The Yellow on the Broom: The Early Days of a Traveller Woman by Betsy Whyte

Author:Betsy Whyte [Whyte, Betsy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, Indigenous, Personal Memoirs, Social Science, Customs & Traditions
ISBN: 9780857907202
Google: IZS6DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2013-06-24T20:49:16+00:00

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About this time (the 1930s) the authorities were beginning to close down all the camping grounds and travellers were being stupidly hunted from place to place. I say ‘stupidly’ because it really was a stupid carry-on. Round about Brechin alone there were five old byways which many travellers had wintered on, schooling their children. One at Trinity, one which we travellers called Powsoddies, one on the Forfar road called The Boat Camp, another one called The Green Tree Old Road, and one at Lightning Hill. All of these camps were within a day’s travelling of each other and all had been public highways at one time. So they really belonged to the public and travellers were not trespassing when they lived on them. They had as much claim to these old roads as anyone else.

A policeman or perhaps two would come to Trinity Old Road, and tell them that they would have to move on the next day. So they would shift to the Green Tree, perhaps, and live there a few days before being told to move on again. Then they might go to Lightning Hill. This went on the whole time, and in spite of having to take their tents down in freezing weather and go on for five or six miles, the travellers found this highly amusing. Well, some of them did. They would perhaps meet friends on the road, who had just been shifted off the place that they were going to, and who were going to the place that the others had been asked to leave. Yet somehow or other they managed to let their children get the two hundred school attendances required by law. It was like this all over the country. I am just giving Brechin as an example.

Many farmers were quite agreeable to allowing us to live on their land, provided that we helped with the many jobs which were at that time needing done on the farm. Travellers were very thankful to these farmers, made sure that they did their work well, and would not even take a turnip out of a field without permission. Honesty was essential and any traveller who broke this code was not allowed to stay on the encampment. Other travellers would not live beside them. So most of them lived by this code, lest they should be made outcasts, and have to live by themselves in some isolated place, perhaps. This would have been almost unbearable as, apart from being very lonely, there was always the danger of being attacked by blaggards. Sometimes even the young ploughmen would take it into their heads to have what they called ‘a tare’ with travellers, when there were just one or two tents. They could sometimes be quite cruel. So honesty was the order of the day.

Daddy much preferred to live on a farmer’s ground. That is why he was at Newtyle. It was at a flower farm where they grew daffodils and tulips, and needed people to clean up the fields, and to weed carrots and other vegetables.

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