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Authors: Doris; Davidson
Gift from the Gallowgate
A Gift from the Gallowgate
This eBook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
Copyright © Doris Davidson, 2004
The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-84158-415-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-521-5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
I was born on the last day of June 1922, and my parents, Robert and May Forsyth, chose my name very carefully. Doris, according to the book of names they studied, meant the
Gift of God. What could be nicer than that? When I was old enough to think for myself, I was secretly pleased that they hadn’t called me after somebody. Not that any of our relatives had
outlandish names, but it was good to have a name all to myself. It has had its ups and downs, of course.
When I started my second job – in a tiny office in the Coast Lines sheds on Jamieson’s Quay – I’d to walk along South Market Street, the part of the harbour where the
coalboats unloaded their cargoes. It was safer to go along the edge of the quay rather than the other side of the street, bustling, even in 1938, with horse-drawn carts as well as smelly fish
lorries and whisky drays rattling over the cassies (the Aberdeen version of causeways, our granite cobblestones). Newly sixteen, I enjoyed the appreciative whistles and wolf calls of the seamen,
black-faced with coal, the stevedores on shore and any other males who happened to be around.
Then I bought myself a handbag with my initials on the flap. ‘DF’ they proclaimed, in large metal letters that no one could miss, and everything changed. The whistles and wolf calls
were suddenly replaced by sniggers, even loud splutters of laughter.
‘Oh, would you look at that!’ one black-faced minstrel sang out, looking round to make sure that his mates were listening. ‘She’s got her initials on her bag.’ He
turned to me again, grinning. ‘What’s the DF stand for, darlin’?’
Pretending not to hear, I walked on. I wasn’t going to tell them anything about myself. Alas, another wag picked up the teasing, but he went a step further.
‘You shouldna need to ask that, Billy Boy. It’s simple enough – stands oot a mile. DF. Damn Fool.’
This was taken up by all, completely deflating my ego, and although I knew they meant it as a joke, I clung on to that bag, with its initials, to prove that I didn’t care. I couldn’t
afford to buy another one then, anyway, and there was no way to remove the offending metal letters that had been sewn right through the lining as well as the suede outer covering. I never told
anyone about this incident, getting so used to the teasing that I would call back, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ when anybody asked the fateful question.
Many years later, my young sister bought a bag with her initials on. She was working in the office of Hall Russell and Company, Shipbuilders, and fared even worse than I had. ‘BF’?
Poor Bertha!
In the early forties, I was astonished to read that Doris Day, a young American singer, had taken the film world by storm. I was well aware that she hadn’t been named
after me, but I enjoyed the reflected glory that came my way because of it. In company, somebody always announced, ‘And now we’ll have a song from Doris Day . . . (long pause) . . .
vidson.’ The only thing was – I couldn’t sing for peanuts! But I went to see all her pictures, bought her records, fell in love with all her leading men. Oh, that Rock Hudson!
What a heartthrob! Why did some wicked journalist have to spill the beans on him when he was dying of Aids?
The girlish dreams I had cherished through thick and thin, through war and peace, through marriage and motherhood, were swept away as if by a raging torrent. Oh, well, at least Doris Day,
herself, is still hanging in there.
My maternal granny also took an occasional dig at my name, though never in a nasty way. She could never be nasty. I used to spend a lot of time with her at the weekends when I
was young (the word teenager hadn’t then been spawned), and I always told her what I’d been doing at school during the week, or at work when I started to earn my living.
‘Maybe your Mum and Dad thought Doris meant the Gift of God,’ she would say, giving a mock sigh, after I’d been speaking non-stop for ages, ‘but nae in your case, lassie.
The Gift o’ the Gab would be mair like it.’
I wasn’t offended, or hurt in any way. I knew my Granny loved me . . . and she loved to know what had been happening to me.
Of course, admitting also to my middle name (after my mother) gave rise to more teasing. Doris May? As soon as one of the opposite sex learned that, he came up with a load of
suggestions, innocently humorous or indecently lewd – depending on the type of person he was.
For instance . . . ‘Doris May? And will you, if I ask you?’
That perhaps doesn’t strike you as having a
double entendre
, but accompanied by a leer and a sly wink, you can bet your bottom dollar it had.
*
I’ve long passed all those stages. Any comments on my name these days come from other women. ‘So you’re a Doris, too? There’s not many of us left
now.’
I usually laugh and say, ‘No, there’s not,’ but it makes me feel like I should be thrown on the scrap heap.
Just the same, it still gives me a real thrill to see novels I’ve written on display in bookshops. My first name lets readers know I’m not a young thing writing in
today’s style, about today’s problems. Mind you, the emotions underlying today’s problems are not so unlike those of fifty or even a hundred years ago; only the underlying causes
of the problems are different. But I don’t intend to lecture on something as controversial as this. I’m too old to argue . . . though I still have my off moments.
I’m inclined to agree, however, with my Granny’s assessment of me all those years ago, and my family will no doubt endorse it. The Gift of the Gab never really leaves a person, does
it?
THE FORSYTH SAGA
(or My Saga as a Forsyth)
My father, Robert Robb Forsyth, served his time (or part of his time) as a cabinet maker – we had a beautifully carved oak wardrobe in the house for as long as I can
remember – but, for some reason, he then took up butchery, learning his trade from his namesake father. He was one of the sons mentioned in the sign above the shop at the top of the
Gallowgate. ‘R. Forsyth and Sons’, it proclaimed, proudly, but before they joined him, it had proclaimed, just as proudly, ‘R. Forsyth, Flesher and Poulterer’.
When anyone asked him why it didn’t just say ‘Butcher’, he always replied, ‘Anybody can be a butcher, but it takes skill to be a flesher.’
The other son of the sign was my Uncle Jack, but more about him later. A third son, Billy, was foreman in Murray’s Meat Market, the killing-house, or abbatoir, to give it its Sunday name.
We’ll come to him later, too.
There were seven girls in the Forsyth family, the butcher’s daughters as my mother was told when she wondered who the three strapping damsels were who marched regally down the hill past
the veggie shop where she worked. They were the three eldest, all well built even then. They gradually bloomed until they averaged around seventeen or eighteen stones, though it didn’t seem
to bother them . . . or their husbands, for that matter.
They sometimes went to Blackpool on holiday, without their menfolk for some reason, and signed their postcards, ‘From the Three Fairies’. This always convulsed me. I could picture
them dancing around in a circle (they were quite light on their feet considering their size . . . like Oliver Hardy, in fact), waving a wand in one hand and hoisting up wings and bosoms with the
other. Awesome bosoms! I can recall Auntie Jeannie boasting that she could rest a cup and saucer on hers. She could, too.
The middle one in age, Jeannie, was a great swimmer earning several life saving certificates, and my cousins and I were made to go to the Beach Baths every week when I was about six or seven, to
learn to swim. I was never very happy in the water, but Bella, the aunt assigned to me, was determined that I would not shame the Forsyth clan and battled bravely on. She used the method of holding
me up at the back by the straps of my bathing costume, and I was making some progress across the water one day when I happened to look behind to make sure she was still there. She wasn’t, and
with no confidence in my own ability (well founded, I may say) down I went, swallowing gallons of water mixed with large amounts of chlorine and small amounts of urine . . . or vice versa?
I never mastered that fear. The most I ever managed was about half a breadth before my toes took cramp. Jeannie, of course, took every opportunity to show off her skills. She dived from the very
top platform and darted this way and that like a seal . . . an elephant seal? She made me feel ashamed of myself, but not enough to make any difference.
My mother and Auntie Ina, Uncle Billy’s wife, used to come along with us, and sat in the spectators’ gallery to keep tabs on our progress, but they were absolutely mortified one day
when an oldish man, possibly there watching his grandchild, said to them, ‘I’m getting my kill at that fat woman. She’s making a right exhibition of herself, but you can’t
help admiring her, can you? Not many her size would dive off the top board, and she hits the water with that much force, I’m aye expecting her to empty the pool.’
(Auntie Jeannie’s own description of hitting the water was, ‘If I don’t go in at the right angle, I land in a belly flop, and it feels like I’ve split myself in
two.’)
Needless to say, Mum and Auntie Ina didn’t admit that they were in any way related to the ‘fat woman’, who had to give up swimming eventually because she couldn’t get a
costume large enough to fit her. She had, as a last resort, actually knitted one, but you can imagine what happened. The weight of the water pulled it so far down that her hands weren’t big
enough to cover what shouldn’t be on display as she came out of the pool . . . for the very last time! I hope the elderly gentleman wasn’t there on that occasion; the excitement might
have been too much for him.
Robert Forsyth Senior also had four younger daughters, making up his total of ten children, three boys and seven girls, but none was so prolific as he. Between them, they only gave him seventeen
grandchildren. One, Annie, emigrated to Canada in 1920, not long after her mother died, and didn’t marry until she was past childbearing age. She never came home, so I never met her, but she
kept in regular touch with Jeannie, who seemed to take on the mother role for all her siblings.
Mum once confessed to me that, even after she married into the Forsyth family, her in-laws made her feel like a country mouse . . . which indeed she was, having only come to the city when she
was about sixteen. My aunts and uncles could never have realized that she felt like this. They were extroverts with a tremendous sense of humour, and all very musical, Billy playing the violin and
ukulele, Jack the mandolin, Bob (my father) the Japanese fiddle (one-stringed, with a horn at the side). He could also coax hauntingly beautiful tunes from an ordinary household saw using the same
bow – his rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ brought tears to the eyes. They could all play the piano, and the girls had beautiful singing voices. I
can’t recall hearing the men singing; we children were packed off up to the attics while the adults had their musical evenings.
