Aberdeenshire Quotes

“I know of no part of Scotland so much and so visibly improved within thirty years as Aberdeenshire. At the beginning of that time the country between Keith and Stonehaven was little else than a hopeless region of stones and moss. There were pieces of many miles where literally there was nothing but large white stones, of from half a ton to ten tons weight, to be seen. A stranger to the character of the people would have supposed that despair would have held back their hands from even attempting to remove them. However, they began, and year after year have been going on, making dykes and drains, and filling up holes with these materials till at last they have created a country which, when the rain happens to cease and the sun shines, is really very endurable.”
― Henry Thomas Cockburn, Journal Of Henry Cockburn

“In nineteenth century Aberdeenshire farm service was not a career in itself, but a stage in a career that began for almost all in family farming, and would end there for a proportion of servants. Even in the middle of the century enough folk rode what Leslie Mitchell later would call the 'strange, antique whirlimagig of the Scottish peasantry' to ensure that the machine kept spinning. William Alexander called his essay on farm service "The Peasantry of North-East Scotland" because in his time English hired farm workers were conventionally - though incorrectly - described as peasants. But the error conceals a deeper truth. Aberdeenshire farm-servants, crofters, and small farmers were three fragments of a single peasant class.”
― Ian R. Carter, Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire

“An intelligent and industrious crofter was proud to show our commissioner a cart of his own particular invention, and which, though furnished with what is proverbially regarded as a superfluity in the shape of of a 'third wheel', seemed exceedingly well adapted to its purpose. It was in use at the time for the purpose of driving home turnips from the field, the team consisting of the owner's two cows; and a more tractable or docile team it would have been difficult to imagine, indeed the assurance was given by a neighbour that not only did they obey their owner readily and efficiently in the draught, but that one of them, in particular, would come from the most distant part of the holding whenever he chose to call and wave his hat as a signal that her presence was wanted for business!”
― William Alexander, Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire

“Nineteenth-century Aberdeenshire was seething with land hunger and social strife. The interests of the landowners and muckle farmers were at odds with the democratic ideal enshrined in the concept of 'The Poor Man's County', which proclaimed the value of a finely graded rural economy with the emphasis on smaller farms and crofts as the continuing guarantee of economic opportunity and ultimately, therefore, of social justice. But the cottar class was disappearing as landlords evaded Poor Law assessment by demolishing cottages for married workers. Traditional farm touns and hamlets were being destroyed. As leases expired, holdings were thrown together into bigger units yielding high returns on the kind of investment only great capitalists could contemplate. As entry levels into farming climbed, the land was monopolised in fewer and fewer hands.”
― William Donaldson, Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk in the Parish of Pyketillim, with Glimpses of the Parish Politics about AD 1843

“In the agrarian economy of Aberdeenshire, the crofter, or improving smallholder generally, has filled a most useful part in the past. To them it is due that many hundreds of acres of barren moor have been brought under the plough within the last fifty or sixty years; and from his class, trained up in habits of industry, thrift, and self-reliance, there have continued to go forth into various walks of life men and women fitted to act well their part under any circumstances; the main cause of regret without doubt being that in such limited proportion of numbers have these men and women been retained in connection with the soil as settled labourers, cottars, crofters, and farmers, from the smallest tenant upward. But while it will be readily admitted that the existence of crofts in a county like Aberdeen - and indeed any agricultural county - is in the highest degree desirable; and while one may assert, without much fear of contradiction, that a judicious blending of farm and croft is greatly preferable to either a community of crofers apart from farms, or a collection of farms without a mixture of the crofter element, we are not blind to the difficulties that attend the perpetuation of the crofting system, as we have been wont to view it, under the changed conditions that now obtain.”
― William Alexander, Rural life in Victorian Aberdeenshire

“The estate on which my Uncle Sandy had been a tenant was one of those on which the relations of landlord and tenant were spoken of as being on a paternal footing; the idea of its being a commercial relationship was strongly resented and declared to be the suggestion of radicalism of a very red type, only fitted, if not designed, to excite prejudice against the landlord class, whose distinctive benevolence forbad their ever going farther than to take what they wanted, and proclaim the grand old doctrine of 'LIVE and let live.”
― William Alexander, My Uncle the Baillie

“THE PUDDOCK

A puddock sat by the lochan's brim,
An he thought there was never a puddock like him.
he sat on his hurdies, he waggled his legs,
An cockit his heid as he glowered through the seggs.
The biggsy wee cratur was feelin that prood,
He gapit his mou an he croakit oot lood:
'Gin ye'd a like tae see a richt puddock,' quo he,
'Ye'll never, I'll sweer, get a better nor me.
I've femlies an wives an a weel-plenished hame,
Wi drink for my thrapple an meat for my wame.
The lasses aye thocht me a fine strappin chiel,
An I ken I'm a rale bonny singer as weel.
I'm nae gaun tae blaw, but th' truth I maun tell -
I believe I'm the verra McPuddock himsel.'...

A heron was hungry an needin tae sup,
Sae he nabbit th' puddock an gollupt him up;
Syne runkled his feathers: 'A peer thing,' quo he,
'But - puddocks is nae fat they eesed tae be.”
― John M. Caie, The Puddock