Free Even on Days when it Rains by Julia O'Donnell Page A

back up to the farm where we’d eat and then rest for a time. It was the same routine day in and day out. Later in the year, as the weather changed, we’d go out at 8 a.m. and come home at 5 or 6 p.m. I’d spend hours riddling the potatoes, sorting them and putting them into different bags out in the open. At the end of the week I’d be handed £3 for my labour. It was a small amount of money for such hard work, but that was the going rate, and it was considered to be a good wage. It was either take it or leave it. There was no union fighting for your rights in those days. Whatever money I earned I sent home to my mother and father.
    Sometimes after a day in the potato field and a break in the afternoon, we’d go out in the evening to farms to gather up stooks of straw that had been tossed around; you’d make some extra money doing that. You’d spend three or four hours at that work for a wage of half a crown. In the wintertime we’d get extra work in the fish houses, putting fish on skewers. There were two dozen placed on each skewer, and then you’d hand them up to another worker who put them on a rack to dry out before they were taken away to be sold.
    When it was time to retire for the night, the stark and smelly cowshed seemed the most welcoming place on earth because I’d be so exhausted from the day’s work. The straw bed felt like a deluxe mattress. Mary had been right. I couldn’t have cared less where I laid my head down at that stage.
    Apart from working on the farm, I also did the cooking and washing for myself and five men: my two brothers, James and Edward, the gaffer and two other men. There was no pay for that. I was a woman and that’s what was expected of women. I never questioned it. It’s just the way it was.
    We moved from farm to farm during the potato-picking season. Even though you’d think there was no end to a field, you’d always get there. Then you’d move on to the next job.
    They were the harshest of times, but somehow we always brought some fun into our lives. When you’re young you crave music and dancing, and at weekends that was what we sought out. You’d walk for miles to a local dance, and sometimes you’d be barely home when you’d have to get up again and go to work in the fields. We were all young, and you’re full of energy and game for any kind of adventure at that time of your life. We didn’t have much money for our own entertainment as whatever we earned was sent home to the island. We kept just enough for essential needs and a little bit for entertainment. It cost thruppence to get into the dances in those times. I only had a couple of shillings to spend in a week. I might spend some of it on a paper, but mostly I bought wee biscuits or sweets: I loved sweets at that time.
    God forgive me, but I remember how one time when the weekend came round I discovered that I hadn’t kept back enough money to go dancing. I couldn’t go to James and ask him for more money because I knew that he’d give me a telling off for spending my weekly ration. Instead, I sifted through his clothes and found sixpence in one of his pockets. So, God forgive me again, I stole the sixpence from him. James knew that his sixpence had gone missing, but he didn’t know who took it and I never told him. You’d get a lot for sixpence at that time. A loaf of bread would hardly cost you sixpence then. A box of matches was only a ha’penny.
    Throughout my late teens and into my 20s, that was the pattern of my life: leaving Owey for months at a time to work at the fish gutting or tattie howkin’. In his house on Owey a distant cousin of mine called Jim McGinty would often recite a poem he’d written about fish gutting in Lerwick:
    It’s the start of the summer and the boys going away
    To work at the turnips, the harvest and hay
    To go to the guttin’ I’d made up my mind
    Tho’ my