Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 35 years of age, not very big, but broad and strong and as healthy as a young animal. There are seven boys and girls in the Lauder family, and I am my mother's mainstay for nursing, running messages, and generally assisting in the house. I can cook a meal, bathe a baby, and do a household washing if need be. There is great excitement one evening. My father comes home with the information that he has been offered a good situation in Pearson's Pottery at Whittington Moor, Derbyshire. A Council of Ways and Means and Future Prospects is immediately called. The pros and cons are studied and discussed. My mother is very silent and undemonstrative all through; she does not like the idea of leaving Scotland for the "wilds of England." All her sentiments and affections are for her "ain folk" and for the land she knows and loves. I do not know it at the time, but in after years she confesses that "her heart was never in the shift." The Highland strain in her make-up foresees danger and disaster ahead ; she has a premonition of impending fate. But my father is full of the bigger wages he has been offered. He thinks there will be better chances for the bairns in England. His enthusiasm wins the day. In less than a month the family packs up and we find ourselves at Whittington Moor near Chesterfield. The few weeks we spent there seem like a dream to me now. I can only remember clearly the one big event which shattered the whole world for a poor young woman and her brood of seven children — the sudden death of my father from pneumonia. And one scene stands out, cameo-like, from the drama. It is the picture of my mother coming out, moaning, from the little room in which my father was lying. She catches me to her arms and sobs out "Oh, Harry, Harry, yer faither's deid, yer dear faither's been ta'en from us. What'll I dae, ma son, mu puir wee laddie? God help us a* in His mercy an' compassion."