Dundonians of a certain age might remember Barrack Street
Museum. Downstairs was a newspaper
archive and upstairs there was a series of displays, including the famous
Dundee Whale. Was there competition
between this museum (now sadly closed) and the main museum in the Albert
Institute? Both certainly boasted
eye-catching exhibits which make the modern ones seem very anaemic in
comparison. (My favourite from the main
museum: the lovingly preserved Old Toll
Bar interior from Lochee. Why is this in
storage now? Maybe I just love pubs too
much.)
Barrack Street
featured a series of small, fascinating dolls whose heads were made from dried
apple, shrunk and dried so they almost resembled miniature human features. Maybe my memory is playing tricks here, but
I’m almost sure they actually existed.
The figures depicted a range of ‘Dundee Worthies’ from the 19th
century, characters remembered in city lore because of their very public and
persistent eccentricities. There were
people such as ‘Glass Bottom’, who had the probably unique delusion that his
posterior was made of crystal and would never sit down on that account. How did he sleep, I wonder? Wrapped up in pillows and bolsters to safeguard
his fragile bum? Then there was ‘Teapot
Tam’, whose mania was to tip himself over at regular intervals along the
street, imitating the action of a pouring teapot.
It would maybe be
politically incorrect to have such commemorations of mentally subnormal people
on display in the 21st century.
But ‘worthies’ or ‘naturals’ were an almost celebrated part of the
community, whether it be larger burghs or country districts and there is a
whole genre of popular literature, from Scotland and beyond, that details the
charming and unique dafties who were colourfully ever-present in Victorian
times and previously. A related category
of writing revels in ‘couthy’ or ‘kail-yard’ characters, whose rural adventures
were lavishly detailed in exaggerated ‘Doric’ language, all of which appears
very tiresome to modern tastes.
Folklorists and historians may regret that so much local history writing
falls in to this dubious variety instead of ‘genuine’ local information. But it’s probably hoping for too much to wish
for the past to be perfect.
Dafties, Worthies,
Village Idiots were an omnipresent fact of life, like it or not. Literature on the subject draws a sometimes
fine balance of admiration and derision, sometimes hinting that such ‘naturals’
were not always as daft as they would like you to think. There is always the suspicion that some of
those afflicted people were playing up to the part, a winking admission that
there was a strain of street smartness which helped them survive. Worthies in another sense also applied to
local dignitaries, particularly eminent parishioners and townsfolk who were
shining examples of religious piety.
This is another strand of regional literature which is very hard to
digest.
The ‘Dundee
Worthies’ were celebrated in a book of that name by George Martin (1934),
recently reprinted. Other examples of this
kind of book are almost too numerous to detail.
One of the best books, and one which is not really typical of this type
is Blairgowrie, Stormont and Strathmore Worthies (by Henry Dryerre, 1903),
which to be fair concentrates on admirable local characters rather than village
idiots, albeit in an occasionally condescending way. Among the genuinely interesting ‘men of
imagination’ are former Angus luminaries such as James Gibb, ‘Old Gibbie’, who
was schoolteacher at Kettins and also a self-confessed provider of grain for
illicit distillers in the hills beyond Alyth.
He got his regular employment as a dominie by being subjected to
phrenological examination by the local
laird, Lord Douglas Gordon of Hallburton.
His cranial lumps proving him well qualified, he was the local teacher
for 48 years, and died in 1875. Another
personality enlarged upon in the book is the ‘Deil o’Glenisla’, whose exploits
I will detail in the future. (Those with more localised taste could try
Carnoustie Sketches, by James Fotheringham (1889).)
James Gibb, 'Old Gibbie', Kettins schoolmaster, scientist, curio-hunter, whisky smuggler (amongst other things). |
There is no doubt
that those afflicted with mental or physical ailments were obliged to use their
infirmities in order to survive. One of
the most remembered characters in North Angus in the 18th century
was Jock Gudefellow, a legless man who used to pull himself around the
countryside on a cart, and who terrified many a farmer’s wife into providing
him sustenance. He died in 1810 and was
buried in Lethnot kirkyard. One farmer’s
wife panicked when he appeared at the door and she did not have anything at
hand to feed him, so she cut up a bit of shoe leather and served it up to
him. His verdict, after he had consumed
it, was that it was tough but tasty. James Bowick of Montrose commemorated Jock, in a bank-handed way, in these lines contained in his work Character and Sketches (1824):
There's he who slid from Perth to Aberdeen
Upon his hands and buttocks as they say:
JOCK GUDEFELLOW was the creature's name, I ween,
Who ofttimes scared the children from their play;
But now the fearful wight hath passed into the clay.
Behind such tales is a flotsam of scavenging humanity, twisted into strange shapes by poverty. And it was not just the congenitally weak who were afflicted. Local Angus records in the early 18th century mention a series of gentlemen beggars, forced to travel from place to place cap in hand because of economic and social circumstances.
There's he who slid from Perth to Aberdeen
Upon his hands and buttocks as they say:
JOCK GUDEFELLOW was the creature's name, I ween,
Who ofttimes scared the children from their play;
But now the fearful wight hath passed into the clay.
Behind such tales is a flotsam of scavenging humanity, twisted into strange shapes by poverty. And it was not just the congenitally weak who were afflicted. Local Angus records in the early 18th century mention a series of gentlemen beggars, forced to travel from place to place cap in hand because of economic and social circumstances.
Another way of looking at things, is the interest in local
characters from auld times reflects a supposedly better age when peculiarities were
allowed to flourish unfettered by standards imposed by the evil pressures of
modern life. Another aspect of the good
old days syndrome.
The redoubtable-looking Auld Grannie Fox from Carnoustie (though she was actually born in Kirriemuir). By the end of the nineteenth century she had around 200 descendants in the town.
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