Scottish Travellers 2

THE BIRD WATCHER

Extracted with Jessie's kind permission from her book

Jessie’s Journey – Autobiography of a Traveller Girl

will appear in Journal 6

So here we were then, me and my folks strolling along an old hill road, towering mountains on either side. Mammy and I were discussing our May Day wash in the dawn dew while Daddy was lighting up his fourth fag. About a mile had been walked when Daddy stopped to sit yet again on a rock cluster. ‘ We’ll never see a drop tea this morning, Charlie, if you don’t put a feather in it.’

‘Shhh, Jeannie, I thought I head a stirring down there in the heather,” he said pointing down a steep slope strewn with large loose boulders. We both joined him and stared over the edge.

‘Help, is there somebody there?’ called a voice from among the rocks and heather. ‘God help and save us, it’s a poor man fell down the side of the hill,’ exclaimed Mammy. ‘Are you hurt bad chavie?’ she called to him. ‘It’s my leg, I think it’s a goner!’, was the call from deep within the rocky terrain.

Daddy went quite pale. He reminded us he’d witnessed severed limbs during the war, and knew that if the lad didn’t get help soon he’d die with blood loss. ‘No telling how long he’s been there already, we had best get help,’ he told us, adding, ‘Jeannie, you go down. Do what you can for the poor soul, but careful as you go, lassie. Jessie, we’ll fetch the help’.

Mammy cannily lowered herself over the precarious edge, calling reassuringly to the man, not knowing what manner of injuries he’d incurred. We waited until she called back that she’d reached him before we set off. ‘Come on, pet, there’s not a moment to lose,’ said Dad, removing his woolly jersey and tying it round his waist. He did well running at my pace, but the recent flu and years of smoking began to slow him down.  I tried to coax him on: ‘Daddy think what Mam will do if the stranger conks on her. Please try a bitty harder, surely we’ll come upon a cotter house soon,’ I said. I knew, though, by the skull-grey jowls on my father that he’d run clean out of lung air. ‘God curse thon stupid man for falling into a crevice in the first place, what fool thing is that to do?’

I asked him to stay where he was and let me go on ahead to get help. ‘No, I’m all right, let’s go,’ was his surprised answer. So away we went running, walking fast and stopping every so often for a breather. It seems like ages and still no sign of a house, cotter or otherwise, before at long last a figure could be seen on the horizon. We both shouted – well I did, Dad had no air to make a sound, but I never had a problem being heard (important when living among eight females). We ran on to meet the person coming towards us on the old hill road.  It was the bearded one with the smelly bogey! He took us further down to his little cottage, where we clambered onto his Fergy tractor and rumbled back onto the scene of the accident. Mammy shouted that she had things under control and not to worry, he wasn’t as bad as first thought.

Lowering ourselves down, the beardy man and I joined the pair. Daddy, unable to find the energy, stayed at the top. Now, it’s a good thing he did, because when I went back up and told him we needed a screwdriver, he found that the air came back to his lungs alright - ‘What! I’ll kill the stupid idiot!’.

Now, why a screwdriver? And had my father not run himself to near collapse to save the man’s life? Well, let me enlighten you dear reader .........

If you remember, the victim called out that he feared his leg was lost. Indeed it was! It had unscrewed from its leather socket and become stuck between two boulders while he was bird-watching. A futile attempt to retrieve his wooden leg led to his predicament. ran back to the cottage for a screwdriver while my mother and the beardy man helped Woody onto terra firma.

Of course, Daddy didn’t kick the leg from the poor lad. In fact he screwed it back in for him, after giving him a good old talking-to about hill dangers. My mother, though, because of the amount of time they had spent together, had found a friend and he came home with us and shared our supper!