Tears for a Tinker (39 page)

Read Tears for a Tinker Online

Authors: Jess Smith

A typical camp of Highland travellers. This one is at Pitlochry.

(
Bob Dawson
)

The travellers earned a living by working at the traditional country trades. This is Isabella Macdonald, tinsmith, in 1889.

Every year these nineteenth-century travellers would head for Blairgowrie and the berry-picking, just as my family did.

(
Maurice Fleming
)

Strathdon tinkers getting the donkey ready for the day’s journey.

(
Bob Dawson
)

Camps could be high up in the hills, like this one…

(
Bob Dawson
)

…or in even more unusual places, like this one in a cave in Wick! Cave-dwelling gypsies are mentioned in the chapter ‘The Curse of the Mercat
Cross’.

(
Bob Dawson
)

Jess’s father, pictured when he was serving King and Country during the Second World War.

Jess’s mother and father in 1942, at Pitlochry.

Jess’s children—Barbara, Stephen and Johnnie.

Jess’s husband, Dave.

Jess with Johnnie (left) and Stephen in 1983.

Jess today.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BIRLINN BY JESS SMITH

JESSIE

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