Betsy Whyte - Red Rowans and Wild Honey

RED ROWANS AND WILD HONEY

Betsy Whyte

This edition first published in 2000 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Reprinted 2004, 2007, 2010, 2017

First published in 1990 by
Canongate Publishing Limited, Edinburgh

Copyright the Estate of Julie Whyte
Editors note copyright Peter Cooke and Ian Gould

ISBN 978 0 85790 746 2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Typeset by Hewer Text Composition Services, Edinburgh
and Brinnoven, Livingston

Printed and bound by
MBM Print SCS Ltd, Glasgow

It is twenty-one years since the publication of Betsys account of her days as a traveller child. That book, The Yellow on the Broom, was hailed as a minor classic. Almost immediately she was being asked to continue her story, for it had ended when she was still a young teenager travelling the byways of Angus and Perthshire with her mother and sister.

In fact Betsy had already begun a sequel (which is now included in this second edition)but progress was impeded by a sudden transformation of her lifestyle. The modest housewife and grandmother, eking out a State pension in a council flat in Montrose, found herself a television and radio personality, travelling England as well as Scotland. In addition to recording traditional songs and tales for the School of Scottish Studies, she gave talks to literary and artistic societies. In classrooms and at folk festivals, she mesmerised children and grown-ups alike with old tales of magic and wonder.

She remained somewhat bemused by her status as a minor celebrity andalthough she adapted extraordinary well to this new kind of travellingshe was happy to return home among her family. But a traveller home is no haven for a writer: hers was a ceilidh hoose, where friends and neighbours dropped in for a crack at any time of the day and night.

A friendly local librarian helped by providing a little room where she could write in peaceuntil she grew restless for the open air. Then Betsy returned to her more relaxing, if backbreaking, occupations such as collecting whelks along the rocky Angus shores or working for farmers during the weeding and harvesting seasons.

Parts of her manuscript appeared intermittently over the next five or six years untilencouraged by a writers bursary from the Scottish Arts CouncilBetsy felt it was nearly finished. She had taken her story up to the end of World War Two, telling with vivid detail and candour of her days of courtship of her mothers struggle to cope with the problems of being a widow and mother of four. Like many other traveller women, she toiled to keep the family together while their menfolk were away fighting Hitlers armies.

But Betsy found great difficulty in rounding off this book. There seemed no natural way to end it, for she already had a sequel in mind which would bring her story up to date. Only parts of the sequel were put down on paper but we were given other fascinating glimpses of what was to follow and tried repeatedly to persuade her to continue without delay.

Buteven when Red Rowans and Wild Honey was completed to her satisfactionshe remained adamant. I have not been writing. It is just a traveller superstition, not to count chickens ... If a publisher is found then I will write night and day. It is all in my mind. I will only have to set it down.

Sadly, it was not to be. Three days after she wrote those words, still before she knew that this book would be published, she died of a heart attack, leaving behind an assortment of brief jottings and just 9000 words of the continuation she had already composed. We now include this brief sequel since it moves her life-tale on another deacde, giving glimpses of more summers in the country and winters housed-up. By 1955, however, it was clear that the days of freedom for travellers to take the road each summer had become rarer and a few years later Betsys family moved more or less permanently into Montrose itself, where we first met here.

Over the years we worked with her, we were constantly amazed by the talentand the humilityof this remarkable woman. She herself recognised only one gift: that of second sight, inherited from her mother and to Betsy it was disturbing. But she was indeed a gifted, natural, writer: or rather a storyteller turned writer. All her written material was actually composed in her mind. Her laboriously penned sheets bore little trace of amendments and corrections, the signs of a seasoned writers second thoughts. Read aloud by one familiar with it, her narrative flowed effortlessly without pause: the natural breaks were therebut unsignalled. Formal punctuation, spelling, paragraphing, seemed necessary to help the reader to listen as Betsy intended. But that was all: we call ourselves editors for lack of a better term: in fact we were mainly exhorters, advisers, sounding boards...

Constantly she questioned the value of her writing: Will people really want to read about that? Yet she was not only recording a past way of life and the attitudes it shaped. In writing of her own life with all its joys and sorrows, its red rowans and wild honey, she told of life itself in a way no contrived novel can. Because these events really happened, because civilised people really did so behave towards those they regarded as their inferiors... her story is singularly poignant, thought-provoking, disturbing... Perhaps because, despite the trials and tribulations, the humour and the hope shines through?

Peter Cooke, Ian Gould

Do you hear me, lassie?

Aye, Ma, what is it youre saying?

Thats three times I have spoken to you and got no answer. Theres more for you to be doing than sitting dreaming. Go with Katie along to the stable and yoke the pony. The poor animal will be foundered if it doesnt get out for a run. Anyway, theres nothing for it to eat. You can cut some grass for it.

There was a note of irritation in Mothers voice. She was worried. My father had died some six weeks earlier, leaving her with three girls. Katie, the eldest, was twenty. I was fifteen, then there was Lexy, eleven.

Mother had been living in a state of confused despair since Fathers death, quite unable to put her mind to anything much. At first she had wandered through the house singing coronachs to her aching heart, with tears running down her cheeks. This doleful singing had such a depressing effect on all the rest of us that one day I burst out, For Gods sake, Ma, stop that or you are going to put an end to all of our days. She did stop it and tried very hard to keep her heart up.

There was neither bite nor sup in the house, so when I answered Mother it was to say, I could do with something to eat myself, as well as the horse. Give me your basket with your wee bits of stock and Katie and I will try to raise the wind. Stock was what we called whatever we were sellingin this case such things as needles, pins and bootlaces.

Ricky, my little Border collie, had been lying quietly under a chair but he soon stirred himself when he knew that I was going out. There was a pleading look in his brown eyes as he gently pawed me. Kneeling down and fondling him, I told him that he couldnt come with me. The look in his eyes as I opened the door was heart-rending. So I ran back to him and said, I will be back for you in about twenty minutes. You be a good wee doggie and Ill take you with me.