125215: Childhood on an Ungeshader Croft

In 2006 Donald Smith Dòmhnall a’ Choisich born in 1915, reminisced about his early life in Ungeshader

“In my young days there were twelve or thirteen of a family in some of the homes in Ungeshader. In our own house there were nine children: Angus, Peggy, Donald (myself) Calum Iain, Doileag, Kennag, John Angus, Padraig and Katie Mary. There were over fifty scholars in the School at Lochcroistean at that time. We used to go directly over the hill to school and only if the weather was dreadful, or if it was snowing, did we walk out to join the main road. There was only a cart track to Ungeshader then, but after some repairs to the road, Bus An Taillear could drive into the village.

I remember walking a cow one time, a flock of sheep another time, the thirty miles to a butcher in Stornoway. In the village one person was employed as a buachaille, a shepherd, to keep the sheep from the crops in Ungeshader during the summer.

When sheep were slaughtered in the village, the meat was salted and the sheep skin was bundled up and hung for a few days. After this period of time, it was easy to remove the wool from the skin marbhchloimheach they called it. It was put along with the rest of the wool which was later to be dyed with crotal, to make a tweed. The sheep skin was stretched over a large board of wood and nailed to it, to make it stretch. That was then used for making buoys for the fishing nets.

After the wool was dyed, it was taken to the mill in Stornoway to be spun, when it was returned, they would weave it into a tweed on a wooden loom.

Then it had to be waulked before it was sold. The waulking was done in the house of the family who had made the tweed. The women sat around a large wooden door board, one end of the tweed was in the tub and the section on the table was waulked, until it was the required thickness and width, then they pulled the next section from the tub. Later the finished tweed was hung out to dry.

At the far side of the loch at Loch Croistean, where the peatbanks are now, that was the Kneep and Valtos village grazings. The Ungeshader shieling area was eight miles away, between the village and Breanish.

The women went there for six weeks in the summer. They took the cattle and carried creels on their back, with the things which were necessary for their time on the airigh.

One or two of the women who had remained in the village went out to the shieling for the day. They would take the provisions they needed on the moor and they returned with crowdie, butter and mulchagan of cheese.

If my memory serves me correctly, my father was the only one in the village who made creels. Most of the families had their own willow beds and would bring him the willow to make their own creels. He would make a creel in a day or over two days at least.

I used to help my father with the thatching, Oats and barley stalks, were used, once they had removed the seed head, but sometimes it was rushes, it varied. You started at the bottom of the roof and worked your way up, then the rope sioman secured it.

I remember as a wee boy that they took the seed from the barley, by removing their shoes and stockings, and rubbing it with their feet, this was called suathadh. The oats they hit with a stick and the seed fell to the ground this was called frasadh.

The seed was fed to the animals in the winter, and some of it was kept to be planted the next year. I very vaguely remember there was a kiln an ath and a mill, every village had one or two of those. In Ungeshader there was a mill on the river just as it flowed into the sea, I remember seeing the wheels turning, but I was too young to understand how it worked

When I was about twelve, I remember buying a wind-up gramophone from the travelling people, when they camped in a field at Loch Croistean in 1927-28.

I left home when I was seventeen and went to sea, I was on a cruise ship in and out of New York for a couple of years, before I was called up for the Second World War. Two of my brothers also served during wartime, the younger brother joined up just before the war ended.

Some of the Ungeshader families later went to live in Geshader. It was a chance to get away from the rocky ground, get a croft and a house and it was going to be easier to grow crops. At least in Geshader you could have a horse or a plough to help with the croftwork.”

Interview by Maggie Smith 2006