been gathering my tales from all over the place this one would have once been common, at least here in Scotland in all rural areas.

The girnal

The memories of another Davidina Sinclair some one hundred years ago.

I was born in a small village about twenty miles from Glasgow although it may as well have been one hundred and twenty for all the chance I would have had of seeing it. The cottage had drystone walls near three feet thick with small windows.

The area was full of farms and mines both coal and ironstone. It was a hard life I dinny mind oan my father he got killed in the war but his painting aye hung at the bottom of mither bed, sometimes when there were bills to pay I would hear her talking to him asking what she was to do wie six bairns to clothe and feed.

There was a big kist at the fit of the girls bed wie the clean linen and some spare blankets. My mum had lost her dad in the mine fire damp they called it.

There wasn't a doctor in the village the nearest would have been close to an hours walk away so it wasn't uncommon for us to be in bed and mither to order us up and strip the bed. We would get new cold sheets from the kist while our warm ones were wrapped up to keep them warm and run to another house where someone had been injured or a wife was having a bairn.

We didn't have the NHS and a doctor was something most of the folk in the village couldn't afford . It therefore fell to women like mither to bring bairns into the world aye and sometimes see the mothers out of it.

Mither was tea total and kent herbs and things to give folk a fighting chance of making it without having to send to the town for a doctors so she was often the first to be called.

When it was hairst time the last o the oats would beaten oot o the girnal(a ither word for a big kist) and pit in a bucket or barrel till needed.

The girnal would be scrubbed wie boiling water and salt and left to dry. The day the new oats came from the mill us bairns would have our feet scrubbed then some of the oats wid be pit in the girnal and us lifted in on top of it to stamp up and down packing it hard before more oats were added.

This wasn't just to get as much in as possible but the tighter it was packed in the less air and that meant less things could get in yer oats.

Dinner on girnal day was always a bit special, mither always got a hen the day before it was boiled for a while then roasted on the range. Before she went to bed the meat would be sliced of the bird, placed on a plate, covered with another plate and put it on the stone shelf in the press to keep fresh.

The carcass was picked over and the scraps added to the plate to be put back into the soup. The bones were put back in the pot that it had been boiled in, topped up with water and vegetable peelings added to swee awa overnight to make a good stock.

The next day while water was boiled for the foot washing the stock was run through a muslin and left to cool a while to let the fat settle on top she would use it later to roast some potatoes and the old oats would be fried up with suet and onion from the yard to provide plenty of skirlie.

My big brother and one of the big sisters were sent of to hunt for berries, blaeberries and brambles gathered in a basket and some pennies in their pocket to call past Jock Cowsells farm for a chappin can o cream.

We thought oursels rich on that day for surely neither the Laird or the new king could have dined as well as we did on girnal day.