Ways and Means.
The principal sources of livelihood of the Gairloch people are their crofts and stock and their fisheries, both treated of in separate chapters. Of course a number of men have regular engagements, as farm or other servants and gamekeepers; whilst a few carry on trades, as tailors, shoemakers, weavers, boatbuilders, thatchers, dykers, sawyers, carpenters, and masons.
Some young men of the parish go south, and obtain situations either for the winter season or all the year round, and they often contribute towards home expenses.
The women of Gairloch, like all other Highland women, are noticeable for their industry. It is they who carry home heavy creels of peats for the household fire,—peats in the treatment of which they had taken an active share the previous summer; they herd the cow, and manage the house. But, more than all, it is the women who are mainly instrumental in producing the only manufactures of the parish, and very excellent manufactures too they are. They card and dye and spin the wool, they knit the Gairloch hose, and they prepare the various coloured worsteds which the weaver converts into tweeds of different patterns. Large numbers of the stockings are sent to Inverness, Edinburgh, and London (see [last chapter]). Some of the tweeds are worn in the parish, and some are sold to strangers.
It will be remembered that the early Pictish inhabitants of Gairloch dwelt in the brochs or round houses of what may almost be called the pre-historic period. These were succeeded by turf-built huts, the roofs of which, rudely framed with boughs, were covered with divots or turfs. The last turf house in the parish is said to have been at Moss Bank, Poolewe, and was occupied by an uncle of John Mackenzie (Iain Glas), whose improved dwelling stands on the same site. There are, however, two modern turf-built dwellings still to be seen at South Erradale. The turf house was gradually replaced by the style of dwelling which now prevails in the parish. The present cottages have their walls of stone, the better ones cemented with lime; the roofs of timber, thatched with heather, rushes, or straw; divots are also still frequently used in roofing. Some few superior crofters' houses have slated roofs, and modern grates with flues and regular chimneys. But many of the crofters still have their byres under the same roof; still have no chimney in the living room, whence the smoke from the peat fire escapes only by a hole in the roof; and still have the heap of ashes, slops, manure, and refuse just outside the door. Sir Francis Mackenzie, in his "Hints" (1838), has some suggestive remarks on the subject of these dwellings. He writes:—"I must at once protest against human beings and cattle entering together in your present fashion at the same doorway.... I will not raise a laugh at your expense by describing your present smoky dens, and the hole in the roof with sometimes an old creel stuck on it in imitation of a chimney. The smoke you now live in not only dirties and destroys your clothes and furniture, but soon reduces the prettiest rosy faces in the world to premature wrinkles and deformities.... Let there be no apology for want of time for carrying away ashes, sweepings, or dirty water, and adding them to your dunghill, instead of sweeping all into a corner till you have more time, and emptying the dirty water at your door because you are too lazy to go a few yards farther."
The houses of the crofters are certainly undergoing gradual improvement, but the majority cling tenaciously to the type of dwelling their fathers occupied before them. Perhaps the villages of Strath, Poolewe, and Port-Henderson contain the most improved houses in the parish. Very few of the crofters have gardens worthy of the name, so that, of course, they lose the advantage of green vegetables and fresh fruits. Still more rare is it to see trees planted about their dwellings, though pleasant shade and shelter might thus be had, and though, it is understood, saplings might be obtained for the asking from the proprietors.
As a natural consequence of the proximity of middens to dwelling-houses, and other unhealthy arrangements, cases of fever occasionally occur. In the Old Statistical Account, 1792 ([Appendix C]), the writer, speaking of Gairloch, says that fevers were frequent, and an infectious putrid fever early in the preceding winter had proved fatal to many. Pennant had previously noticed how spring fever used to decimate the west coast. Such outbreaks have happily become rare since the potato famine of 1847 led the people to depend more on imported meal for their sustenance in spring.
Few of the crofters' houses are floored, so that the inmates stand on the natural ground, or put their feet on a loose plank. In wet weather the ground often becomes damp. From this and other local causes pulmonary consumption is common among the crofter class. It is only right to add that this fatal disease often appears among some of the young people who go to work in southern towns, and come home to die.
