Guttin’ and Tattie Howkin’
AS THE PACKED train chugged through the pleasing landscape of Gweedore in the Donegal Gaeltacht, where the native Irish language is spoken, I didn’t dare blink for fear of losing sight of Owey.
My heart was full of sorrow and my face a soggy mass from crying as the island became smaller and smaller in the distance.
I let out a big sob as it shrank to a mere dot on the horizon. I was taking the train to the boat, which in turn would take me far away from the island. It would be several months before I’d set foot on Owey again, not until Hallowe’en.
My poor mother and father hadn’t been able to conceal their heartbreak as I’d headed down to the currach on the shore. My father would never cry, but I could see in his eyes that he was suffering pain. Three of the family were leaving that day. My older brothers, James and Edward, were travelling with me, as they had got jobs to do with fishing too. My sister, Maggie, and younger brother, Owenie, were the only ones left behind. And Maggie would soon be going off to work in a Scottish hotel.
Emigration, no matter for how short a time, always brought pain to families. It tore loved ones apart in the struggle to survive and put food on the table. After my first experience away in Derry with Mr and Mrs Foley, I thought it wouldn’t be such a wrench. But it was much worse. I was now nearly 16 and a new job awaited me at Lerwick, one of the Shetland Islands off Scotland. This time it wasn’t housekeeping at the other end of the journey but the daily grind of fish gutting. It was a lovely summer’s day in June as I set off, but there was no sunshine in my heart. I was filled with foreboding as I had no notion of what lay in store for me, other than being guaranteed hard work and lots of it.
As the boat journey neared an end, the outline of the houses and the church spire around Lerwick harbour came into view. Lerwick, Shetland’s only town and Britain’s most northerly one, was a hive of industry at the time thanks to the wealth the herring fishing brought to the local community. One of the community’s most notable features was its fine town hall.
I didn’t have time to take full stock of my surroundings because I was immediately introduced to my new ‘family’ – the ‘herring girls’, as we were known – and given a demonstration of the work that was required. Growing up on an island, I was no stranger to fish gutting, but doing it as part of a team of girls who came from Scotland and many parts of Ireland was a strange, new experience and a lot more demanding. I set about working in a crew of three people, with two of us frantically gutting the fish and the third girl packing them into barrels between layers of coarse salt. As it is an oily fish, herring deteriorates quickly, so it was essential that we swiftly removed the insides with a razor-sharp knife and preserved the fish in the salt. The target was to gut and pack a minimum of 30 barrels a day. Each barrel contained 80 to 100 herring, depending on their size, so you really had to concentrate on getting the job done and there was no slacking off.
As we diligently sliced open the fish and scooped out their insides, we wore oilskin skirts with bibs over our own clothing to save our bodies from the mess of the entrails, the water and the salt. The protective layers of clothes had to be long enough to cover the tops of our boots so as to prevent fish scales and raw pieces of gutted fish slipping down inside our footwear. Our tall rubber boots had wooden soles to cope with greasy surfaces and the corrosive effects of the salt.
Unbleached cotton which came from empty flour sacks was cut into strips, wound round our fingers and fastened with cotton thread in a desperate and mostly useless attempt to protect our hands from the sharp knives and stinging salt. During our dinner break we’d replace the strips, but they were a poor source of protection, and I regularly got excruciating cuts as I went about my business. After a couple of months, my hands looked like they’d been through a bloody battle. The marks of the knife carved out a pattern. Raw wounds were a torture when the coarse salt got into them. I had no choice but to endure the stinging pain and get on with the job. Otherwise I wouldn’t get paid.
We did our work out in the open on the quayside in all kinds of weather. The stench from the innards of the fish was often overpowering. This was one of the fishing industry’s most gruelling jobs. Our contracts committed us to begin work when required and to continue as long as we wanted; if you put in the extra hours you’d get more pay. We’d normally start at 7 a.m. and finish at 6 p.m., with just a one-hour break for our dinner. In the busiest time you could end up doing 14 or 15 hours and working by lamplight until all the fresh fish had been processed. Standing in the same spot working with the fish at night is hardship I’ll never forget. In particular, the cold I experienced was almost beyond human endurance. The only source of heat was a wee lantern with hot coals in it. Every now and then we’d take turns going to the lantern to warm our hands. But that only made the work harder because once you put your hands into the cold fish again it was torture. At the end of a hard day you’d only be fit for bed. At night we slept in basic wooden huts.
As the weeks wore their way into months, I settled into this tough routine. It’s amazing how the human mind and body can adapt and cope with the most difficult of circumstances. But the long-term effects of this work could be seen in some of the older people who suffered from arthritis in their hands caused by working in wet conditions. There were people with chest problems and others affected by sclerosis of the spine from bending into barrels and over fish troughs for long periods.
Owey was never far from my mind while I was working in Lerwick. Every week without fail I would write a letter home to my mother and father, to reassure them that I was safe, healthy and doing just fine. I would never complain about my terrible life. It would have been unfair to trouble my parents, as I’m sure it was a constant worry for them having their children working abroad. They missed us just as much as we pined for them.
James and Edward never wrote a line home, of course. They were men, and it wasn’t expected of them. I would always mention them in my letters, saying how they were safe and doing fine at their work. The three of us got on well at work. It was James who took care of the money. Whatever Edward and myself earned we passed on to James. He in turn would post the money home to our mother and father. Although the two boys were older, I adopted the role of mother when we were away. That included washing their stinking work clothes. It was what women did.
After five long months in those conditions, our stint there was over, and, with a light heart, I packed my few bits and pieces, stuffed my final earnings into a sock and headed off to the boat with Edward and James for the journey back home to Owey.
As I stepped out of the currach on the island, I crossed myself in thanksgiving for a safe passage; then my legs took off at a gallop on the short route to our home. It was a thrill to walk through the doorway of our little cottage and see the faces of my mother and father light up with joy at my safe return. In those days families didn’t hug and kiss like they do in these modern times, but you knew by their body language that there was great love for you and that they were delighted to have you back in the house.
Sometime later on Owey, Daddy was struck down by a severe bout of flu and had to take to his bed. He was shivering and sweating. He was a very sick man. My poor mother tended to him with hot drinks and cool clothes, and I could see that she was terribly worried about him. At this time Maggie and the three boys had gone away again to find work, so it was left to me to do all the chores around the farm. It was time to harvest the potatoes, and I dug out and filled 13 barrels with them. There were four big sacks of potatoes in every barrel. I took them home on a donkey and put them into a pit and covered them to protect them from the winter frost. And I was the first person on the island to have the potatoes harvested. It was a busy time for me. There was turf to be brought in and water to be fetched from the wells. And I milked the cow twice every day. My poor father felt terribly helpless, but there was nothing he could do. He’d been raving and sweating and delirious for several days while going through the worst of his illness. And it was a relief to us all when he began to show signs of improvement. It took a couple of weeks for my daddy to get back on his feet again. When he came to inspect my work, he was so proud of me.
‘Y’know, Julia, I don’t know what I’d have done without you,’ he remarked as he made his way back inside the cottage.
The following year I was back on the chain-gang when I joined a big crew of Owey people, including my brothers James and Edward, for the first of many trips tattie howkin’ on the big farms of Scotland. It was June when we set out for our destination, leaving my beloved island and my parents behind. And even though I was travelling with my brothers and many of my neighbours, the homesickness was as bad as ever.
Our destination was Ayrshire in Scotland, and on my arrival at the farm in Kilwinning, where acres of potatoes awaited us, I was shown my sleeping quarters. I now had something in common with the farm animals: we were sharing the cowshed. The pungent smell of hot cow dung and the peculiar odour of the animals which had just been milked was still heavy in the air, even though the area had been washed out with water and swept with yard brushes. As I stared at my spartan new sleeping quarters, I could hardly believe it. I hadn’t known what to expect as I’d set out for this land so far removed from Owey, but the cowshed had never been mentioned. It’s not that I was accustomed to the finer things in life, but this was as basic as you could get.
‘It’s certainly no home away from home,’ I remarked to Mary, one of the other girls.
‘Julia, you’ll be so tired you’ll be happy to bed down anywhere,’ Mary pointed out.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I replied, as I got set to make up my mattress. Our employer had thrown us some straw, and each of us had to make up our own mattress using bags that had been stitched together. There was a black blanket for every worker and two of us sleeping on one mattress. All the girls slept in one shed, and the men were in a separate one. On the positive side, it was June as I started into this, which took the sting out of having to rough it in these primitive surroundings.
The next morning a lorry arrived for us at 5 a.m., and we all piled onto the back of it. We were like the inmates of a prison camp being driven off to do hard labour. The vehicle was packed with young men and women. We were transported across rough terrain, and the bouncing up and down made me feel sick that first morning. Finally, we reached the fields where we had to reap the tatties. As I jumped down to the ground and walked around to the front of the truck, I glanced across the huge expanse of land that swept before me. There seemed to be no end to the field. It spanned out as far as the eye could see, and I wondered how many weeks I would spend in this field crawling on my hands and knees as I gathered the potatoes.
Tattie howkin’ was laborious, painstaking work. It was done by hand at a snail’s pace, with the spuds being dug out with three-pronged forks and then collected in baskets. It was back-breaking work, and every day was the same that summer. I’d get to the fields shortly after 5 a.m. and go straight to work. We were under pressure to make as much progress as was humanly possible before the heat of the sun became unbearable. I’d spend hours on my knees, gathering the potatoes into a basket that I pulled along after me. The ground was rock-hard, and as I crawled along through the drills the friction blistered my knees, making the tedious task even harder. My hands were soon decorated with welts and cuts, and clay was caked under my fingernails. Sometimes small, sharp stones would pierce underneath my nails, sending a stinging pain up my fingers and leaving them sore for days. The cuts, punctures and blisters hurt like hell as you worked, and there was never any time for them to heal.
Sometimes the heat in the field was unbearable, but you couldn’t go off to the shade of the trees because there was a job to be done. At 2.00 p.m. the lorry would return to take us back up to the farm where we’d eat and then rest for a time. It was the same routine day in and day out. Later in the year, as the weather changed, we’d go out at 8 a.m. and come home at 5 or 6 p.m. I’d spend hours riddling the potatoes, sorting them and putting them into different bags out in the open. At the end of the week I’d be handed £3 for my labour. It was a small amount of money for such hard work, but that was the going rate, and it was considered to be a good wage. It was either take it or leave it. There was no union fighting for your rights in those days. Whatever money I earned I sent home to my mother and father.
Sometimes after a day in the potato field and a break in the afternoon, we’d go out in the evening to farms to gather up stooks of straw that had been tossed around; you’d make some extra money doing that. You’d spend three or four hours at that work for a wage of half a crown. In the wintertime we’d get extra work in the fish houses, putting fish on skewers. There were two dozen placed on each skewer, and then you’d hand them up to another worker who put them on a rack to dry out before they were taken away to be sold.
When it was time to retire for the night, the stark and smelly cowshed seemed the most welcoming place on earth because I’d be so exhausted from the day’s work. The straw bed felt like a deluxe mattress. Mary had been right. I couldn’t have cared less where I laid my head down at that stage.
Apart from working on the farm, I also did the cooking and washing for myself and five men: my two brothers, James and Edward, the gaffer and two other men. There was no pay for that. I was a woman and that’s what was expected of women. I never questioned it. It’s just the way it was.
We moved from farm to farm during the potato-picking season. Even though you’d think there was no end to a field, you’d always get there. Then you’d move on to the next job.
They were the harshest of times, but somehow we always brought some fun into our lives. When you’re young you crave music and dancing, and at weekends that was what we sought out. You’d walk for miles to a local dance, and sometimes you’d be barely home when you’d have to get up again and go to work in the fields. We were all young, and you’re full of energy and game for any kind of adventure at that time of your life. We didn’t have much money for our own entertainment as whatever we earned was sent home to the island. We kept just enough for essential needs and a little bit for entertainment. It cost thruppence to get into the dances in those times. I only had a couple of shillings to spend in a week. I might spend some of it on a paper, but mostly I bought wee biscuits or sweets: I loved sweets at that time.
God forgive me, but I remember how one time when the weekend came round I discovered that I hadn’t kept back enough money to go dancing. I couldn’t go to James and ask him for more money because I knew that he’d give me a telling off for spending my weekly ration. Instead, I sifted through his clothes and found sixpence in one of his pockets. So, God forgive me again, I stole the sixpence from him. James knew that his sixpence had gone missing, but he didn’t know who took it and I never told him. You’d get a lot for sixpence at that time. A loaf of bread would hardly cost you sixpence then. A box of matches was only a ha’penny.
Throughout my late teens and into my 20s, that was the pattern of my life: leaving Owey for months at a time to work at the fish gutting or tattie howkin’. In his house on Owey a distant cousin of mine called Jim McGinty would often recite a poem he’d written about fish gutting in Lerwick:
It’s the start of the summer and the boys going away
To work at the turnips, the harvest and hay
To go to the guttin’ I’d made up my mind
Tho’ my heart it was sore for the folks left behind
When we landed in Lerwick it sure was a sight
Our foreman was there he was full of delight
To see all his gutters arrive back once more
To the old town of Lerwick and Shetland’s green shore
After some greeting and a great deal of fuss
The foreman conveyed us to Ganson’s wee bus
We all started off for our new abode
God knows it was dreary the grimest of road
We got cooking utensils we got pieces for cloots
We got oilskins and aprons and short rubber boots
The gutters got knives and packers got scoops
And the whole thing was tallied in the foreman’s notebook
At half-five the next morning the foreman came round
He knocked at the window from within came no sound
When no one made answer it filled him with rage
And he shouted right back, ‘You’ll get no weekly wage’
At last came the day the fishing was o’er
Once more we were leaving Shetland’s green shore
With the fondest of memories we’ll always recall
The dances we had in Donaldson’s hall
So good-bye to you Lerwick and Bressay also
For it’s back to old Ireland I’m planning to go
But I hope that some day I’ll come back o’er the sea
If the Lord has allowed me a gutter to be.
Jim is 90 years old as I write, and he can still recite this wonderful poem from our time in Lerwick. And, like myself, Jim’s fondest memories of Lerwick are the great dances we enjoyed there.
During one of my terms in Scotland there was a big gang of potato-pickers from Donegal and Mayo on the same job. The main sleeping area that had been arranged for the workers couldn’t accommodate the exceptionally large crew, so they put six of us girls into a different shed on the farm. It was clean inside and we found nothing to complain about; not that you would anyway, as no one would listen to you. There were shelves along the walls containing lots of empty jam pots that were in storage. We made up our makeshift beds and settled down. In the middle of the night our sleep was disturbed by the clinking sound of the jam jars striking off each other.
‘Do you hear that? What’s that?’ Kathleen, one of the girls, shouted out in the dark.
‘Lord save us, is this place haunted?’ someone whispered as jam jars came crashing onto the floor.
Maura, another of the girls, struck a match, and someone let out a piercing scream.
In the dimly lit room I could see the cause of her terror; the place was crawling with rats. Well, we were out of there like lightning, roaring our heads off as we ran for dear life across the farmyard to the shed where the rest of the female crew were bedded down for the night.
Despite the work being hard, the people we worked for weren’t demons. Our accommodation certainly left a lot to be desired and wouldn’t be tolerated in modern times, but there was no one shouting at you while you worked. We were all supplied with free milk and potatoes, fuel and light as part of our deal. And I encountered some very nice people.
One evening I was down getting milk at the home of the ploughman on the Scottish farm where we were working at the time. The ploughman’s wife was a plump lady with a big smile and an easy laugh. She kept her house lovely. It was like a doll’s house with lots of pretty ornaments, including two dogs that stood on guard each side of the fireplace.
‘God, aren’t they lovely,’ I said to her one day.
‘Do you like them?’ she responded.
‘I do,’ I said.
The fields on this farm were enormous. Three weeks later I was still there picking the potatoes when there came a message for me that I was wanted down in the ploughman’s house. I was very worried then, thinking that I must have done something wrong. When I went down, it was the ploughman’s wife who came to greet me at the door of the cottage. She invited me in.
‘You like them dogs, don’t you?’ she said.
‘Well, I just think they are lovely,’ I replied.
‘They were a wedding present when we got married and I’d like you to have them now,’ the ploughman’s wife said.
‘Och, I couldn’t take them,’ I said, even though my heart was racing at the thought of getting them as a present.
‘No, Julia, I’d love you to have them for your own home when you marry,’ the kind woman insisted.
I was beaming from ear to ear as I left her house that evening with those ornamental dogs. The woman had carefully wrapped them in newspaper and put them into a small sack. I was so excited as I made my way back to our humble lodgings that you’d swear I was carrying a bag of gold. Those porcelain dogs were a wonderful gift, particularly as they were of such sentimental value to the lady of that house. Why she gave them to me I’ll never know, but I have always treasured them. To this day they are proudly displayed on my own mantlepiece.
As time went on I was able to save money from my allowance during working trips away in Scotland to buy presents for my mother and father. I’d sift through the second-hand shops for bargains, and I was very skilled at finding bits and pieces that I knew my parents would appreciate. I’d never buy anything that they would consider to be extravagant or a waste of money because that would have been frowned upon during those hard times.
I recall one day going into a second-hand shop and spending a lot of time rummaging through the hangers and shelves without any success.
‘There’s more stuff out the back if you have the time to take a look,’ the shop owner told me.
‘I’ve all the time in the world today,’ I told him.
It was dark out the back, but I could see lots of clothes at the end of the room. As I walked across the floor, I suddenly fell through a trap-door. I thought I was going to be killed as I hit the ground with a loud thud. Fortunately, the only damage was to my dignity. When he heard the commotion, the man came running to see what had happened.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, as I picked myself up and dusted myself down. It was the blessing of God that saved me from being killed.
‘Dammit, I didn’t know that was left open,’ the owner said. ‘I’ll tell you what, young woman, pick out something for yourself and I’ll give you a good deal.’
It was then I spotted a cardigan that I knew my mother would love.
‘How much is that cardigan?’ I asked the shop owner.
‘A shilling to you,’ he said with a smile.
It was a bargain, and I bought it on the spot. I was delighted with my purchase, but I needed something to give my father as well. I explained this to the man, who said that he had some good-quality jackets that had come in a few days earlier. They weren’t out on view, but if I cared to sift through the boxes I was welcome.
I came out smiling with a jacket that cost me only 1s 6d. Never mind my pride, I thought. Sometimes good things can come out of a fall.
When I returned to the island at the end of the working season, my mother and father were delighted with their gifts. From then on, the cardigan and the jacket became ‘good wear’, only put on for show when the priest came to the island to do the Stations of the Cross. My mother had that cardigan until the day she died, and then I wore it after her!
Don’t ask me how she did it, but my sister, Margaret, escaped the hard labour that I went through. Margaret had to leave the island, of course, to find work, so she didn’t avoid that heartbreak. Coming up to the age of 16, she migrated to Glasgow where she immediately got a job as a waitress in the George Hotel. Like the rest of us, whatever money Margaret had left out of her earnings, after covering her living expenses, she sent home to our mother and father on the island every month. Although the work was easier than mine, it was still a hard life for her. Margaret was on her own in Glasgow. The digs where she was staying with some of the other hotel workers were very grim, and terribly cold in the wintertime. However, moving to Glasgow would eventually change the course of her life.
It was in Glasgow during the war that she met and fell in love with a small, stocky but good-looking young American man called Bill Chancellor, who was in the navy and was stationed in Scotland at the time. After a whirlwind romance, Margaret and Bill married in June 1945. None of the family made it over for the wedding, as we couldn’t afford the expense of the trip. But Margaret had the blessing of our mother and father.
Margaret and Bill were parted the following year when he returned to the States with his ship. Later, she was among the excited young women on a liner carrying what were known as the ‘GI brides’ to America. When she eventually landed in New York, Bill was there to meet her. Margaret was one of the lucky ones. Some unfortunate brides found themselves all alone in a foreign land after their ships docked. Their husbands seemed to have forgotten while they were overseas that they already had wives back in America. Later, Bill went to work in the oil business, and he and Maggie had three children. Bill did well, and the family were able to afford to travel back to Ireland to holiday on Owey. That was always an occasion of great excitement, not just for our family but for the entire island. Whenever ‘the Yankees’ were coming, everyone on Owey would join in the party.
Bill was a lovely man. Everyone in the family was very fond of him. Sadly, he too has passed to the next life.