September/An t-Sultain

Mar chlach a ruith le gleann, tha feasgar fann foghair.

Like a stone rolling down the hillside is a weak and fast fading evening in autumn - a reference to the passing of our lives, and literally the autumn days with diminishing twilight.

For children, September signalled the return to school, complete with a new pair of tackety boots, and maybe a new jumper, jacket and trousers if you were lucky. Cast offs were all the rage in those days: you were delighted to get them.

If there were rushes on your croft, you cut them for thatching at this time. If not, you went to a convenient place on the common grazing to get them. You bundled them like the corn - making sheafs and stooks of them. The rushes were used for thatching the hay and corn stacks. Some people also thatched their peat stacks to protect them from frost. The leftover rushes - perhaps 20 or 30 - were handy and even for livestock bedding. The crofts were used to their utmost. Glas pheighinn soil is more of a sandy soil and there are less rushes. Glas pheighinn and Dìg people might frequently go to Stenscholl with a cart and collect rushes. The rushes were cut and sheafed like corn. Two kinds were used for thatching - rushes and go luachair. The first was used mostly for houses and byres, and the second for the stacks (corn and hay). It was always an aim to get the thatching done before the onset of the gales. The stacks were done first, and then the thatching - barns of stables and repairs. This was distinct from the overall thatching which was done in March.

Hay was of course made into hay stacks and stored in the stackyard. There was another method though. This was the making of a dais which was much bigger than a stack. It was a creation something like a huge pan loaf to look at, and it was 25 or 30 feet long and 10 feet high. It accommodated the same amount as three or four stacks of hay. Some people made a golag (about 2 or 3 feet high) to preserve the dais. The wind could get in about the golag. The next stage was a coc (needed 2 or 3 days of weather - if not they resorted to golaig) and the next stage was a cruach and then a dais. Two people frequently worked within the dais. There would be probably another two people forking, and another person trimming the dais. Maybe there were two carts hauling the hay. Carts would be working at different ends of the croft. Then loading the cart, one would fork to the man inside. Then the ropes were tied down to secure the cart. When putting the hay into the barn for cattle feeding, the hay knife was used for cutting a slice off it from the end of the dais on the sheltered side, usually about two to three feet thick right down to ground level. One had to make sure that the end you would open was away from the prevailing wind (the south west). The dais was quite convenient, and all your hay was secure. The work was over in one day. The sides of the dais were raked and therefore the rain would never penetrate.

Sometimes the finishing off with the harvest would be held back due to bad weather, and sometimes people would despair of the weather. There was an optimistic saying - Foghar beag an Lon fheàrna (the little autumn of Lonfern) signifying that the weather would surely improve since the harvest weather of Lonfern had not yet arrived. The Lonfern farm was traditionally late with its harvest (the farm had been broken up for the crofters following the 1886 Crofters Act.). The saying referred to a spell of weather yet to come - in October - and some crofters pinned their hopes upon that.

Tròndairnis - dùthaich bruthaiste, brochan is bros

Trotternish was the land of brose and potash and porridge - rich in corn growing quality