Sometimes the births were easy. Sometimes they called for much obstetric skill and not a little physical strength. Often a heifer would give rise to much trouble and anxiety: sometimes the fear of milk fever caused more sleepless nights than actual time spent out of bed in the byres.
Not only had the byreman to be out of bed: his wife or his daughter had also to accompany him to milk the cow while the dairyman attended to the calf. And for every calf born in the night there was, as the result, an extra cow requiring milking in the morning.
Over all the land the lowing of cows in the pain and agony of labour could be heard. Some might be dropped in the fields by day. But mostly they were trailed from their mother’s womb in the byres: often as not in the early hours of the morning when the light was no more than the pale and inadequate beam thrown by a lantern resting on the byre walk, flickering and waving as the draught caught it from under the byre door.
In springtime the dairy farmer reaped his harvest. The more calves the more milk: the more milk the more cheese: the more cheese the more profit. But the harvest needed its slaves and these were provided by the dairymen. For them there could be no question of rest; no thought of respite. Day and night they were tied to the byre, tied to the cattle beasts – never resting with an easy mind even when the occasion for rest presented itself. And should their wives also be with child, then indeed their cup was full to overflowing.
Not for the dairyman did the lengthening days and the soft winds and the singing of birds arouse feelings of joy and gladness. Nor did the swelling bud on the thorn promise release from the winter’s darg. Deep down perhaps he welcomed the approach of the June days when the cattle could stay out for the night and relieve him of a weary nine months round of mucking and bedding and feeding. But he would need to plumb his very depths indeed to discover such pleasant anticipation. For the overwhelming urgency of calving obliterated any pleasant thought of the morrow and what it might bring forth.
Yet the peesweep tossed and grass put forth its shoots and the spring rains swept over the turning soil: the days lengthened and the sun grew in strength and the mavis, vibrant throated, with a deep age-long sorrow, sang its love song to the morn.
Of what consequence that man, back bent in toil, had no ear for such music? From every thorn bush the song went forth, a pæan of praise, that the earth had been born yet again.
THE BOY DAVID
Sam MacKitteroch was a very different schoolmaster from John Gibb. His school was different. He was entirely dependent on his scholars and charity for his living. Mostly the scholars brought him a peat two or three times a week but sometimes they would bring him an egg or a farrel of scone. Sam got his oatmeal from John MacMeechan of Achgammie. Sam had trained a son, Robert, in the craft of the sailing ship and had coached him with his chief’s and master’s certificate. In gratitude, Robert had left instructions that during his voyages Sam was never to know want. Robert MacMeechan had gone to sea with Richard Ramsay and both owed much to Sam MacKitteroch that they qualified as masters so quickly.
No one could have disliked Sam. He was old and he was gentle in his methods. He would rather impart thoroughly one bit of knowledge to a scholar than cover a wider field indifferently.
John MacMeechan gave him the use of an old barn in which to conduct his class. There were seldom more than twenty scholars. They sat on planks at the end of the barn as near to the peat fire as they could get. And in winter when it got too cold Sam dismissed the class – maybe keeping a few of his keener pupils so that they could sit close up to the fire and enable him to warm his old bones too.
Sam had a soft pleasant voice that soothed and caressed and yet there was authority behind it. He did not believe in his pupils learning by heart. Knowledge did not come that way. Wisdom lay in understanding. He did not much care whether they could repeat accurately the answers in the Catechism so long as they understood the nature of the question and the meaning of the answer. He always mistrusted and tried to discourage the quick and accurate reply. Often as not he would say:
‘Aye: now that’s quite right, John: but just tell us what that means in your own words.’
And as often as not the scholar shewed by his answer that he did not understand the true nature of the question.
The Bible lesson was conducted in the nature of a service. They began with the Lord’s Prayer and finished with the Apostles’ Creed. Sam would read a chapter of the Old Testament, reading it slowly and with great dignity. It was not that Sam was nearing his end that made him specially reverent. All his life he had had a great reverence for the Good Book: and he had always prayed – even when his youth had been wildest and most riotous. He believed that if people kept the image of their Maker constantly before them their lives could never go very far wrong. So successful indeed was his method of imparting religious instruction that not one of his scholars in after life ever failed to have that image somewhere before them. They might cease to go to church: they might even in exceptional circumstances neglect to have their children baptized. But they never forgot the God of Sam MacKitteroch – the Father, the Maker of Heaven and Earth …
Sam was a much better scholar than John Gibb, even though he had never been to college. There was something a trifle old-fashioned in his arithmetical methods and he had certain peculiarities in the matter of spelling – he never used a capital at the first person singular – but literary composition was Sam’s weakest subject and the one he reckoned least useful to his scholars. As long as they grasped some elements of arithmetic and were able to read and write – even if only their names – something had been achieved.
His attendance was much more broken and irregular than John Gibb’s and his equipment was more primitive. He had only a small-scale map of the world, indicating British possessions in red, certain main trade routes, the equator and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But mean and inadequate as the map was, he made it live through his vivid descriptions.
Sam MacKitteroch’s school was a pleasant affair. He had no strap and he never had occasion to wish he had. His scholars applied themselves or not as they felt inclined. He prescribed no home work. He knew what their homes were like: how impossible conditions were for home study. But occasionally he would visit a home, usually a farm-house, and coach a boy for an hour in Latin so that he might qualify for entrance to college and in due course qualify as a doctor or a minister. Sometimes a successful student would come back and call on Sam and on parting would slip him a sovereign or two in appreciation of the service he had done him.
David Ramsay soon became one of Sam’s favourite scholars. David had a great admiration for the old man and applied himself diligently to his studies. David liked the geography lessons which, in addition to giving much factual knowledge, were a mixture of the science of navigation and the travellers’ tales.
David decided that as soon as he grew up he would go to sea like his brother Dick – even as old Sam himself had done. It was not that Sam romanticised the sailor’s lot. Far from it. Indeed he gripped them with tales of hardship, starvation and shipwreck. Yet there was glory in a shipwreck as Sam described it – the essential quality of drama was there.
It was this drama, this heightened colour of experience that young David fed on. He would often find an excuse to wander as far as Corsewell Point to catch a glimpse of the rigged ships sailing down the Northern Channel. He would sit on the heughs and follow them in imagination as far as the Horn or maybe Australia. He was grateful to Sam for having sketched the world for him: made it familiar to his mind’s eye so that the horizons of his mental voyages were boundless.
Sam MacKitteroch and Andrew Ramsay often exchanged words about the boy.
‘That
