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The Autobiography of Samuel Laing of Papdale 1780-1868
 | Price: £16.95 Supplier: Bellavista Publications |
Samuel Laing's autobiography is in the Orkney archives. It was written for his children, Samuel and Mary and is an entertaining account of his experiences in the Peninsular War, his travels in Europe and the establishment of the herring fishery in Stronsay. He also gossips about contemporaries and relatives.
Dr Fereday has added useful footnotes to the autobiography and supplied an extensive biography on this interesting man who was very active in public life in Orkney and wrote well-received books on his travels in Europe. He was a man of strong views, who led a long and active life and this is a very readable, informative book.
Hardback, 328 pages with 17 illustrations and 15 maps
ISBN 095253505X
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There was something very primitive in the way of living and arrangement of the family in those days - very different from the present. We lived in that house in Kirkwall a little below the broad street which is distinguished by two or three middling sized Plane Trees, which were planted by my father and are almost the only trees in the country. In the kitchen there were twelve or fourteen maidservants at their spinning wheels singing, one or two cooking and scolding two or three gossips or sweethearts and some beggar or idiot at the chimney corner earning perhaps a handful of meal by turning the spit. The roof was hung with smoked geese and black puddings. David Bews, a kind of house steward had a store cellar adjoining the kitchen in which the meal, the salt meat tubs (for in those days fifteen or sixteen head of cattle were killed and salted in November for the provision of the family during winter), the salt, oil and all the other stores and necessaries for a twelve-month were deposited. My father had also a writing room on the ground floor where he generally sat and, with his clerk Samuel Murray, accounted with the tenants; and enjoyed himself occasionally of an evening over a bottle of ale with any of the Tacksmen from the North Isles. Above stairs things were more like what they are at the present day. There was a good dining room and drawing room and one or two good bedrooms; good linen, good furniture, a great abundance of silver plate (principally what had belonged to my uncle Malcolm in Jamaica), and books and dirt and a mixture of waste and economy which may easily be conceived in such a kind of housekeeping, and perhaps it could not have been otherwise with such servants and in those days. The kitchen was of course my favourite haunt, until the sailing in boats, the wanderings over the hills in search of nests and other amusements of the big boy, superseded the stories and songs and gossip of the kitchen.
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