Interviewee: Ronnie Waugh (RW) Interviewer: Margaret Smith (MS) Date of Interview: 7 April 2015 Ref: DG38-15-1-3-T

MS: Ronnie, on this occasion is going to talk about his very early memories of growing up in the village of Dunscore. So, Ronnie can we maybe start with when and where you were born in Dunscore? RW: Well, as I said in my earlier interview, I was actually born south of the border, I was born in Kendal. No recollection of that, I was back when I was virtually a baby, my parents moved back up here and I spent virtually, my whole, well, all my boyhood, up until I was about sixteen, in Dunscore but when ah first moved back to Dunscore we lived in a little hamlet called Black Steps just on the outskirts o the village and that’s where ma earliest memories stem from and my first conscious memories, oddly enough, are at Black Steps, lying on ma bed one night, very, very peaceful little place, not a sound there, and all of a sudden ah could hear this strange humming and buzzing noise in the sky and it got louder and louder and I was terrified and ah can remember, although I was very, very young, I can remember jumping out of bed and running to my mother and grandmother and of course, at that time, I was much too young to understand. Eventually this noise faded away into the distance but what it had been was actually the German bombers, they came right over, they used to come right up over Dumfries and over where we lived there and that was them going to bomb Clydebank, which was about March/April ‘41, ‘42. But just a tiny wee boy, but I can remember that vividly as if it had happened yesterday but, as ah said, ah had never knew why. It was years later before ma folks would tell me what it had actually been. But that was…Black Steps was a lovely wee place, ah think there was only about five houses there. MS: Was there? RW: It was on the outskirts of the village and we used to just walk into the village, you know, for groceries and tae the butcher’s and suchlike but that’s ma earliest memories and ah had happy times there as a wee boy but it was wartime and ah can always remember, one morning ah got up and ma mother says to me ‘Come and look at this’ and she took me out and lifted me up onto the dyke and as far as ah could see, right down the sides o the roads, all through the fields, it was absolutely filled full o soldiers, there was tanks, jeeps and motorcycles, dozens and dozens o soldiers, they were sitting making brew-ups on the side o the road and it was a great adventure for a wee boy to see and ah don’t ever recall being frightened o aw this stuff and there was huge tanks going all over the place. And they never went through the gates, they jist went straight through the dykes into the fields and after that the farmers were compensated for all the damage that was done to their properties, you know. 3m 06s. And of course there was aircraft buzzing all over the place and I was seeing all these famous wartime aircraft coming over, Spitfires and things like that, flying around and it was a great adventure. And of course, to top it off for kids, we were getting all the chocolate and sweets off soldiers because we had very little, it was strict wartime rationing and we got oor weekly ration and back in these days we would get something like a big bar of Highland Toffee, something that would last. There were jube- jubes, as we used to call them, the big sort of parcels, but we got all this stuff and of course, ma Grandmum, ma mother had tae go and work in the Munitions Department in the old ICI… MS: Did she? RW: …and ah was pretty much brought up by my grandmother and they used to bake scones and things on the old range fires as we had back in these days and I used to run out with cloths wi these scones and stuff and they used to give me sweets, a bit o chocolate, but they also used to give me tins

1 of bully beef and of course the soldiers, and being a soldier later in life, ye were sick o the sight o bully beef, but ye couldnae get it the same back then. Soldiers gave it but they were big tins, no like the wee stuff that ye buy nowadays. And so these were my earliest memories but a lovely wee place, very quiet. MS: And can I ask you Ronnie, were these British soldiers? RW: Oh yes, they were British soldiers. MS: And why were they there? RW: Well, there was huge manoeuvres taking on…all over the country, you know, I mean there were soldiers everywhere, all over Britain on training things, and all different things. But, no, they were all British. There might, I mean at one time there might have been one or two Canadians or that, I think, but they were mainly British soldiers. But this wee place at Black Steps, down through the fields, there was a lovely cherry orchard and ma mum used to take me down there to pick cherries, I would eat more probably as I put in the basket, but one day we were walking through the field and I could see something lying in the grass and ah started tae run towards it and ma mother must have thought and she shouted me to ‘get back, get back’ and she went and looked and it turned out it was the tail fin off a German bomb. Now the bomb never landed, it was simply the tail fin, it must have been some sort of malfunction or something and they had just ejected it out but it was German because it was later identified as such but for a long time it used to sit outside the house at Black Steps. 5m 52s MS: Did it? RW: I’ve no idea what became of that, it probably be just sent away, but ah don’t know, I just don’t remember. But it was a German, off a German bomb and, as I say, we were deep in the countryside, and ma whole life was the countryside. And then about 1942, ah think, we moved from there to another wee hamlet which is just on this, the other side o the village, called Throughgate, and we lived in a house cal,led The Tower House and it’s still there, it’s called The Tower House because the roof’s just liked a peaked tower and it’s got a round front, you know, like a half circle and it was originally, there used to be a toll gate there and ah think that’s where the name Throughgate derived from and there was an old wall, which is still there to this day, unchanged and the old hinges are still in that wall where the original toll gate would hang and as far as ah know they’re still there. Externally the house has never changed but it’s a listed building and I don’t think they’re allowed, it’s all been changed inside because it was a holiday home for a time but it’s been sold ah think now. But we moved there to The Tower House and I’ll never forget there was me and ma mother and ma grandmother and we flitted in a cattle float which wasn’t uncommon back then. You were more likely to see somebody moving with a horse and cart with their stuff piled up on the back but we were grand, we went on a cattle float and ah’ve never forgot, we all crammed into the cab and ma grandmother fell sound asleep and it was a journey which would probably take about maybe three minutes, she was sound asleep. But anyway, we arrived at our new house at the Throughgate and the neighbours came around and helped wi stuff, to get in the house but ah can always remember in the living room there was an old- fashioned corner cupboard that had been left there by the previous occupants and ah was just wandering around an underneath this old cabinet ah saw this big tin toy car, it must have been well over a foot in length. Now it’s hard to understand maybe, with kids nowadays, but you’ve no idea the treasure that that thing was to me because I had virtually no toys and this huge car and it was one of these old tin toys where the, on the side, the side profile had a driver’s face, was painted and on the front the front of his face was painted, you know, and ah played wi that for years. I wish I had kept it and kept it in good condition because they’re worth a shilling nowadays. 8m 41s.

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But that was a tremendous treasure, so we got settled in and ah started to build, well, being at Black Steps, that wee place, ah was the only child there and ah had been, ah don’t remember really being very lonely but ah was only child and of course when ah got to Throughgate ah think there was about another five or six kids there and of course I got out and I started to get to know them and they were kids that became ma life-long friends, I still see them, one or two of them fairly regularly and it was another nice place but there was more activity there. There was a blacksmith’s shop there and of course back then a blacksmith’s shop was always a hive of activity. They used to bring the big farm horses there to get their shoes done and we used to go to the blacksmiths and we were absolutely fascinated in the old blacksmith’s shop, the smithy, I can see him yet wi his long leather apron and he would shoe the horses, he would heat it in the forge, you know, it was pumped up wi a set o bellows and the metal was heated up till it was almost white hot and then he would fashion the shoe on the anvil and then he would sort of burn it into the hoof, an then it would be cooled down when he got it to the right size, shape and then it was nailed onto the hoof and ah can always remember, the nails used to come right up through the top of the hoof and he used, never hurt the horse, didnae feel anything in the actual hoof, but they were beautiful big animals and their harnesses, some of the harnesses were…you never see that, you quite often see them hanging in a country pub, things like, that all polished up, the brasses and that. But these are some of my very early recollections of Throughgate, so ah got to know ma new friends and, of course, at that time there was a prisoner of war camp up at Carronbridge, north of Thornhill, and the German prisoners used to come out and work in the farms, they might work in shops or a blacksmith’s shop for instance, but they used to, where, this wee place where ah lived that was one of the drop-off points and the pick-up points. When they came round in the morning they would get off wi their guards, they would go to various bits and then they would come back to the same place at night and the truck would come round and take them all back to camp. And that was early on and you were really supposed to have nothing to do with the prisoners and ah can always remember ma poor auld grandmother had spent ages baking scones, pan scones, and general baking on the old range fire and she took them out this night to give to the prisoners and she got a terrible row fae the guard. Under no circumstances would she fraternise or have anything to do with the prisoners. But, being kids, we paid little attention to that, we used to go and sit on the grass bank and most of them could speak reasonable English and they were actually really nice, they were only young boys really, eighteen, nineteen, early twenties, you know, who had been captured and they weren’t your sort of average Nazi type, they were just ordinary young German soldiers that were having to do what they had to do, you know. 11m 59s. And we got to know them quite well, these prisoners and, talking about toys, they used to make us the most marvellous toys, you have no idea, just out of bits and pieces they would find. One of them actually made me a tractor and trailer and it was big, the tractor was quite long and the trailer and it was all beautifully painted, and ah remember it was done in red and greens and black and you know the back tyres on a tractor, they’ve got these big heavy treads, that was all beautifully carved out and you could actually steer it, he had made, done it with little bits of wire and you could steer it. And they used to make things, they were like, if you can imagine, a table tennis bat but twice as big with a handle and all around there were wee blocks of wood wi a slot in them an little birds carved out in profile put in on a wee rod and a string went from each one through the centre to the back on to a lead weight or something like that and when you shook the handle all the birds used to peck up and down. Well many, well not that many years ago I saw one of these appear on the Antiques Roadshow and it was worth quite a bit of money because they reckon there’s very, very few of them left now, they were just broken, you know. But they made some beautiful stuff and they were all, there are still one or two of them around, old, old men now because a lot of these German prisoners, after the war, they stayed back, because a lot of them would have been going home and they would have been to the Russian Sector and they just wanted nothing to do with that and so they opted to stay. And most of them got married to local girls on the farms and ah never, ah never, ever met one that ah didn’t

3 like. And they just settled in and they were accepted in the community. As the war got on these prisoners got a bit more freedom and you could sort of talk to them and they even got let out at the weekends to go down into Thornhill, they could go down and have a pint o beer and things like that. People used to invite them on a Sunday for their lunch and things like that and they held no real grudge against them, they were just young men having done what oor own soldiers were having to do. So that was a sort of early time, the wartime and the rationing, of course, was horrendous. MS: So what kind of food do you remember having?

14m 25s. RW: Well, being country boys, or country children, we were better off as the kids in the big cities, for a start, you could hardly step for rabbits, they would flit aboot everywhere, when ah was a wee boy we had rabbit stew, we had rabbit casserole, we had rabbit curry, boiled, fried, however you liked it. Ah was almost weaned on rabbits but you got used to it but then there was, you had your, you got your bit of farm fresh farm butter and the odd egg and whereas a boy or a child’s rations, if ye look at the old ration, a child’s weekly allowance was very, very meagre. How we survived and yet we were always, we always had enough to eat, don’t ever remember being hungry and during the day, through the day you would go in and get a piece, as we talked about, sometimes it just had sugar on it, a lovely sugar piece, or jam. And most of the jam, of course, was all home-made, ma grandmother and ma mother, it was aw home baking back then and there was always plenty to eat. And as I say, the soldiers came and of course we would get oor extra sweets and a bit o chocolate fae soldiers and they in return would give us the bully beef but they used to come and they would camp in the fields, just all around and we had a marvellous time. Ah think it would be getting nearer D-Day and there would be a huge, all the soldiers were moving south and there were huge convoys, sometimes they went on for hours and we used to stand inside the wall at my house and watch them and there was tanks, Bren gun carriers, all the usual stuff on the move, you know, we were absolutely fascinated wi this. And looking back even though the young soldiers would give us a sweet and a bit of chocolate you often wondered how many of them came back, how many of them would die inside these camps and stuff like that. And then of course, we had oor own young men away and quite a lot of local men were killed, certainly in the First, but there’s a memorial there in Dunscore, has been for a number of years. The names there, the names are familiar, the families, but the men are faceless because I was too young to remember them, you know, when they went away and of course they never came back, sadly. And women, mothers and sisters and stuff, there was one family in Dunscore, a beautiful family, and she had, before the war she had five…one, two, three…she’d five children and she never saw her husband for six years, he never once got home, he was overseas all the time. Thankfully he came back but these kids were, they were strangers, he was a stranger to them and his kids had grown up and ye often think that the heartache that that woman must have had wi the worry, would he ever come back? But thankfully he did, so there was all that, a lot of sadness and then, of course, there was the dreaded yellow telegrams that used to come to the house and ah had two uncles, ma grandmother’s two boys, ma uncles, they were away, both away all through the war, one of ma uncles had been in years before the War, he’d been a regular soldier. 17m 59s. Ah can remember the telegram boy, they used to have, the telegrams would come through to the Post Office and then they would be taken out by the telegram boy and he used to wear a hat and he had a belt wi a pouch on it and he would cycle all over the parish wi these telegrams. But ah can remember watching ma grandmother’s hands actually shakin when she saw these telegrams comin but in her case, thankfully, it was never bad news, they both come home. They were good years in some ways, community-wise but there was a lot of sadness back then as well because that was always…I mean, you knew, well we didn’t understand, we were too young to understand fully what was happening but

4 we knew that men were away and we would see them coming home on leave now, the ones that were lucky enough to get leave, and so it was quite a, it was quite a sad time but, having said that, for us, my childhood, I mean I had the most happy childhood and we never had the facilities like kids have got now, we had utterly nothing, one or two toys, mostly what the Germans had made us, but we had very little, but the whole countryside was our playground. We didn’t want anything else we were happy, we had never known anything better so we never missed things and the countryside, was our playground, you know what I mean, we would, in good weather we were literally away from morning till night. MS: So, what kind of things did you do? RW: Well, I will get round to the mischief and the stuff but, generally speaking, when we went away for a day we [?] getting up, we just loved roamin the hills, going into the woods and we lived off the countryside, we would eat all the wild berries,the raspberries, there was one, there was a patch o strawberries at one place. You would have your hazelnuts, your gooseberries, and the odd wee turnip that ye would pinch out o a field somewhere. And most wee boys would have a pocket knife then and we would skin the turnip and eat it, you know. How we never ended up wi serious stomach aches, but we never did, but we always had a, most boys had a penknife and there was an old man lived just up the road from me, a right old worthy, and he always used to say ‘Boy, if ye’ve got a penknife, a piece of string and a penny in your pocket, ye’ll never go wrong.’ that was what he used to tell us. So we would start walking around wi a penknife and a penny but we never had a penny, we might have a farthing, which is a thing of the past as well. But the whole countryside was a playground and we would literally roam from morning to night and sometimes we might have a biscuit or something in oor pocket but normally we just lived off the country and then of course you’d go home at night, you’d be dead tired, ye’d be filthy dirty and, back in these days, you couldnae go home and get intae a nice hot bath or a shower, didnae exist. 21m 07s. All the people there, ye had an outside toilet, ah had tae walk fifty yards to go to the outside toilet, round intae the wood, ye had no running water, we had no electricity, nothing like that so, when ye got up in the morning, ye would sit and freeze in the winter until yer mum or granny got the old range fire kindled up and going, before you could boil up yer kettle and get yer porridge on before ye went to the school. Ye couldnae get up and just press a switch and ye would have an instant hot cup of tea. There was nothing like that and we had to walk about, from my front door, you had to walk probably about twenty or thirty yards to the outside tap or spicket, as you called them, and you would have the pails, the auld zinc style pails and ye would carry your water intae the house and it was kept in there and, of course, all the cooking was done on the fire and there would be a big wall bracket that would swing out and the pots and the pans, well, the pots would sit on top of the thing and your kettle and certain things would hang on this until they heated up and there was two wee ovens at either side but ye had tae wait until it was really warm, till the ovens heated up, before the rabbit stew went in, intae the oven. And it was rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, believe me, so there was very little facilities, [ ? ] I used to lie as a wee boy, when I was old enough to read, and it would just be candle light and the old houses, as ye know, the wind would…ye’d be lying there at night and the draughts would be coming in, the candle would blow out, no electricity, we had a paraffin lamp but that was only just mostly down in the living room. There was something, going back to then, there was something infinitely cosy about sitting in a house at night with the nice coal fire, wi paraffin lamp and listening to the old crackly radio in the corner, and they were pretty crackly and of course there was so many marvellous radio programmes back in these, I could name, I could still name, I could name nearly all of them. And then of course, for the kids at ten to seven every night ye got what ye called Dick Barton, Special Agent, he was on it and ye would give up everything to be back the house to listen to Dick Barton and then, of course, there was all the wartime songs and the big bands, of course, were a thing, I can remember listening to Glenn Miller coming over the radio and all the comedians of the day, Charlie Chester and

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Tommy Handley and och, there was so many of them. and there was some marvellous [?] and then the Children’s Hour was every night at five o clock till six and ye had the famous Tammy Troot, and ye had all these marvellous radio programmes and then, of course, ye had yer comics and yer books. Of course the most famous comics, of course, were The Dandy and The Beano which are no longer with us. 24m 16s. MS: So where did you get these? Where did you get those? RW: Well, ye could get them in the shop in the village. MS: Right. RW: Yea. In the village, in Dunscore itself, back then, there was a grocer’s which doubled up as the Post Office, then just down the road was the butcher’s and then across, just up from the butcher’s, another shop which sold papers, magazines, it sold everything, it sold clothes, pots and pans, cutlery, just a general sort of, what’s the name for it. But ye could get…and that’s where we got oor papers, they would be delivered to the shop in the morning and ye would go and that’s where…but then, of course, not every Saturday, but quite a lot of Saturdays was your day into Dumfries. And back then there was, the bus service was unique, there was buses all the time. And ah’ve saw double decker buses coming down frae Moniave, a couple at a time, and they were filled, they were standing, but you see very few people had cars, ordinary working class people just simply never had cars. The only people that you would see with cars were maybe the doctor and the vet and maybe the local garage or the greengrocer, the grocer and things like that, but the rest of us, you were lucky if you had a bike, never mind a car. Back then ah didn’t have a bike so that’s where we got oor papers but then when ye went intae town, of course, ye’d get them in town and, no it was a good life and a very, very happy time. MS: So, is that where, where did you go to school then? RW: Went tae Dunscore School, the primary, it was just up the road. MS: And you just walked there? RW: Yes. That is, that terrible event happened about 1943, when ah went tae school and it was the start o an absolute lifelong absolute hatred o that establishment. I don’t think there was ever a boy lived, that hated the school as much as I did. MS: Oh?

26m 13s. RW: I absolutely loathed the school, the first day ma mother hauled me up the road screaming and shouting because there was no way I was going tae school. And she was demented, poor woman, and she deposited me at the school and I was back home before she got back, ah just ran away. So she took me back and they took me into class and the minute the teacher’s back was turned I was out, I was home again, across the fields. Took me back again and the headmaster, who was in the bigger room where the older kids were, got me in and said ‘Keep him here till…’ or whatever but ah was away again but they sent two o the bigger boys to chase me and to this day ah know perfectly well they didnae try tae catch me. So ah went back and she took me back for the third time and the teacher said ‘Just take him away and bring him back tomorrow.’ So that night we were playing, it was outside the blacksmith’s shop, there was old carts and trailers and we used to be in on old cart and kidding on it was a Wells Fargo Stage you know, or something like that, we played [?] and ah fell and ah caught ma head on the crossbar and ah split ma head, barely, might just be able to see the mark, but this

6 would be about the back of four o’clock one day and ah walked, run across howling, ma grandmother came out and ah think, they must hae jist arrived and ah think she thought ah’d been hit by the bus, but it was…luckily enough we lived right next door to the local doctor, he was in the house next door so they took me there and ah got a couple o stitches and he told me, he told ma mother to keep me off the school the next day. I would have cut ma head every day if ah though ah could get of the school because I absolutely hated it and yet ah’ve still got report cards from Dunscore school and they’re very good. MS: So, what was it that you didn’t like? RW: Ah don’t know, ah think it was, ah was a child, I was a Huckleberry Finn, if ye like. I just wanted…that was the sort of attitude ah had, ah just hated the confines o a classroom [ ? ] ah just wanted out bit ah actually was, had a couple of firsts and seconds in ma class. Ah was, apart from ma arithmetic, ah don’t think there was ever a teacher born that could have taught me and, sadly, it’s still much the same to this day. But every other was good: spelling, English, history. Ah actually saw on an old report card ah got a hundred per cent for geography because ah loved geography, I used to look at maps and read and stuff. But I absolutely hated school and it was a nice wee school, the primary class was built on steps, it went up in tiers, and the youngest ones were at the front and as ye went through ye moved up. And we had a teacher there, ah think it was a Miss Collins or a Miss Kirk but she had the awful habit which, when she went to punish you, she would make ye put yer hand flat on the desk and she would hit yer fingers wi the edge of the ruler, not the flat. Teachers would never get away with that nowadays but we just thought nothing about it, we just toed the line. But we did get the belt and ah was on the receiving end o that thing frequently during ma schooldays mostly jist for mischief, or talking was a crime. 29m 44s. MS: Was it? RW: Or if you were caught chewing a sweet, and ah remember ah had a jube-jube, as we called them, it was during the war, getting on towards the end of the war and ah had been chewing this in class, the teacher saw me and he made me go out and put in into the waste paper bucket, and ah had hardy started this thing so he left the room for a wee while and the minute he was out ah went and ah got the jube-jube back out o the, and put it in ma pocket and when play time came ah got it out and ah put it in ma mouth and there used to be a saying back then ‘A good sook and a spit, and it’s as good as new.’ There’s actually a wee book called A Sook and a Spit that was written by somebody locally, ah believe, and so that’s just how valuable ah sweet was back in the wartime. Ah never like the school, but ah mean a didn’t, ah did, ah hated it but ah had some good times, but mostly when it was sport, if ah was getting out tae play football or going on nature walks was a favourite wi me, ah loved nature, and ah loved the countryside. Ma mother taught me so much, she would tell me aw the different flowers, even to this day ah can go out tae the country and name lots o the wild flowers and she just installed intae me what became ma own love, the countryside. I like lonely places, when ah got older ah used tae disappear into the Galloway hills for days at a time with a friend and the village itself, I mean it was a, it’s so different now, back on a summer’s night the village was absolutely alive, wi the women would be out having a blether, the men would be out, the kids were playing and back then we had all these childhood games, the usual hide and seek, kick the can was the favourite, all these different, an the girls and the boys used to play what we called ‘Beds’, hopscotch was the proper name, but was just called it, and ah was recently talking to a girl that lives nearby that grew up wi me at Throughgate and she said ‘Yes, you used to annoy us because you were far better at it than us.’ And then, of course, a favourite thing wi the boys of course was ‘cairts’ or barrows which was made with a couple of bits of wood and pram wheels. Well, back then, a set of pram wheels were pure gold tae a wee boy and they were difficult to get but was always manged and we made these barrows and we had endless fun wi these things, you know.

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32m 16s. MS: And did the boys make the carts? RW: We made them ourselves, mostly. I mean ye would get help but mostly, they were easy to make but the wheels were the thing, ye could get bits o wood here and there, although that could be difficult as well but the barrows…we would go right away up the hill, where ah lived we were right up the hill to the top before ye dropped down to come in towards Dumfries and we would haul them right up there and we’d come flying down. How we never got seriously hurt, I’ll never know, but we had marvellous…and of course, there was the boyhood mischief, you know, ah mean, the 1940s was…we were all, not always but quite often we would be up to all sorts of things that we used to get up to, ye know, the usual, there was the usual. At night time we’d be knocking on somebody’s door and runnin away or if there was two houses and the doors were adjacent, might just be a pillar, we would tie both the handles and knock on them both and then ye would see one trying tae open and then eventually, if they had enough room, a big knife would come through and cut the string. And we would play a prank called, ah think it was ‘Chicky’ or ‘Chicky Melly’ it was called and what it was, ye would get a thread, ah just don’t remember exactly how we did it, but ye would fix it above somebody’s window, then ye would take the thread right over the road, hide behind the wall or the dyke and when ye pulled the thread ye’d maybe have a stone, or an auld washer or something and it would tinkle. And we had done this one night to an elderly woman who lived up at the top o the village and she come flying out and she’d come back and then she saw where were hiding, and the best of it was we were hiding in the cemetery, which was immediately, well the wall up in the corner, wasn’t very high and she saw us, well she came after, she run down to the gate and of course we panicked and ah run right through the cemetery, which is something ah would never have dreamt o doing at night, black dark, but what happened was ah jumped, in ma panic, ah jumped over the wall at the back which, again, wasn’t very high, forgetting, of course, it was about six feet straight down the other side. But ah didn’t just land there, the frightening thing was ah landed right in the local policeman’s hen run, he kept hens there and he had a big wire fence and then the wall, ah couldnae get out and ah don’t know whether ah was more frightened o him coming out or this woman that was chasing me but, anyway, ah managed to get up between a post and the wall and got away [Luaghter]. 34m 50s. There was the village hall there where all the parties, kids’ parties, Band of Hope, as we used to talk about, concerts. Band of Hope was just a sort of concert, you know, done by local kids and people, the Women’s Rural used to have their meetings there, maybe on a Tuesday night or whatever night it was, but a pal and I, one night we decided that we would investigate and out in the field there was a window which we slid up and it looked right into the ante-room of the hall and the women used to have lovely spreads there, with their cakes and sandwiches and all sorts of goodies for their tea after the meeting. Well, they were all in the hall and the ante-room was bare apart from aw this stuff so what we did was we managed to get a long bit o stick and an old bit rusty nail and we put the nail through the [?] and ma pal got up on my shoulders and he reached in and he hooked all the sandwiches and the cakes on the end of this nail and passed them back out and, when we had enough, we disappeared round behind what was the old bowling hut, where the men used to go and bowl, and we gorged ourselves and to this day ah’ve often wondered if these women ever knew what had happened to their sandwiches and cakes and stuff. But that was just typical 1940s boyhood and of course one of the favourites was stealing apples or ‘scrumping apples’ we called it, that was tremendous. There was two things about stealing apples, it was because you wouldn’t have got apples or plums or pears or anything, if ye didn’t go and steal them and it was also the excitement, there was an excitement in doing this, ye know, and we would, down at the bottom o the village, in Dunscore, called Green Well, it’s still there, it attaches the oldest resident in the village now, she’s well into her nineties, she’s the only one of the old generation, but her dad, the apple trees are still there, they were the most beautiful apples and ye could go into the field and they used to overhang the dyke and

8 ye could creep up the back o the dyke and reach up and steal these apples but for some reason, ah think the man that owned them, he seemed to have a sort of idea that ye would be there or thereabouts because as sure as [?] your hand would just…and he would be there. And if ye’d went and asked him nicely he would have gave ye a couple but there was no excitement in doing that, the excitement was in stealing them, ye know, and now there’s apple tress all over the place and kids just don’t give them a second glance. We never got apples, ye would get the odd apple, but ah wasnae gonna go and spend money in the grocer’s buying an apple when ah could walk down the village and steal one from the local orchard. And we were all the same. MS: What about lawlessness in the village? Was there a…? 37m 45s. RW: Lawlessness? MS: Uhuh. RW: Apart from us boys there was very little lawlessness, no, there was the pub and it was a really busy pub, sadly it’s gone now. It was a marvellous, it was a place ah went, obviously when ah got older. But there was, ah don’t ever remember, you had your usual one or two men that might overindulge and be a bit iffy but normally the village policeman would be there and he would [?] and anything but ah don’t ever, ah can’t ever remember anybody being arrested. There was very little lawlessness, you know. MS: So there was even a resident policeman? RW: Oh there was a resident, well, as ah told ye, just a wee while ago, ah jumped over and landed in his hen run but his name was Bob Johnston, that was it, he was a big tall man and if he managed tae catch ye if ye had been up tae some mischief and he caught ye, he had a habit, he used to get the top o yer ear an he twisted it until ye were right upon yer tiptoes and booted ye on the backside wi the instep o his boot and he would tell ye tae, but we never told oor parents cause we got another boot on the backside. But no, there was always a local, back then all the villages, or most of them had their local, and there was the police station, that’s still there, it’s a private house now, the village Bobbies are a thing of the past. But they cycled for miles and miles, cycled everywhere, ye know, unless they were just in the village, but they spent a lot of time out of the village going and checking up in different places to see if everything was ok or if there was any complaints about anything. But they were generally nice guys, only doing their job but they were part of the community and they would get involved in things. The same as the school teachers, my first male schoolteacher was a man called McFadzean and he had been a soldier during the war and you got a very good education from this man but he could deviate a bit from the norm and he would tell ye things about his days in the army and things like that and he always kept ye interested and ah think he knew what, when ah was really unsettled at the school ma mother was worrying a lot because there was always a confrontation, every morning, when ah had tae go tae school and she decided to go and see the teacher and ah think she was relieved from the point of view that ma schoolwork was generally good but they couldn’t understand why I was so anti this establishment. But ah was always, ah started when ah, ah’ve always been an avid reader and ah used to, one thing ah was good at, at the school, was writing essays and ah think this teacher saw this thing in me and we entered for a competition run by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, we had to write three separate essays on different subjects, all to do with animals and such and ah got the Scottish first prize … 40m 55s. MS: Did you? RW: …and ah’ve still got that book and ah’ve still got the wee certificate inside and ah’ve always been proud of that, you know. Ah did get other prize books at the school because they did have first and 9 seconds but to this day it’s a mystery how, because I absolutely loathed the school, and the only thing ah was really happy was when the bell rang at night and, of course, the long summer holidays. MS: So, was that all during your primary school education and even into secondary school, as well? RW: This hatred? MS: Mm. RW: Oh, it became worse. MS: Oh dear [laughs]. RW: When ah came into town ah spent most of the time in the library. MS: Did you? RW: Ah [?] the school, oh it became quite a thing and yet ah wasn’t, ah just, ma mother, ah told ma mother aboot that years later and ah says ‘Always went to the Ewart Library and she said ‘Oh well, ah suppose ye were educating yourself’ and ah was, ah used tae sit there for hours, not every day, ah’m exaggerating tae ye but, at one point, every Tuesday, the whole afternoon was taken up with mathematics and ah’m absolutely hopeless and that was one of the days when ah would skip the school and ah would go down to the library because ah just couldn’t, there’s nobody could have taught me decimals and fractions, I hadn’t a clue and yet if ye had asked me the capital of Outer Mongolia ah could hae told ye but anything to do with mathematics and problems, we used to call them problems, and ah just, I hadn’t a clue. But no, ah hated the school. MS: So, going back to Dunscore then, Ronnie, was there any old worthies? 42m 38s. RW: Oh, there was loads o them, loads o them, like the old guy I told ye about the penknife and the bit o string. There was an old man that used tae tell us these tall tales, and we would sit in awe listening to them. Ah remember one that he told us, he used to tell us he had been a sailor in the days of sail and he’d been coming round Cape Horn one time and they were in real trouble and the Captain had asked for a volunteer to go and saw the mast down, he wanted somebody to go out and saw the mast down. So he says ‘Ah volunteered. But’ he says ‘the wind was [ ? ] and a couldnae do it’ he says ‘because the wind was strong it blew aw the teeth oot o the saw’ [laughter]. This was the sort of thing that he used to feed us and about the…in the winter time the pigs would eat thereself inside the big turnips and they would stay there for the winter and aw this sort of, jist absolute nonsense but as young boys and girls we jist used to listen to this stuff. But there were lots o worthies, the butcher at that time was a worthy, he was, at one time he had a travelling cart, it was, he had the horse and he had like a sort of waggon, where ye sat up into the horse but it had like, ye could open it up at the back and he would go round wi some o his stuff, round the county but he was partial to the old native wine, i.e. the John Barleycorn, or the whisky, and he would stop off here and there and he would get a tot and some nights he’d come back and he was sound asleep, sitting up, and the horse knew exactly where it was, it would come up through the village and when it got to his shop it would stop dead and there he would be until somebody went and gave him a shake or he woke up. But he was a character and we had a, we actually had a cobbler’s shop there as well, it was a big hut and the cobbler was, he was a cobbler but he was also the local postman. The mail would be delivered to the local Post Office and he would walk for miles all around the country delivering the letters and there were very, very few times he never, the weather had to be really, really bad before, but he was quite a character and we had a, the old man that owned the garage cum shop there, there was a garage and there was the shop where, you know, you could buy all sorts of stuff. You could buy bicycles there, just all sorts of stuff that ye could get and he was a very well-known man, he was a real worthy, but he had a fascinating knowledge about Dunscore in the past, he used to write a lot of poetry. Ah’ve got one o

10 his wee books o poetry, he used to write poetry, and that was a place that we used to go and sort of hang around and, during the War, the old radios that they had, they were battery operated, and accumulators and stuff, and ye used to have to take them tae the garage to get them filled up wi this stuff and charged up. And then ye would take it back and put it, fix it back inside yer old radio and of course, back then, ye’d see all the houses, they used to have these wire aerials on the roof and they ye used to have these, what they called, egg insulators, you know, the glass insulators, you would see. 45m 57s. And even to this day ah still can, now and again, ye’ll see one hanging fae an old house somewhere. But no, there was a lot of characters in the village, not just the men, there was one or two o the women, we had an old lady that lived on her own, they called the ‘Woodbine Annie’, the Woodbines were never out her mouth yet she never, she just let it dangle there. MS: Did she? RW: … and she had a terrible cough and she had a husky voice probably wi the cigarettes but she was a well-known character, she used to work up at Crawfordton, at the boys’ school near Moniave, she was a sort of cleaner there, she would get the bus up and the bus back. But the village itself was, it was a lovely place to grow up and it’s a place, although ah left it to join up when ah was about seventeen and a half, but it’s still there in ma heart, you know, Dunscore. If it had been practical ah would have moved back there years ago but wi ma work at the hospital and ma young kids an such it just wasn’t practical but ah still go out there but ah’ve no relatives there now, but one or two people ah grew up wi I’ll go and visit. And always go to their gala day and they really do, ah must admit their gala day, they work hard at it but there was a letter in the paper once, a few years ago, someone from the Dunscore area saying they would work at getting the community back like it used to be but they’ll never, ever achieve that because it’ll never be the same again because it’s a totally different world now. Ah’ve went up to ma mother’s grave on occasions, wi ma brother, on a summer’s night and ah’d go out there and ah would tidy it up and have a wee wander around and never saw a living soul out in that village, it was dead. So different from my day when it was alive on a summer’s night wi people but now it’s just, the people that do the gala, they do a good job but there’s a lot o newcomers, ah hardly know anybody there, well, ah know a few but a lot of them don’t get involved in community but a lot o them do, it’s not fair to say that they don’t, a lot of them do do quite a lot. An ah think the church is still probably fairly well attended but nothing like what it…to what it is now. An then ah think when got tae about, ah used to be a member, originally ah was a member of the Boys Brigade when ah was very young and then we went, they formed a Scout troop in the village and it was…ah’ve still got ma shirt and all ma badges that ah got while ah was in the Scouts and it was called the 44th Dumfriesshire troop and we done all sorts of great things, ye know, the Scouts. We got an outbuilding at a farm and we done it up, whitewashed it, and that was our Scout Hut. 48m 50s. And of course, ye learned all, that ye could do all different things to get certain badges and we were, we had one member who became a Queen’s Scout, he was the top and he actually went away to a big jamboree in Canada. I’ve just recently got in touch wi him, he emigrated eventually to Canada. But we had a good Scout troop there, there was, we were probably at one point we must have been about twenty-five or twenty-eight of the boys, local boys, in that troop and we went to Windermere once to a World Jamboree. And we had, there was also lots of concerts, the kids always had their Christmas parties, Halloween parties, and there was the concerts, ye used to get these travelling troupes that used to come tae the villages, ye know, and put on plays and concerts and singing and dancing. MS: Oh right. RW: And we used to get these Evangelists used to come as well and they used to pitch a great big tent in a field and people could go to that, if they were so inclined. And there was all sorts o activities, lots

11 of activities and then there was the bowling hut for the men, that’s where ah learnt to play carpet bowls and it was, we were always occupied, never really bored and as ah said the country was oor main playground. The facilities were poor, no water, no running water, no indoor toilets, no showers, no baths, no proper heating and the outside toilets, the ones that we had were actually brick built and there was a row o about five, a lot of the other houses jist had the wee wooden shack in the garden but it was a pretty precarious, but that’s where we went and it used to be a great place to go and hide if yer Mum was coming after ye wi the belt or ye could get peace to read your comic, you know, but it could be, and the thing was these buckets were emptied in the burn that ran around the back o the houses and when it came time to empty these buckets, ma mother normally done that when a was a wee boy, but it was always done at night and there was probably two reasons for that a) so that you wouldn’t be seen and 2) so as nobody would see ye if ye met wi a disaster between points A and point B, which did happen. If ye went tae throw the bucket intae the burn and the wind happened tae be coming in the wrong direction then you were in serious trouble so that did happen on occasions. MS: What about baths? Did ye have a tin bath? 51m 36s. RW: When we were little boys, little kids, we got bathed in the old famous zinc baths. Now that was another traumatic thing, as far as I was concerned, because ye would get, they would put the bath, if ye were lucky, near the fire but ye had to boil the kettle up and gradually and it took ages and then ye would go into this and ye would be actually literally scrubbed wi like a nail brush thing and a bit o carbolic soap and ye would come out of that looking like a boiled lobster, ye know, red, and that normally just happened about once a week, twice if ye were unlucky. But it wouldn’t mean ye were dirty people, just the hygiene, the facilities just weren’t there. Ye would wash yer face and hands and have a wee rub down in between times but there was usually one night set aside for your, the ordeal of having this bath and ye couldnae stretch out in it ye were hunched up in the thing. But that’s the only way and if ye wanted a wash then ye just had tae boil up the kettle and carry it through to yer wee kitchen place and put it in the basin and have a wash. And ah remember where these toilets were, there was a wee wall round a sort of [?] and that was the local midden, oh, a lot of slops and tattie peelings and aw that rubbish and it stank. But being boys and girls, the girls used to hunt around to get wee bits of broken plates and they would get them aw and they used to play what they called ‘wee hooses’, they would make like a living out of stones and one would be the…and I remember one day ah fell head first intae this thing and ah went and appeared at the door and ma mother jist wouldnae let me in so ah had to go across to the burn and get a wash, it was a nice day or she wouldnae hae done it, but she wouldnae let me intae the house. But there was an lady lived in the end house, it was like the one ah lived in, it had a round front, it was actually called The Toll House and an old lady and when ye saw this old woman it was like taking a walk back in time she had never changed from the Edwardian times, she still wore the long dresses and wi the granny boots peeking out at the bottom and she had, she used to have the shawl round her and a lot o these old women, they had the shawl and they used to have one of these cameo brooches pinned in the front and her hair would be in the bun with a bit of lace in the back and she was quite solitary. She was nice but she was quite a solitary, and she must have lived on her own for years and years, she used to get visitors, she got one, there used to be an RAF pilot, a bomber pilot, used to come, he was some relative, he used to come and visit her during the war but they were all nice people. The only time that ma mother ever fell out was wi the blacksmith’s wife, she kept hens over in a field, she had two or three hen huts and they used to have, the door would be locked but there used to be the wee bit at the bottom where the hens could come in and out, well one o the boys that I was [?] he could get in there and we went in one day and stole the eggs but we didn’t, we couldn’t, we daren’t take them to oor parents, what we did was we took them up to the wood and we made a target o a bit of old…and we threw the eggs, what’s was absolutely sacrilege, you know. The next day she would have[?] but oh the most awful row, the police was down at me, oh I was a little…

12

55m 20s. MS: You were a tearaway. RW: …mischievous imp, aye. I mean ah never done anything, well that was quite a serious thing, ah never, ever, ah don’t think ah ever done anything like that again, well, because the threat of the policeman was enough. But ah just got a row, that was it. MS: I think, Ronnie that has been fascinating. RW: Is that enough? MS: I think we’ve done about an hour. RW: Have we? MS: We have indeed. But thank you ever so much for sharing your memories of growing up in Dunscore. RW: You’re welcome.

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