Ceardannan
The Summer Walkers
Travelling Families in Mackay Country
Within living memory men, women, children – grandparents, mothers, fathers, teenagers, toddlers, babies travelled across the north of Scotland making a living by pearl fishing, tin-smithing, horse dealing, buying, selling and bartering.
Many people in Mackay Country can remember these visits when as children they all played together while the adults got together to do business, drink tea, talk, make music and barter food for goods and labour.
One of the best known and best loved of these families in the far north was that of Essie Stewart and her grandfather Ailidh Dall (Alexander Stewart, Lairg) – tinsmith, piper, soldier, singer, storyteller – a man remembered with love and respect.
The Stewarts kept to a traditional route each yaer.
From altnaharra we traveled north in convey to Brea Tongue down to Coldbackie sands on through Naver bridge Armadale, Bettyhill Strathy, Melvich to caithness. We hawked traded, tinsmithed and Ceilidh ed our way through Sutherland to janetstown where we turned back. The Stewarts never went further east than attendance at the horse fair in Janetstopwn.
Essie Stewart
A Traveller’s Childhood
‘Every summer we would set out for five or six months on the road with the horses, dogs, one to three carts, our big bow-tent, and two or three bantams for eggs.
By that time Ailidh Dall could no longer make tin, so everything depended on my mother selling round the doors. She took whatever was wanted and needed bringing in – overalls, trousers, shirts, socks, underwear, needles, pins, brushes, combs, frock-coats for women. All the Highland women wore them – with the flower patterns on. She would take orders, or know from years of selling what particular crofters, shepherds, keepers would be wanting. Most of the women were so pleased to see her. They would meet perhaps two or three times a year and many of them would see few other folk. There was real isolation in the Highlands then. We were friends and very welcome – we were travelling shops ahead of time! There were still very few cars in the forties.
On the road I normally had to stay behind at the camp to look after my grandfather, do the washing, tend the horses, prepare the food.’ [1]
Essie Stewart
[1] Pages 6 and 7 Timothy Neat in his book ‘The Summer Walkers’, published by Canongate, Edinburgh – 2002.
Tradition Bearers
Like the people of our Mackay Country communities, Ailidh Dall and Essie Stewart were brought up in the oral tradition. Over the years history has tended to be written by powerful, literate classes. The stories and experiences of people brought up in an oral tradition were written out of these kind of histories. Over the years a few people with great foresight have challenged this through recording and publishing stories and experiences from all sorts of people who are important tradition bearers in Scotland. In Sutherland and in Scotland, the Stewarts are important tradition bearers. Hamish Henderson was a very important advocate for this ‘carrying stream’.
Recordings of the Stewart family, particularly Ailidh Dall, were made throughout Mackay Country in the summer months during the 1950s. These recordings were made in Tongue, Skerray, Borgie, Naver Bridge, Bettyhill, Kirtomy, Armadale, Strathy and Altnaharra.
Ailidh Dall – My Granfather
Essie recalls her grandfather for Timothy Neat:
‘Alexander Stewart, Ailidh Dall, that means Blind Sandy, was born in 1882. He was my grandfather but he was more like a father to me. He came from a family of seven. He had no schooling. As a young man he was a tinsmith, and a much respected horseman, he did four years in the artillery, he was a very good piper and a singer. He couldn’t read or write. He, and the Williamsons of Ardgay, were the last of the real old style Travellers in the north west and they were very well though of.’[1]
[1] Page 6 – Quoted by Timothy Neat in his book ‘The Summer Walkers’, published by Canongate, Edinburgh – 2002.
Ailidh Dall - Storyteller
Hamish Henderson described his first encounter with Ailidh Dall in Timothy Neat’s book:
‘The first song I recorded from Ailidh Dall “The Sweet Sorrow”, Am Bron Binn, is one of the oldest songs in Europe. It tells of Arthur, “King of Britain” and makes a unique and direct link between the worlds of P Celtic and Q Celtic, the two great branches of Celtic language and history. To start at the beginning is always good but to get started in 500 AD was the stuff of dreams! Needing mains electricity, I set up my first “studio“ in Tongue Hotel.’
Calum MacLean, who was responsible for work in the Gaidhealtachd when the School of Scottish Studies was created in 1951, called Ailidh Dall ‘the best Gaelic storyteller ever recorded on the mainland of Scotland’.
Hamish Henderson said of recording him:
‘Ailidh Dall was a piper too of course, and a singer. But it was his stories, told with Homeric gravitas, that take the biscuit. I have never heard the haunting, slow, deliberate rendition of Ailidh Dall equalled for archaic authenticity. I held a bucket there, as it were, beneath the sky, a rusty can – to crystal water cascading down the cataract of day!’