A Croft in the Hills (16 page)

These little schools are well supervised by the authorities. Inspectors pay them regular visits and a good standard is maintained. Most of the teachers and inspectors are people of Highland
origin and have all the Highlander’s respect for learning. There is nothing slap-dash about their attitude to letters. Doctor and dentist also pay regular visits. The nurse, who comes on a
monthly tour of inspection, gets to know the children well. Medical examination holds no terror for them, as it has always been part of their routine.

The Education Authority is wisely keeping open the country schools, even when the number of pupils falls to as low as half a dozen. To transport the children to a bigger school, or even to a
town school, would he comparatively simple. But once embark on that scheme and the depopulation of the remoter areas is assured. Up here, the boys would be happy as larks, tough, clear-eyed and
skilled in country ploys, brought up to hard work, but getting an immense amount of fun out of a game of shinty, an afternoon’s sledging, a day at the fox-drive. Come across them in town, and
you find them lolling round Woolworth’s, eating a bag of chips for their dinner, ogling a bunch of giggling girls, conforming to the inevitable pattern. They’re soon ashamed of their
old skills. To know how to thatch a rick, to snare a rabbit, to guddle trout has become for them the mark of the uncouth. Their one ambition is to ‘come up on the pools’, or find some
other way to get rich quickly. Very soon, there’s little to distinguish them from the town-bred youth of all the world.

It is a sad fact that in some of the remoter areas sheep flocks are disappearing, though there is greater need than ever of good, home-produced mutton and wool, because men cannot be found to
undertake the shepherding. The skilled shepherd gets a good wage, a good house, good perquisites, everything necessary for a healthy, satisfying life, but he and his wife and family must be willing
to live at a distance from the shops, the pub and the cinema. Apparently that is too much to ask of young people who have once had a taste of these things. So the ‘Situations Vacant’
column remains a long one, under the heading ‘Agriculture’, and only occasionally does one find a
cri du coeur
in the ‘Situations Wanted’—‘Young man
wishes work on estate or farm. Remote area preferred.’ Perhaps it is the voice crying in the urban wilderness, remembering the lost gods of hill and moor and sky.

There is no doubt that it is the willingness, or otherwise, of the female partner to embark on a lonely life, which can encourage or discourage a young man in the pursuit of a country career. A
wise Education Authority has foreseen this, and in the Junior Secondary schools in the Highlands every effort is made to encourage the girls to be self-reliant and to take a pride in the old home
crafts of cooking, laundering, needlework and child-care. There are several institutions, actually in the Highlands, where young women can be trained as instructresses in these crafts, without
having to go near an urban centre.

Scotland is not a country of great natural resources. Her contribution to the world is all the greater because of that bare fact. Her contribution lies in the character of her people, which has
been tempered in the struggle to make the most of what resources the land can yield. A man will easily grow fat when the ripe fruit falls into his mouth as he lies in the shade of the tree. But
when he has to plough the soil a few inches deep on a rocky hill-side before his little crop of oats will blossom, if blossom is the word, then he’ll have to grow tough and skilled and
resilient, or perish—and the Scot has no notion to perish. He loves his rocky hillside with the fierce passion of a man for a woman who will not easily yield.

Scotland today is becoming more and more industrialised. The Scots character, after a generation or two, is swallowed up in the standardisation imposed by an urban way of life. The remote areas
remain the breeding-ground of the country’s most precious asset—character. Only there can the Scot remain completely true to himself, for that is where he is rooted. Other countries,
other parts, have exploited his abilities for long enough. When he comes home, in his dapper suit, his Stetson and his rimless glasses, to grasp his brother’s rough hand again, he is looking
for something. His pockets may be brimful, but he has learnt, in his canny way, that money imposes its own tyranny. He is no longer independent in the old, satisfying way.

Why is it that the influx of exiled Scots, come to take another look at the country of their origin, grows steadily greater every year? It’s because, at bottom, every Scot recognises the
validity of the old human virtues. You can’t fob him off with make-believe. He doesn’t live easily in a climate of success, he must have something to get his teeth into. He was always
happiest ploughing his few inches on the rock, or sailing his boat smack into the wind. He’ll work all the hours there are, tending his own few acres and his stock, but give him an assured
job and he’s the worst clockwatcher in the world.

We have a neighbour, thin as a wraith and crippled with old wounds. It is a greater miracle each year how he gets his crop gathered and a fresh one down in spring. But he must be working about
his fields, or there would be no cheery twinkle in his eye, no witty word of greeting as he meets us on the road. When he mangled his hand in his barn mill, he would walk the two miles to the bus
to go into town for daily treatment as an out-patient rather than spend a week in hospital, as the doctors recommended. He had his beasts to see to, and his independence to preserve. It will be a
bad day for the world when toughness like his has been destroyed by the palliatives of a welfare state. The best way to keep alive is to be constantly at grips with one’s universe.

One evening in early March we were sitting quietly at the fire when Billy burst into the kitchen, wide-eyed, a little scared-looking. ‘The hill’s on fire’, he announced,
‘we were afraid the van might get it!’ We rushed to the window on the other side of the house; the whole of the southern sky was glowing orange. The Macleans, whose house faces the
hill, had evidently been watching the advance of the flames and had sent Billy to warn us. We flung on our coats and boots and made for the spot where the van was standing. True enough, the flames
were within a few yards of it and, though the road lay between, the rising wind might easily carry a spark across the narrow safety belt. We moved the van as far as possible out of harm’s way
and began beating out the flames along the roadside, but within minutes the thing was hopelessly out of control. We could only stand listening to the terrifying roar and crackle and hope that the
wind would die before morning.

After an hour or so of fruitless efforts to control even the burning of the rushes at the roadside, we went back to the house. From the upper windows we could see the full extent of the fearsome
blaze. By morning it had died down considerably, but was still burning here and there. Luckily the sheep were out of harm’s way and the fencing on the eastern boundary had escaped damage. It
was a warning to us for future heather-burning operations of our own. Once again we were thankful for the Macleans’ vigilance and goodwill.

The smell of heather burning and the sight of plovers swooping over the fields, in the cold, afternoon light, make the reality of an upland spring. We’ve seen small tokens of a change in
things from mid-February, perhaps—a softening in the light that pours down the hill-side from the peak of the noonday sun, the sudden, unlooked-for blooming of a daisy or a coltsfoot in a
sheltered hollow by the burn. But the burning of the old heather and the wild agitation of the returning birds mean that things are really happening—space is being sought for new life and
growth.

The first new arrivals in our own spring season came in small cardboard boxes from hundreds of miles away—a batch of day-old chickens all the way from Dumfriesshire. Train and bus had
brought them to the foot of the hill, the post’s motor-bike pillion conveyed them to our door. When we opened the boxes on the kitchen table, it seemed a miracle that these small, yellow,
chirping atoms had safely and cheerfully survived such a journey on the day of their birth. We installed them, with two brooder lamps, in the glasshouse and they throve wonderfully well; we lost
only three out of a batch of one hundred.

We presented a broody hen with a dozen day-old Aylesbury ducklings. She took to them at once, and they to her. They grew so fast that, within days, she had difficulty in keeping them covered.
Finally she gave up the attempt and would strut after them, with much exasperated clucking, as they waddled off, in a determined line, to seek their own kind of fortune among the damp rushes. A few
weeks later we took them in a crate to the butcher. They went to grace the tables of the more expensive Inverness hotels. They were lovable, comical things and we missed the sight of them about the
place. I doubt if we shall ever acquire the complete detachment of the man who makes rearing for the market his business.

CHAPTER XIII

‘GAUDEAMUS IGITUR’

W
E
had one reply to our request for a student to help during the Easter vacation. One, out of all the hundreds who must have seen the small notice
pinned on the board in the University quadrangle, had had the courage to take at least a tentative step towards our fastness! He was a veterinary student, which sounded promising, John by name. We
answered his letter hopefully, and it was arranged that he would come in the middle of March.

No sooner was this plan fixed than we heard from an Arts student, Henry, who sounded very enthusiastic. We hated to turn him down; perhaps two students would be better than one, we thought. They
would keep each other company and that might make for a happy atmosphere. Besides, one never knew, the first one might fall by the way. So we offered to engage Henry as well as John. However, we
received no acknowledgement of our letter to Henry, so we concluded he would not be coming.

As the day of John’s arrival drew near, I managed, between thrice-daily trips to the chickens and bouts of liming and digging the garden plot, to get a room ready for him. It was bare
enough, but it had the elements of simple comfort. We guessed that a young man who would venture, in mid-March, to a spot one thousand feet above sea-level would not be too fussy.

The day we were expecting John, a wire came saying that Henry was due at Inverness station the following afternoon! That was a hectic day by any standard. We had been over to say good-bye to
Willie Maclean, who was going into hospital. We were behind with the work, and I had a baking to do for the extra mouth we were expecting, and now it seemed we had to expect two after all.

Still, the evenings were lengthening. After tea, we harnessed Charlie and brought a spare bed along from the bungalow. Bertha came over to give a hand—Mrs. Maclean must have guessed we had
a crisis on hand. We set the mattress and blankets to air, we collected odds and ends of furnishings from all over the house, and, by the time Jim returned from the station with John, Henry’s
room was ready and I was able to welcome our guest with a calm which quite belied the storm that had been raging all day.

We took to John at once. He wore corduroys and carried his gear in a rucksack. He was tall and quiet and looked as though he wouldn’t easily be defeated. He confessed right away that
he’d never worked with a horse, but said he could drive a car and was sure he could manage the tractor.

Next day we went to meet the three-thirty-four train. After unsuccessfully accosting several young men, who looked as if they might have come north for a working holiday, we finally ran Henry to
earth at the very end of the stream of passengers. He was dark, twinkling and dapper and he was struggling with a heavy suitcase. A more complete contrast to John could not be imagined; Henry
hardly ever stopped talking or laughing. But after a day or two the five of us settled into a pleasant enough routine.

The weather was superb. After dispelling the morning mist the sun rose, day after day, into a sky of sheer, summer blue. The larks were singing, the peewits flashing, the curlews gliding over
the moor. I think John quietly revelled in the freshness and Henry, who was a good deal older and had knocked a bit about the world, couldn’t help feeling a touch of the magic. John soon
learnt to harness and drive Charlie; he took to the field-work at once. In a battered old tweed hat and jacket he’d stride about the place, taking things calmly, as a countryman does. Henry,
on the other hand, couldn’t quite adjust himself to the tempo of the land, and he always managed to look dapper. He’d make the most extraordinary noises of encouragement to Charlie, as
though they were both something out of a circus. But Henry was certainly anxious to be helpful. One very stormy day he offered to feed the hens for me. I gladly accepted and gave him the pail of
mash. But my heart nearly stood still as I heard the terrified flutterings and squawkings issuing from the hen-house. Henry’s imitation of a mother-hen was enough, had he only known it, to
put any self-respecting pullet off the lay for several days!