Memorials of John Geddes

uncle of my father, continued to reside at this quiet home-
stead of the Braeton, which lies in the throat of the side-
glen formed by the Marky Burn as it issues from the wide
basin known as Glenmarkie. It was within easy walking
distance of Bodylair, where the younger son John had
settled himself, and being more sunny and sheltered, was
reckoned, though a smaller holding, a more genial place
than Bodylair.* Here at all events dwelt in the old
" stamm-haus," Uncle William, along with his sister, Aunt
Helen, both being unmarried, and these, from the traditions
regarding them, seem to have been somewhat of " charac-
ters " in their frugal, primitive ways.-f- In the frequent
* The Saxon name of Braeton shows, however, that it was not so ancient
a place as Rodylair, whose Gaelic origin, whatever be its interpretation, seems
unmistakable. Many were the jokes my father had to bear, and also my
mother from her Mortlach friends, because of the supposed Saxon interpretation
of Bodylair.
t Frugality was in those days to the occupants of such homesteads
a virtue ingrained into their mind, anil burned, as it were, into their being.
One of the characteristics of my father was a respect, approaching to venera-
tion, for the cereals as forming human food: he had seen hardships, " nae
mows," in such bad years as 1817, when he had to gather with "dirlin'
fingers " the half-ripened corn out of early fallen wreaths of snow. He could
tell sad tales of hardship through poor food, and tradition had carried down
to him fearful tales of the "seaven ill years " in the time of Queen Anne, when
the poor people "bled the cattle " at intervals to keep in their own life, and
gathered sea-ware as food and fodder — so ran the harrowing tales. More
reliable and authentic were the stories of the " Peasemeal time "—otherwise
the famine of 1783 — when the Government had to open the stores of pease meal
provided for the American War, in order to feed the starving people of the