Complete New Tales of Para Handy (25 page)

Two of them were standing on the jetty as the
Vital Spark
came alongside, one wearing the traditional badge-of-office of the foreman, a rather battered bowler hat.

“You're late,” said this worthy, without preamble. “We expected ye twa hoors ago.”

“Chust so,” replied Para Handy without rancour, “but what you contracted for wass the
Vital Spark
, no' the
Glen Sannox
. We are not exactly runnin' to a schedule.”

“In fact,” came a voice from the engine-room at his feet, “wi' the state o' this machinery it's a miracle we're runnin' at all!”

“Pay no attention to Macphail, chentlemen,” said the Captain, unperturbed, “for bein' cooped up in that cubby-hole aal hoors of the day would turn anybody soft in the head.”

Four hours later, her cargo of granite blocks in place, the puffer cast off from the jetty at Ailsa Craig and headed north towards Arran and her ultimate destination, the James Watt dock in Greenock.

“That's gey fantoosh stane tae be used for buildin' hooses in Greenock,” observed Sunny Jim.

“Good heavens, it iss not going to be used to build anything at aal, Jum,” exclaimed the Captain. “Surely you ken that Ailsa granite iss the nameliest there iss for makin' curlin' stanes, and they're sent aal over the world!”

“They must be weel thocht of stanes, then,” said Jim, “if it's worth the labour o' folk tae go cairtin' them aboot the place like that. Who foond oot aboot them in the first case, oot on the Ailsa rock like that?”

“It will have been wan o' they gee-oligists, Jum. Like the man we saw last week at Furnace, the Englishman that wass stayin' at the Inn, and had thae sacks o' rock samples stored in the cellars, and him oot first thing every mornin' wi' his wee hammer and awa' along tae the quarries, afore they sterted blastin' for the day, to knock more lumps oot o' them.”

“Whit's the point o' it all,” asked Sunny Jim. “Whit dae they dae wi' the rocks when they've got them tae wherever they're takin' them?”

“Tae judge from the quality of coals we're gettin' on this shup nooadays,” observed Macphail, appearing at the wheelhouse door wiping his hands with an oily rag, “Ah doot they sell them aff cheap tae the coal yards, and whenever the merchants get an order frae the Glesga office tae fill the bunkers on the
Vital Spark
then they jist pit wan sack o' rocks in the cairt for every wan sack o' coals.”

“There's times I think you could be right at that, Dan,” said the Captain. “When I saw the rubbish we wass being given last week by MacFadyen's man at Craigendoran, I wass nearly sendin' for the local polisman to put MacFadyen on a cherge. There wass mair rock in it than I've seen in many of the shup's cargoes of roadstone!

“What they really do wi' it, Jum, iss to tak' it awa' and study it.”

“Study it!” cried Sunny Jim. “Why dae folk want tae study a bit o' rock for guidness sake!”

“I don't know aal the ins and oots of it,” admitted Para Handy with a shrug, “but it'll be for museums and the like. Then again maybe that's how they cam' to find oot in the first place that there iss good slate at Ballachulish and Seil Island, and tip-top granite at Ailsa Craig and at Furnace, and roadstone at Alexandria and aal the rest. Wee men in plus-fowers and sonsy bunnets crawlin' aal ower the country and chust chip-chippin' awa wi' their hammers, and takin' great lumps of Scotland hame in their luggage when they're done. Nae wonder folk are aalways sayin' the country's no' half whit it was fufty years ago!

“Hurricane Jeck met up wi' wan o' them when we wass laid over in Portree for a day or two a few years ago, and sent him home wi' aal the wrang ideas aboot Skye, that's for sure …

“It wass this way,” he continued in a moment, once his pipe was going to his satisfaction, and the puffer had run the cheeky gauntlet of half-a-dozen youths in hired rowing-boats off Millport Bay. “Jeck and me wass crewin' a puffer that belonged to a man in Brodick, and we had gone to Skye wi' a cargo of early Arran potatos, and to pick up a load of peats for wan o' the Campbeltown distilleries.

“There wass a delay in gettin' the cargo in. I think mebbe it wass a deleeberate delay, for the skipper wass a Skye man and he chust went off hame for a few days, leavin' Jeck and me and the boy in the harbour at Portree.

“Jeck and I spent some time in the inns at Portree till oor money ran oot and it wass there that we met wi' this English gee-oligist. He was a hermless enough fellow, but there wass nothin' to him, he wass aboot five foot two in hiss stockin' soles and ass skinny ass a Tiree chicken. Effery mornin' he'd be off first thing wi' a hammer and an empty sack and effery evenin' he'd come staggerin' back into Portree bent double wi' the weight of whateffer he'd pit in it that day.

“It wass peetiful! There wass times you wud think he wud drop on the spot!

“Wan night he wass that trauchled that Jeck went up from the boat and gave him a hand to get the sack to his Hotel, and pit it in the cellar wi' aal the rest he'd collected. There wass mair than a dozen of them, aal whuppers, wi' big labels roond their necks sayin' where the rocks in them were from, and whit day he'd foond them.

“The upshot wass that he offered Jeck a chob for the next day to go out with him and help fill his samples and then, come the evenin', cairry them back to Portree. Five shullings he offered and Jeck chumped at it, for we wass oot of money except for a couple of coppers and some foreign coins the Portree Inns wudna take. ‘I'll split the money wi' you, Peter', says Jeck: ‘You stay here and keep an eye oot for our peats comin', and I'll go and help the mannie.'

“Next mornin' Jeck wass up at the crack o' dawn and up to the Hotel, and I saw the two of them headin' off, the mannie wi' a wee knapsack and his hammers, and Jeck wi' two huge empty sacks draped ower his shoulders.

“Six o'clock at night, Jeck appeared on the quayside and you wud not think he had walked a yard nor cairried a pound for he wass as fresh ass a daisy: but you must remember he wass at the height of his powers at the time, full of natural sagacity and energy, built like a brick oothoose and with the strength of three.

“ ‘You're lookin' quite jocko, Jeck,' says I, ass we made oor way along the harbour towards the Inns. ‘It wass not too hard a day then?'

“ ‘It could have been,' says Jeck. ‘Wud ye believe we went aal the way to Sligachan, a good eight miles along the main road, and then off we go into the hills and he leaps aboot the rocks wi' thon hammer hammerin' awa', and he fills the sacks till I could scarce lift them off the ground. He says it makes sich a difference havin' a fine strong chap to do the cairryin', and for sure he took advantage of it!

“ ‘When it comes to dinner-time and I'm thinkin' the least he can do iss tak' me and treat me at the Sligachan Inn, here he ups and opens the wee knapsack and brings oot some bread and cheese and two bottles of milk.
Milk
!

“ ‘Towards fower o'clock, when the sacks are full to the very top wi' lumps o' rock of effery shape and size and description, he thanks me very politely for my services, and gives me the five shullin's we'd agreed on for the feein'.

“ ‘Then he says that he'll go back to Portree the long way roond, takin' the track that runs along the coast beside the Sound of Raasay: but that I can chust tak' the main road hame for the sake of speed and comfort. So I did, and so here I am. There's no sign of him back at the Hotel yet but his sacks is aal safely snugged doon and labelled in his cellar.'

“ ‘You look very fit on it, onyway,' says I. ‘The sacks couldna have been aal that heavy for you look chust ass fresh ass when you set off and there iss no' ass much ass an ounce of perspiration on you.'

“ ‘There would have been, if I'd let it,' said Jeck. ‘But did ye think I wass goin' to be daft enough to hump half of Sligachan eight miles up the road to Portree? Wan stane is like any ither stane ass far ass I can tell, so I chust waited till he wass well oot o' sight and then I emptied the sacks oot at the roadside at Sligachan, hung them round my neck, and when I got back to the town I filled them up again wi' rocks from yon big pile of roadstone lyin' at the pierhead.

“ ‘He'll neffer ken the difference …' ”

F
ACTNOTE

Lying at the mouth of the Firth nine miles west of Girvan Bay, Ailsa Craig has become familiar to anyone in the UK who has ever watched transmission of the Open Golf Tournament from the nearby Turnberry links. Cameras make a habit of zooming in on the dramatic silhouette of the rock when there is not much happening on the course!

For decades the very best curling stones were indeed regarded as those made from Ailsa granite. There was little else of any material value on the islet, though it was tenanted from the Earls of Cassilis, into whose estates it fell, for a tiny rental which, at least till the beginning of last century, was paid in kind — young gannets for the table, and seabird feathers and down for bedding and cushions. It was still tenanted just a generation or so ago, but the fisherman's summer bothies, the remains of which can still be seen on the north-east coast, have been deserted for much longer.

T
HE
A
RRAN
C
ONNECTION
— Here in all her late Victorian, splendour is the Glasgow and South Western Railway Company's
Glen Sannox
, which gave 33 years service on the Ardrossan to Brodick crossing, her speed helping to reduce the Glasgow to Arran journey to under 90 minutes. She ran her trials on 1st June 1892 and it is probable that this photograph was taken then. This is obviously a ‘new' vessel, and there are no members of the public on board.

Most of the eminent travellers in Scotland, from Monro in the 16th century onwards, have visited and been over-awed by the rock. Many of them, coincidentally, were geologists — though their travels were not solely motivated by that specialised branch of science. John McCulloch, who criss-crossed the Western Highlands and Islands in the first two decades of the 19th century, has left the most comprehensive account. Much of it may be almost unreadably turgid but nobody, not even Pennant in the late 18th or Muir in the late 19th centuries, covered so much ground. McCulloch visited virtually every rock and atoll in the north west and left a unique account of their society as well as their geology in four volumes published in 1820.

It is interesting how early travellers in Scotland seemed to come in surprisingly well-defined categories in an evolutionary progression.

The enquiring — such as Monro or Martin. The curious — Johnson or Boswell. The polymaths — Pennant or Garnett. The geologists — Jamieson or McCulloch. The antiquarians — Cordiner or Grose. The economists — Newte or Anderson. The historians — Selkirk or Logan. The natural historians — Kearton or Harvie-Brown.

And (at regular intervals) the downright eccentric, such as the formidable Englishwoman, the Honourable Mrs Murray Aust of Kensington, who undertook a journey through the Highlands which included the crossing of the notorious 2,200 feet Corrieyairack pass from the Spey Valley to the Great Glen
in a post-chaise carriage and pair
, and wrote a two volume account (published in 1810) to prove it!