44215: Donald Smith Cromore: At Work (part one)

A brief history of the life of Donald Smith, 15 Cromore. His father was Finlay, son of ‘Big John Muldonaich’, and his mother was Ishbel, daughter of Roderick.

Gaelic version

I was born in Cromore in 1907 where I went to school at five years of age. The headmaster was Mr Duncan. Many people made out that he was no use, but looking back I am not of that opinion. It is said that his predecessor, Mr Bruce, was good at teaching Gaelic. When Mr Duncan came he was of the opinion that the children were fluent enough as they naturally spoke in Gaelic, but they were in need of being taught English. When the Gravir minister came to give us a test he didn’t agree. There were only two or three able to read and write Gaelic, and he was wild. The two fell out, and the headmaster ordered the minister to leave. When the argument was over, Mr Duncan said, “Well, if that man is in Heaven, I’ll walk out.” Mr Duncan was good at teaching us psalms. I learned more English psalms in the day school than I did in Sunday school. I still remember five or six of them. There was one that our Finlay always requested when the headmaster gave us a choice of which one to sing, and it this is it: –

When he cometh, when he cometh
To make up his jewels
All his jewels precious jewels
His loved and his own.

I was about seven years of age the first time I went to Stornoway by boat. There was no road round the loch then. We slept in the home of Donald, Kenneth’s son of 19 Cromore. At that time they were living on Mackenzie Street. We came home in a small boat belonging to Alastair the Tailor. We left from the Battery with my father and another two or three men, rowing to Cromore.

When I left school I worked at home on the fishing, the croft and odd jobs round about.

When they started building the Nurse’s cottage in Gravir they took a lorry from Stornoway to take supplies from the quay to the house. My father thought it would be handy to have one based in the community. And that was what happened. He brought over a one tonne truck from Callanish. She arrived in Cromore on the boat ‘Good Hope’. She was put ashore at the point where the quay is now. My father steered her home up the hill. He would let me drive her. I t wasn’t long before I wrecked her. I would go round the district with her, but since the road was not complete, I couldn’t go past Habost with her. I remember going to Kershader to take people to Lemreway for the wedding of Iain, son of ‘Domhnull Chalum’ and Mary, daughter of ‘Domhnull Bhig’.

There were a lot of boats in Cromore when I was young. I remember the names and registrations of the first ones I saw. They were ‘Violet, SY 217, and ‘Dove, SY 72’. MacConnachaidh had a boat called ‘Pioneer, SY 1021’. The skippers of all these boats lived locally.

Dan had a post office and shop, and MacConnachaidh also had a shop. It was when he retired that we opened a shop ourselves. MacConnachaidh didn’t have much help so I used to carry supplies up from the shore for him. He wouldn’t have been able to keep me away anyway. I f there was a boat coming ashore I was in it. I also would go and give MacConnachaidh a shave with the ‘cut throat’ razor. It’s a wonder I never cut his throat.

We also had boats. One of them was named ‘Star of Hope’. She originally belonged to Lord Leverhulme, and then some men from Ness bought her to take supplies to their shop in Ness. She was too big to berth at their quay so they had to sell her. That’s how we got her. She was then taken to Calbost and went on fire there. We then had the ‘Spray’, and the ‘Aurora’, and in the year of the big herring landings in Loch Erisort it was the ‘Elsie’ we had. There was plenty herring at that time, but MacConnachaidh was partially blind. One of his eyes was pure white. I never found out why. People used to say that that was why he always left the boat at anchor and swam ashore.

They came from everywhere to fish for herring. A drifter from the mainland came over by the name of ‘Burnt Haven’. She set her nets in Loch Torostay one beautiful evening and the crew went down below. She began to list and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. When they looked she was aground on a rock. She didn’t suffer too much damage. She was made out of steel. Everybody fished for as much as they could get. I remember ourselves going out really early one Monday morning. We set the nets and never caught a thing. I was quite pleased, in case folk thought that we had gone out on the Sabbath.

We used to go into the Park Estate deer hunting as well. John Angus, Angus Dic, Iain Aonghas Sheonaidh and I went in one night. We left Iain looking after the boat while the rest of us went ashore. We had killed two deer when out of the blue the gamekeeper and his son appeared. We hid, because we knew they would return to Eishken before dark. When they left we made off in the boat, and they put me ashore further up to retrieve the deer from where we had left them. Then they returned with the boat and picked me and the deer up. We took both of them home. Iain was wearing a coat of mine with the letters D.S. written on the back and we were afraid they would recognise us as I was driving the bus at that time. But they couldn’t have realised because a while after that the gamekeeper was in Cromore and he never came near us. I remember another time when my father and grandfather went up to Brollum in a small 14 ft boat. They rowed there and back. They killed enough to fill the boat. My grandfather took a turn and my father maintained it was the rum that kept him going until they reached home. They were fortunate in more ways than one on that day. They hadn’t got up from the shore when a gale came in from the southeast.

Once I turned eighteen I joined the Reserves. A number of us had tried to get in before we reached eighteen. Roderick ‘Dic’, boys from Gravir and I went together. They could tell that we were underage and the police lifted us. We were fined two pounds. Roderick never tried again. He went to America. He was quite right. It was at Chatham that I carried out my first drill. My uncle Angus, and Angus, son of Norman came with me. The first drill lasted six weeks, and the second lasted three.

I got my licence in 1923. There was no test; you just had to send for it. Domhnall Moil from Gravir had the first car here. Murdo Alex used to drive it. We then got a van from Mitchell. I then got a seven-seater. When the road round Kinloch was completed, we would take passengers to Stornoway. At first we didn’t have a timetable, but when other buses started running we set up a timetable then. We would take turns in waiting in Stornoway for the steamer. It was often the early hours of the morning before we got home. It was quite hard in winter with the snow. There was no salt put on the roads, which resulted in icy conditions. It didn’t really bother us. We were quite brave in those days. We didn’t have the sense to not drive the bus until the snow stopped. If it wouldn’t start for me in the morning I would connect it to the battery from the radio. That worked.

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