When a farmer dies in Scotland, it’s the convention that he gets a big funeral. So, when auld Jockie Murdoch of Muirside died, it wasn’t just his relatives and his neighbours who turned up for him, but all the other farmers for many miles around, who’d known him from the auction marts and the agricultural shows, plus the contractors who’d shifted his animals, transported his fertiliser and lime, delivered his fenceposts and similar gear, the vet, the bank manager, the insurance agent, the auctioneer, the farmers’ union rep, and so on. There must’ve been more than a hundred of us.
After the interment, a few of us, including some who’d know him all their lives, moved onto The Gordon Arms Hotel in the village and decided to ‘mak a nicht o’ it.’ There was his younger brother, Willie, who used to be a teacher at the local Academy, before he retired. And Hugh Robertson who had the other half of the hill-grazings on the Kirkmuir. And Wattie Watson, who used to have Blackwaterside before he sold up and moved into the village. And auld Jim Steele from Wester Woodside. And me.
Hugh raised a glass: ‘To Jockie Murdoch, a firm friend an’ a sair enemy.’
‘To Jockie!’ we chorused.
Willie laughed: ‘Aye, he could be fierce if he felt he’d been wronged, that’s true enough. Small in stature, but mighty in his wrath. Of course, we Murdochs are Covenanting stock, fierce in defence of our…’ Mercifully, he was cut short by Hugh. (Willie is was a history teacher, and given an opportunity, will bore on for ever and a day about Scotland’s Covenanting Wars in the Seventeenth Century).
Hugh: ‘Ha! “Fierce” is the word, right enough. Ye should’ve seen him when he came on that family picnicking up on the muir, wi’ one o’ they mobile barbecue sets. There’d been nae rain fur a week an’ the heather wiz as dry as tinder. His language woulda made Billy Connolly blush. I could hear him two fields away. I rushed up there thinkin’ there wiz mebbe a murder bein’ committed.’
Wattie: ‘Aye, Jockie loved the muir. Every July he climbed up there to pick nutberries. Annie or one of the daughters would mak the jam, and he’d always drop by in the village wi’ two or three jars for me.’
Me: ‘Nutberries?’
Jim & Hugh: ‘Aye, “Nutberries,” they call ’em “Cloudberries” doon in England. They mak awfie gud jam.’
Me: ‘Never knew that.’
Willie: ‘Aye, the Norwegians and the Swedes are mad about ’em. My dochter says ye can buy the jam in that IKEA shop. I went there once, took me ages to find the way oot.’
[stunned pause]
Jim: ‘I believe he climbed up there every year for the nutberries, because his father and his father’s father had done it afore him.’
Wattie: ‘True enough, Jockie wis a traditionalist in some ways. But nae in a’ ways. Forby, the man built his ain wee hydroscheme tae power the milking shed. Built the thing in the 1970s too. These days ye can buy a complete effing mini hydro-electricity kit. Not then. He had tae design it and built it from scratch. And a gud job o’ it he made too.’
Me: ‘That’s right enough, Wattie. I remember him showin’ it to me. I asked him why the outflow ran thirty yards downstream before it drained back into the burn. Jockie explained that, if the burn was in spate, then floodwater might back up the outflow and kill the power, but that wouldn’t happen if you made the outflow long enough. He said he’d got the idea from studying the remains of the old cornmill beyond the village…. Is it my turn for a round? Same again, lads?’
**
Jim: ‘Weel, how tall wis he, Willie?’
Willie: ‘He wasnae that small, Five foot three mebbe. Mither aye said he wis sae quick an’ nimble that he seemed smaller than he really was. Some o’ the best and the greatest come in small packages. Er, Napoleon, for example.’
Hugh: ‘Small or not. He wis a great worker, he cud turn his hand tae anythin’ – breedin’ Clydesdale horses and harvestin’ their oats wi’ a reaper-binder like his father, or buildin’ his ain hydro-electric plant. He really cud turn his hand tae anythin.’
Me: ‘He could’ve led an army into Russia, like Napoleon.’
[awkward pause]
Wattie: ‘He surely cud turn his hand tae anythin’. But all he wanted tae do, and do it tae his very best ability, was tae farm Muirside, like his father and his father’s father before him.
Image: Semenov.m7, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons – ripening cloudberries in amongst leaves.
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