The Guga Hunters by Donald S. Murray

Author:Donald S. Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

Barabel Murray* played a major role in entertaining my taste buds when I was younger. While growing up in South Dell, I used to spend some time visiting her son Alex Dan – one of my near contemporaries. As we played a game of Monopoly or draughts, she would provide us with a glass of orange juice and a plateful of scones and home-made jam. There would be times, too, when something even more exotic would be on hand – a plateful of ‘duff’, the skinned dumpling with currants that was the speciality of many of the housewives of Ness at that time, or a slice of Victoria sponge, perhaps.

‘Siuthadaibh,’ she would say. ‘Come on . . . Eat up.’

Frailer now, Barabel no longer has the gusto that she had in earlier years. A short time before I visited her, she had fallen and broken her hip. Later, they discovered the bone had been set incorrectly and took her back for another operation. She is recovering from this when I see her. Still in her nightdress and dressing gown, she sits in her fireside chair with her Zimmer frame in front of her. On the mantelpiece, there is a glass of water and a clutch of tablets.

Yet for all her body’s lack of strength, her mind and tongue still have vigour. She recalls for me old disputes that once occurred in the district, how a respectable lady from the community once appeared in the courtroom and disgraced herself by referring to the judge as ‘Lord Loaf’ throughout the proceedings. She also recalled how that same community had fed itself in former days, when the district relied on its own resources.

‘There were none of these supermarkets then. No, indeed.’

Her silver hair, once possessing a reddish tinge, bobs as she talks, giving emphasis to her words. She has a rather staccato voice, too, her words clipped and emphasised. These characteristics combine to recall the forceful quality she possessed some 30-odd years ago, helping to create a sharp, vivid picture of her early life at the north end of the district where she grew up. For most of our conversation she speaks about food, showing an interest in cooking and baking she has possessed for most of her adult life.

‘We used everything we had to get by. Everything we had. Even the head and feet of the sheep were used. Ceann is casan. We’d singe the sheep’s feet in the fire, using the prongs to turn them over. Singe the head too. We’d split it then and remove the brain. There would be the intestines too. They would be used, every single part rinsed and cleared out to make maragan . . .’

She takes me back to my childhood as she speaks, watching my Aunt Bella working away in the shadows of her own kitchen to make the district’s own version of black or white pudding. She would have the sheep’s intestines curled up in front of her in an earthenware bowl, a few other ingredients, too, set out and ready to play their own part in this recipe.

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