It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to draw the curtains, gather round the fire and tell tales of the supernatural; and of one Caithness witch in particular—the sinister Graycoat of Thurso, self-professed raiser of the dead. There are numerous stories of witches in Caithness, usually women who could turn themselves into cats to work mischief. And it’s a tempting thought: who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be a cat? Sure, the diet’s unappealing, but think of the savings in toilet paper.
But Graycoat is different: it seems she really existed. We know this because she appears in the minutes of the Thurso Kirk Sessions, the meetings of the elders of the parish. In July 1654 the record says, “Isobell Groat declairs that Graycoat wes in her houses, and hir sonne, William Caldell, being standing at the fyre, she looking to him said he wald be a hard fortunat man, and that he wald die by the sea, which fell out.”
Phragmites by the riverside path
Isobel Groat’s husband George had been on his deathbed, and “she comeing from his house weeping, mett Graycoat in the way, who asked if it was for him she was weeping, and she answered it wes. Therefore she desyred to sie what they wald give her and she wald make him weill, for he was witched. They said if she would have cow or horse they would give, and she ansred she would not have that, but lyff for life.” Isobel properly refused, and said that it was the Lord’s will, she would not meddle with her. (This is why it’s a joy sometimes working with archives: “life for life”, “a hard fortunate man”—people speaking in their own voices, though 350 years have passed.)
Dunnet Beach from Castletown
Meanwhile back in the present, if All Hallows’ Eve is imminent the clocks have gone back and the inexorable slide into winter is gathering pace. The sun already sets at 4.30pm, so it’s a race against time to get this gansey finished before it’s too dark to see what I’m doing. But as ever at this stage, things are coming together swiftly: I’ve finished the front, joined the shoulders, knit the collar (14 rows), and started the first sleeve (136 stitches picked up around the 18-inch armhole). If I crack on I should finish this by the end of November.
Door at Sandside, nr Dounreay
Graycoat turns up again in the Thurso Kirk Sessions in November 1655. This time Katherine Skinner “confest that her husband being [new]lie diseased the said Graycoat cam in to the house [and] offered to heale him for reward, whereupon the said [Kather]ine gave her fortie shillings Scotts money but denyes that [she] knew the said Graycoat to [refer] any incantatione or [cha]rming or that she applied any thing to the diseased person.” As this was a first offence Katherine was let off with public rebuke. (There’s no record of Graycoat being punished—presumably she evaded justice yet again, possibly in the form of a cat.)
But let’s take comfort that even a witch’s prophecy can be ambiguous. Take William Caldell, above: he may in fact have had a long and happy life; finally expiring, 17th century banana daiquiri equivalent in hand, reclining in a deck chair on some Florida beach, at the splendid old age of 97. Happy Halloween everyone!
It must be autumn: the leaves here are turning golden, just briefly, before being stripped from the branches by the gales and turned into compost by the rain. It has rained a lot. There’s an old sea shanty whose opening verse is: Oh the rain it rains all day long / Bold Riley-o, Bold Riley / And the northern wind, it blows so strong / Bold Riley-o has gone away. And I can’t help thinking, if Bold Riley had been living in Caithness I’m not altogether surprised.
Trees by the river
Here by the coast at least it’s not too bad. The ness of Caith—the promontory whose tip is at Duncansby Head, near John O’Groats—is a rocky triangle rising sheer out of the North Sea: surplus rain cascades away over the cliffs in waterfalls like water from the scuppers of a ship. But inland it’s another story and the ground is fairly saturated. Every now and then I pass a cow in a field, submerged past its fetlocks in mud, gazing at the passing cars resignedly as if to say, Little help?
Ishmael in Moby-Dick famously went to sea whenever it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul. But what do you do if it’s a damp, drizzly November out of doors—and it’s only October? Well, knitting is part of the answer, clearly.
Loch Stemster, looking towards Achavanich Stones
I have finished the back and am now embarked up the front. So far so good. The secret with knitting this sort of pattern back-and-forth is to ensure that the alternate plain rows are knit on the front-facing side, and the pattern row on the back (or purl) row: I find knitting an entire row a lot easier than purling it. It’s a very straightforward pattern to knit, very relaxing, and just what I needed. It suits the navy yarn, too. But I must admit my thoughts are already straying to my next project: a rather fancy Wick gansey from the Johnston Collection of photographs; a pattern that has, to the best of our knowledge, never been charted before. More on this in December, if everything goes to plan.
Keiss Harbour
Finally this week, few stories have given me as much pleasure as the one about a Coca-Cola vending machine in New Zealand, the land of my birth. In a move that backfired more than a little, the machine apparently displayed a greeting in what the company obviously thought was a disarming blend of te reo Māori (the language of the indigenous population) and English: “Kia ora, Mate,” or “Hello, mate”. Unfortunately, “Mate” in te reo means something quite different; and the message actually given was, “Hello, Death”…
Last night we were woken in the middle of the night. There was a loud pulsing noise coming from overhead, a deep, rumbling wom-wom-wom, and flashing lights. I looked at my bedside alarm to see the time but it was dead, all the power out. And still the deep, throbbing pulse of an engine flattened the air, louder than anything had a right to be at that time of night.
What, I thought, could be hovering over our house with flashing lights? Could whatever it was have causedthe power outage? It took a few moments for my inner sheepdog to round up my scattered wits: would an alien mothership really travel thousands of light years, vast interstellar distances, only to settle on Wick for first contact? And would it—my ears finally reporting for duty, dishevelled and faintly embarrassed—travel about when it got here powered by rotor blades?
Milky Way and Moonlight
The helicopter—for helicopter it was, of course—slowly passed us, looped round and headed back to the airport. The power came back on. It was 3.00am. I forgave myself my moment of confusion: anything’s possible at 3.00am. Actually, in my case all it takes is the dark.
Once I was driving the lonely road from Llangurig to Rhayader in Radnorshire, mid Wales. I’d given a talk at a village hall, and was coming home. It was a dark, clear, early spring night, about 10.00pm. I was tired, and was letting my mind wander; anyway, the car knew the way. Suddenly I was aware of a similar wom-wom-wom, loud enough to make my fillings vibrate, and my car and the patch of road around me were illuminated by a bright light. This is it, I thought, it’s the Rapture. Finally! Then I thought: hang on a minute, why me? Before I could think of a good reason the light and the noise moved on. And I saw that a vast Hercules transport plane had crept up on me unawares, following the road, flying so low I could have bounced a tennis ball off its fuselage if I’d had one to hand. My rational mind had a good laugh at my expense: but just for a moment there…
Visiting Hour
Meanwhile in the empirical world of ganseys, I’m well embarked on the yoke of the Vicar of Morwenstow Revisited (which is like Brideshead but with more herring). The Wendy yarn continues to infuriate (my last ball contained four knots, which is a bit much for 100g) and delight by turn. I’m trying to knit a bit tighter now I’ve reached the pattern: this sort of pattern can spread if you’re not careful, making the yoke too wide, so I’m trying to rein it in. So far it seems to be working.
Finally, an update on the seals at Sarclet Haven. We haven’t seen all fifty together again but there’s still a lot of them about, black snouts bobbing in the water and a few slumped up on the beach, plus—excitingly—some young pups. There’s a tiny white seal pup on the beach just now, barely able to drag itself along a few painstaking inches of shingle but growing daily, like a slowly-self-inflating inner tube. Its whole life lies ahead of it, the book of its life unwritten. To misquote Rabelais: Go well, little seal; may your ship sail free...
I wandered lonely as a cod
That plumbs the deeps ‘midst hake and eels,
When all at once I saw a pod,
A herd, of fifty swimming seals;
Silent, save a booming cough,
Waiting patiently for the German tourists to bugger off.
It’s not often I compare myself to Wordsworth, but just as the great poet was moved to pen the most famous poem in the English language when he encountered a wide expanse of daffodils on the shores of Lake Ullswater one windy day, so we were utterly stunned to find no fewer than fifty seals gliding through the shallow waters of Sarclet Harbour, just south of Wick, last weekend.
It had been a grey, wet, blustery autumn day, not the kind of weather to lure you outdoors, but late in the afternoon it cleared enough to make remaining inside seem like the cowards’ option. So we drove down to Sarclet to see how the offshore wind farm was coming along: and the answer was, apace. (Soon the horizon will shrink from the rim of the world to just nine miles; and the Wordsworth in my soul can’t help regretting that.) But it was what was happening inshore that took our breath away.
At first it looked like whitecaps in the harbour, incongruously, or dozens of little black buoys. Then we saw the snouts of some fifty seals bobbing in the water. Fifty! I’ve never seen so many seals in one place. Autumn is the time of year when most seals up here give birth, and Sarclet—a small, abandoned, mostly secluded, sheltered harbourette—is one of the places where they come. The water was shallow enough to let you see them swimming underwater. Every now and again one of them would utter a wailing cry, as of a lost soul in torment; not so very tormented, though—more as if a lost soul had realised he hadn’t put enough money into the parking meter.
Autumnal Puddles
There were a couple of German tourists down on the beach taking photographs, while fifty seals bobbed in position, staring reproachfully at them, hoping they’d take the hint and go away so the seals could come on land for a bit of a breather. They didn’t, of course; and eventually the disappointed herd swam off in dribs and drabs to try their luck elsewhere. How inconsiderate, we thought. DH Lawrence, as so often, said it best, in the ending of his magnificent poem, Snake: And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords / Of life. / And I have something to expiate: / A pettiness…
TECHNICAL STUFF
It’s time to reveal the pattern. After a few weeks toying with this one or that, I’ve decided to revisit the classic Vicar of Morwenstow pattern. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I had to abandon my planned Flamborough gansey, as the yarn is just too thick for the sort of detail it demands—it will have to wait its turn with the rather more reliable Frangipani. (Or as I think of it, Wendy’s really let herself go…) So I’d already resolved to knit a more textured gansey, rather than one with lots of different pattern bands and cables.
Then I was going to knit The Lizard pattern, in three bands. But I had to abandon that as well, because 10 rows to the inch wouldn’t give me all the rows I’d need to do it justice. Now, this Morwenstow pattern isn’t banded—it covers the yoke in a single panel like the classic Scarborough basket stitch (another pattern I have in mind for this yarn)—so I don’t have to worry about the yoke being too long or too short: I can stop when it’s the right length.
Also, as I’ve said before, I have at least another gansey’s worth of this particular yarn and dye lot. So this is a good way for me to establish the row and stitch gauge, so I can plan the next one better, whichever pattern I ultimately choose.
I wasn’t satisfied with my previous attempt at this pattern, either. I did it at a time when I was changing my stitch gauge, and it came out far too saggy. The great, if controversial, composer Richard Wagner was never happy with his opera Tannhäuser, and before he died he said he felt he still owed it to the world. I feel the same way about a Morwenstow gansey. It’s time to set things right!
Oh, and my last reason: I really like the pattern and want one in navy…
It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to draw the curtains, gather round the fire and tell tales of the supernatural; and of one Caithness witch in particular—the sinister Graycoat of Thurso, self-professed raiser of the dead. There are numerous stories of witches in Caithness, usually women who could turn themselves into cats to work mischief. And it’s a tempting thought: who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be a cat? Sure, the diet’s unappealing, but think of the savings in toilet paper.
