Typescript of a conversation

Mrs R. H. Cubbin, "Cornelly," Albany Road, Douglas.
Aged 84 from Bradda and Fleshwick - mother of Mr Cyril Cubbin of Cubbin and Bregazzi, Victoria Street Douglas.

8 11 49 and 17 11 49. Coll: MQ

[born Margaret Hannah Crebbin, dau John Crebbin & Margaret Kermode ch Kk Rushen 03 July 1870 (Margaret Anna in IGI) m. R H Cubbin at Kirk Braddan 22 Sept 1897; parents married 19 July 1866 Kirk Rushen ]

Typescript

When grandfather married my grandmother, twenty people came down from Fleshwick to Rushen Church, and twenty people came down from Bradda. They walked two by two, singing. I asked my grand- father how they got them all into the little house at Fleshwick afterwards it was only a thatched cottage then, He said they all gathered in the barn after the wedding,

In the old day's they didn't give presents to the bride and grooms the bride's father it was who gave the presents - dresses and hats and gloves to the bridesmaids. And when there was a funeral the mourners were supplied with long black: kid gloves with a band hold them up above the elbow for women. I can remember a funeral at grandfather's house, and they were taking them out of a box and I was down on my knees trying to smooth the black gloves over his hands, He had large farmer's hands, and he wasn't used to gloves on. The gloves came a dozen in a box.

My family owned all of Bradda mostly in the old days, but they sold it bit by bit. The rights to the road leading to the mine belonged to mother's grandfather, and grandfather used to lock the gate across it once a year to keep the rights.

The other side of the family had a farm at Fleshwick. The old farm was just a thatched cottage and it lay across the valley from the new house, I should think the new house to be 110 years old. The old beams in it were all shipwreck, And there was a well in the house itself when I was very little, in the back rooms behind the kitchen, They had a pump put there afterwards.

My grandfather was a big man, over six feet. He was known as Harry Niggy (Nicholas) , and they called him the King of Fleshwick then.

My grandfather got toothache when he was over 80 and. my mother made him stay in bed and sent for Dr. Rose. He came to see my grandfather and it was night time. My grandfather was in one of those old beds, curtains hanging down from the four posts, a deep feather mattress held in by side boards, and you had to get into it by a little stepping stool. The doctor got a candle and told my grandfather to open his mouth, He was standing on the little steps, looking down at grandfather. My grandfather opened his mouth wide, and the doctor went to put his finger in and my grandfather bit him! He said afterwards he wasn't going to let the doctor pull. out one of his teeth with his fingers.

My grandfather spoke Manx as well as he spoke English, He always wore a hard hat, something like a bowler, but flat on top. The bigger farmers always wore them. And he was a sidesman at Rushen Church and always wore a, top hat there. He had two seats in the church. The Gawnes of Kentraugh used to go, my grandfather said, and sit in their big pew - like a little room. There would be their coachman, and groom, and the butler all there, too.

There were lots of old people around that district who said they had saw mermaids. I met one man who said he had seen one swimming in the sea. And once, I remember, my grandfather came to when I was very small, probably about six years old, and said, "Come quick, girl, and thou wilt see a sight thou shall never see again:!" I asked, "What is it, da ?" and he just told me; again to come quickly, So I ran out with him and we ran down to Fleshwick Bay, but as we got in sight of it, he stopped and looked so disappointed, "It's gone," he said, "it was a mermaid sitting on the rocks there, "

In my grandfather's time, they went down with stiffcarts to Stranall (Strandhall) for wrack, and on to Port Erin shore for sand to mix with it, They would never take the horses out on Sunday at all, not until Midnight, If a man took a cart out on a Sunday, the men of the neighbourhood would go after him and would put him on a gate and carry him home.

My grandfather told me he ploughed the meadow field for the first time and found bog oak there.

The first son of the farmer came into the farm the other sons all were apprenticed to a trade, my grandfather was a joiner. The fishermen were too poor to put their sons out to a trade and then had to fallow their fathers and go to the fishing,

My grandfather. had a horse that wouldn't go. It was so unpredictable that they grew very fond of it and wouldn't have it killed when it got old, once I remember seeing them coming back from the mill, on the way grandfather and the manservant had stopped at a. pub for a drink, and when they came out the horse refused to budge. They tried and tried, but still it wouldn't move, and at last my grandfather pulled some straw and put it, under the animal and lit it, He went all right then; I remember seeing my grandfather flopping about on the cart with the horse going full out, and he was all white, covered with flour !

I remember my grandfather telling about the wrecks at Fleshwick. There was no lighthouse on the Calf then [pre 1818]. Once a boat came into the bay then and struck and there was a lot of lovely linen and silks floating about. They put my grandfather with three others in charge of it so it wouldn't get taken, That would be the revenue that did that. One poor man got caught by his arm between two rocks, and they couldn't get him out, They went up to get saw to cut his arm. off to save him, but while they had gone, he managed to free himself and was lying on the beach when they came back. They wrapped him in some of the linen to keep him warm,

My grandfather had found a light, beautifully polished boat, something like a canoe, and just big enough for one person. It was beached above the high tide at Fleshwick. He thought someone must have come from Ireland for shelter and left it them. He took it up to the farm and kept it there and I remember it when I was a child. But a horse that was sick kicked out and smashed it,

My father had a boat and kept it on the beach at Spaldrick. He fished for conger and cod, He did work for Carey on the Calf, too, taking sheep over there in the summer. He owned the land. where the hut is now, and the Golf Links, it was mother's father over at Fleshwick , that was Henry Kermode, Harry Niggy. My father's father was Tom Fad.

My father was drowned when he was 30. He had five boats. I came into Douglas when I was fourteen and went as an apprentice to a pastry cook. My father found the boats didn't pay, so he went for a joiner in Douglas, He only came home for weekends. He rode down to Douglas on horseback, everybody would be on horseback then or going to Douglas in stiffcarts, there would be other way of getting.

I can remember the beggars coming round, my grandfather was mischievous and I remember him playing a trick on one of them, :Billy Bill Dhoo, he was called,, and he couldn't see anything, without saying, ""Now that's just what I need." whether it was a pair of socks on the line outside or a bottle of medicine. My grandfather had been tarring his ropes and had some tarry mixture in a bottle when he. came into the kitchen. Billy Bill Dhoo was sitting by the fire eating some broth, and when he saw my grandfather with this bottle which was marked cough mixture', he said "Now I could just do with a bit of that for my cough (which he pronounced. ' cock') So my grandfather gave him the bottle: and Billy Bill Dhoo put it up to his mouth and drank out of it. He dropped the bottle and spat it out on the floor, My grandmother was cross because she could never get all the tar out of the floor which was cement. I remember the stain there for years afterwards,

When my mother married four sheep were her dowry and they were left on my grandfather's farm.

My mother's grandmother gave her the big white house high up on the hill, and when she married she went into this house. It's gone now.

My mother had two geese and their had twelve goslings. Every egg was true, and one day a man came down from Ballakilpheric and stopped to talk, "These are fine geese," he said, and went on down to the bay at Fleshwick. Half an hour later my mother went out and found one of the. goslings with its wings flopping, A little .while later there were four of them down with their wings flopping. My grandfather came in and mother told him about it. He had been making creels for the lobster fishing., and he said to me, "Come on, girl, we'll soon stop that." And he took me into the barn where he had been making creels and told me to pick; up the chips of the straw and bits that were lying around and he put the dead goslings on it and burnt them, ""That'll stop all that," he said, and it did, too,

There was a tailor called Nelson who was good at poetry, and he wrote a verse about grandfather chasing a thief. My grandfather went out finding a man going after three sheep he was fattening up to kill for Christmas and my grandfather shouted to my uncles then only a few years old, to follow him. He tried to sneak up on the man but the man saw his tall hard hat coming and ran for the beach. My grandfather chased him down there, followed by the little boy, and the man hid under one of the fishing boats that were on the shore. My grandfather told him to run home for help but he was too scared and, wouldn't go, and the man got away.

There were fifteen thatched cottages around our farm in those days - their all kept fowls and they roamed the hills at the back, and they all kept a pig stye, They bought nothing from any shop, but when a farmer killed a beef or a sheep;, the crofters would go up and get a bit, and they would get milk or butter from the farm. it was tea only on a Sunday then.

We had salted mutton it was awfully good, and salted pork. it was kept out in the back room where the well was, and there was a barrel of herrings there, too. They dried fish up in the rafters of the kitchen„ You would see them hanging there.

They never ate salad then: they only grew plain vegetables potatoes and cabbages, But they had good teeth in those days, I remember my grandfather ate both the soft bones in a chicken„ and the bones in hake,

All the clothes were made from wool from their own sheep - the wool vas teased, and went to be spun and made into rolls and then sent to the weaver to make it into cloth for petticoats and dresses and suits.

You were not compelled to go to school. I went to Rushen and paid fourpence a week which I took with me. My mother had a little schooling. My uncle went to a school kept in a thatched cottage near Kentraugh, My mother went to a lady who kept school in a thatched cottage, There were only about six pupils there and I shouldn't imagine the lady knew much about teaching. And if there was any work to be done on the farm, and they were shorthanded the children would be kept home,

I used to wash myself by the stream at the farms, the Tholla Bet all the year round, stripped to the waist when I was small, Even in the snow, and then I would run twice round the haggard and be as warm as toast, and then I had to walk two and a half miles to school.

When they were getting water out of the wells they were using hoops to stop the buckets from bumping against their legs,

There are wells near our farm - one is near Bradda in a garden, called Tholla Maynea.

On old Christmas day all the fishermen were playing cammag with a gorse stick and a piece of cork.

They kept Christmas when I was a child. We never had presents though. They didn't give presents in the old days in the country. They may have done so in the towns, I don't know, but in the country there was no money for that. Even when there was a wedding it was the bride's family who gave the presents.

But we had a goose and a pudding but not such a rich pudding as they do now. They would have ducks, hens, and geese to eat, but no turkeys.

My father would not allow his men to go out on old Christmas Day to work, when my grandfather sold the land where the Hut is now to a man from Manchester a cotton merchant, he started to cut the grass on Old Christmas Day and the men went out and took the machine away from him.

If you had £100 then you were a wealthy person.

The little hill down in the center of Cronk y Moo was a watch Hill for the soldiers, so the old people said,

I remember being taken to see two old uncles of my mother living in a tholtan at the foot of south Barrule, the ruins are there yet. My grandfather took me and he was talking to them in Manx sitting around the fire. They neither of then spoke a word of England[sic English], I couldn't understand all they said„ but I knew a few words of it.

I remember doing that. I have the charm for a burn, too, and for blood stopping, but I have only used it once. It seems a t; a me that they never used them during the awful war s. There are still people who know the charm here, and a lot of good could have been done with the if people would only believe in them.

My mother's great-grandfather, my grandfather used to tell me, was taken off the fields by the press gang while he was herding the cattle They put the cattle the cowhouse and took hi m away. He said he would never fight. I suppose that would be the Prussian war - and anyway he deserted. He and another man, a Frenchman, made their way on foot to France. They met a man on horseback n some woods and asked where they could sleep. The man told them, after he had asked them how much they had to go to a cottage nearby, They both looked very shaby told him only a small proportion of the amount they really had. They went to the cottage, and a woman let them in. It was a mean place and they were put up in a loft by a ladder, something like the old Manx cottages. The Frenchman woke my mother's great-grandfather in the night, and whispered that he had heard the man's voice downstairs and he thought they were coming to rob them, So they put the amount they had said they had in a stocking and secreted the rest on themselves and lay down and pretended Sleep. The man came up and felt in the stocking and found the small amount and took it, thinking it was all they had. They got away all right, but if they had not done that, they would have been killed for their money. My mother's great-grandfather made his way to London but he daren't come home as he was a deserter and would have been shot. His wife went to London, too, and got a job making: the lovely shirts with frills that men wore them, ,She used to come back. occasionally to the Island for a visit, and came on sailing ships and had to leave the ship by a small boat to get ashore,

Port Eiron as it was called then is spoiled now.

I remember coming down from Bradda when there were only four big houses right from the top until you reached the Falcon's nest. There were fourteen thatched cottages down that way when I was a child,

The young men were always playing practical jokes then they had no better way of getting rid of their high spirits. They would tie the courting couples in, or tie the door when there was a taffee spree.

Once I remembered hearing-about them plastering mud over the window of a thatched cottage near our farm where an old couple lived. It was the only window, and they had no clocks and only waitted for daylight before they got up. Well they kept looking at the window and it was still dark, They lay in bed for a long time and got hungrier and hungrier, and at last they couldn't stand it any longer, so the old man got up and opened the door, "Betty, come quick" he cried "it's the end of the world,! The sun's coming up where it ought to go down !" They had stayed in bed till sunset:

Sometimes the young fellows would climb up the roof and stop the chimney, and smoke would pour in and choke us. Once my sister threw some buttermilk out of a window onto one of the fellows that had stopped the chimney and spoiled his best suit, and his mother came round after. She was cross. And they would be going round singing at Hop tu naa, and getting herring and sugar. "They would sell the herring to the poor crofters for a few pennies, and were keeping the sugar for a toffee spree. They made the toffee with just sugar and water, and didn't put any butter in it. Sometimes we put peppermint essence in for flavour.