My Child Without Consent – May 1923

A boy of nine was brought with his parents before the magistrates for a persistent truancy. He had been admonished , punished at school and, whipped at home but nothing would deter him from playing truant once or twice every week and often enticing other boys to stay away from school to ramble together.

His mother pleaded that if the teacher would be more considerate and try to interest the child he had promised that he would try to give up his roving habits.

The judge, however, decided that the parents had failed and ordered the boy to be sent to a reformatory for a period of five years. The mother, who had shown great distress during the hearing of the case, collapsed and had to be carried out of the court.

Is it just that our laws should permit a mere man on the bench to take a child from his mother and put him in a reformatory to cure him of playing truant? If I were the mother of that child I would see to it that British law did not take my child from me without my consent.

The Shawl – May 1921

The shawl is still the main head dress of women in all corners of the earth. When it is a small square made of cotton or muslin, we may call it a handkerchief if we choose but that does not alter the fact that it is a small shawl draped over the head to protect it either from cold or heat and to confine the hair.

Civilised fashion has shaped straw and silk and velvet and decorated with flowers and feathers to tempt our vanity but the vast majority of women, chiefly peasants, fisherwomen, factory workers etc., cling to the simple square draping the head and shoulders and no other shape we can devise drapes so gracefully, else the brides would be having their veils a new shape every two years. The most common head dress of Eastern countries where the sun is very hot is a piece of cloth wound round the head. We copy this on a frame and call it a toque.

As an article of fashionable dress the shawl went out of fashion in Europe about 50 years ago and shawls are now kept as heirlooms, wraps for infants or put to various uses such as sofa rugs. (I have seen a large Paisley draped over a Chesterfield, tucked in and knotted all over the arms till it formed a splendidly fitting cover), dining room, table-covers, portiers and also in these latter days, jumpers.

A dress maker told me it grieved her to have to cut up the beautiful old shawls which were sent to her. In the east this would be looked upon as an affront to one’s ancestors as the fine shawls are handed down from generation to generation.

Although we are accustomed to speak of the Paisley pattern, Paisley weavers had no originality of design. The manufacture of the shawls was established at Paisley and Norwich and a few French towns about the beginning of the 19th century to supply the large demand for a cheaper form of the handsome shawls which had hitherto been all imported from the east.

The Eastern designs were faithfully copied and the large cone which is such a common characteristic of all these home woven shawls is Indian and has been a prominent feature in their woven patterns from earliest antiquity. Probably it is a form of gourd.

Although we in the west have ceased to wear dressy shawls there is a large demand for them in Asia and Eastern Europe. The Chinese Cashmere wool is spun from the soft downy under-wool of a Tibetan goat It is all dressed and spun by hand and may cost £2 10s per lb. It takes three men a year to make a shawl and a fine one might cost — before the war —£300 on the spot before it was imported to Europe, and that allows only £50 to each worker. A Cashmere shawl, fine enough to go through a wedding ring was a favourite wedding gift from Queen Victoria and we can see that, in money, it was a valuable one

Nature Notes – May 1921

Everything is remarkably early and of trees only the ash is not in full leaf. There is very little May blossom, only a scanty spray here and there, but it is fully opened and by June 1, it will be fading. The rowans are in perfection of blossom, and scent the hedgeways but nothing makes up for a dearth of hawbreck.

The whitebeam — two weeks ago silvery white with its half expanded leaves — is ready to burst into flower. My table is adorned with delicate branches of the bird-cherry, pendulous drupes of fairy white scenting the room. I gathered them from a tree that had been cut and laid to mend a fence.

A Letter to My Boys – May 1920

Dear Rogues.

I saw some boys the other day planting their cricket stumps and immediately your yells were brought to my mind. I nearly stopped and asked them “Where’s Binks? He is such a grand bowler.” Some very proper little boys touch their caps (or salute when their yellow heads are bared) when they meet their mothers or their aunts or their cousins but you always used to throw back your right leg, make a graceful sweep with the right arm to land an imaginary ball in my eye just to remind me what good cricketers you are. Do you remember how hard it was for me to be umpire as I wanted you both to win?

The other day I read in a newspaper that the green stain had crept to the top of the elm trees; that is far away in the south near to you for the cold winds up here make the little green leaves keep closed down tucked in their silk lined russet nest. But I thought of the beautiful elm in front of our bedroom windows and wondered if it had put on its spring dress of green lace.

I dreamed last night that we went for a walk round the decoy pond. Do you remember the beautiful bullrushes we gathered there last October. Well in my dream there were millions of primroses and bluebells and by the water’s edge a lovely spear grass growing up with pink tips.

We crept near to gather some of it when all of a sudden the heron which had been hidden behind a clump of last year’s reeds flew up with such a whirr that Binks jumped with fright and fell into the pond. We both jumped in after him for we couldn’t have gone home without dear Binks could we ? And something seemed to suck us right down. I kept a tighthold of a cricket belt round somebody’s waist and could just see the pink checks and yellow hair of Binks floating away in front of me.

It got darker and darker and I thought we would never get to the bottom of that pond —- something was drawing us away through an under-ground river. Then there was a great splutter and splashing and I saw the pair of you scrambling on to a platform and squeezing the water out of your hair.

Then you said, “Hello. Can’t you climb up? Here, we will give you a hand.” And one took each an arm and hauled me up —- cricketers have such strong arms —- on to the platform.

I know where you are, you shouted and at that moment we heard queer noises over head. The horrid rattling of a chain which made Binks think of ghosts and he began to cry. Then we looked up and a yellow light came down and down till we saw it was a candle. We shouted and somebody far, far up cried down in a small voice. “Hello you three down there. We thought there some something wrong with you at the pump. How are you going to get up?

Well, although it is 60 feet deep it was quite easy in a dream. We just floated up somehow and found tea ready. And now we could tell everybody what a true legend it is that there is a river from the bottom of the mere to the pump.

I want to ask you such a lot of questions about Dot and the white rabbit and the lambs but haven’t room for them to-day. Don’t grow too big before I see you again.

Your loving Playmate.

End of Gretchen – May 1915

(In response to the objections to the name Gretchen. Margaret reverted to her own name)

I am not sorry to lose the name of Gretchen, apart from its German birth. It is more than ten years since I suggested to my readers and the editor that I would prefer to sign myself by the Scottish equivalent of Peggy; but the latter would not allow me to change the name by which I was already well-known, in case it should appear that the personality was changed.

Circumstances have now deprived that objection of any force, and I gladly disassociate myself from the faintest savour of Germanism. I would have preferred my grandmother’s name of Peggy, and my own love-name of childhood, but my true name is Margaret.

Gretchen – May 1915

(By the middle of the war Margaret’s use of Gretchen as name, became increasingly unpopular)

Sir,

Surely the time has now come when you should issue your royal mandate that “Gretchen” should change her German name.

Yours.

A Patriot.

Child Labour in Agriculture – May 1915

Since August of last year, local education authorities have had the power to exempt from school attendance children whose labour is required owing to circumstances connected with the war —- that is owing to the large number of men who have been withdrawn from the industry.

The board of agriculture has recently issued the return of the number of children exempted. I have not seen the total figure but it is said that 89 per cent are employed in farm work, 59 per cent between the ages of 11 and 12, 884 between 12 and 13, and 449 between 13 and 14.

The maximum wage is 7s a week. The board of education quotes the figures of one county education authority as being typical of pay given generally — two at 6s; one at 5s 6d; 9 at 5s , 5 at 4s 6d, 6 at 4s, one at 3s and meals, one at 2s and meals, one lodging board and no pay.

One newspaper says that the maximum should have been a minimum but child labour should be cheaper for such tasks as weeding and thinning, for which they are better fitted than older people not of much monetary value. Everything depends on the kind of work and the adaptability of the child.

Farmers’ hopes are brought forward by those who fear that children may be exploited wholly on account of their cheapness and they are scornful at the subject that there is a danger to their health in being set to work too soon. What healthier work could they have than in the fields, they ask. There is a small danger of injury to health if the child workers are well fed and not worked to exhaustion.

It would be extremely difficult under modern conditions to work a boy too hard. Nature has endowed him with a protective inertia. Boys and girls do not love hard work or close application to anything, fortunately for the race or its strength would get sapped in childhood.

A Happy Master on Term Saturday – May 1913

It is almost too good to believe that we are actually having a dry, warm, sunshiny day after weeks of persistent wet. It makes such a tremendous difference to have good weather when we have no servants — but the married men — and everything about the place to do ourselves.

The servants’ bedding should be washed and was all done in readiness but so many dirty corners had to be seen to in the dairy and kitchen — some farm girls will purposely leave their domain in a neglected condition for the mistress to clean up after them.

There is one happy circumstance in connection with this term week. The new staff of servants is fairly complete. At breakfast time, a young man made his appearance at the kitchen door. He proved to be a trustworthy lad we once had but who left for a more responsible place. Now he wishes to come back and to be put in a position where he can learn all kinds of work with horses.

The master sat down with a happy face. “Now I don’t care a hang. I am fit up with good men, even if I don’t get another married man. When I told the young man I paid the whole of the insurance, he replied that he would take 10s less. That is his way out of any difficulty over national insurance. It may be open to question but it answers perfectly with us. ”

We are a married man short. There has not been one answer to advertisements inserted at interval for months. When trade is good, rural work and life are not attractive.

Your Mooth’s No’ Made That W’y – May 1913

“Whit are ye gaun’ tae write aboot this week?” was the rather startling question a farmer asked as he shook hands with me for the first time: “Ah wiz readin’t afore ah cam awa’. Mony a time ah wunner ‘at sae muckle that womman has in her heid.

Bit ah like best when ye gie’s a big lauch. A wee kin’ o’ sair on the men whiles, are ye no’? Bit mebbe we’re the better o’ kennin’ oor fauts. A bit lauch does us guid though, sae dinna forget that.”

It is a serious matter to find that one is expected to supply the farming world weekly with “a bit lauch;” especially when circumstances and natural disposition tend to keep the grave side of life to the fore. All the more reason, perhaps why we should value the laugh that is kindly and sympathetic and humorous with no vulgarity or hardness or frivolity in it.

The great humorists of literature have been called benefactors of the human race. So in a humble way smaller people do each other good if they can have a laugh together. Farming people are fonder of laughter , and laugh more readily, than any other class of people known to me. It is not that they have a keener appreciation of wit and humour, but that they have a greater love for unrestrained, hearty, physical laughter — if I may call it such.

“That wiz aye the laugh ye ken!” is the phrase that generally concludes the telling of a story perhaps twenty or thirty years old which has never failed to do its duty in setting laughter a-rocking. Once that I was making the plaint of being unable to laugh so easily and so heartily as the older generation of my farming kin, I was told, “Your mooth’s no ‘made that w’y.”

It sounds rather as if Scottish farmers were accustomed to a position among their women of unquestioned supremacy and authority, and an atmosphere of humble flattery, that they should think I am “sair” on them if I venture upon a little mild criticism — for I am sure I deal very, very gently with them —- and dare to poke a little fun at their masculine ways.

I am going to tell a secret that is not a secret. Like many other women who through life have had to shed “sair” tears because of their men folk, I can see the humour of it all through my tears, and love at times to hold my sides and “hae a bit lauch” at them. If they can laugh with me, so much the better.

Through the Byre – May 1911

The worst of farmhouses is that they always smell so of cows, remarked a young townsman to me, with an air of critical tolerance, as if he might be disposed to consider them more seriously if only the objectionable odour could be eliminated. “But I suppose it can’t be helped, “ he went on.

One day I was invited to visit a dairy farm in the company of some town friends. As we surveyed each other’s attire on the point of starting, I remarked, “I have put on a dark short skirt, because we shall probably be taken through the byre.” “Through the byre!” echoed one of the ladies in a tone of genuine consternation; “what would we be going into the byre for?”

Now, all my life, I have been accustomed to reconciling the oftentimes incongruous habits of mine of town and country, that it is as much first as second nature with me. But here I was at fault. It was unthinkable to the lady that anything so crudely unpleasant as a byre could be introduced into the conversation, much less that she should be invited to walk into one. As a matter of fact, the byre was not alluded to, nor did we see so much as the tail of a cow.

It is not so in other parts where I am more at home. The half-hour before tea is so invariably devoted to an inspection of the dairy stock and of the pigs, that, after all social civilities and enquiries have been exchanged, one knows exactly when to expect the question, “Would you like to see the kye?” And then we move in slow procession through the byres, listening to the recent history of each cow in turn, and learning something of the feeding of them.

Here the women know more about the business than the men, who have a detached air of proprietorship, as they lead the way along the line of cattle. And I think of my fastidious town friends when I listen to one farm-wife exclaiming to another upon the long distance her byre and her milk-house are from the dwelling: “It’s a heap extra wark when the byre’s awa’ oot the road like that.”