Not all of Calum Maclean’s
fieldwork recordings were restricted to Gaelic song or stories for here is an
example of a bit of social history recollected by Joseph Lobban (b. c.
1877), aged 75, a retired carpenter, from Abernethy and then residing in Nethy
Bridge, Strathspey. The following, recorded on the 25th of October 1952, gives
a fascinating insight into the work undertaken by loggers, during the late
nineteenth century, to float timber down the Spey:
Well,
the floaters up till about the – a hundred years ago – the most of the wood was
transported by water. There was no roads, no railways. All had to go by water.
Well, in these times away up in the Caledonian forests of Abernethy there had
been umpteen pit-saws erected and the farmers and crofters then were engaged in
the winter months in dragging the trees to the pit-saws. And the sawyers would
saw them up into railway sleepers. The railways in England was going on the,
but there was no railways in Scotland. And they had to be transported from
Garmouth. That was their nearest seaport. And they had to be floated down the
Spey. And those floaters they had to be skilled men, because they built the
sleepers on rafts and floated them down the Spey till Garmouth. That would be a
distance of over forty miles. The number of sleepers on the raft depended on
the size of the water. If the water was high the more sleepers they would take
– anything – up to a hundred an’ fifty or two hundred sleepers on the one
single raft, and one man to navigate it. The only instrument they had was what
they called a floater's cleek. It was like a boat hook to steer the raft off
the rocks. Well, I remember my own father telling me once – he was a skilled
floater – going down with a raft, and he got stuck on the rocks at Carran.
There were bad rocks on the River Spey at Carran. And he was detained about
three hours there and before he got to Garmouth and got the raft off his hands
and was paid for his raft, the coach that left Garmouth for Granton had gone,
and he would get no more till next day. He left his cleek and put his address
on it to be sent with the coach the next day and walked it, walked the forty
miles. All that he carried was a small bag o’ meal, and he would get hot water
at any house; and always made the bowl of brose and a smoke and walked the
rest. He arrived home at Lower Dell up here next morning. He left Garmouth at
eleven o’ clock. He arrived up at Dell next morning at six o’ clock, six in the
morning – walked day and night. He got his breakfast. He went down to the River
Spey – a distance of two and a half miles – and started buckling his next raft.
The
floaters never had corns. You never heard of a floater troubled with corns. His
feet were always wet and the corns didn’t thrive. You never heard of a floater
having a cold. The reason o’ that I think was that those floaters had a man
carrying a cask o' whisky and at every stage or every now and again they got
their glass of whiskey and that seemed to do the needful. They had no waders,
just ordinary woollen clothes and they would be up to the knees, up to the
belly sometimes in the river. It made no difference. They were hardy. There
were times when they called a jam. That was when the whole float sticks and they
jam up in the water. The logs in front got stuck and that ones had to be
relieved. It was a dangerous job, but I never heard of anyone being drowned.
They could just jump along on the logs. They wore loggers’ boots wi’ nails in
them. They got a grip on the log wi’ the floaters cleek balanced themselves.
I
remember seeing a cleek. They were long – about twelve feet – handles in them
of twelve feet – wooden handles with iron hooks. There was a point and a hook.
It was something like the Lochaber axe.
About
the timber in Glenmore there was one tree they had to leave. The wind blew it,
and they had to send to England for a special saw to cut it up. It was six feet
through – in diameter, and they gave one board of it to the Duke of Richmond,
and it’s in a table in the hall of Gordon Castle to this day. It was a huge
tree. I heard the old people talk about it. I heard of the stump of it. I know
whereabouts it was, but I never found it. It was overgrown with juniper and
heather.
The
forests grew at one time over three thousand feet, and you’ll see the stumps of
the old trees still up there. And at the present day once you go up the Windy
Corner, there’s no trees at that height. There was a saying at one time that a
squirrel could travel from Forres to the top of Cairngorm without touching the
ground. There was so much forest. They cut a lot in those days when the
Englishmen were there. They had been years there working.
At
Kincardine they cut a lot of birch there into bobbins for thread-mills, but I
suppose now they would get them from America. They used birch as fuel. Any time
of the year you can burn birch – when the leaf is on even. And it burns better
in frosty weather. It throws out a fine heat.
With new modes of
transportation reaching the Highlands during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, especially through the expansion of railway networks and
the building of roads and bridges, opened the area up for a more intensive
period of industrialisation. The transportation of timber then became more
reliant upon the railway and road networks than had previously been the case
when rivers were (and still are in other parts of the world) the best way of
carrying these loads to their various destinations.
References:
Affleck
Gray, Legends of the Cairngorms (Edinburgh:
Mainstream, 1987), pp. 253–65
SSS
NB 22, pp. 1708–12
Image:
Loggers,
River Druie, Strathspey, in the early 1900s
