Transcript:

A news on traditional food fae Lumsden

A story by Edith Petrie and Pat Dunn about the traditional food of the Lusmden area, incuding an authentic

Stovies recipe!

“I like tatties. Chapped ??? tatties. And stovies. “What’s a chapped tatty then?” Let the tatties boil and then

mash them.

“Love stovies. Only done it a couple of times but no-one’s even shown me how to do it properly – do you

use mince or do you use bits of steak? Oh no – if I’m eating stovies, I’m eating stovies.

Meat and stovies are meat and stovies? Oil. Used to use lard but I just put in oil now. Bit healthier.

I cut up an onion and put it in. Get your fat hot and put onion in, cut it and get it brownie then get potatoes

ready and put them in sliced and stir them up at the bottom and you get this lovely brown – thinly slice the

tatties. I like mine brown.

After keep stirring until they’re really ready and then turn down the heating. Never put in beef. Nae beef –

just stovies. Stovies doesn’t have beef in them. Just onion and tatties.

A lot of people now put in mince and gravy and stuff but I dinnae. Stovies taste much better without the

meat. Jusst salt and pepper. And if you have beetroot – plain beetroot or the jelly one – you put beetroot in a

redcurrant jelly – that’s nice with stovies. Or the plain beetroot. Corned beef and chopped tatties or

oatcakes. Oatcakes are lovely. But not tooth friendly – not the easiest things to eat.

When Willie was working in the shop I made seven girdles of oatcakes every Tuesday – used to wash on

Monday and bake seven girdles every Tuesday and that would last the week. I had an open fire you see

and you put your oatcakes in a wrap and dry them off and put them in your box. Oatmeal and salt and a bit

of melted fat. Had a board sprinkled with oatmeal and just pop them off the board and cut into triangles –

like the shortbread.

That would last a week – we used to eat it with everything. Even with pudding. That was your staple diet.

My husband’s family, there was eight of them and they had porridge in in morning, maybe skirly at

dinnertime – oatmeal with onions and that but thin – and then porridge again at night, or a boiled egg.

So actually oatmeal was the main staple carbohydrate but beef on a Sunday – a roast on a Sunday. It was

different when I was little because we had our own farm.

Younger – farm they just had beef on a Sunday but a lot of them in Lumsden and that, they just had beef but

we had pheasants, and rabbits. If you had a farm you had chickens, Like rabbit – mixy stopped them but in

Holland they still eat them. It’s quite lean – needs some bacon or lardons or something.

My mother used to make an oatmeal stuffing, sewed into rabbit with a wee drop of water. A few stitches like

you do a turkey at Christmas. And a few onions and turnip and carrots, gravy and salt. We had that a lot

and we loved it. And we had chickens – sold chickens and had roast chicken sometimes.

I had a lady here that stayed in the top manse – Lady Nicol and when we came into the farm she took a

young cockerel from me every Sunday to feed her cancer, she said. She had cancer in her throat – but she

lived a long age. I suppose any chicken would have done but she would buy a hen every Saturday. I don;t

know what she did with it. She said she took it to feed her cancer. But Ive one old ??? comes and stays

with me and she’s 90, from Auchterarder. Drives up every year for the Lady Mary’s birthday at the Lonach.

Lady Mary Forbes. People all over the world talk about chicken soup being good for you – the broth is a

healing thing. Make it with the whole thing. Pheasant makes a good broth – if you do pheasant it’s best pot

roasted to keep it moist.

Pease meal brose – try that. Bit like cornflour – used to be a darker colour long ago but it’s lighter now. It’s a

bit like a pudding. Maybe powdered split yellow peas?

Transcript:

Braeside and the school

A story by Edith Petrie and Pat Dunn about the school and Braeside in Lumsden.

I remember when Edith and her sisters were in school. We used to stay at a farm over at Clova, you see,

and we used to see them walking through the fields and a right long way to Lumsden School that they

walked up. Three miles down in the morning and three miles back.

People were healthier back then!

A few sandwiches in the bag and a tin of coffee or cocoa and my mother put it in in the morning and we

went to school the headmaster used to take it from us and put it on – he had a stove – and he used to open

the cork and set them on the top so that it was still warm. We just got soup dinners before I left.

It was Mrs McKenzie who made the soup and Mrs McGregor did it. We went down every Friday to

Queensbriggs with a pail of the stuff that was left. Did it for a week and got a threepenny on a Friday.

So what’s Queensbriggs?

A house just across there at the foot of the brae, a bridge beside it, just the other side of the village from

here, the Clova road, go past the garage and there’s a road down there and that’s Queenie Brae.

There was somebody told me that there was a queen or something – there was someone that told me but I

forget who it was. It’s just called that. The minister was telling me – she was telling Margaret Shearer.

But it’s Queensbriggs. But we walked it with what was left from our lunch with the school. With the spoil, we

come down every day and got a threepenny. That would have been for the Frasers?

Braeside – there’s no-one there now since we left – grounds all flooded and trees now.

House is still standing – I used to see it when I was out for a walk with my son. And he would look across

and say, “That’s where my grannie’s buried and to think I’ll soon be meeting her and she’ll make bannocks.”

Because he was dying of cancer – and that’s what he used to say.

Transcript:

Grouse beating and tattie picking

A story by Edith Petrie and Pat Dunn about the grouse beating and tattie picking.

“I used to go to the beating when I was about 12, 13, 14. With a stick and a flag, all over those hills, got

about 50p or a £1 when I started. But I think it went up to about £5.”

“When I started at Littlewood it was about 12 shillings or 60p a day – to do the beating. Then up to 15

shillings – 75p. Then it would get up to 22/6. Now it’s about £40 – not bad for a days work.

There used to be a sweepy there used to be sweepies you know, sometimes you’d win it, usually for a £1.

When we were at school we used to gather potatoes an all. There used to be 13 days off from school in

October – the tattie picking holidays – but they don’t do it now. We just have the time off.

But there’s no tatties to pick now, or if there is they get picked by combine harvesters …

I saw a photograph last night, when I was looking out photographs of things for our Edie and Willie had took

a photograph and its tatties and there’s three rows of tatties like this. And they’re just thick. What tatties.

When we came in here first. 24 years since I came in here.

And we had kale and cabbage then the rest was tatties and carrots the other side – and onions. Used to set

it out with strings.

Inginngs and tatties and neeps. Now it’s onions, potatoes and turnips.

I like tatties though.

Transcript:

Mackay the Gamekeeper

A story by Edith Petrie and Pat Dunn about Mackay the Gamekeeper of Clova

He was a character, Andrew. He was a very good keeper and good at his work but he was just the keeper.

A great Laird’s man like, he used to work with my grandfather long ago – my grandfather was head keeper

up there and Mackay came in his place when he retired. He stayed at ??? down there. After he retired he

went down there and then he came up and got himself a house in Lumdsen.

I used to see him and he’d be away for his lunch and I’d say “What are you getting” and it would be

“Oh,tea, loaf and margarine.” He just got fed tea, loaf and margarine. A cup of tea with a slice of bread and

margarine – no butter.

But he was a character. They’d no family, his wife and him, but they were very fond of children. Just sad

they didn’t have any family but he worked in Clova for a long, long time.

Come from Dunbeith down to Clova – my mother knew them up there – she came from there. ??? was the

keeper there. They wore the overalls that you wore long ago – you put your hands in – old, old-fashioned

[like a tabbard?] – like a dress with short sleeves. Wore them till they wore out. We went to the Cabrach

some time and they didn’t wash them – just grew grimy and then they threw them away.

I remember once I was at the pub up there and Mackay was there and he’d had a good drink.

“You know this Pat”, he says, “I’ve come away without my bloody pipe” he says. “You go up to Alice for me”.

And I was away up the street to see Alice. “What’s the bugger needing now?”, she says. So I was away

down the street with the pipe. He liked his pipe.

“What’s the story about the cranberry picking?”

When we went up for cranberries if he saw them or he was up in the hill and they were there he’d empty

them out. He wouldn’t want them carrying them off the hill. He wouldn’t say “Don’t pick them or don’t come

back”, he’d just empty them out on the hill. Very strict

And he was strict about dogs. He was blamed for putting eggs down for stray dogs – strychnine. Poison.

Because I remember my husband – when we were new married – was shepherd at Clova. He had sheep

dogs – Collies – and one of them wasn’t well one night and he says to me “I think that dog’s got poison” and

I said “Surely not,” but it died. But it wasn’t poisoned it turned out. But my husband he went to the Laird

and said ‘You’ve poisoned my dog”. But they did used to carry … “I’ve hear d that myself – but there were a

lot of keepers mistakes made.

“Was it that they didn’t want the dogs to bother the game?”

Aye, a lot of that – grouse and the shooting and that. Awful particular when the shooting comes. But Willie’s

dogs were never touching birds. They were sheep dogs and they wouldn’t bother birds.