Bruach Blend (13 page)

Fearing I might have hurt the old man's feelings by showing my misgivings about his handiwork, I tried to atone by quite unnecessarily buying myself one of his dippers.

‘There's no doubt your dippers are good and strong,' I complimented him as I handed over the money for the dipper and the baking tin.

‘Indeed everything I'm after makin' is good an' strong, just as you say, mam,' he acknowledged complacently. ‘I have two sons that's the same way; captains in the army both of them an' where else would they be gettin' their strength now if it wasn't from me?' He inclined a deprecatory nod towards ‘the body', who undid her mouth and tried a tentative smile. ‘No, mam,' he went on, ‘I need to give my work strength or folks would be after complainin' an' I would be for loosin' my livin', would I not?' He lifted the lid off one of the milk pails and producing a filthy rag wrapped the money in it before replacing it in the pail and pressing the lid back firmly. ‘No indeed, mam,' he reiterated. ‘It wouldn't pay me not to take care when I'm doin' my job. A tinker's not like a doctor that can just bury his mistakes.'

As he and ‘the body' turned to go there came another ‘moo' from Bonny.

‘Is your beast near calvin' then?' he asked.

Though all Bruach cattle were out on the moors at this time of year a cow approaching calving would normally be brought in and tethered on the croft thus enabling her to have a bite of good grass and also enabling the owner to keep a better eye on her in case of difficulty, hence the old man's question.

‘No,' I told him. ‘I brought her in because she has something the matter with her eye and as the vet is supposed to be visiting the village today I want her close at hand so I can ask him to have a look at her.'

‘Bloody hell, mam!' he exclaimed genially. ‘You'll be excusin' me surely but why would you be needin' a vet now for to cure a sore eye in a cow? Sure I can cure her myself in no time at all.' He darted an enquiring glance at me. ‘Will I get to try?' he asked.

‘You will,' I told him. I was happy enough to let the old man try his skill since it was by no means certain the vet would be able to reach Bruach that day and tinkers are regarded as being good folk doctors. Many were the stories told in Bruach of a tinker effecting a cure in an animal or even a human when the vet or the doctor were alleged to have been nonplussed. The old people of Bruach also had a good knowledge of folk medicine when they could be induced to confide it but on the whole they were reticent about offering their knowledge except in general discussion at the ceilidhs by which time the symptoms had usually disappeared or the patient was dead. At first I had put their tight-lipped attitude down to their fear of being derided by the younger folk, many of whom had by now come to share the professional ridicule of homely remedies. But of course I may have been wrong; it may have been only their conception of clan loyalty that kept their lips sealed for everyone has to earn a living and after all many of the clan were qualified vets or doctors; some were even undertakers!

I led the old man towards Bonny and she, catching sight of us, lifted up her head from grazing the good grass of the croft and watched us expectantly. She looked pathetic with her one eye half-closed and dribbling pus but she herself seemed to be suffering no discomfort.

‘I believe 'tis no more than a sharp bit of heather stem that has got itself under the eyelid,' said the tinker as he approached. Bonny shook her horns at him threateningly but his response was to grip one of her horns firmly the better to examine her eye.

‘It's all right, Bonny,' I assured her, and because he was in my company she made no more gestures of protest.

‘Will she take a wee potach?' asked the tinker.

‘She'll take as many as I want to give her,' I assured him.

‘Aye, well see an' bring a wee potach for her,' he instructed.

I left him and ‘the body' still discussing Bonny and going over to the cottage made up a potach. When I returned the old tinker was chewing vigorously at what I thought at first was a quid of tobacco but as he opened his mouth to speak to me I saw that whatever he was chewing was leaking green juice which ran down his chin as he spoke.

‘Did you get the potach?' he asked.

I took it from my pocket and seeing it Bonny moved forward. ‘Now don't give it to her yet just,' the tinker ordered as he moved up to within a foot of Bonny's head and bent down. Resting his hand on her neck and staring straight into her eye he said quietly, ‘Offer her the potach now but hold it just out of her reach so she cannot get it. Make her strain for it just.'

I did as I was bid and Bonny's eyes opened wide with impatient greed as she strained to reach the potach. At the precise moment when she was engrossed with reaching for it, the old tinker gathered all the spittle and juice in his mouth and spat expertly straight into Bonny's eye. I am not sure whether it was Bonny or myself who recoiled the more violently from the sudden expectoration but it was Bonny who recovered herself more quickly. She screwed up her sore eye and tossed her head, but she was not deterred from reaching for the potach and taking advantage of my momentary inaction she took it from my unyielding fingers.

‘That's the way of it,' pronounced the tinker with great satisfaction. ‘Likely she'll be the better of that.' He wiped his green-stained lips and chin on his sleeve. ‘I'm thinkin' you'll no be needin' the vet to her now.'

‘What was it you were chewing?' I asked.

He nodded at ‘the body' who unclenched her hand to show me a few sprigs of ground ivy which she still held.

‘And you reckon that will cure her?'

‘I do so, mam. You will see her eye as good as new in a day or so,' he assured me.

There was the sound of a car engine and a few minutes later the vet came striding towards us. He summed up the situation at once. ‘You've been having a go at faith-healing, have you?' he said, dismissing my embarrassment with a lenient smile. ‘What have you been up to, then?'

Readily the old tinker explained the treatment. The vet listened attentively. ‘Aye, well,' he said when the old man had finished. ‘Let's leave it at that and see what happens. I have to come out again tomorrow to see Johnny Tom's cow so if your cure doesn't show signs of working we can try mine.'

‘I've never seen it fail yet,' said the tinker. ‘Not on man nor beast.' He turned towards ‘the body'. ‘Look now but didn't I do the same thing for herself a while back an' not a sign of trouble since.' ‘The body' released a sad smile. ‘But you must make sure it comes as a shock to them,' the tinker went on. ‘What you must do first is tell some tale they're goin' to find it hard to believe an' when they're starin' at you with their eyes so wide they can't open any wider then that's the moment you spit.'

The vet slanted a look of stealthy amusement at me. ‘What tale did you tell your wife to get her to open her eyes wide enough?' he asked the old man.

‘Ach, I told her I was swearin' off the whisky for a week,' came the reply, followed by a guffaw of laughter.

When the tinker and the ‘small wee body' had gone the vet turned his attention to Bonny. ‘Seriously, what do you want to do about her?' he asked. ‘Myself, I don't mind telling you I'd like to see how the spit cure works.'

‘To be honest I'd like to see that too,' I admitted. ‘But I don't want to risk the eye perhaps getting worse.'

‘Oh, I don't think there's much fear of that,' he comforted. ‘Anyway I'll look in next time I'm down just to make sure.' Back at the car he said, ‘I can't help being amused by this because my wife has had a sore eye for two or three days now. She got some drops from the doctor but they don't seem to be doing much good. It came into my mind when the tinker was telling us about curing his wife.'

‘You're going to try the same cure on your wife?'

‘I'll have to think of a good tale to tell her first,' he said with a secret smile.

‘Why not?' I asked, joining in his laughter.

‘The trouble is I'd never know whether or not it worked.'

‘Why not?' I repeated fatuously.

‘Why not? Because if I tried that treatment on my wife I wouldn't have a wife any more. She'd be up and away on the first boat,' he told me. ‘And who'd blame her?'

The following morning Bonny's eye was so much improved that when the vet called later in the afternoon he professed himself perfectly satisfied with her progress. ‘In fact,' he said seriously, ‘I cannot do better than recommend you to continue the treatment.'

I burst out laughing. ‘No damty fear!' I said, but my amusement began to border on agitation as I realized there was no reciprocal laughter from the vet. ‘You're joking!' I accused him, studying his face while waiting for the hint of a smile to betray itself. ‘You are, aren't you,' I faltered.

The vet returned my stare steadily. ‘No, I'm not,' he replied, and though his mouth relaxed into a smile his voice was firm.

‘Look!' I laughed protestingly, ‘I can't go chewing weeds and spitting them into cows' eyes.'

‘Why not?' he retorted. ‘If a simple remedy like that will do the trick why bother with anything more complicated?'

I looked from him to Bonny. ‘But surely she's so much better it's very likely the one treatment will suffice,' I prevaricated, still half convinced he was teasing.

‘That could be,' he admitted. ‘But supposing it doesn't then you'll be wanting something from me to clear it up and neither of us will ever know whether or not the tinker's cure was truly effective.'

Bewilderedly I accepted his reasoning.

‘Cheer up!' he bade me in parting. ‘It's good to live and learn.'

‘You're a sadist,' I told him, and was sure I detected a gleam of pure devilment in his eyes as he drove away.

The following morning I dutifully gathered a bunch of ground ivy and chewed with steadily increasing distaste until my mouth was fall of green pap which was about as palatable as a mixture of soap and mustard. Then with purpose in mind and a potach in my hand I approached the tethered Bonny. As before she espied the potach; as before her eyes widened with greedy anticipation as she reached for it. It was going to be easy, I told myself, and mustering the contents of my mouth I prepared to spit. But at the crucial moment a horse-fly must have bitten Bonny's side and as she swung her head round to attack it she caught me with the tip of a horn, knocking me off balance, and making me stumble. When I picked myself up I stood gaping and panic-stricken at the dawning realization that the mouthful of green pap was no longer in my mouth; neither was it in Bonny's eye. At the moment of stumbling I had swallowed the whole wretched mess! I clutched at my throat. Having no idea what effect ground ivy might have on the digestion of a human, it seemed there was only one thing to do. I put my finger down my throat and retched.

According to Culpepper, ground ivy ‘easeth all griping pains, windy and choleric humours in the stomach, spleen or belly, helps the yellow jaundice by opening the stoppings of the gall and liver, and melancholy by opening the stoppings of the spleen; expelleth venom or poison and also the plague; it provokes urine and women's courses'.

The old tinker's remedy certainly cured Bonny's eye and I reckoned I too should be healthy enough for a time. The cake tin he had made for me was also an enormous success, the cakes cooking to perfection and sliding out effortlessly when done. It proved so useful, in fact, that I resolved to ask him to make me another one. Now it seemed I was too late. I wondered what had become of the ‘small wee body'.

‘Ach, didn't she go away to the hostapol with him an' now folks say she's after makin' her home with her son on the mainland.'

‘Her son – and the old man's?' I queried.

‘Aye, I believe he's one of them scrap tinks.'

I smiled. ‘The old man told me he had two sons and they were “captains in the army both”.'

Ruari let out a scornful grunt of laughter. ‘I wonder which army that would be?'

‘Not the Salvation Army anyway,' said Erchy. ‘I'm damty sure none of his sons would ever be sober enough to join that.'

‘The flea army, maybe,' murmured Janet.

‘Indeed if I'd told as many lies as that man I couldn't face myself,' Ruari declared with a shake of his head.

‘Lies or no, where will we be after gettin' as good dippers an' pails now he's gone?' asked Morag, who frequently betrayed a soft spot for the island tinkers. Tinkers on the mainland she was willing to concede might ‘steal the eyes out of your head an' come back for the sockets' but not island tinkers: their behaviour was gentlemanly in comparison.

‘Right enough we'll miss the old man's pails and dippers,' said Janet.

‘And his “small wee body”,' I said. ‘We'll miss her too.'

‘Not so much as the barman at the bar will miss her, I'm thinkin',' said Ruari.

‘He'll miss the pair of them,' said Erchy.

‘Did she drink too?' I asked innocently. It was accepted in Bruach that tinkers got roaring drunk but I found it hard to associate drunkenness with the meek little ‘body'.

‘Drink?' echoed Erchy. ‘Too damty true she drank. I've seen her myself take six good drams one after the other an' still by the look of her you'd swear she'd never touched a drop.'

‘The woman!' ejaculated Janet disapprovingly.

‘Aye, it's true right enough,' Ruari confirmed. ‘But when she'd be takin' another three or four on top of the six then the barman would have to watch out for fear she would be fightin' her way in.'

‘In where?' I asked.

‘Into the bar,' explained Erchy. ‘See, the old tinker wouldn't allow her in with him so he'd take whisky out to her. He thought by doin' this he'd stop her havin' too much. But ach, he used to get so drunk himself he couldn't remember how many she would be havin'. So long as there was money to pay for it he'd buy it. By God! she used to get real savage with him at times wantin' to get inside.'