William Jamieson married Ann Urquhart in 1820 when they were both recorded
as living at Middlehill, on the Balthangie estate in the parish of Monquhitter, east
of Turriff. They both seem to have come there from further north in Moray;
William certainly did. Henry Duffus, in his History of Monquhitter, describes how
William’s sister, then living at nearby New Byth, proudly boasted to her neigh-
bours, comparing her brother to the Marquis of Huntly. From then on he was
known as ‘Markis’, a name which was duly inherited by William and Ann’s second
son, Francis, born at Middlehill in 1823, less than a year after their first son,
William, and two years before his brother Joseph. Two girls were born some years
later, Ann in 1831 and Jean (sometimes Jane) in 1833.
By the time of the 1841 census the family had moved from Middlehill slightly
north to a croft on the Hill of Cook, just to the west of the grounds of the old
Byth House. In his early years as a teenager, Francis was working as a farm
45
labourer at a farm in Kirkside (now in Banffshire, but at that time still part of
Aberdeenshire) but was back at Cook by 1851. During this time the two Williams,
father and son and Francis’ younger brother Joseph would have been working to
improve the state of the land. Rural Aberdeenshire was undergoing a process of
‘engrossment’, the claiming of new farming land from the whins and mosses that
surrounded the small crofts and farms. Adam Sanderson tells me that his great-
great grandfather ‘Samuel Gill (1796-1882, born in Banff), lived in a sod house on
land he cleared himself. Even the name of the place he farmed gives clues to the
terrain - Boghead of Hythie’. In fact, it seems that the Jamieson family themselves
lived in a sod house, according to a recorded interview with Willie Mathieson.
‘Well, he lived in a house that you wouldn’t have lived in, and neither would I, no,
I would not. A sod house, out by Byth, built of sods and clay.’2
The following is from Jock Duncan’s 1995 article in Common Stock:
“At that time mosses and whins were being trenched and drained to form
viable farm land and sometimes the Lairds of the time gave them the land rent
free to do such a task for so many years and then they charged a rental.
At this work Francie Markis excelled. He hired his services far and wide -
whether he took his own squad or was part of another I do not know. I think
he was probably a loner and took on the job on piece per acre. That implied
turning the soil two feet deep, putting the top turf at the bottom. Removing the
stones in puddocks with a horse to later build the stone dykes that finally
enclosed the fields. Of course the drains had to be dug and they were stone
lined as well. At those tasks Francie was adept, especially at the spade and pick
work - those specially made implements were smiddy made twice normal size
to cater for his excesses.
At the scythe however, which was the tool used to cut corn, he was again in a
league of his own. At that time hairst squads were hired to cut the grain. Some
were for a six weeks harvest duration. Others were hired on piece-work per
acre cut, This was the method Francie preferred as it gave him scope for his
ability. An acre a day was a big day for most people, but he usually did twice
that, and on one prodigious occasion cut three. He was supposed to have
remarked that three acre a day ‘was nae child’s play’.”
As if this work was not enough, Francis was also an outstanding athlete,
competing, and taking away prizes, at all the local games and fairs. He was also
well-known for his prodigious appetite, but curiously, for such an energetic and
vigorous man, he developed a love for and skill in music. He could both read and
write music and is said to have had an understanding of it. He played the fiddle,
on which he performed tolerably, but excelled at the ‘bass-fiddle’, the cello.
46
It’s not clear how or when he acquired the pipes that he is holding in the
photograph, but he certainly was known to play them, especially at the Porter
Fair, the feeing-fair at Turriff (locally known as ‘Turra’). These fairs were often
riotous events with singing and dancing and general merriment, and, of course, a
good deal of ‘anti-social behaviour’. So much so, indeed, that the minutes of the
Fintry Ploughman’s Mutual Improvement Association record a debate that was
held to decide whether the feeing-fairs should be abolished, due to the ‘evils’ that
regularly marred them – (the proposal was eventually rejected).3
For the next seven censuses Francis remained at Cook. His father died in 1863
but his mother survived into her 80’s, still living with Frances. In fact there does
not seem to have been a time when there was not at least one female member of
the Jamieson family living at the croft, his mother or his sister Jean, ‘a big strong
woman’; Francis was said to have thought that if he could get the famous
hammer-thrower, Donald Dunnie ‘to her’, they would have a hammer-thrower
nobody could beat.4
In his last years Francie was joined by his niece, Ann Duncan. I haven’t been
able to trace whose child she was, but in 1861 she had been there, aged 5, along
with (young) Joseph, described as Francis’ nephew. This was the ‘illegitimate’ son
of Francis’ sister Ann and David Sim, a corporal in the 93rd Regiment. He was
born at ‘Cooke’ 3rd November 1855. This information comes from his birth
record, and suggests that his mother could not have been Ann Duncan’s mother.
This is the Joseph Sim to whom Frances bequeathed the name ‘The Wonderful
Boy’ when proudly asking people at a concert Joseph gave aged 12, ‘isn’t he a
wonderful boy?’. Joseph went on living at the croft at Cook until some time
between 1881 and 1891 when he moved into New Byth where, in the 1901 census
his occupation is given as ‘Player on the Violin’. He died there in 1918.
Francis himself died in 1903, aged 80. In the last 20 years of his life his powers
began to wane, so that he had resort to ‘oxter’ (armpit) crutches, one of which can
be seen in the photograph. He is said to have been able to move as fast as a horse
using this support. Ultimately, for visits to Turra Fair, Joseph and others would
hurl him on a three-wheeled cart. According to Willie Mathieson, both Francis
and Joseph were bellows pipers and played at feeing markets and horse markets.5
A number of interviews were conducted in the 1950’s, many by Hamish Hender-
son, with folk who knew Francis in the 1870s and 80s. The summary of one of
these, with George Hay, describes how:
“George 'Lordie' Hay used to dance the Highland Fling and the Schottische,
often to Francie Markiss on his pipes. [In this interview he] remembers some of