Gansey Nation

So here we are: the pullover is finished, and what a great pattern it is. I finally decided to extend the cuffs to 6 inches, so they can be rolled back to suit and give the wearer a bit of flexibility. The loose ends have all been darned in (at least with Frangipani 500g cones there aren’t too many), so now it just has to be washed and blocked and it’s ready to go. And after a short break it’ll be time to think about the next.

Now, as you know, I’ve been up to my elbows in the history of Wick’s Victorian fishing industry lately – and one of the things I’ve been wondering about is, just what was the impact of thousands of immigrants (‘strangers’) descending on the town for two months of the year.  You see, Wick is (and was) an English-speaking town; but many of the migrants came from the (Gaelic-speaking) Highlands and Islands. You never read about tensions between the two communities, so when I came across this extraordinary incident from 1859 it was all the more surprising.

It all started trivially enough, as is so often the case. About 7pm on Saturday 27 August two boys, one a local from Wick, the other from Lewis, got into a fight over a dropped orange. At that time the streets were packed with both incomers and locals; within a few minutes the brawl became general, as each side leapt to the defence of their own, and quickly developed into a full-blown riot. The police arrived and made a few arrests, including a Highlander who was thought to be the ringleader, and who was taken to the gaol in Bridge Street.

The incensed Highlanders at once besieged the gaol and tried to get the man released (one crew even went down to the Harbour and returned with the mast of their boat to use as a battering ram!). But the police had meanwhile recruited a number of local youths as special constables and armed them with batons, and together they broke up the crowd, and repulsed a later attempt to break through to the gaol.

The trouble died down that night, and everything remained calm throughout Sunday. But the Highlanders were only biding their time – for, as the harbour master noted, the police had armed “many of the thoughtless lads of the place” with batons on Saturday, and now their furious victims wanted revenge.

They got it on Monday. “Numbers of the Highlanders thronging Bridge Street and threatening vengeance against the parties using the batons on Saturday evening … upwards of 22 persons struck and abused before 6 pm, no available force able in any way to check the violence offered.” As evening came on, however, the Highlanders, having had their revenge, were “now willing to enter upon armistices.”

There followed a temporary suspension of hostilities, though “the Highlanders continue very sullen, looking daggers at parties who escaped them yesterday.”  The helpless authorities sent for the army, and meanwhile, with the fishing season nearing its end in any case, some of the Highlanders began to leave for home.

Next Saturday 100 soldiers arrived by steamer and it looked as if the trouble was finally at an end. But later that night the Wick youths went on the rampage, running through the streets with knives and stabbing any Highlanders they found out of doors. The military were called out and it took them two hours to “scatter the rebels”, by which time 11 people had been stabbed, some of them badly wounded, though luckily no one died.

The Wick harbour master wrote sadly in his diary next day, Monday, 5 September 1859: “The Highlanders leaving the town in great numbers, others making ready, the men have no confidence after the usages to which they have been subjected, in terror of their lives for several nights past.”

It’s hard to imagine that relations between the Highlanders and the people of Wick would ever be the same again after that, isn’t it?

You know the saying that travel broadens the mind? Well, in my case it may do, but it also raises the blood pressure, increases stress levels and shortens my life expectancy. Much of this is caused by staying in hotels, of course. The room I had in the hotel in Inverness last week was so narrow I touched all four walls every time I breathed in: lying in the bed was like being digested by a boa constrictor, or buried alive in a child’s coffin. Then the guy next door came in noisily at 1.30 in the morning, and got up and left noisily at 5.00; the walls were so thin I could hear his nose hairs rustling as he slept.

Dornoch Firth, not to be confused with a hotel in Inverness

There’s this theory that the universe will expand to a certain point, then collapse back, there’s a big bang and everything repeats, again and again, eternally and for ever. There are many reasons why I don’t want this to be true, but mostly because it will mean endlessly reliving that night in Inverness, back and forth, until the end of time and space, an infinity of sleepless 5.00am’s.

I spent part of last week’s holiday with my parents at Reid Towers, our ancestral mansion in Northamptonshire overlooking the Grand Union Canal. South Northants really is a lovely county, a patchwork of fields draping the landscape like an embroidered quilt, charming villages of Cotswold stone, all ivy-covered pubs and cricket on the village green, and everywhere herds of solicitors and doctors, the only ones who can afford to live there, ravaging the crops like wild deer (time for another cull, you say? Pass me my twelve bore). But it still feels like home to me.

The Grand Union Canal from my bedroom window Chez Reid

The town of Northampton itself, though, is sadly an urban wasteland of post-apocalyptic desolation, where hollow-eyed survivors stagger from the ruins after dark (not zombies, of course, for as everyone knows, zombies feed on brains, and the last one in Northampton starved to death 20 years ago).

Northampton made the schoolboy error of supporting Parliament in the Civil War, so when Charles II was restored to the throne he—rather petulantly, it’s always seemed to me—had the castle torn down, starting a tradition of destruction carried on by the Luftwaffe and subsequent town planners. Retracing my childhood in the town is now about as hard as working out how medieval people lived and already involves more archaeology than history (I know I’m getting old, but really: this is my childhood, people).

I left my knitting behind, as I usually do on these trips, partly because I’m self-conscious, but mostly because it’s so big and unmanageable now it’s like holding a drunken sheep with a fever on your lap. And anyway, it was just too hot down south (at one point I even contemplated rolling up my shirtsleeves, but recollected in time that there were ladies present, and forbore). Still, I’ve managed another few inches since last time, and am still on track to finish the gansey by the end of the month.

My Victorian detective novel The Cuckoo’s Nest continues to sell well on Amazon, selling more in a month than some of my books ever have, so thank you to all who’ve downloaded it. I guess crime, as they say, really does pay.

Margaret comes back from serving her time in a Turkish prison, correction, “holiday”, next week, when normal service will be resumed—by which I mean the blog will have images that actually vaguely resemble their subjects. Meanwhile I’m off to catch up on my sleep, now my travels are done: I think, all things considered, I’ll keep my mind safely narrow in future.