Of Crofters, Kelp and Iodine by Susan Price

A Highland croft - wikimedia

Crofters in the Highlands and islands of Scotland have always had a hard life. Even now, although crofting may be a more rewarding way of life, in many ways, than banking or sales, it’s by no means easy.

In a past stretching back into pre-history, crofters supplied almost all their own needs by their own labour: building and maintaining their steading, raising animals to provide meat, milk and wool, making their own clothes and making or repairing their own tools. They grew oats and vegetables but also fished and gathered wild food.

Almost always, a crofter had to pay rent to the owner of the land they farmed, and that rent had to be paid in hard money. Cash was often needed to supply a few needs they could not make, catch or grow for themselves: a little tobacco, perhaps or raisins and spices for Christmas.

One way to earn money was to drive their cattle to the markets where the highest prices were paid. Another, which I learned about when I researched my book The Drover’s Dogs, was to burn kelp.

Kelp, wikimedia, By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

Kelp is a large and fast-growing seaweed which forms thick kelp forests around rocky coasts. It had been gathered for centuries. Crofters carried it from the beaches on their backs in tall baskets— a heavy load, often carried up steep, hazardous cliff paths. It was spread on fields as fertiliser.

There was also a tradition of burning the kelp to ash and mixing the ash with fat to make an ointment. Because of kelp's high concentration of iodine, it was a quite effective antiseptic.

With the rise of industry, iodine became a far more valuable commodity. It was used in glass-making and pottery as a colouring agent. The cloth trade needed it for bleaching linen. Soap makers used it to turn soap from messy goo into the hard blocks which customers favoured. Iodine was also used in the production of the cleaning agent, soda.

It was easier to import kelp from Europe than to fetch it from the far more remote Scottish Highlands and islands, but European kelp was heavily taxed. So agents made difficult journeys north, offering to buy all the iodine the crofters could produce. Kelp was harvested in Ireland too.

A crofting family would build a kiln. These varied considerably: some were built above ground, somewhat resembling an oven. Others were simple pits. Some, if the crofters could afford it, had an iron grid laid above the pit, on which the kelp was placed and burned.

Kelp was gathered throughout the year, especially in the winter after storms, which tore it from the rocks and washed it up. The seaweed was spread to dry and then piled into stacks, in kelp-ricks which were thatched with heather to keep it dry.

Burning started in June, while the men of the crofting family might be away on a drove. The dried kelp was piled on the iron grid over the pit and set alight.

Crofters burning kelp in Stronsay - Glens of Antrim Historical Society

As the kelp burned to ash, the oil from it dripped into the pit. The smell of the burning seaweed was, it seems, exceptionally powerful and pungent and carried for miles. If you can recall the rank stink of exposed estuary mud on a hot day, imagine that burning and, it seems, you will have a faint idea of the stench.

The end result was a pit full of thick, stinking oil which cooled to a rock-hard substance of greyish, purplish blue. If allowed to go cold, it had to be chipped and chiselled out of the pit, so the burners tried to dig it out before it was completely cold, while it was still easier to work. The iodine blocks were heavy and it was hard, stinking work.

Agents bought these blocks and paid good money for them— though in some parts of Scotland, all the money from the trade went to the local laird. Who did none of the work.

But for those who did profit from this hard, dirty, stinking labour, it was another source of ready cash and for about fifty years, roughly between 1780 and 1830, business was good.

However, in the 1820s, the tax on European seaweed was reduced, and the tax on salt  abolished. This made it much cheaper to import seaweed from Europe and much cheaper to make soda from salt than from kelp. These decisions, made in a southern parliament on behalf of southern industries, destroyed the kelp industry of the Highlands and islands.

It also contributed to depopulation of the Highlands because, at the same time, the droving trade was being killed by railways and landlords were raising the rents of crofts. Caught between rising rents and falling profits, many Highlanders left for Canada and America – where, in dreams, they beheld the Hebrides.

After 1830, demand for iodine from Scotland rose again as industry began producing aniline dyes and photographic plates. The seaweed from Europe was no longer enough, and agents once more came to the Highlands. But the industry was never again as strong as it had been, since so many of the people who would once have collected and burned the kelp had left the crofting life - either by choice or eviction.

This gave me an ending to my book The Drover’s Dogs, whose narrator is a Scot telling his Canadian children how he was rescued by two herd dogs and 'brought home' to Mull.

The Drover's Dogs by Susan Price

The ending rose partly from my own research and partly from the research my Scots partner did into his own family. He had a special interest in Drover's Dogs, since he helped me follow the old drove road to Mull, told me of the 'bondage,' the young hero escapes and also painted the cover picture! (And he doesn't like what I've done with it.) Since a branch of his own family had gone to Canada and become quite wealthy farmers, he was quite keen that the family in the book did too.

So I gave him the ending he wanted, to make up for what I did to his painting

Find The Drover's Dogs on Amazon.

 

 

We thank Susan Price for this reserve post. From 11th September this slot will be filled by Deborah Burrows.

Door furniture - Michelle Lovric

Some years ago, I wrote, designed and produced an illustrated book called HOW TO SEDUCE, PLEASURE & TITILLATE IN CLASSICAL LATIN, working with classicist Jenny Quickfall. It was a follow-up to a surprise best-seller called HOW TO ABUSE, INSULT AND INSINUATE IN CLASSICAL LATIN, in which my collaborator was Niki Doxiadis Mardas. That book is still in print nearly twenty years later and indeed this week the publisher, Ebury, have asked for another reprint.

That request reminded me about one of the ideas explored in HOW TO SEDUCE: the paraclausithyron or “shut door poem” in Latin and ancient Greek poetry. I included some of them in HOW TO SEDUCE. In these poems, the lover describes being shut out of his mistress’s house, life, bed. Instead of lamenting the woman’s cruelty, he rails comically against the door itself. It is the door who must take the blame for everything and the brunt of the poet’s wit.

 All the materiality of the door, from lock to hinges, can serve as a metaphor or for innuendo.

 Lucretius (De Rerum Natura 4.1177-9) asserts:
at lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepe
floribus et sertis operit postisque superbos
unguit amaracino et foribus miser oscula figit
The weeping shut-out lover often buries the threshold in flowers and garlands, anoints the proud doorposts with marjoram scent and plants miserable kisses on the door.

Tibullus offers a classic example:
nam posita est nostrae custodia saeva puellae,
clauditur et dura ianua firma sera.
ianua difficilis domini, te verberet imber,
te Iovis imperio fulmina missa petant.
ianua, iam pateas uni mihi victa querellis,
neu furtim verso cardine aperta sones

A cruel watch has been put on my girl and the hard-hearted door has been firmly locked in my face. Oh door of a stubborn master, may the rain pelt you and lightning sent by Jove target you! Oh door give in to my complaints, open just to me and make no sound as you turn your stealthy hinge.
(1.2.5-10).

Propertius describes the ‘Dreadful door’ as ‘crueller by far than your mistress herself.’ He demands, ‘Why do you stand silent, outfacing me with such hard panels? … Will I sleep ignominiously on the cold-blooded doorstep?’ He continues,
If only a word of mine could squeeze through an open crack
And seek out those lovely little ears and ring inside them!
… But you are the one, the greatest cause of my pain,
Dreadful door, never won over by my gifts
The only one entirely devoid of pity for human suffering,
You answer me mutely with the silence of your hinges.

Walls sometimes come in for the same treatment. Possibly the best-known anthropomorphized wall is the one that separates Pyramus and Thisbe, first in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and later, via Chaucer and Gower, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

One reason why these poems were fresh in my mind is because I’ve lately felt extremely drawn to an aspect of Venetian life that might seem mundane – door furniture.

On a recent walk around my neighbourhood, I photographed the following examples and recorded my feelings about them. After a little absence from Venice, now that I am back I find myself revisiting the esoteric mental scrapbook that is the by-product of so many novels, an anthology and much life lived, felt and thought in the city.

 

The first one to attract my attention is this handsome one belonging to the Dominican nuns near the church of Santa Maria degli Miracoli. The idea of nuns having doorbells seems somehow odd, thinking back on the days when they were sternly enclosed. Deliveries took place via ‘la ruota’ – a tall circular shelf that revolved inside the doorway, meaning that no one ever needed to behold a nun’s face, a sight reserved for her bridegroom, God. Food, money and unwanted babies were inserted into convents via la ruota. The nuns raised many orphans, including characters in several of my books ...

Nearer to home, by the church of the Maddalena, I loved this lion who apparently holds a writhing snake in his mouth. A winged lion is among the totems of Venice, but the snake is a novelty. Perhaps it is an eel? It was traditional to eat eel at Christmas in Venice – a fact recorded by Effie Ruskin in a letter to her mother on December 24th 1850. She described the Rialto market as ‘a perfect lake of blood,’ with the aproned fishmongers lopping off the heads of eels and throwing ‘the wretched beasts, still twitching, into the shopping bags of eager, festive customers.’

Many writers and several exhibitions have focused on Venice’s connections – mercantile, military and aesthetic – with the East. Here, on a palazzo in Cannaregio, I found a simulation of sinuous Arabic calligraphy on domestic door furniture.

 

 

This one made me sigh. How long is it since anyone in Venice received a telegram instead of an urgent email?

 

 Venice’s sense of humour is not the best known thing about her. I first discovered it in her earthy proverbs, which I began to translate as epigraphs for my first novel, Carnevale. But you see it, if you look, inscribed on her streets too. This panel of doorbells shown above is near San Lorenzo.

Next to a residential building, another kind of door furniture. I haven’t seen a rat in Venice for some time. But I still keep a children’s toy gun in my handbag late at night. The only thing it shoots is light and noise. It seems to work.


And lastly, my favourite piece of door furniture is not old at all. But I am very fond of it.



Perhaps some poet shall take against its door one day, but for the moment it offers only happy welcomes.

Michelle Lovric’s website



The Blue-Eyed Roman Girl from Africa

by Caroline Lawrence

Sometimes it’s good for writers to have restrictions; it can make you more creative.

Yesterday I led a story-writing workshop in the Undercroft Gallery at the Guildhall Art Gallery, situated above London’s Roman amphitheatre. First I shared the simple seven-beat story-structure I use to map out every scene in my books and also for the overall arc of the story itself. I illustrated the seven plot beats via the first chapter of my first Roman Mystery, The Thieves of Ostia. 

Then I told the parents and children about an idea I’m working on now, the story of the 14-year-old girl who lived in Roman London in the 4th century AD. The so-called Lant Street Teenager, named after the modern part of London where her grave was found, was one of four skeletons sent to McMasters University in Canada for in-depth study of DNA, isotopes and pathogens. Rebecca Redfern of the Museum of London has written eloquently about this and the other three skeletons. 

Science has made astounding advances and we know the following things about the Lant Street Girl. 

- Her mother was from the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, perhaps Thrace or Dacia. 

- Initial tests showed the girl had blue eyes and blonde hair

- She spent the first ten years of her life in North Africa

- She came to Londinium when she was about ten

- She ate a diet of fish, grain and vegetables

- She died aged 14 of unknown causes

Pathogens in her bones tell us about her health.

- She had rickets, a childhood disease caused by lack of calcium or vitamin D in the diet.

- As a result of this disease she had bandy legs. 

- Like most Roman Londoners, she had periodontal disease and therefore probably bad breath. 

Her burial indicates that she was from a rich family. Grave goods found with the body include:

- Two glass bottles, possibly for perfume or unguent.

- A wooden box with ivory inlay including that of a goddess.

- An clasp knife with an iron blade and an ivory handle in the shape of a leopard. A small bronze key is attached to this knife by a bronze chain.  

There has been lots of talk about the ethnic diversity in Roman London and this girl is the perfect example. Her father might have been a dark-skinned African, an Egyptian, a Phoenician or even a Roman. We don’t know yet as we don’t have access to the father’s DNA. 

In my writing workshop yesterday we tried to come up with a story for the girl, whom I’ve provisionally called Dido as she might have come from Carthage in North Africa where other ivory-handled clasp-knifes have been found. (Dido was the beautiful Queen of Carthage who fell in love with the hero Aeneas in Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid.)

We brainstormed a possible story for the blue-eyed girl from Africa, based on the facts, and then used our informed imaginations to come up with possible ways she might have met her untimely end. 

Here are some ways a Roman girl could have died in Londinium:

1. Death by illness. 

2. Death by infection. 

3. Death by childbirth complications.

4. Death by fall.  

5. Death by drowning. 

6. Death by choking.

7. Death by murder, strangulation or poison for example. 

8. Death by starvation.

9. Death by runaway oxen 

10. Death by wild animal or feral dog.

11. Death by fire or smoke inhalation.

12. Death by curse or bad omen.

Over twenty children attended the workshop and I hope that some of them might write a story which they can enter in a competition like BBC’s 500 Words or Butser Ancient Farm’s Poetry competition. (Just put your story in blank verse for the Butser entry!)

I know that even if every child and adult who attended came up with a story, each would be different. That’s the joy of writing historical fiction!

I’ll be giving the talk again today (Wednesday 9 August 2017) at 2pm so if you live in London and love history, Romans or writing, come help me tell a story about the Blue-Eyed Roman Girl from Africa.

For more information about all the great events of the #Londinium Festival celebrating Roman London for three months in 2017, go HERE. 

'Cooking on a Prayer' by Karen Maitland

Reconstruction of 19th Century Kitchen

Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland

Photo: Jorge Royan

This morning I spent ages hunting through my bookshelves in search of a particular book that I was sure had a white cover, and which eventually proved to be red. But in the process, I rediscovered several books that I had forgotten I owned, including a cloth-bound volume entitled ‘Recipe Book, Swinton Parish Church Bazaar, St Stephen’s Stall, 1911’. The recipes were contributed by members of the parish and the book was printed to raise money for charity, though how it came to be in my possession, I have no idea.

Some of the dishes are wonderfully evocative of the period: how to make potted sardines; lobster cutlets; stuffed cod with brown gravy; and oxtail soup. (I can’t remember when I last saw an oxtail in a supermarket.) But it was the ‘useful household tips’ at the end that really distracted me from what I was supposed to be doing. One, contributed by the Rev. B.O.F. Heywood, said the way to cook the perfect boiled egg (presumably on his housekeeper’s day off) was to place it carefully in boiling water and time the cooking by reciting the famous poem by Felicia Hemans, ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning deck.’

Using words to time recipes is something that has gone on for centuries. In the Middle Ages, prayers or psalms were used to time cooking and brewing. Medieval cookery books frequently state that a sauce should be simmered for the time it takes to recite two Ave’s or a fish should be boiled for three pater nosters. This method would have been highly effective in the crowded kitchens of manor houses or monasteries where many dishes were being prepared at the same time, and several scullions or young servants might be working under the direction of a cook.

Abbot's Kitchen, Glastonbury with ruined wall of

the abbot's dining hall.

Credit: Rodw

In the 14th century abbot’s kitchen in Glastonbury, which has been wonderfully restored, there were four fireplaces that could be used to cook everything from spit roasted meats to sauces and in the Middle Ages a narrow gantry ran across the kitchen above the servants’ heads so that the master of the kitchen could climb up and observe all the activity below, pacing back and forth to yell down instructions to those peeling, chopping, basting, and pounding. In all the noise, heat and bustle any inexperienced servants must have been grateful for the simple instructions of reciting something so familiar as a prayer they knew by rote.

Part of the Interior of the Abbot's Kitchen, Glastonbury

Credit: NotFromUtrecht

Using prayers or psalms also had a protective element and they became viewed as a charm that would ward off food poisoning and accidents. This would be especially important when in an abbot's or nobleman’s kitchen where valuable spices, saffron and even gold leaf were part of the recipe, and servants ruining a dish might fear being beaten or dismissed. Demons were thought to lurk between the leaves of worts such as lettuce and cabbage which could make you ill if you swallowed them, likewise in rising bread. Crosses were cut into stalks and dough to drive them out, but you certainly didn’t want them diving into something else, so the prayers helped to banish evil from the hearth.

One of the unforeseen consequences of the Reformation must have been the number of dishes that were spoiled by cooks who suddenly found they could no longer time their cooking by reciting Ave’s without arousing suspicions that they were still practising ‘popery’. There must have been much secret muttering and mumbling going on in some kitchens.

It is hardly surprising then, that in the witchcraft trials of later centuries those unfortunate enough to be interrogated were often accused of timing the brewing of their spells or even their suppers by reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards or muttering the cursing Psalm 109.

In the 19th and first part of the 20th century, instead reciting poems or prayers to time cooking, rhyming poetry was being used to memorize the recipe itself, often because those employed as domestic staff did not read well, or simply because it wasn’t practical to constantly consult a recipe as you cooked in a busy kitchen where a valuable book was likely to be ruined by steam and splashes. Many organisations such as churches and charities produced these rhyming recipe books to raise funds and even those campaigning for women’s suffrage saw the advantage in it.

In Boston, in 1886, Hattie A. Burr produced ‘The Woman’s Suffrage Cook Book’, with contributions from many of the leading women political activists of the time including Elizabeth Cady Stanton who penned a rhyming recipe for breakfast.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) with

Susan B. Anthony circa 1900

'Cut smoothly from a wheaten loaf
Ten slices, good and true,
And brown them nicely, o'er the coals,
As you for toast would do.

Prepare a pint of thickened milk,
Some cod-fish shredded small;
And have on hand six hard-boiled eggs,
Just right to slice withal.

Moisten two pieces of the bread,
And lay them in a dish,
Upon them slice a hard-boiled egg,
Then scatter o'er with fish …'

As for me, I’ve found a recipe in that 1911 cook book for Ballagarry Buck contributed by Mr Filliter and Mr Taylor, it sounds like a rather interesting version of Welsh Rarebit and it thankfully requires no timing at all, so I’m off to try it.

A Workshop at The Museum of Cambridge by Adèle Geras

On a Wednesday in late July, I went to a talk by Carolyn Ferguson at the Museum of Cambridge. It was part of a series of workshops and talks which looked at the various aspects of textile arts: patchwork and embroidery and so on. We were promised a look at some of the quilts owned by the museum and also at some from Carolyn's own private collection. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to attend. There were two main reasons for this. First, I'm obsessed with patchwork. One of my very first books for children was called Apricots at Midnight.  In this book, an old lady called Aunt Pinny told stories to a child at bedtime. Each tale sprang from one of the patches on the quilt covering the child's bed, and was about something from Aunt Pinny's life. I've always thought that that image: the patches of material mirroring episodes in your life, was a very powerful one. Patchwork has been with us for hundreds of years and its different manifestations and the different circumstances in which it's been made fascinate me.

The second reason I wanted to go to Carolyn's talk was more personal. She was at school with me, at Roedean, and in those days  she was a good friend of mine called Carolyn Ballantyne. When we moved to Cambridge in 2010, finding that Carolyn lived there too was a wonderful surprise. We hadn't seen one another for decades, but when we met again, it seemed to me that she'd changed very little. Her hair is a different colour now, but otherwise she's just the same. Nevertheless, when I learned that she was both a quilter herself and also a member of The British Quilt Study Group; that she'd written papers on the history of the colour, Turkey Red, and on the Rajah Quilt; that she had a deep and scholarly interest in  textiles  and that she was also involved with the Museum of Cambridge, I was very pleasantly surprised. I've sent Carolyn a few questions which she's kindly agreed to answer. I'm going to intersperse her answers with some thoughts about the talk she gave. 

The Museum of Cambridge, of which Carolyn is a Trustee, dates from the 17th century and  used to be a coaching inn. It stands at a crossroads, very near Kettle's Yard. It's full of fascinating things, mostly local, and the rooms are small and different from one another and seem to have been stuck together haphazardly. The stairs are wooden. It's delightfully  unslick in any way and a visit there is a real pleasure. 

AG: I have no memory of you sewing, or embroidering at school. Am I blotting this out because I was so useless at such things? When did you start being interested in patchwork and quilting?

CF: My mother and her mother, my English Granny, were both very keen sewers and my Scots Granny was a tailor so I was probably bound to have some stitching in my life. My first patchwork was a teacosy made with my English Granny around the age of 8 from a set of Liberty linen samples. My mother used it for many years until it fell apart. I made various clothes at school, a petticoat and a felt skirt are things that I remember best. I still have the sampler that I started (but never finished) for O Level art too. In the 1970s I bought some Laura Ashley squares and did some basic patchwork but it was when we lived in Hong Kong and I went to a class run by an American lady that I really learnt to quilt and to do patchwork by machine which was a real revelation!

Carolyn's talk took the form of a slide show of various coverlets, quilts, bedcovers, some actually quilted and some not, starting with one from about 1400. The Tristram Quilt, made in Sicily, is the earliest example we have (it's in the V&A) and when a replica was made of this, it took modern quilters days and days of work. Below are two photos of one of the quilts from Carolyn's own collection. There were ten of us, and we all put on white gloves to look at it more carefully.

AG: You've written monographs and papers about historical textiles. Can you say something about whether the interest in the history springs from the making, or is it the other way round? I suppose I'm asking: how do the writing and the making relate to one another?

CF:I was always interested in History at school and also in historic artefacts. Do you remember the ‘Taste and Judgement’ displays? [these were objects exhibited from time to time at school, about which we had to comment and which we had to judge for their beauty, usefulness etc.] They kindled an interest in antiques - again something that my Granny was keen on. She was an avid buyer and loved auctions too. I suppose that textile research just puts together my scientific research brain with a love of textile.

Carolyn took us through the way the art developed as the techniques of printing and manufactured advanced. It was quite fascinating to see how every change in the fashion of the day was reflected in the way coverlets and quilts came to be made. 

The red quilt below was made in the 1840s in Stratford - upon - Avon by many hands. In the centre is the church where Shakespeare is buried, Holy Trinity. Many people were given a square to embroider in their own way, often using printed patterns that could be ironed on to the cloth. There's a similar patchwork made by Cambridge Ladies, led by the wives of the Masters of various colleges, and   Carolyn has a great interest in this quilt about which she's written and spoken extensively.  

AG: Knitting is the only craft I'm any good at, and I always have some knitting on the go. Are you always making something with your hands, whatever else is happening?

CF: I am not sure whether you mean research or stitch? I am still trying to write up my 5 years of research for the Masters’ Wives quilt and my sewing projects seem to take a back seat. I have numerous things on the go including a memory piece and a small quilt for my nephew’s next baby but I’m not always making things these days.  I find that there are lots of other things to be done. I seem to wear quite a few ‘hats’!

Below is the 'jockey cap' style of patchwork. The quilt is in the Museum and I'm grateful to have been allowed to photograph it.  There are many different styles. You can make patchwork out of large squares, strips, hexagons, or combinations of shapes.  Crazy Quilting combines many different kinds of fabric, in irregular shapes. American Quilts are different from British quilts. With the exception of communal patchworks, like the Stratford quilt, the Rajah Quilt and the Masters' Wives Quilt, these are often the work of single person, who has used the material available to her (or him...there were male quilters too, often in the Army or the Navy) and for reasons of their own. For example the Brereton patchwork, hangings for a four-poster bed, were made by Anna Maria Brereton mourning the death of the five children she lost: four in in infancy and one later on.

AG: How did you become involved with the Museum of Cambridge?

CF: I suppose that it was about 10 years ago that I first became involved when the Museum did a small exhibition about patchwork and I wrote all the information boards and helped set up the display. My most recent involvement started in 2012, first with the Masters’ Wives quilt then organising and making the community quilt, helping document the textiles and clothing and from the start of this year as a Trustee with special interest in the Collection. I have also given talks at the various History Festivals organised by the Museum.

Below is a photo of Carolyn's pamphlet about Turkey Red. This was the name of the red dye in the late 1700s which enabled red to be printed on cotton in a colour - fast way for the first time. Turkey Red revolutionised fabric production for one thing and for another, it's a wonderful colour.

The ladies who came to this talk were all quilters, apart from me. One of them had made a patchwork by sewing together stamps from her husband's collection, each one meticulously bound in paper and sewn together with stitches so tiny that you could hardly see them. The ways that some of these old quilts, both Carolyn's own and the ones belonging to the Museum, were found were also interesting: in a cupboard, in a chest somewhere. Look at your old boxes if you have an attic. You don't know what you might find there. But if you do own precious heirlooms, do not store them in plastic bags...there was a terrifying tale of someone whose cleaner threw a bin bag containing a very beautiful and valuable quilt out with the rubbish. Beware...

And thanks to Carolyn and the Museum for a really wonderful morning.
I'm ending this post with a photo of a pin wheel quilt made by Carolyn herself.

------------------------------------------------------------


Carolyn Ferguson: A biographical note


Carolyn Ferguson is a textile historian and independent scholar whose main interests are looking at nineteenth-century quilts and coverlets from a social history perspective.


Carolyn is currently researching the Cambridge Mastera' Wives coverlet and has collaborated with Dr Ann Kennedy Smith on research into Cambridge University wives 1882–1914, in particular the twelve influential women who became the Ladies Dining Society. In 2015 they presented a paper entitled ‘The Cambridge Wives Lives: Rewriting the Victorian Marriage’ for the Writing Lives Together conference. In May 2017 she presented ‘The Detective Story of the Masters’ Wives Coverlet: A Study in the Iconography of Embroidered Signature coverlets’ at the Textile Society Research Symposium.

The Duffs of Beechfield Street -- a poem by Sheena Wilkinson

Like many History Girls I love watching Who Do You Think You Are? and am always struck by how little I know about my own antecedents. This poem pieces together snippets from things my gran told me about growing up in Belfast. She was born in 1908 and must have had memories of the Great War, the Great Flu, the Home Rule Crisis, Civil War, and the Belfast Blitz, but she always spoke about the domestic: home and church, work and leisure. 

There was nothing remarkable about her family. Except of course to her. 

The Duffs of Beechfield Street

The Duffs built the Titanic.

In 1913 James Duff moved his family

two streets further up the Newtownards Road

To save on the tram fare to the Yard.

The Duffs all worked at the Yard

The Duffs  were stalwarts of the Christian Endeavour

At Albertbridge Congregational Church.

They won prizes for Attendance and Bible Knowledge.

If you didn’t eat your dinner, James would say,

Put it in the oven, she’ll eat it when she’s hungry.

A Belfast street

 The Duffs loved animals, Annie a smuggler of kittens

Upstairs, hidden in her pinny, Frances never tiring

of the story of the wee Pomereen pup

found sleeping in her daddy’s boot.

The Duffs did as things did with them.

When James died Fanny took in sewing

And made sure the children had good clothes for Sundays.

The girls left school at thirteen, sewed shirts,

and hoped to marry. Sadie died at sixteen.

Annie, the kitten smuggler, Sadie who died, Frances, my gran

Alexander loved dancing. He always got Sandy.

Frances married Charles from a semi-detached

With a garden up the Castlereagh Road.

Jim went to Australia.

Annie dreamed of Australia

But when her mother died in 1936 she stayed

In Beechfield Street with her brother John,

And a cat called Dinky who was allowed upstairs.

Fanny Duff's death notice in The Belfast News Letter, 1936

Dance Around in Your Bones by Joan Lennon

I live in Scotland, so I am rarely troubled by being too hot.  But the summers were scorchers where I grew up and I now have a son living in Indonesia - and when I visit oh how I wish I could follow the delectable Lee Morse's advice!  Which advice is that, I hear you ask?  Listen up -

I've combined the various versions of the lyrics that the internet has to offer for you.

Dancing may do this and that

And help you take off lots of fat

But I'm no friend of dancing when it's hot

So if you are a dancing fool

Who loves to dance, but can't keep cool

Bear in mind the ideas that I've got

When it gets too hot for comfort

And you can't get ice cream cones

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

When the lazy syncopation

Of the music softly moans

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

The polar bears aren't green up in Greenland

They've got the right idea

They think it's great to refrigerate

While we all cremate down here

Just be like those bamboo babies

In the South Sea tropic zones

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

When you're calling up your sweetie

In those hothouse telephones

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

When you're on a crowded dance floor

Near those red hot saxophones

Ah, t'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

Take a look at the girls when they're dancing

Notice the way they're dressed

They wear silken clothes without any hose

And nobody knows the rest

No more singing in the bathtub

With those television phones

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

Now, we are gathered by the river

Listen to your Deacon Jones

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

You must all go in that water

Let me hear your sinful groans

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones

Do what I say right away, wicked sinners

For this is your judgement day

Come andele in the river with me

Wash your sins away

Throw away your gin and razors

Throw away your gambling bones

For t'ain't no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones


There are definitely bits I had to look up.  Andele, for example, is, according to Wiktionary, American slang for hurry up; come on; get a move on!  Gin and razors could refer to a cocktail of gin and cayenne pepper, which seems to me a ghastly thing to do to gin, so definitely worth throwing away.  But who is Deacon Jones?  Other than a preacher who conveniently rhymes with bones?  And why were telephone boxes so hot?  Let me know if you've got any ideas.  And what about that reference to television phones way back in 1929?  Wow!

One last tidbit - in the comments of the instrumental version of 'Taint No Sin by Fred "Sugar" Hall and His Sugar Babies here, I learned that this was Ray Bradbury's favourite song as a boy.  ("Zen in the Art of Writing")  

Lee Morse, American jazz and blues singer and songwriter (1897 - 1954)

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Walking Mountain.