Memorials of John Geddes

early Days— ClK Environment.
cultivation, so that, with winter lingering long and frosts
coming early, life was a serious struggle, and a certainty of
oat crops yielding, as the phrase ran, "seed and bread,"
could not be reckoned on. It was at the second of these
farms, or East Bodylair, that the subject of this memoir,
John Geddes, saw the light, and spent the first part of his
life, even all his early days. Of the two holdings, East
Bodylair was far the most exposed and shelterless, and at
the period of our story could not boast of a single tree
except one stunted ash which had managed to maintain a
ragged existence,— a stricken shrub rather than a tree.*
The farm was probably an ancient holding, and we find
a James Geddes in "Bodilair" in 17 16 (Misc. Sp. CI., IV.,
p. 168), about the Sheriffmuir time. The houses, such as
my earliest recollection figures them, were fairly substan-
tial, round a courtyard flanked by the long rambling house,
with its windows looking out to the enclosure called the
"gairden." These buildings had been gradually erected
and " heathered " by my father, who was always great in
masonry, and the whole style of them was conceived in a
* At the foot of this poor tree was found about the beginning of this
century, by some strange chance, an Austrian Dollar of Leopold I., a large
and handsome silver piece still in the family. My father used to think of it as
possibly dropt by some Dugald Dalgetty returning from foreign wars and
halting to rest on the spot. The finder of it was my father's only brother
James, who was thought therefore a favourite of fortune, but he died young.