This posting is directed to GUEST, JimI RE: Farewell to Tarwathie

JimI, if you read this please feel free to contact me at: rmcmaster@knockgrafton.com
to further discuss our family connection.

Who wrote:
Subject: RE: Farewell to Tarwathie-----in public domain??
From: GUEST,JimI
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:14 PM

By a strange coincidence I have been looking at my father's ancestors recently. My great, great, great, grandmother was the aunt of George Scroggie, miller and lay preacher, who was born in Old Deer, Aberdeenshire in 1827.

Well, by another strange coincidence my great, great grandmother on my mother's side was Bridget Scroggie(Nylon) who married George's brother Robert Alexander, and immigrated to Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

I have a photographic portrait of my mother Gladys Lois Hamilton (age aprox. 6 months)surrounded by her mother Cicil Hamilton, her grandmother Mary McLoad, and her Great Grandmother Bridget Scroggie(Nylon), my great-great Grandmother.
The photo was take in a studio in Sarnia, Ontario in the later part of 1911. The face of Bridget Scroggie is the perfect storybook face of an elder Scots/Irish women... Oh, the stories in just that face.

My mother and my grandmother moved from the Sarnia area with my father, Walter McMaster in the early 1940's and re-located in St. Catharines, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, where I was born (1947) and raised. I now live in London, Ontario, about an hour's drive from Sarnia. I remember visiting some of my mother's relatives in the Sarnia and Detroit in the early 1950s.

I found it very interesting that George Scroggie was the author "Farwell to Tarwathie", and an ancestor of mine. "Farewell to Tarwathie" was one of my favorite folk songs from the 1960/70s when I first heard it sung by Judy Collins. It is a song that has stuck with me all my life, almost haunted by it. And to find it was written by a long past family member... could there be some kind of genetic remembrance at work? Hummmm???

My research on George Scroggie shows he was a farmer, but also a poet, who wrote about those who toiled on the lands and in the sea. He may never had gone to sea himself, but he must have had many friends who did. As for Tarwathie, it was/is a farm near Strichen, Aberdeenshire and,up to 1986,the long time family home of the Cardno family, who were related by marrage to the Scroggie family. Over the years many of the Cardno's took to the sea as "Artic Whalermen", the last being Davie Cardno, who passed away, March 15, 1938.

The obituary from the Buchan Observer : 15th March 1938 read:

Davie Cardno sails home :

Mr David Cardno, Peterhead, one of the last and best known of our whalermen, died at the home of a relative in Aberdeen last week at the age of eighty-four.
He made his first voyage to the Arctic as a boy seventy-three years ago by stowing away aboard one of the local fleet of whalers, and for over forty years engaged in the whaling and sealing expeditions to Baffin Land and other parts of the frozen north.


In the Aberdeenshire area fifteen whaling vessels were on the 1851 crew list showed Peterhead as their hail port; 2 whaling vessels (including the ENTERPRISE) showed Aberdeen. The men ranged in age from 19 to 50. All of the whaling vessels were under sail.
In 1851, just six years before George Scroggie published his little book of poetry, there were perhaps close to a dozen whalermen from Aberdeenshire, any one of whom might have been the person in "Farewell to Tarwathie," intending "To follow the whale."


Even though George Scroggie 'was just a farmer' he knew the men of the sea, and he wrote with love and loyolity of his friends, farmer and whalerman, alike... and I'm proud to be desended from such stock.

My finding came from many sources including researh done by the Cardno-Rettie family.

A bit about my background:
I am a full-time musician, percussionist who works in the almost traditional field, performing original music, much of which is based on old Celtic (Scots/Irish) tales and legends composed by my partner Celtic harpist, vocalist & storyteller Jennifer White. I'm also a sometimes writer editorials, poetry and story-songs (a three chords and a capo type folkie guitar player)

Our music website isat: www.knockgrafton.com

Any way... this has been a thrill to find there is still so much interest in "Farewell to Tarwathie", thank you for reading this far and letting me be part of it all.

JimI, if you read this, please contact.

Robert McMaster (SoundScape Percussionist)
Knockgrafton Productions
London, Ontario, Canada
www.knockgrafton.com