds on examination day.

There were 66 pupils to get through so the event became a masterclass in organisation. The examiner and the local minister, Mr Urquhart, decided that each class would be examined separately and then dismissed to make space for the others. The examination concentrated on the children’s ability to read Gaelic and to understand the Bible. Because they were learning to read their own language and because teaching was emphasised basic literacy, progress could be remarkably quick. Indeed all the Inver students had developed well since the school was established. They all, of course, read ‘according to the provincial dialect of the place’: the Gaelic of Easter Ross. Some could even read ‘with taste and understanding’. The schools were primarily intended to promote Christianity. This, and the comparative dearth of non-religious Gaelic books meant the curriculum was focused on the Bible. The inspector was gratified at the level of scripture knowledge displayed by the young folk of Inver. As a good Evangelical, he hoped for an impact of the teaching on their lives as well as their minds. The gathering of mothers was probably most concerned to see their children’s progressing and hoping they would perform well in front of their neighbours and friends.

Inver, looking north over the Dornoch Firth. Photo: Elizabeth Ritchie

A natural desire to encourage their children was only one reason to attend the examination: local identity, sociability and spiritual and intellectual stimulation were also motivations. Working and fundraising for the buildings created local pride in the school. The examination was an opportunity for the community to celebrate their school, see the effect of the teacher, and support him and the children. The event was lent weight by the presence of the minister and the inspector from Edinburgh. It was also a social occasion. The women set aside the ordinary work of the day to enjoy the excitement with their neighbours. The examination was an opportunity to stretch the mind. Hector Allan, who became minister in the nearby parish of Kincardine, remarked that

the mental pleasures of the poor are few, and an examination of a School is to them, all that the meeting of a Bible or Missionary Society is to the middle and higher classes of life. They are interested because their children are benefited; they are elevated because they are themselves not merely spectators but the judges.

Highlanders had a strong oral culture of poetry, history and music. Evangelicalism had been popular in Ross-shire from the seventeenth century onwards, and the faith was very much ‘carried’ orally. Despite the efforts of educational organisations people, especially older generations, relied on the spoken culture of sermons, prayer meetings, sacramental occasions and family worship for their ‘spiritual food’. For devout but illiterate members of the community, the school examination supplemented this diet.

Inver, looking north over the Dornoch Firth. Photo: Elizabeth Ritchie

School examinations brought the community together. The event became a holiday, with all the excitement of performance, of high-status visitors, of using the school they had worked so hard for, and with the fun of bumping into friends. Evangelicalism has been castigated for suppressing older forms of sociability. However, nineteenth-century Highlanders, many of whom described themselves as Evangelical, developed new forms of sociability which somewhat replaced the ‘secular’ entertainments of music and drinking. With the respectable aims of educational improvement and religious edification, school examinations like at Inver were one of the new type of social events which combined fun, socialising, spirituality and intellectual stimulation.

A Letter of Advice by Sir Robert Gordon, 1620.

Wade Cormack is the post-holder for the Royal Dornoch PhD Studentship at the Centre for History, University fo the Highlands and Islands. His research explores early-modern sport and cultural history of the Moray Firth.

While children should always listen to their elders, whether they do or not is totally up to them! The year was 1620 and eleven-year old John, the 13th Earl of Sutherland, received a letter of advice from his uncle and tutor, Sir Robert Gordon. Sir Robert wanted John to become a successful leader, a calculated but kind master, a learned man, and someone respected throughout the land. His advice covered disparate topics, from the vices of man, how to select a proper wife and how to administer his estate effectively. He also instructed him on the themes of sport, education and ‘civility’.

Robert Gordon was born at Dunrobin Castle in 1580 and was the fourth son of the 11th Earl of Sutherland. Initially he was educated in Dornoch before leaving for St Andrews, Edinburgh, then continuing his education on the Continent at Saumur, Poitier, Bourges, finishing with six months in Paris. Along the way he became a student of Neo-Stoicism. In 1606 he was at the court of King James VI and I where he was subsequently admitted as a Gentleman to the Bedchamber and was knighted. These influential positions gave him direct access to King James and he began his long political career.

After the death of the 12th Earl of Sutherland in 1615, Sir Robert became the tutor to his six-year old nephew. He set John’s affairs in order and sent him to school in Dornoch. During these schooldays we find the first references known to date of golf being played in town. The Earl’s expenses show that ‘Item ten poundis guven this yeir for bowes, arroes, golff clubbes, and balls, with other necessars for his L[ordship’s] exercise’. Sir Robert was an accomplished archer himself, winning the silver arrow in Edinburgh during the King’s visit in 1617. He was a proponent of sport and believed it was a crucial part of education. Sir Robert solidified Dornoch’s reputation for sport in 1630 with his A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland. He famously stated ‘About this toun… ther are the fairest and largest linkes…of any pairt of Scotland, fitt for archery, goffing, ryding, and all otherexercise; they doe surpasse the feilds of Montrose or St Andrews.’

As the Genealogical History existed only in manuscript copies for nearly 200 years, the promotion of Dornoch’s links was for the eyes of the Earls of Sutherland. However, Sir Robert’s Letter of Advice shows broad participation in sport. He urged John to ‘Cherishe your countreymen and train them vp in all kynd of honest exercise, such as hunting, ryding, archerie, shooting with the gun, gofing, jumping, running, swimming and such lyk’. Golf in this region was not just an elite preserve then, but was for all of the Earl’s countrymen. Although the direct references to golf in Dornoch fade from then until the nineteenth century, this evidence suggests it was widely played.

Young men were prepared for manhood and leadership through martial activities and a good education. Although ‘gofing’ had been previously restricted by the Scottish kings because it was of no military benefit, Sir Robert felt it was acceptable. Football, however, another sport restricted on the same grounds, was not recommended to John: ‘footeball [w]as a dangerous and vnprofitable exercise’. Sir Robert’s reasoning for this was probably because in many cases football became a riotous event, considered to cause great disruption and damage to people and communities. The disruptions caused by golf, by comparison, were limited.

The Royal Dornoch Links 1900 (Image Courtesy of HistoryLinks Image Library)

Sir Robert was also keen to ‘improve’ the Sutherland lands, especially Dornoch. In 1609 the Statutes of Iona promoted the assimilation of the western Highlands and Islands into a Lowland culture. As an influential man at the court of King James, Sir Robert would have been involved in discussions on how to accomplish this. Sir Robert’s ideas on the importance of English language education and literacy; on ideas of civility; on sport; and on how to bring up young men, noble and commoner, for the good and cohesion of the realm, were influential at the highest level. Sir Robert believed the best way to transform the people of Sutherland was to: ‘plant schooles in ewerie corner in the countrey to instruct the youth to speak Inglishe. Let your cheif scooles for learning be at Dornoche, and perswade the gentlemen of your countrey to bestowe lairglie vpon ther children to make them schollers, for so shall they be fittest for your serwice. Preasse to ciwilize your countrey and the inhabitants therof, not onlie in this poynt, but lykwyse in all other things which yow shall obserwe abrod in your trawells among other nations.’ Sir Robert then advised John to ‘erect a biblio-theck in Dornoch and fill it with sufficient store of books, boith for your credit and the weell of this countrey, to amend ther ignorance which increases through laik of books’.

From a child’s perspective, Sir Robert’s Letter of Advice was rather daunting. Judging by his later character, John internalised much of his uncle’s advice though. Moreover, he continued to support sport, education and ‘civility’, and passed these lessons to his sons, who continued the tradition of Sutherland men playing golf, being well-read and educated. Nearly 400 years later, the connection between golf and education continues in Dornoch, thanks to the collaboration of the University of the Highlands and Islands and the Royal Dornoch Golf Club to support and investigate that passion of Sir Robert’s: the place of sport in society.

Sources
National Library of Scotland, The Sutherland Papers, Dep. 313/1597.
Allan, David. Philosophy and Politics in Late Stuart Scotland. (East Lothian: 2000).
Fraser, William ed. The Sutherland Book. 3 Vols., (Edinburgh: 1892).
Gordon, Robert A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland from its Origin to the Year 1630: with a Continuation to the Year 1651. (Edinburgh: 1813).

Cock o’ the North

In February it feels like winter is eternal.  The people of Dornoch cheered themselves up with what we would consider a rather brutal amusement: a cockfight.  Early in the nineteenth century Donald Sage, a teenager from Kildonan, attended school in the town.  Although he later described it as a barbarous pastime, at the time he enthusiastically participated.

For schoolboys across Scotland the cockfight was the peak of entertainment.  Far from being a surreptitious activity for which the students would be punished, it was an intrinsic part of the school and community calendar.  Dornoch’s teacher, Mr. MacDonald, entered into it ‘with all the keenness of a Highlander and with all the method of a pedagogue’.  In the days leading up to the cockfight, am cluiche nan coileach, there was a ‘universal scrambling for cocks all over the parish’.  ‘We applied at every door, and pleaded hard for them.  In those primitive times, people never thought of demanding any pecuniary recompense for the birds for which we dunned them.’

‘Cockfighting in London. 19th-century artwork of cockerels fighting at a royal cockpit (demolished 1816) in Birdcage Walk, near Whitehall, London, UK. This blood sport was banned in England and Wales in 1835. This artwork is from ‘The Microcosm of London’, a series of 104 hand-coloured aquatints depicting London buildings and scenes. They were published by Rudolph Ackermann between 1808 and 1810, and then collected in three folio volumes. The artworks combined architectural details by Charles Augustus Pugin, and human figures drawn by Thomas Rowlandson. This aquatint, published 1 May 1808, was engraved by John Bluck.’ 

Image and above text from British Library.

The main event was staged in the county court room.  The ‘chamber of justice was converted into a battle-field, where the feathered brood might, by their bills and claws, decide who among the juvenile throng should be king and queen.’  A stage was built and the schoolmaster seated himself on the bench where Sheriff McCulloch usually dispensed justice.  He was joined by a band of his friends who would judge the proceedings.  Any bird that refused to fight when placed on the stage was called a “fugie”, and it became the property of the teacher.  The winner was the youth whose bird had gained the greatest victories.  He was declared king and the lad in second place gained the title of queen.  The fights were over but the event was not.  The cockfight created such excitement in the town that it could be sustained to another day when the victors would be crowned.  Although the participants were the schoolboys and the judge was the teacher and his friends, the February cockfight was a community event.  It is not clear whether the fight itself was a male-only preserve, but it was the ladies in the town who ‘applied their elegant imaginations to devise, and their fair fingers to construct, crowns for the royal pair.’  They were also present on coronation day when the boys assembled in the Dornoch schoolhouse. Donald describes what happened.

‘The master sat at his desk, with the two crowns placed before him; the seats beside him being occupied by the “beauty and fashion” of the town.  The king and queen of cocks were then called out of their seats, along with those whom their ties had nominated as their life-guards.  Mr. MacDonald now rose, took a crown in his right hand, and after addressing the king in a short Latin speech, placed it upon his head.  Turning to the queen, and addressing her in the same learned language, he crowned her likewise.  Then the life-guards received suitable exhortations in Latin, in regard to the onerous duties that devolved upon them in the high place which they occupied, the address concluding with the words, “taque diligentissime attendite”.  A procession then began at the door of the schoolhouse, where we were all ranged by the master in our several ranks, their majesties first, their life-guards next, and then the “Trojan throng,” two and two, and arm in arm.  The town drummer and fifer marched before us and gave note of our advance, in strains which were intended to be both military and melodious.  After the procession was ended, the proceedings were closed by a ball and supper in the evening.’

Today’s community comes together in the summer at the Sutherland Agricultural Show and the Highland Gathering.  The differences are obvious: the attitude to animals is quite different, they do not revolve around the school and nor do the prize givings involve classical learning!  However, just like their cockfighting predecessors, the events involve competition, sport, judging, presentations, musical parades and dancing.  Today’s showing of cattle, athletics, pipe bands, silver cups and ceilidhs have replaced the cockfights, fife and drum, handmade crowns and dinner dance of two hundred years ago.

A Whirlwind Tour of Dornoch’s Schools

Sue Higgins is curator at Dornoch’s Historylinks Museum.  She has a particular interest in education in the region.

There is a possibility that the art of teaching in Dornoch dates back as far as the 6^th century A.D. when it is reputed that St Finbarr established an ecclesiastical foundation on Schoolhill.  If this were the case it is likely that the pupils were boys who learned Latin and Greek.

In the mid-thirteenth century the newly built cathedral opened a cathedral school.  The curriculum would have been similar, but would have included singing for worship.  It is likely that a school continued there until just after the Reformation and after the MacKays burnt the cathedral, when we know it was moved to the Town House.  The Town House has long since vanished but was situated near the Mercat Cross on the High Street.  The school remained there until 1589 when, due to the dilapidated state of the Town House, a move back to the cathedral was necessitated.

With the bestowing of Royal Burgh status on the town in 1628 a new Town House was built.  This again housed the school but by 1730 was in such disrepair that the school went back to the semi-ruinous cathedral.  The move was short lived as by 1738 the Town House was restored by the Earl of Sutherland and the school could return.

By the mid-eighteenth century the small county town boasted three schools.  The Master of the Grammar school earned 200 marks each year receiving an additional £2.8 shillings for each ‘poor scholar’.  In all probability this was the school at the Town House and was where Donald Sage attended from 1801-1803 (see posts from February 2013).  The Mistress of the ‘English’ school was paid 6 shillings per quarter per pupil, and the Teacher of the elementary school received £1 per ‘poor scholar’.  Teachers’ income partly relied on the number of pupils they had and how prompt parents were in paying their fees!

By 1815 the Grammar school had moved into the newly renovated Castle which also housed the County Jail.  The school was on the first floor and the floors above housed the prisoners.  The building proved to be inadequate for both so, sometime before 1845, a new school building was constructed on Schoolhill (now the Social Club) and the new jail, currently a shop, was built in 1844.

By 1845 there were again three schools in Dornoch.  The Parish school was at Schoolhill; a female S.S.P.C.K. (Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge) school was on the site of St Finbarr’s charity shop, and taught basic literacy, Scripture and ‘female skills’ like spinning; and there was a private female school.  In 1848, following the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, the Free Church added one more educational establishment. 

Supply had overtaken demand and in 1857 the Free Church school was amalgamated with the Parish school.  The S.S.P.C.K. school followed suit by 1884.  Over the coming years numbers grew and the school on Schoolhill overflowed into the old Free Church and S.S.P.C.K. premises.  The time had come for a new Academy.  Moving out of the centre of town, in 1913 it was built on the edge of green fields.  It is still home to the Nursery and Primary school and they celebrated their centenary last year with a production of ‘Oliver’ involving all the pupils.

 

Pupils and staff at opening ceremony of Dornoch Academy 1913.  Photo from Historylinks Image Libarary.

During the mid-twentieth century the increasing population of Dornoch and the closure of many smaller schools in the area meant another building.  A new Academy was built for the older pupils in 1963 and opened by H.R.H. the Queen Mother.  The Academy celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year.

The Academy continued to serve the whole of Sutherland, including the north and west coasts.  To house these children two hostels were opened.  Ross House Girls’ Hostel is now the site of North Highland College.  It was originally built by Robert Hamilton Bruce in the late 1890’s as a family home and was called Abden House.  It was transformed into a private hotel before becoming the hostel.  Girls from locations such as Lochinver, Tongue, Lairg and Durness stayed here during term times. In the early days of the hostels students were only able to go home at the end of each term but later on were able to journey home for weekends.  Earls Cross Hostel was for the boys.  Again it was initially a private house, built in 1913 for J.B. Muir, a prominent yacht builder from Clydeside.  It was requisitioned during the Second World War to house soldiers and had a German prisoner of war camp in the grounds.  In 1949 the house was converted to a hostel and continued in this role until as late as 1992.

Rev Charles D Bentinck, Dornoch Cathedral and Parish, (Inverness: The Northern Counties Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Company Limited, 1926)

The School Inspector

On the ninth of August, 1827, a well-dressed gentleman rode north east towards the fishing village of Helmsdale in Sutherland. His name was John Tawse. Tawse was touring the north on behalf of his employer, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, or SSPCK. The SSPCK has become a byword among students of Gaelic and of Highland history for its efforts to kill off the language. By 1827, many of its schools taught Gaelic, however the Society never let go of the notion that English was not only necessary for Highlanders but superior to their native tongue. None of this was on John Tawse’s mind as he rode hard. His job was to inspect the SSPCK schools, counting the students, inspecting the buildings, testing the children’s knowledge of reading, writing, Scripture and anything else thy might be learning, and checking up on the teachers. He had set himself a punishing schedule. The previous day he had first inspected the school at Inver, on the coast just east of Tain, where a new teacher promised great things. He then rode along the south coast of the Dornoch Firth to Strathcarron, three miles west of Bonar Bridge. Apart from some problems of funding and an inadequate schoolhouse, Tawse felt that ‘everything is conducted here in the very best style.’ He was then back on his horse for the thirty miles to the ‘thriving village’ of Helmsdale. The ‘rapidly increasing fishing station’ had a hundred names on the school roll. He proceeded with his inspection and wrote up his observations for the Society, now preserved in his neat handwriting in a leather-bound volume in Edinburgh:

this being the fishing season, many of the children were employed – indeed every person that can do anything, male and female, turn out at the fishing. There were only 25 scholars present today – I was much pleased with their appearance and with the manner in which they went through their exercises. They read and repeated with great accuracy, and several of them seemed to have a considerable knowledge of grammar and they answered the questions in the shorter catechism very readily. I was much pleased with Gordon Ross’ method of teaching and his great assiduity. His hours in summer are from 7 to 10, from 11 to 2 and from 3 to 5.  In winter his hours are from 10-4.

Helmsdale, from the Strath of Kildonan.  Photo: Elizabeth Ritchie

The teacher complained that he could not get the children to attend the Sabbath Evening School. The people here seem to be very indifferent about religion moreso than even in most fishing villages. They laughed at the teacher when he requested them to send their children to the Sabbath School. I spoke to the children very seriously about it, and also spoke to Mr Ross, the minister of the parish, threatening even that the school would be removed if the Sabbath School was not better attended. He promised to go to the village which is 8 miles from church and speak to the people about it. I wrote a letter also on the same subject, and with reference also to the accommodations with the view of its being shown to the Marchioness of Stafford.

The teacher’s dwelling house is very tolerable, but the school room is a great deal too small & in every way insufficient. I was informed however that a new one was to be built or the present one enlarged as soon as the fishing season was over. The teacher has a small garden, but he has no fuel or provender for a cow, nor a compensation for those. Mr Ross was to make an application on the subject to the Marchioness.

Gordon Ross the teacher seems to be a zealous active diligent man, very well filled for the charge. He was laid aside by bad health rising from an accumulation of family misfortunes, which has reduced him to great poverty and involved him in debt from which he has little prospect from being relieved unless the Society can do something for him.

John Tawse had thought of a method not only of assisting the Ross family, but of extending education in Helmsdale. He suggested the SSPCK should pay Mrs Ross to establish a ‘female school’ which taught girls sewing, deemed by the SSPCK a useful and suitable skill. The next morning, after attempting to sort out the insufficiency of the schoolhouse, the lack of fuel and fodder, the teacher’s personal finances and the general irreligion of the village, Tawse saddled up and guided his horse up the Ord of Caithness, ready to take on whatever problems the school at Dunbeath might throw at him.

Source:

National Archives of Scotland, GD95/9/4  Reports of Visits to the Schools of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge by John Tawse, 1827

Fisherman’s Friend

In the early 1820s Embo was re-developed as a commerical fishing village.  As the Sutherland Estate commercialised their vast tracts of land, they moved people around, sometimes forcibly, and introduced new industries.  The Estate re-organised the village of Embo to promote commercial fishing, building it on a modern grid pattern of streets imitating Edinburgh’s New Town and the redevelopment of Paris.  In about 1819 a young fisherman sat in a house in the new village, ignoring his boisterous children, to puzzle over the letters in a Gaelic psalm book.  He was a devout Christian but, living several miles from the parish church in Dornoch and with a young family, he wasn’t always able to get to Sunday services or the Sabbath school.  He wanted to be able to read so that he could read the Scriptures himself during the week and so he could include Bible reading in the daily worship time which was the custom of many families at the time.

A few years before the young man decided to teach himself to read, a group of philanthropists in Edinburgh saw a need for a missionary society in the Highlands.  The felt the best way to reach people was by teaching them to read the Bible for themselves. Despite the aims of the Reformers, very few ordinary rural people had access to a school at this time.  Most schools which did exist were taught in English which was useless for Gaelic speakers.  The Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools provided temporary schools which taught pupils to read the Gaelic Bible.  When we think of a school today we think of a classroom, of book learning, a room full of children, and a teacher who stays in the classroom.  When Mr Sutherland was sent to teach in Embo the young fisherman must have been delighted to meet him as not only did he do all of these things, but he did much more.

Children in a nineteenth-century Scottish fishing village. 

Image from: www.tayroots.com 

In 1821 Mr Sutherland reported that he had twenty boys and twenty one girls on his school roll.  He added that the keenest student was not a child but a certain thirty year old fisherman who had taught himself to read using his psalm book and now attended the school with his three children.  The psalms were a good place to start learning to read as most people knew many by heart, having sung them all their lives.  Once the young man had figured out the letters and sounds, he would have quickly found sentences that he recognised.  When the school came, he enrolled to improve his skills.  It was possibly also his enthusiasm which caused the number of pupils “to increase, till the fishing and the harvest called the efficient hands away.”  The teacher anticipated “a very crowded School for the Winter-Session”.  Going to school was not obligatory, so people attended when they could.  If people were busy with work, or needed the children to work, then they stayed away.  But in the winter, when it was too stormy to take to the sea, when it was the wrong season for working on the land, and when the evenings were dark and long, the school was popular.

It was not only during school hours that Mr Sutherland was busy.  To avoid treading on the toes of local ministers the SSGS, despite being a missionary school, ordered its teachers not to preach.  However in many parishes, especially where the minister was an evangelical, the rule was ignored.  In Dornoch parish Angus Kennedy was the minister and he was grateful for any assistance.  Kennedy was unable to meet all the needs of the villagers and happily passed on some responsibilities to Mr Sutherland.  Sundays may have been busier than weekdays for the teacher!  He “tests children [on their catechism], teaches a Sabbath School for adults and preaches every 3^rd Sunday in a nearby fishing village”.  If anyone has any idea where this other fishing village near to Embo was, then do let me know!  Kennedy was delighted with the effect as the children were attending Sunday services more frequently and more parents wanted their children baptised.  Embo residents may be relieved to hear that the school also apparently inspired “a general attention to cleanliness and decency in their clothing.”

The school had already fulfilled the dreams of the nameless young fisherman, but Angus Kennedy was still looking to the future when he wrote to the SSGS full of optimism about what might yet happen.  “Upon the whole I have every reason to hope that these Schools, situated as they are in populous Districts, and disposed, as the people appear to be, to attend them, shall prove, by the Divine Blessing, a means of training the rising generation in the knowledge and fear of the true God”.

Rogart and the Society for Gaelic Schools

One of the aims of the Reformation was that people should read the Bible for themselves. In Scotland the Reformers intended that every parish should have a school. This plan failed because of insufficient money, too few teachers, and because Highland parishes could be enormous so most children could not walk to school each day. Various charity schools tried to fill the gaps, but there were not enough of them and many taught only in English even though the children spoke Gaelic. In 1811 a group of Edinburgh philanthropists decided to create the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools.

The main aim of the SSGS was to spread Evangelical Christianity through teaching Gaelic speakers, especially children, to read the Bible in their native language. The Society provided education in townships which were far away from schools or churches. If a community was interested, they had to build a schoolhouse before the Society would send a teacher. The teachers were funded by donations and stayed for two or three years. The school taught reading alone. There was no writing, arithmetic or other subjects. This was because the ESSGS was primarily a missionary society. They wanted people to be able to read the Bible.

Seventeen years after the SGSS began, it established a school in Rogart parish, in the little township of Knockarthur. The first we know of it is when the ministers of Rogart and Golspie, John MacKenzie and Mr. McPherson, inspected the school on 15^th March, 1828. There were 139 pupils on the roll!  94 of these were present for the inspection, 37 of whom were adults. The SSGS was happy to teach anyone who came along: adult or child. At the inspection, the students showed the ministers what they could do. Some read the New Testament, like the man who was “seventy five years of age, has been twice married, and had in school with him two of his family by his first wife, and four of his family by his second.” Other pupils could recite parts of the Bible. The schools were also very keen on teaching students to memorise. This is a teaching method which is out of fashion nowadays because often people can memorise material without understanding it. However, two centuries ago the culture of ordinary people was an oral culture, very much based on memory. One of the main forms of entertainment was gathering in each other’s houses in the evenings and spending the time making ropes, knitting, spinning or doing other odd jobs while telling long narrative stories and singing. John Mackenzie wrote “A great number repeated portions of Scripture committed to memory, with accuracy that was pleasing.” So by encouraging pupils to memorise Scripture, teachers like George Gordon in Rogart were evangelizing in a way which was meaningful to the people.

The Rogart folk were hardly unaware of Christianity. Their minister explained that “the people in this part of the country have long been familiar with the Scriptures, as translated to them, from the English version, by persons who could read. This, I need not observe, could not always have been very correctly done.” He went on to explain why, unlike some ministers who saw the schools as a threat to their authority, he was such a keen supporter. “By Gaelic Schools the Gaelic version will be brought into general use; and thus a more accurate knowledge of the Scriptures will be attained.”

Image taken from RCAHMS
http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/index.php?service=RCAHMS&id=91462

By 1828 the school was popular, but at first it wasn’t. Initially there

was a prejudice against Gaelic schools which has now disappeared. The old begin to see that they may still be able to do what they but lately never expected – to read the word of God … I am glad to find that the School is regarded as an important benefit by the people of the district; I trust it may, by the blessing of God, prove such to them.

Indeed enthusiasm was spreading. John Mackenzie wrote to the Society explaining that just down the hill, in the neighbouring district of “Morness, there are several heads of families who cannot read, and who entreat me to express their desire to your benevolent and useful Society, to send them a Teacher.” He explained that most of the “scholars at Knockarthur are young children; and the greater part of them will be kept out of school, during Summer and Harvest, herding cattle.” While the Knockarthur children were working, in Morness “a number of grown-up persons, and some far advanced in life, would make an effort to attend, at least for some hours in the day, during those seasons.” By December 1828 there were 73 on the school roll at Morness. Attendance at the school declined in the autumn as the harvest was brought in. By winter, a good number of adults came along, but fewer than expected. However, the school was successful enough to still be in operation in 1830. Indeed Mackenzie reported that year that “there are several persons who come from the neighbouring parishes, and board themselves, in order to enjoy the privilege of attending the School.”

I have cycled around Knockarthur. There is no obvious location for the school, however there is a collection of ruins at the crossroads which I like to imagine might be its remains, although, of course, it could be anywhere! In St Callan’s churchyard, however, there is a grave of a family who lived in Knockarthur at the time the school was present. In all likelihood they attended the classes. The ESGSS is not a well-known organisation but it had a significant impact on the educational and spiritual lives of ordinary Highlanders in the midst of the social and economic upheavals of the clearances. Other nineteenth century missionary organisations might have done well to learn from the cultural sensitivity of the Gaelic Schools, and their efforts at providing socially appropriate methods to promote Christianity. Rogart was not the only place to have ESSGS schools in east Sutherland, but more of that at another time!

‘Downtown Dornoch’ 1801

Today, when you walk around the square in Dornoch the scene is quiet.  There is the lovely cathedral, the green, and the golden sandstone buildings.  However Donald Sage, a schoolboy in 1801, recalled how lively ‘downtown Dornoch’ could get!

“The public fairs of this little county town made a considerable stir. From the Ord Head to the Meikle Ferry, almost every man, woman, and child attended the Dornoch market. The market stance was the churchyard. Dornoch was what might strictly be called an Episcopalian town; and the consecrated environs of the Cathedral was just the place which the men of those days would choose, either for burying their dead or holding their markets. The churchyard therefore became the only public square within the town. The evening previous to the market was a busy one. A long train of heavily-loaded carts might be seen wending their weary way into the town, more particularly from Tain, by the Meikle Ferry. The merchants’ booths or tents were then set up, made of canvas stretched upon poles inserted several feet into the ground, even into graves and deep enough to reach the coffins. The fair commenced about twelve o’clock noon next day, and lasted for two days and a half. During its continuance, every sort of saleable article was bought and sold, whether of home or foreign manufacture. The first market at Dornoch that we attended took place six weeks after our arrival at the town. The bustle and variety of the scene very much impressed me. The master gave us holiday; and as my brother and I traversed the market-place, pence in hand, to make our purchases, all sorts of persons, articles, amusements, employments, sights and sounds, smote at once upon our eyes, our ears and our attention. Here we were pulled by the coat, and on turning round recognised, to our great joy, the cordial face of a Kildonaner [Donald’s home was in Kildonan]; there we noticed a bevy of young lasses, in best bib and tucker, accompanied by their bachelors, who treated them with ginger-bread, ribbons, and whisky. Next came a recruiting party, marching, with gallant step and slow, through the crowd, headed by the sergeant, sword in hand, and followed by the corporal and two or three privates, each with his weapon glancing in the sunlight. From one part of the crowd might be heard the loud laugh that bespoke the gay and jovial meeting of former acquaintance ship, now again revived; from another the incessant shrill of little toy trumpets, which fond mothers had furnished to their younger children, and with which the little urchins kept up an unceasing clangour. At the fair of that day I, first of all, noticed the master perambulating the crowd, and looking at the merchants’ booths with a countenance scarcely less rigid and commanding than that with which he was wont invariably to produce silence in the school.

Another incident of my schoolboy days at Dornoch was a bloody fray which took place immediately after the burial of Miss Gray from Creich. The deceased was of the Sutherland Grays, who about the beginning of the last century, possessed property in the parishes of Creich, Lairg, Rogart, and Dornoch. She came down from London to the north of Scotland for change of air, being in a rapid decline, but did not survive her arrival at Creich longer than a month. Her remains were buried beside those of her ancestors in the Cathedral of Dornoch. The body was accompanied by an immense crowd, both of the gentry and peasantry. In the evening, after the burial, there was a dreadful fight. The parishioners of Dornoch and those of Creich quarrelled with each other, and fists, cudgels, stones, and other missiles were put in requisition. The leader of the Creich combatants was William Munro of Achany. I sat on a gravestone, at the gable of the ruined aisle of the cathedral, looking at the conflict. Broken heads, blood trickling over enraged faces, yells of rage, oaths and curses, are my reminiscences of the event. Dr. Bethune narrowly escaped broken bones. As he was walking up to obtain ocular demonstration of the encounter, he was rudely attacked by two outrageous men from Creich. They threatened to knock him down; but some of his parishioners, coming just in time, readily interfered, and his assailants measured their length on the highway.”

Donald Sage, Memorabilia Domestica or Parish Life in the North of Scotland [freely available online at archive.org if you want to read more]