From a Needle to an Anchor

31 Pages·2011·1.52 MB·English

‘From a Needle to an Anchor’
The story of Tiree’s shops.
Tiree and Coll Gaelic Partnership, Summer 2002
©2002 An Iodhlann All Rights Reserved www.aniodhlann.org.uk
‘From a Needle to an Anchor’
The story of Tiree’s shops
In 1863, E.C.Stanford, a young English chemist who had come to the island to set up the
‘Glassary’ factory in Middleton, wrote in his diary:
“I found every supply very bad and dear, the people poor and famished, and the storekeepers
flourishing.”
Tiree has changed profoundly in the last 150 years, and the story of Tiree’s shops gives a
vivid picture of this. We do not know exactly how many shops there were on Tiree when
Stanford arrived in 1863. Almost certainly there were more than there are today.
Transport was usually by foot, and so shops were set up all over the island within walking
distance of most people.
“Although there were many shops, there was also much walking. Every Friday, unless the
weather was very wild my aunt Annie used to walk the seven miles from Brock to Scarinish
and back with two shopping bags of groceries.” Alasdair Sinclair, Brock.
It was also easier then to set up a shop. You needed a room in the house, and some capital to
buy goods, but there was little red tape.
“No word of sell-by dates in these days.”
“Oh, it was unheard of! Everything was in bulk, and it was there until it was finished . . . the
cheese, for instance . . . when it started to get the green mould . . . you just cut it off…it’s
quite harmless.” Alasdair Straker talking to Margaret Campbell.
No shops, or even the butchers’ slaughterhouses, had running water. But the older people
asked about this insist that there are more germs around today than there were then.
The heyday of the Tiree shops was probably between the wars, when there were over thirty
five. Today we have five, with another four of a new phenomenon, the craft shop.
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In the days before the Second World War, money was scarcer, and many crofters’ families
were very self-sufficient. They would have their own milk, churn butter and sometimes make
cheese. There would be potatoes, one or two vegetables from a garden, fresh or salted fish,
and plenty of eggs. Shops were therefore much simpler than they are today, where the Co-op
in Scarinish displays over 4,500 different items!
“In those days, people in Balevullin, and in general on Tiree, were mainly self-sufficient.”
Iain MacDonald, Balevullin.
The late Mabel Kennedy remembered the food supplies in a typical household in Balephuil
around 1910:
A 42 lb cheese from Coll (bought at 1 shilling a pound)
A large box of hard caraway biscuits (known as cabin or ship’s biscuits) from
Tobermory
A 5 lb box of tea from A.B. Cochrane’s of Glasgow
A half a barrel of salt herrings from Loch Fyne
A geineal, or chest divided into three sections formìn-fhlùr (wheat flour), mìn-choirce
(oatmeal) andmìn-Innseanach (maize meal) bought from travellers (like Cook and
Blair’s) once a year.
“The flour and meal were bought in 140 lb. sacks, known as poca bolla, from MacFarlane
Shearer’s traveller once a year. When the bag was opened there was usually a copy of the
Christian Herald sewn in the bag at the top of the flour... Two hundred weight bags of sugar
were made of hessian, and the flour bags of strong cotton. They were much used to make
work aprons, bed ticks, and pillow cases, linings of trousers, and (coated with boiled linseed
oil) for oilskin jackets and trousers. King’s Own flour bags were of particular quality.”
Alasdair Sinclair, Brock.
The co-op van at Vaul in the 1940s.
L-R: Catriona MacKinnon; Margaret Doig; Lorna and
Morag Lee; Neil MacNeill.
“I remember as a wee girl [in the 1930s] it was a novelty to get fruit on the island. I
remember my father bringing home bananas and oranges [from the mainland].”
Maggie Campbell.
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Children did much of the shopping (something that is uncommon today), going down to the
shop with a list of messages, and perhaps some eggs to pay part of the bill. This was because
the shops were close at hand, it was safe, and there was less choice, so mistakes were less
likely. At several of the shops (again, some more than others) one could buy things on tick
until the next cattle sale.
If you couldn’t go to the shop yourself, or wanted some heavier items, there were the vans. At
first these were horse-drawn, but after the First World War, cars and lorries began to be used
to allow shops to increase what today would be called their ‘customer base’.
Donald Sinclair (Dòmhnall Neill Oig) wrote a poemOran na Van to commemorate the first
van on the island around 1882.
According to Hector Cameron in Na Baird Thirisdeach, “It always announced its arrival at
any station by a loud blast on a trumpet. Hence the allusion in the song to Righ na Mòintich
mistaking it for the distress signal of a ship ashore.
“Early on Wednesday when it reached Greenhill the heavens heard of its arrival: Righ na
Mòintich [the nick-name of a well-known crofter in Moss] was putting on his boots when he
heard the music which was in no way faint; he then jumped and shouted ‘Get up! Hooray!
Children, a large vessel has arrived on Cladach a’ Chrogan [Balephetrish beach] – you will
miss out unless you get there’.”
“When it left Greenhill and made for the west it caused fear among the people of Cùl Bhòid
[near Main Road Farm, Balephuil]. Said theIasgair [a nickname] ‘It is the Devil with his iron
wheels and brass and all the rest of it. But come back to your senses and calm down and I’ll
go for the ‘Apostle Paul’ [another nickname] – he will make a prayer to guide us and he will
steer a close course through the smoke.’ ”
(translation by Flora MacPhail).
Food was bought in bulk by the shop-keeper, and then divided and served to the customer,
usually as they waited.
“Everything was like that, the butter, the bacon, the cheese, everything was cut according to
the amount you wanted, and put on the scales. The sugar came in huge big bags, and there
was just a wee scoop into a brown paper bag.” Alasdair Straker talking to Margaret
Campbell.
Some shops were great meeting places in the days when there were few public buildings
except the schools and churches, especially Dan MacArthur’s, Hugh MacPhail’s andEachann
Sheumais’. The young would meet outside, atceann a’ bhuth, at the gable end of the shop,
while the men would sit inside in the warmth for a cèilidhby the light of a paraffin or Tilley
lamp. Some shop-keepers, it has to be said, were happier than others to stay up late into the
evening with their customers, but it must have helped that they all lived above or beside their
businesses.
The late Hector MacPhail used to tell this story:
There used to be amullachag, a big round of cheese, at the end of the counter in Buth
Dhan, in Scarinish. Old men used to gather in the shop in the evening for acèilidh, and
Dan MacArthur, the proprietor, would sit behind the counter.
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One man,Seòras, from Scarinish, had a habit of marching by the counter while he told a
story. When he reached the cheese, he would quickly look to see if Dan was watching,
and, if the shop-keeper’s attention was elsewhere, he would pounce on any loose bits of
cheese left over from the day’s business.
One evening Dòmhnall Òg, another of the old men, cut a few shavings of ‘Lifebuoy’
soap and put them around the cheese. When Seòras came to his evening snack, there
was a great foaming at the mouth and much laughter!
The Scarinish shop in 1910. L-R: butcher Calum MacLean, co-
owner Hugh MacArthur, gamekeeper Peter Anderson.
Most of the shops were open at all hours, more like the corner shops in cities today. Only on
Sundays, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day were they closed.
“Notices of forthcoming events appeared in the shop and post office windows. They almost
always ended with D.V (God Willing)”. Alasdair Sinclair, Brock
“Did they keep strict shop hours or could you go there at night?”
“No, no, go there at 10 o’clock at night, if there was someone short of tobacco or something
like that. There was no problem in these days.” Hugh MacKinnon, Baugh.
Supplies were delivered by lorry from the pier to the shops. Alasdair Straker used to help
Willie Bunting on his rounds.
“TheLoch Ard brought a lot of cargo and it used to come from the Kingston Dock and
straight to Tiree…that was in the days when all the bulk stuff came straight from Glasgow,
unlike the ferry which always came from Oban…
“I was round about the age of 13. I did most of the driving, under age driving. The local
policeman here, Mr. MacDonald, and I were very good friends…whenever he saw Willie’s
lorry, he told me this many a time…he found something ‘interesting’ to look at, as he used to
say, elsewhere!
“How it stuck together, I’ll never know. Because it was one of those lorries with double
wheels at the back and it was very rare that all the wheels were was there!” Alasdair Straker
There were shops in every part of the island.
Caolas
There was a shop before 1900 on Mullach nan Ceallrun byCeit, nighean Phàraig.
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Ruaig
In the 1920s and 30s there was a Ruaig Agricultural Co-operative Society who ordered
materials like fencing and feeding direct and in bulk for crofters. Their secretary was Alex
MacLean, Caolas (Alasdair Neill Oig), and another leading light was Charles MacKinnon,
Tor a’ Bhaile (Tearlach Eoghainn).
Alasdair MacLean of Ruaig, born in 1821, is recorded as a ‘shopkeeper and boatman’ in the
1881 Census. He had two daughters. Catriona, unusually for a woman, had her own boat and
fished for lobsters and herring, while Charlotte concentrated on the shop, which was known as
Buth Theairleat.
Charlotte was blessed with a strong singing voice, and taught singing in Ruaig School.
Because of this she earned the nicknameCailleach an ‘Doh’. The shop closed down around
1938.
Buth Theairleatin Ruaig.
Mrs. Kate Lamont (Ceit Lachainn), wife of the postmanEoghan Iain, ran a small shop with
the sub-post office for the east end. It closed in the early 1950s.
There was also an older shop in Taigh Poll a’ Chrosain (betweenSgibinnisand Dùn Mòr a’
Chaolais) run by Bean Dhòmhnaill Chamshron.
Charles Lamont (Tearlach Iain Thearlaich) was a coal merchant in Ruaig.
Salum
The most famous shop in the east end was run by Malcolm MacLean, universally known as
Calum Salum.
Angus MacIvor composed this verse about him:
And then there’s Calum Salum
Whom you must not pass by,
For he’s greater by far
Than your Copeland and Lye.
[a prestigious store in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow].
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He started the business in 1938, and expanded after the War into an old RAF hut from the
airfield. Buth Chaluim Shalum sold a wide range of goods, helped by his good contacts,
which were particularly useful during the war.
He sold a wide range of food and hardware - tins of food, paraffin, methylated spirits for
lighting the Tilley lamps, crockery, Calor gas cookers, radios and their batteries and even
larger farm equipment including tractors. He was also the first man to sell bottled gas on the
island.
“There would be Calum sitting in his shop with a Tilley lamp. The War was on, but Calum
had so many acquaintances with his letting [from his guest -house], he was able to get things
no-one else could get. Calum would issue us with chocolate Digestives…these were treasures
to us in those days. Then we would walk home again [to Brock] under the moonlight.”
Duncan Grant
Inside Calum Salum’s shop in the 1950s.
Sometimes dealing with the paperwork took second place to all Calum’s other activities.
Inside the house at Salum, which he ran as a boarding house with his step-father Lachie
MacNeill, the dining table would often be covered with letters and accounts waiting to be
dealt with. His favourite saying was: “It’s here, but where?”
“Just outside the house at Salum stood a wooden shed which was Calum’s shop and, if you
knew where to find it, he sold everything: food, clothing, Wellingtons, paint, cattle food, toilet
requisites, lamps, earthenware, buckets, fishing tackle, sweets, medicines and bottled gas.
“Our friend was not a tidy gentleman. He never cleaned out his old stock, or swept his
floor. We did this for him every year. Seldom did he even man the shop. The till was always
left open and many is the time I have gone behind the counter to serve the children with
sweets…
“When the day of our departure came, the grocery bill had grown to many pages. I would
take out my cheque book to pay and from the ‘deep litter’ (his name for the clutter on his
desk) he would take out the pad and flick over the pages, marvelling at the enormity of our
appetites.” Jean Brown, who brought groups of guides camping in Salum for many years.
Calum was also known for his beautiful handwriting and his stories.
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“Calum was telling us one year that Tiree had been used as a garden for Iona by the monks.
‘They would not have a woman on the island’, he informed us. I believe they would not have a
cow on the island either, on account of its being a woman too. They kept their cows on
another island, and I’m thinking that they would have women there to look after the animals.’
His eyes suddenly began to twinkle. ‘I believe the monks were very good swimmers’ he said.”
Jean Brown
“Calum had working for him at that time an enormously heavy man called Big Neil. He was
an infinitely gentle man who loved the myriad of daisies which flourish on Tiree. Calum was
telling us one day that in spring, a sparrow hawk had chased an unfortunate victim, and it
had flown for safety into the exhaust pipe of the tractor that Neil was using. ‘He’s a patient
man, Big Neil,’ marvelled Calum. ‘ He spent all morning taking off the exhaust, and he was
that gentle, the wee sparrow flew out alive.’ ”Jean Brown.
Malcolm MacLean (Calum Salum) with
his mother Christina MacNeill.
He also ran two cars in what became a very busy taxi service for the east end of the island.
Calum was amongst the first on Tiree to set up a windmill on his house to generate electricity
and for many years he served as the District Councillor for the island. He was also a piper,
and often used to play for dances down at Salum and from the rocks at the shore to the seals.
The shop closed around 1971.
There was also a butcher’s shop in Salum run by Hugh MacLean (Eoghann Alasdair mhic
Eoghainn). The family moved from Crois, Caolas, to the Ruaig school house, which was
vacant at the time, when they were allocated a croft in Salum. For a while he butchered in a
lean-to attached to the back of the school. Water had to be carried up from a pump at the
roadside. Later, he built a slaughter house and shop at the front of the house now owned by
his son Hugh Archie MacLean.
He usually slaughtered sheep once a week himself, but he would usually share a bullock with
Archie MacLean, Kenovay, as there would be too much in the carcass for one shop to sell.
When a pig was slaughtered, the whole family would turn to, carrying hot water from a 10
gallon iron boiler outside to scald the skin, so as to get the hair off.
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Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest times of the week for the shop, especially in summer.
His wife, Marion or Mòr, would serve in the shop and made white and black puddings.
During the war, the meat trade became highly regulated with ration books and coupons.
Cartons of Fray Bentos corned beef and some carcasses from the mainland would be sent
from Oban. At first Hugh used a horse and trap to deliver the meat, but later bought a two-
seater car from Oban for £5, from which he removed the dickie seat at the back to store his
goods.
After his death in 1949 the business was continued by his widow and his son Hugh until the
latter decided to emigrate to Australia. It closed in 1950.
Brock
John MacKinnon (Iain ’illeasbuig Oig), Brock, the great grandfather of Alasdair Sinclair, had
a shop in Brock in the 1850s. He also owned the schooner Feannag. When the family caught
smallpox, the shop was shunned and subsequently closed.
Vaul
Three MacMillan sisters, Margaret, Sarah or Marion (Seann Mhor), and Mary were moved in
1876 from their 25 acre farm in Balinoe by the factor because there was no man in the family
to work the land. This followed the deaths of their father Murdoch in 1874 and their uncle
Lachlan the year after. In its place they were offered a small house atan Uailleinich
(‘Silversands’), Vaul with a shop attached. This had been run by a family of MacDonalds who
emigrated to Canada.
Silversands, Vaul.
Though quite young and inexperienced, the sisters accepted the challenge. Margaret
subsequently went to work on the mainland, and Sarah, with Mary’s help ran the shop.
Sarah developed a reputation as a strict businesswoman. One young girl from Ruaig went to
the shop around 1910 with a penny she had been given. The shopkeeper weighed out a
measure of ‘Black Stripes’, and, seeing that they came to slightly more than a penny’s worth,
she picked one up, cracked it between her teeth, put half back on the scales and the other half
back in the jar. By contrast, Mary would put in one or two extra sweets into the hands of her
young customers.
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Before each New Year, Sarah would go with John MacKinnon, Brock on his schooner to the
Broomielaw, on the Clyde. There, she would engage a barrow porter and march off into the
town, returning several hours later with her goods, including the prized currant cake (Bun na
Nollaige).
“Like other shops, it carried a wide range of goods, including groceries, tobacco, paint,
paraffin, needles, fishing flies, and bamboo fishing rods. Thepiocaichrods cost one shilling,
and thecarraigrods one and six. The latter were about four metres long after the last metre
had been discarded because it was too springy.” Alasdair Sinclair.
John MacPhail, Balephuil, remembers bicycling there from Balemartine because it was the
only shop on the island that sold Jews’ harps.
Mary married Hugh MacIntyre from Vaul, and their daughter, Morag (Morag na h-
Uailleinich, Mor Og, or Morag nighean Eoghainn) eventually took over the shop.
Besides running the shop and looking after her aged aunt, Morag also took in visitors during
the summer months, and ran the MacIntyre croft in Vaul with the help of James Curran. The
shop was used as an assembly point for Scottish Airways passengers when the planes landed
on an Tràigh Mhòr before 1939.
She also acted as secretary of the Vaul Golf Club, and players had to pay their green fees to
her. A map of the course (now in AnIodhlann) was on her shop wall.
She never had a bank account, and paid all her suppliers by Postal Order purchased at Ruaig
Post Office. The shop closed around 1960 after serving the community for almost one
hundred years.
Gott
James MacIntyre (Seumas a’ Ghobhainn) started a shop in his house in Gott around 1937. He
often bought eggs from his customers at 6d. a dozen in exchange for groceries.
James MacIntyre’s house in Gott.
Seumas a’ Ghobhainn . . . he sold everything, as they say, ‘from a needle to an anchor’, you
know. If you wanted rope, thesioman ruadh, the rope they use for haystacks and that. That
was the place to go for it.” Hugh MacKinnon.
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