Barrow-Beggars in Scotland c1800.

[Currie]

Here’s a short article from Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal – 1847. This particular beggar was not quite as she seemed but the story gives some insight into the difficulties faced in the olden days by disabled persons who did not have support of family and who had to rely on the generosity of others.

BARROW-BEGGARS.

Many of our readers may not be aware that, some forty years ago, it was common, and still may be in some districts of Scotland, for mendicant cripples to be carried about the country in a handbarrow. It was incumbent on the individual at whose door the cripple was set down, to bestow the customary alms of a handful of oatmeal, or whatever largesse their bounty might prompt, and forward him or her, as the case might be, on to the next farmhouse—sometimes a few yards' distance, sometimes a mile—or, if not so forwarded, the beggar behoved to be lodged and fed by the person at whose door he was placed. In villages or small towns such conveyance was easily accomplished; but in thinly-populated country districts it was not unfrequently a matter of much trouble and inconvenience, where the great distance between the dwellings rendered it a positive burden.

Occasionally, the house at whose door such lamiter was laid was tenanted only by females, sometimes by a solitary aged woman, or by an aged and decrepit woman and her equally aged and decrepit husband. In such cases the only alternative was to hire assistance, if it could be found; or if the party was too poor to pay, the individuals who brought them would resume their burden, and tramp on to the next dwelling; and as these barrow-beggars were generally peremptory and irascible in their manners, to get rid of them was usually accounted a boon. Thus these lordly sorners performed a sort of alms-gathering ovation through the length and breadth of the land. When I was a boy of ten years of age or thereabout, one of these pests was set down at the farmhouse where I was the herd. She—for it was one of the tender sex—was a large, sallow, broad-shouldered Amazon, with a world of well-filled meal-pokes hanging round her burly person, over which depended a piece of greasy blanket, by way of mantle, and which was secured at the throat by a large brass bodle-pin. She was dignified too, and evinced the bearing of a Serniramis—surly, imperious, and commanding as any beggar on horseback could be; and as the master and all the men and womenfolk were half a mile off, busy on the hairst rig, the goodwife—who, with myself and a halfwitted son of the farmer, a lad of sixteen years of age, were the only inmates of the town—was sadly perplexed as to the disposal of the vagrant.

She had received a liberal aumus of two goupens of meal, bread and cheese, and a drink of milk, for which the evinced not a particle of gratitude, but sat on her well-stuffed cushion (I remember wondering if it could be meal) in sulky and offended dignity, till she should be conveyed to the next farm-steading, nearly a mile distant. After waiting nearly an hour, during which period this locomotive volcano manifested various symptoms of an eruption, by breaking out at frequent intervals in wrathful mutterings, at length a welcome relief appeared in the person of Randy Rob, a weaver lad from a neighbouring village, who at this juncture came up the croft whistling 'Maggie Lauder.' Rob had been fishing in the Earn, which ran immediately in front of the house; and to him the goodwife applied, with the promise of a liberal hire, to carry the lame woman to Cauldside, the next farm town. Rob readily undertook the job, provided Tam (the daft son) would carry one end of the barrow. Tam was delighted at the proposition; and after the two had whispered together for a moment, they were to be seen, with their portly burden, moving solemnly down the path that led by the side of the river, Rob in front, Tam behind. At first their pace was grave, then lively, then brisk, then zig-zag; anon, as if a new fancy inspired them, they danced and sung as they went, making the mendicant perform the most wonderful feats with her body and arms to preserve her equilibrium. At last, as if impelled by a new whim, they took to running; and as their path was close on the margin of the stream, and the jolting immense, the beggar woman was sadly put to her trumps to keep herself steady. The race was a short one; for as soon as Rob perceived that the footpath led them close to the river, where it was free of brushwood, he shouted, 'Noo, Tam!' and in an instant the beggar, bags, barrow, and all, were soused in the Earn.

In another instant she stood up to her middle in the stream, from which she was not long in extricating herself. To disencumber herself from the saturated meal-pokes, and rush after her now affrighted tormentors, was but the work of a moment; and the speed with which she gained on them was astonishing. The goodwife and myself had at the outset mounted the loupin'-on-stane to see the fun; and the worthy woman, with uplifted hands, uttered an ejaculatory 'Losh guide us!' as she beheld the beggar woman—she that had been born a cripple—overtake Randy Rob, and lend him a 'lunt i' the lug,' as she phrased it, 'that laid him on the craft as dead's a herring.' With Tam she was less successful, for Tam was lathy and light of foot, and mortal terror had lent wings to his heels. But the lame woman, after swearing like a trooper, and threatening 'to gi'e the hale toun a het waukening for't some misty morning,' took herself off, and was never again seen in that part of the country.

As for Randy Rob, he always maintained that 'he kent she could gang, but never jaloused the jaud was nae souple o' fit, or he wad ha’ ta'en sooner to his heels.' As it was, he said 'his lugs rang wi' that uncanny thud for sax weeks after.'

http://www.google.com.au/books?id=lkgFA ... =RA1-PA110

Alan

[Liz Turner]

Alan

... and some people complain about our welfare state - hey I'd rather be around now than back then ... although if I could time travel for short periods, just to find the ancestors who seem to be "missing" that would help!

It's always really intersting to read things from back in time - gives you a bit of perspective on the problems that we face today. Thanks for posting this.

Liz

[littlealison]

I just found this, quite a laugh, but what a fraud.
.....is the past another country? - Alison