That old Scottish Tradition

Hallowe'en cards are not something sent by people in Australia today, and I don't know if they ever were fashionable in either Australia or New Zealand, but I thought I would look up a few newspaper articles published in the past about this old Scottish tradition.  Older Australians are often scathing of the way Halloween has become commercialized, primarily under American influence, but they may not know much about the Scottish origins of the celebration. 

My grandmother Mona Forbes was born in Christchurch New Zealand  and never traveled to Scotland, but both her father Charles Forbes and her mother's parents Charles Young and Jane Paterson were Scots emigrants from the district of Glenmuick in Aberdeenshire. I know that Charles Forbes was a member of the Scottish Society and no doubt Mona was well-versed in all things Scottish. Here is a report of the Halloween festival held in Christchurch in 1909, published in the Star on 1 November 1909, when Mona would have been 12 years old. You can see a photograph of young Mona here.

This and the other articles included here are courtesy of Papers Past, the excellent web site created by the National Library of New Zealand

  Next comes a transcription of  most of a report on the Scottish Society's Hallowe'en gathering in 1912, when Mona would have been aged 15 and was a pupil of Miss or Mrs Macdonald. It's very likely that she would have been one of the juveniles mentioned in the report.  

Star 1 November 1912

HALLOWEEN

The Children's Day

 "There was a great gathering of children and young people at the Scottish Society's rooms last night to celebrate the Scottish festival of Hallowe'en.  The celebration was not this year in strict accordance with Scottish custom, but  an entertainment was provided perhaps more pleasing to the Colonial boy and girl than the old-fashioned way. Chief Mackintosh was "father of the house" for the night, and while he allowed fun to run riot, and the young people had plenty of it, never let go his hold on discipline and the command "Silence" was obeyed on the instant. In the course of the evening it was announced that 250 boxes of heather had been received from Scotland, one parcel especially from a school in Jedburgh had arrived that day. A parcel sent by the same school last year also reached Christchurch on Hallowe'en.  The sprigs in the Jedburgh parcel were distributed amongst the elder children, who are expected to write to the senders acknowledging the sprigs and exchanging greetings. The programme provided by the Hallowe'en Committee, comprised a grand march and reel o' Tulloch by the Society's juveniles, under Mrs Bessie Macdonald; a song, "Sound the Pibroch, " by Master Douglas Martin, a fine effort for the boy's years; an action song by the infant class of the East Christchurch School, under Miss Menzies, with Miss Walker at the piano; a topical song by the boys of St Albans School, under Mr R Malcolm; sailor' hornpipe by Miss Fairbairn  and the misses Pirrie (3); "The Hat Brigade", by the boys of East Christchurch School; ... and the "Flowers of Edinburgh" by the juvenile dancers. The children were given light refreshments and each received the customary bag of sweets."

It seems quite amazing that that boxes of heather had been sent all the way to New Zealand. They must have taken quite a while to arrive so it was certainly lucky that they arrived just in time for Hallowe'en,

Here is an announcement from the Star for the same event the following year:  

Star, 1 November 1913

I didn't find a report of the 1913 Halloween event after it took place, but here is another report just two weeks later, again from the Star newspaper, including a particular mention of Miss Mona Forbes' performance of  the Highland Fling in the last paragraph. The Scottish Society certainly seems to have been an active group!

Star, 14 November 1913

                            One more, this time  from the Star in 1918:

None of these old articles mention any dressing up or trick or treating, which seems to be the main feature of Halloween these days but it was clearly a fun event all the same, with the children receiving treats at the end of the evening. 

Here are a couple of photos of Mona's Australian great grandchildren dressed up for a school Halloween celebration in the early 1990s, followed by a very recent one of Mona's great great granddaughter Lucy all ready for her childcare party. 

Lucy, daughter of Wonderwoman above, looks a little bewildered about exactly why she is wearing this cat costume!

Another great great granddaughter, Eloise who lives in Canda, was a very cute turtle.

Finally just for fun, here is a photo of some very cute dolls all lined up and ready to welcome young  Halloween visitors. Their owner Rosie Saw is a very clever lady who makes and sells handmade dolls clothes and patterns. Anyone interested can check out her pattern web site here. 

Now for more blogs on Halloween fun, check out Sepia Saturday 

Today and tomorrow

It's April Fool's Day today and the prompt photograph is appropriate, as the photographer has been very clever here on the beach at Collaroy, a beach we visited a few times when we lived in Sydney. My beach photograph is nowhere near as tricky, but being buried up to the neck was always good fun, so long as you weren't too close to the water line and had someone ready to dig you out. Our youngest child Laura, who must have been about 3 in this photograph, looks like she is planning to water these strange beach plants. I'm not sure of the beach but it was probably on the Central Coast north of Sydney.

That is my contribution to Sepia Saturday #361.

Now to change the subject more or less completely: My grandparents John Morrison 29 and Mona Mary Forbes 22 were married the day after April Fool's Day, on Wednesday 2 April 1919 at 218 Colombo St Christchurch NZ, the home of Mona's parents Charles and Jane Isabella Forbes.

                         
                                   John and Mona on their                                                wedding day.

Here they are a few years later with their first two children Pat and Ken, possibly at or near Leithfield beach, a favourite place to go for a picnic day out.

                                
 Some 35 years later in March 1961 they came to Australia for a visit and are pictured here at Palm Beach Sydney, a few beaches north of Collaroy where the Green brothers were photographed playing tricks. Mona was about my age in this photograph, and just a bit too old to play tricks on the beach, although I'm sure Jack had played his fair share of them in his time. How looks and fashions have changed!

    Eight years later Mona and Jack celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary at home in Christchurch on 2 April 1969. 

Tomorrow 2 April 2017 will be the 98th anniversary of the wedding of Mona and Jack, who by my count now have 45 direct descendants. Mona passed away in February 1972 and Jack followed in May 1977. 

 Happy Anniversary, dear Nan and Granddad!

ps. Coincidentally we attended a wedding picnic on 1 April last year for a nephew and his bride. It was a very happy and enjoyable day and the program of events unfolded just like a real wedding, with the groom's sisters acting as marriage celebrant and assistant, but the official ceremony had in fact taken place about 2 weeks earlier in the United Kingdom where the couple currently reside. I don't know if there was any significance to the date chosen, but I believe some of the guests were not initially aware that this was actually a post-wedding celebration for Australian family and friends.

Mona and her beloved cat

This week's prompt photograph shows a girl, a dog and a lady who could perhaps be her mother or her grandmother.

We've had pets as a topic previously and I posted the photo below then, but I feel it's worthwhile showing it again because it is a good match, despite the animal being a cat rather than a dog and there being no lady with the girl in my photograph, who is my grandmother Mona Forbes. She was 9 years old so the photograph must have been taken around 1906. It's the only photograph I have of her as a child. Mona was in her mid-fifties by the time I was born, and I did not know her very well because we left the country when I was 3 and she died before I was 20. I really wish Mona's mother Jane Isabella had been standing there with her as in the prompt photograph, as I have very few photographs of her either, and none of her as a young woman.

I mentioned in my post last week that Mona attended the School of Art in Christchurch New Zealand but did not include any of examples of her work, so linking back to that theme, here is a photo of a drawing Mona did whilst a student at the school in 1913.

 It would be nice to think that the subject might have been Mona's older brother John Middleton Forbes, aka Jack, in contemplative mode, before he embarked for service with the Royal Engineers Unit of the NZ Expeditionary Force in 1914, but I cannot be sure of that. It may simply have been a drawing from a life model posing at the art school. I've found a couple of photographs on the Christchurch City Libraries web site, showing art classes taking place at the school in 1910, just a few years before Mona studied there. The class looks to be quite crowded, and according to the web site the school had an enrolment of some 400 students.

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/photos/disc9/IMG0024.asp

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/photos/disc9/img0025.asp

Mona did not continue with her art because following her marriage to John Morrison in 1921 she became very busy looking after their six children, but son Graeme inherited Mona's artistic talent and went on to become a commercial artist. It was also Graeme who was responsible for bringing home various stray animals that the family adopted as pets, even including an ex-racehorse at one stage, which famously broke free and headed straight for familiar ground at the nearby Addington racecourse.


For more blogs on various topics that possibly include children, pets, ladies, fancy hats and perhaps even fences, visit Sepia Saturday #357

Spirits of our past

No double exposures or ghostly images from me, but I have interpreted the above photographs as showing people from the past watching over others. I like to think that our ancestors do that in some unknown way, and so here is a collage showing my daughters, granddaughter and myself surrounded by some of our female ancestors. Although they are gone they are always with us, in the sense that there's a little bit of all of them in all of us.

Top row: Jane Young nee Patterson, Mary Anne Hays Byles nee Bills

Middle: Mona Morrison nee Forbes, Jean Cruickshank nee Morrison, Jo Featherston nee Cruickshank, Laura D nee Featherston, Claire K nee Featherston, Isabelle K, Charlotte Cruickshank nee Joss, Elin Cruickshank nee Hickey

Bottom row: Jane Isabella Forbes nee Young, Myrtle Cruickshank nee Byles

Jane Young and Charlotte Cruickshank were just two of Isabelle's thirty-two 4x great grandmothers. 

For more interpretations of this week's prompt photographs, click here and you'll be spirited away to Sepia Saturday #304.


Postscript:

Here's a re-do of my collage, including 3 more ancestors. Bottom right is Janet Cruickshank nee Mackie, 5x GGM to Isabelle, at top right is Mary Forbes/Paterson nee Anderson, 4x GGM and in the middle row at far right is Mary Bridget Morrison/Morrissey nee McNamara, 3x GGM. I've also replaced the older photograph of Jane Isabella Forbes with a beautiful photograph of her as a young woman, at top left.

Leithfield beach: a family day out

It seems to be agreed that this Irish mother and son were filling the sack with sand, although we don't know what for, or how they would have managed to carriy it away, unless perhaps they were able to drag it to a waiting cart nearby. If it had been kelp they were gathering, that would have been much easier to carry home and use on the garden as fertiliser and mulch, but they may not have had a garden.

My Morrison family in New Zealand enjoyed going to the beach for a day out, specifically to Leithfield Beach, on the east coast, a little to the north of Christchurch. These days on modern highways Leithfield is only about a 45 minute drive from where they lived in Aylmer St Sydenham, but back in the 1920s the cars and roads were not so flash and no doubt the trip took considerably longer. There were closer city beaches such as Brighton and Sumner, but Mona and Jack Morrison seem to have favoured Leithfield, possibly because both Mona's maternal grandparents and her paternal grandmother lived up that way, in Kaiapoi, so she may have known the beach as a child. Her father's half sister Mary Shaw lived at Leithfield with her husband David and their large brood. The Shaw children would have been Mona's half cousins on one side, and her second cousins on the other, but I won't go into that here!  

                               

Here 's Jack posing proudly in front of the new car he purchased in 1926, with his son Ken on the running board, ready to drive to the beach for what may well have been the car's first outing.

After winding through the countryside and down the hill to the beach, Ken and his big sister Pat were no doubt keen to kick their shoes off and play in the grey sand with their bucket and spades.

Either before or after the children played on the beach, they enjoyed the attractions of the nearby playground. Here they are with Jack, perching on a seesaw, and it looks like there's a double or maybe triple slippery dip in the background.

 Mona and the children on a family-sized swing, which I am told is still there today

Someone else must have been present to take this family shot on the seesaw again. Both Mona and Jack remain quite formally attired, in a dress and a three piece suit with tie. No casual beachwear for them!

I'm not sure what Pat and Ken are up to here, but whatever it is, they look very interested!  From the sign in the background, it seems Mona and Jack would have been able to enjoy a nice hot cup of tea with the picnic lunch they had no doubt brought from home for their day out, the first of many over the years in their family car that would eventually accommodate all six children. Mona might have made bacon and egg pie, a great picnic staple and a tradition that has carried on down the generations. I know it was one of Jack's favourite dishes, but in his opinion it had to be accompanied by tomato sauce!

Moving on to February 1956, and here are my parents Jean and Ian Cruickshank with yours truly, relaxing after a swim at nearby Waikuku Beach. This was probably the last time my parents would go there, as we left NZ for Australia just a couple of months later, in April that year. My baby brother would have been about 5 months old, but as there's no sign of him, so perhaps he was left at home with grandparents Mona and Jack.

I took the following photograph of nearby Pines Beach in 2006.  It doesn't look too bad here although I think these beaches are all fairly isolated and windswept, and the sand is rather gritty, at least in comparison with most Australian beaches, but my mother still retained fond memories of her beach days in NZ. I don't remember them, but then I was only three, and at least I have the photos.

For more photos of sandy beach goers, just pick up your buckets and spades and go fossicking at

 Sepia Saturday 228.