Traveller and story-teller Duncan Williamson enjoyed a very different upbringing from most, one that made him and his kind a target for ancient prejudice. Here he recalls an epidemic of diphtheria that heightened tensions between settled and shifting communities.
Life was very hard for us as a travelling family living on the Duke of Argyll’s Estate in Furnace in Argyll, because it was hard to feed a large family when times were so hard. We ran through the village and we stole a few carrots, stole a few apples from the people. Some of the local people respected us, some didn’t want their children to play with us. We were local people too, but we were tinkers living in a tent in the wood of Argyll. And of course we did a lot of good things forbyes, because we helped the old folk. My brothers and I sawed sticks and we collected blocks along the shore for their fires and we dug a few gardens. If there was a little job for a penny or two, we would do it for them. We did things for the people that the other children would not do. And we gained a good respect from some of the older folk where we lived. As the evening was over boys would get together, and we’d climb trees and do things, but we never caused any trouble or damage. But some of the people in the village actually hated us.
I went to the little primary school in Furnace when I was six years old. It was hard coming from a travelling family. You went to school with your bare feet wearing cast-off clothes from the local children that your mother had collected around the doors. And of course you sat there in the classroom and the parents of the children who were your little friends and your little pals in school had warned them, ‘Oh, don’t play with the tinker children. You might get beasts off them, you might get lice.’ You were hungry, very, very hungry in school. You couldn’t even listen to your school teacher talking to you, listen to her giving you lessons you were so hungry. But you knew after the school was over you had a great consolation. You were looking forward to one particular thing: you would go home, have any kind of little meal that your mother had to share with you, which was very small and meagre, but she shared it among the kids. Then you had the evening together with your granny and your parents. The stories sitting by the fire, Granny lighting her pipe and telling you all those wonderful stories. This was the most important thing, the highlight of your whole life.
We were the healthiest children in the whole village. We ran around with our bare feet. We lived on shellfish. We didn’t have the meals the village children had, no puddings or sweet things. We were lucky if we saw one single sweet in a week. But we hunted. If we didn’t have food, we had to look for it, and looking for food was stealing somebody’s vegetables from somebody’s garden or guddling trout in the river or getting shellfish from the sea. We had to provide for ourselves. Because we knew our parents couldn’t do it for us. Mammy tried her best to hawk the doors, but you couldn’t expect your mother to go to the hillside and kill you a hare or a rabbit. And you couldn’t expect your mammy to go and guddle trout. So, from the age of five-six-sevenyear-old you became a person, you matured before you were even ten years old. And therefore you were qualified to help raise the rest of the little ones in the family circle. You could contribute. Because you knew otherwise you wouldn’t have it. You didn’t want to see your little brothers and sisters go hungry, so you went to gather sticks along the shore, sell them to an old woman and bring a shilling back to your mother.
The epidemic of diphtheria hit the school in 1941. Diphtheria then was deadly. Now you had to pay a doctor’s bill in these days. And by this time there were nine of us going to the single little school, all my brothers and sisters going together. But because there were so many children actually sick with diphtheria, they closed the primary school. Now we ran through the village with our bare feet. ‘Little raggiemuffins’ they called us in the village. Our little friends, five of them went off to hospital with diphtheria. Two of my little pals never came back.
My mother had good friends in the village, but some people wouldn’t even talk to us. One particular woman, a Mrs Campbell, had two little boys. She was one who wouldn’t even look at you if you passed her on the street. She wouldn’t give you a crust. After the school had been closed, I walked down to the village this one day in my bare feet. She stepped out of the little cottage.
And she said, ‘Hello, good morning.’ I was amazed that this woman should even speak to me. She said, ‘How are you?’
I said, ‘I’m fine, Mrs Campbell. I’m fine, really fine.’
She said, ‘Are you pleased? Are you enjoying the school closure?’
I said, ‘Well, the school’s closed. We’re doing wir best to enjoy wirsels.’
She said, ‘Are you hungry?’
I said, ‘Of course I’m hungry. We’re always hungry. My mother cannae help us very much.’
She said, ‘Would you like something to eat?’ Now I didn’t know, I swear this is a true story, that her two little boys were took off with diphtheria and sent to Glasgow to hospital. She said, ‘Oh, I have some nice apples. Would you like some?’ Now an apple to me was a delight. She said, ‘Come in, don’t be afraid!’ and she brought me into that house for the first time in my life, into the little boy’s bedroom. And there was a plate sitting by his little bed full of apples. He was gone. And she took the apples from that plate and gave them to me, three of them. She said, ‘Eat this, it’ll be good for you.’ I didn’t know what she was trying to do. Because I was too young, only thirteen. And she was trying to contaminate me with the diphtheria because her two little boys were taken away. Because none of Betsy Williamson’s children ever took diphtheria. And that school was closed for five weeks. And everyone was saying, ‘Oh, have you got a sore throat?’
Then they began to realize, why were the travelling children so healthy? And they used to say, when my mother walked round the doors of the village, ‘What was Betsy Williamson – oh, Betsy Williamson must have superior powers. She must be collecting herbs or something in the woods and looking after children.’ You see what I mean? And some would say, ‘Oh, she must be some kind of a witch.’ And things were never the same after that, never the same.