A Village that won't Grow Up!
by H.V. Morton
The Daily Herald, Thursday Nov 26, 1931, page 6.
From Kilbarchan
When Dr. Johnson ate his first plate of Scotch broth he made one of those simple statements which Boswell recorded with such solemnity:-
"I don't care," said the doctor, "How soon I eat it again."
I feel much the same about the village of Kilbarchan, just beyond Paisley. I don't care how soon I see it again, or how often, for it is a real fragment of an old Scotland that is rapidly vanishing.
How Kilbarchan has managed to retain an 18th century point of view within a few minutes of tramcars that go to Glasgow is strange, but not surprising when you realise that it is the last stronghold of hand-loom weaving in Scotland.
There is nothing more conservative than a hand-loom. The very sound of it as the shuttle clacks backward and forward takes the mind back to a world that vanished in steam.
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| "The weavers are old people . . . they have resisted the modern World." Source: The Daily Herald, Nov 26, 1931, p.6 |
Fifty years ago [1881] there were 800 hand-looms working in Kilbarchan but to-day there are only 20. These are engaged only in making hand-woven clan tartans for those Highland chiefs who would scorn to wear a machine-made kilt.
So Kilbarchan is the last vestige of that great weaving industry round Glasgow and Paisley which, deserted a generation ago by the young men, gravitated south into Lancashire.
* * *
The weavers are all old people with the exception of the "baby" of Kilbarchan, William Meikle, who is fifty! In a few years' time loom after loom will become silent and a great and historic industry will be dead. There are no young people to follow on.
"Aye, it's a tragedy," said William Meikle, "for there's no other trade like weaving where a man can make his ain money in his ain hame and sit at the loom watching the flowers in his garden . . . "
The strange thing about William Meikle is that he has learnt this difficult art of tartan weaving since the war. When he came out of the army - he served with the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders - he decided to go back to the trade of his fathers. To-day he is the only man in Scotland - probably in the world - who can weave two clan tartan at once.
These are travelling rugs.
On one side is the husband's tartan, on the other the wife's. I watched him at work on a rug of Grant tartan, the reverse side of which was a MacLean. It was an extraordinarily complicated process:
"How on earth do you do it?" I asked.
"Well, my eye's on the MacLean and my mind's on the Grant."
This is probably the most difficult hand-loom job a man could tackle.
It seems to me a tragedy that this industry should be permitted to expire, as it must in a few years' time. There is a market for every yard of cloth turned out in Kilbarchan, and I believe that if some of the Scottish nationalists - who do not yet seem quite sure of their intentions - took an interest in this purely Scottish craft something might be done to save it.
* * *
At the moment the weavers of Kilbarchan are all under contract to supply a firm of Glasgow clothmakers with hand-woven tartan. They receive the dyed wool free of cost and they merely weave the cloth, for which they receive what would seem to be the rather inadequate price of 1s. a yard. Hand-woven tartan costs anything from 15s. to 20s. a yard.
But the weavers, like most craftsmen, are hopelessly impractical. Not one weaver in Kilbarchan knows where the raw materials come from or how much they cost. No business brain has ever arisen among them fired with the ambition to put this ancient industry on its feet. And nothing would appear to be easier, given a small capital.
They want a showroom in Glasgow or Edinburgh and a weaving school in Kilbarchan. Surely if the young people could be promised decent wages at the hand-looms they would return to the craft of their forefathers.
There was never a time when clan sentiment was stronger all over the world. More tartan is being worn to-day in Scotland than ever before. It seems wrong that the art of hand-woven tartan should die in Scotland, just because no one takes more than a purely commercial interest in the last weavers of Kilbarchan.
* * *
"It's a strange place," said Mrs John Borland. "A girl from the next town who marries a Kilbarchan man is an incomer all the days of her life. And if a Kilbarchan girl goes away to be married they never call her by her husband's name if she comes back on a visit. She may be Mrs Blake, but we say, 'Oh, there's Janet Muir back again . . . ' "
The weavers of Kilbarchan have resisted the modern world - represented by Glasgow. I heard from the lips of William Meikle a diatribe on cities that would have delighted anyone who believes that the strength of a nation is not in its great cosmopolitan centres, but in its small towns and villages.
"The cities just suck all the good out of the little places," said William Meikle. "I mind the day when we could call on 20 performers at a concert here, all local people, singers and reciters and such. But now I doubt if we could find one.
"The young boys and girls think only of going to dances and pictures in Paisley or Glasgow. And it's so easy, with the trams at the bottom of the hill. Kilbarchan's not good enough for the young people. They work outside, they play outside, and they come home just to sleep. I think we were better in the old days, when we were proud of belonging to our own little town . . . "
And William Meikle banged his fist on the table.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
A Village that won't Grow Up! by H.V. Morton The Daily Herald, Thursday Nov 26, 1931, page 6. [sourced via Find My Past website]
