Batty’s Den

Hello once again from the Barry Mill Blog! As the blog was originally set up as part of my Creative Scotland Residency,  now successfully completed, I haven’t posted here for a little while. My second novel The Bone Harp should hit the shelves early next year, but what to do with all that delicious research into mill life, lore and literature?

I have a plan! A non-fiction book of folklore and landscape, which will preserve some of those lovely heritage tales you’ve been kind enough to share with me. You will be able to follow my progress here, and I’ll share with you any snippets of interesting information that comes my way, plus all the Barry Mill news. I will post it on the mill’s Facebook pages, or you can become a blog ‘follower’, so you don’t miss anything.

Last week, I took a walk to Batty’s Den. Most Carnoustie/Muirdrum residents will know  the den as a rather wild place beloved of teenage campers (my own sons included, years ago). I’ve never been there myself, but intrigued by a few paragraphs in the late Annie Thompson’s wonderful book, Carnoustie, in Old Picture Postcards, I ventured forth.

The den has been greatly side-lined since the development of the dual carriageway, and it is seriously overgrown.

I couldn’t help but compare it with the mill den at Barry, and the picturesque Craigmill Den, so well -maintained by Angus Council. As I emerged scratched and nettled, it struck me that we are missing out on a wonderful natural amenity. The Scottish ‘den’ is such a big part of our landscape, and ‘wild’ space so rare, it would make sense to have a ‘den trail’ around the local area for families to explore.

What does Miss Thompson say about Batty’s Den?

‘The name may come from Patie’s [water-driven] flax-spinning mill which operated here in the 19^th c. In 1820, the minister of Panbride, writing in the Statistical Account of Scotland, complained that the mill employed young girls who would be better off at home, as their presence encouraged young men to loiter around the mill.’

Oh dear, women getting the blame again! Miss Thompson goes on to say that no trace of the mill remains, nor the hump-backed bridge in the photograph, but Batty’s Den ‘remains a charming, leafy spot, in spring filled with primroses and wood anemones’.

Den, dean or dene; (OE denu); n. a hollow with sloping sides, or a narrow, wooded ravine, often with rivulet. E.g. Den Burn (Aberdeenshire), Dean Village (Edinburgh), Denholm (Roxburghshire).

Lummesdene (mentioned c.1100); Botheldene, 1159; Ellesdene, 1218; Strikerden, 1275;Denside, 1304.

 

 

 

Mill Women, Part 2

My recent visit to the Verdant Works gave me the perfect excuse to compare mill poetry with Erin Farley, who is currently researching the subject in relation to Dundee’s textile industry. You can check out her amazing blog here. I suppose a part of me assumed that the long hours and poor conditions of factory work would leave little time or energy for creative pursuits, so it was a bit of a revelation to discover that many female jute workers not only penned poems about their lives, loves and concerns, but also managed to get them published in magazines. Lanarkshire-born Ellen Johnston, began working as a weaver at the age of eleven, and published a volume of verse in 1867.

Women of Dundee, Verdant Works

By comparison, the female voice in the literature of the rural water mill is mainly silent. Our most familiar mill poems are male-authored, such as the nostalgic ‘Keepsake Mill’, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walter De La Mare’s quirky Five Eyes, about mill cats. One exception is Victorian poet and composer of hymns, Sarah Doudney. Her poem ‘The  Lesson of the Watermill’ is a rather sentimental call for her readers to live an upright life and look to the future rather then the past:

Listen to the water mill,                                                              

Through the livelong day;

How the clicking of the wheel

Wears the hours away.

Languidly the autumn wind

Stirs the withered leaves;

On the field the reapers sing,

Binding up the sheaves;

And a proverb haunts my mind,

And as a spell is cast,

” The mill will never grind

With the water that has passed. ”

 

While the Miller is celebrated in country ballad form as a bawdy rogue, his female customers tend to get a bit of a raw deal. Much ribald wordplay around the notion of ‘grinding the corn’ has led to the figure of the female farm servant being lampooned as either an innocent or a temptress. Below is part of a traditional song which tells the consequences of an ill-advised liaison between ‘the Miller and the Maid’. The girl is described as ‘wanton’ and seduces the Miller in order to evade the ‘multure’ or milling fee.

‘When forty weeks had passed and gaen,                      

Hech hey sae wanton

When forty weeks had passed and gaen,

Hech hey sae wanton she

This lassie had a braw lad bairn,

because she’d got her corn grund,

Because she’d got her corn grund,

meal and multure free.

Many versions of this narrative were printed on broadsides, and sold on the street for a penny. Such scurrilous stuff was hugely popular, but no doubt provided an accurate reflection of how women were viewed in the male-dominated world of the corn mill. In my recent interview with former miller and musician Alex Green, we can see that these social attitudes and gender roles were to continue for many decades. Women had a limited presence in the meal mill, and certainly no influence. It is interesting to contrast these literary stereotypes with the women of the pre-industrial era. The notion of the matriarch grinding the family corn at the quern is an empowering one, and the spirituality of the charms and rhymes associated with the practice reflect this power.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the rural woman, however. Some ballads (although not many) show that girls of a certain class (probably the daughters of farmers, blacksmiths etc) did have a certain amount of freedom in choosing a husband. The Miller, with his abundance of corn and land, was considered quite a catch, as you can see from the following verse:

 

‘Merry may the maid be

that marries the miller                                                            

for foul day and fair day

he’s aye bringing till her;

Has aye a penny in his purse

For dinner and for supper;

And gin she please a good fat cheese

And lumps of yellow butter.’