We’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns
September 2001
Wilma Thompson
How often have you heard someone say ‘We’re a Jock Tamsons bairns’, and wondered who Jock Tamson was? My great, great, great-grandfather John Thomson was an innkeeper in Usan, a small fishing village just south of Montrose, which although now derelict was in the 18th century famous for its lobsters, sending as many as 70,000 yearly to London.
John Thomson was born in 1787 and died in 1839. His wife, Margaret Ruxton, was a year older. The inn was a ‘well favored meeting place for fish teas and other refreshments by day trippers from Montrose’.
When Margaret died the license was withdrawn and the inn reverted to an ordinary dwelling house. The 1841 census returns list her as a vintner in Usan Village, but with no numbered house, whereas the return for 1851 records the address as number 10 Usan Village and Margaret as a public house keeper.
Along with the legends, three pewter whisky measures from the inn have been handed down the generations in my family and are now in my possession, given to me by my elderly aunt to whom I am indebted for much of our family history.
In the book The History of The Village of Ferryden by Andrew Douglas in 1855, the author in his foreword states, ” The whole has been revised, and, it is presumed, will now be found to be reliable to the minutest particular”. With that in mind I repeat the tale that is in his book: “The sarcasm – ‘He’s nae man ava, like Jock Tamsons wife’ has been uttered, we should say, wherever the voices of the working classes of Scotland have been heard. In Forfar and Fifeshire especially it is current verbiage and though it did not originate in Ferryden, it may properly find its place in this history, because the village of Usan, where John Thomson flourished, and where the following incident occurred, may be regarded as a portion of Ferryden, the two villages, viewed as fishing stations, being so near to each other and the pursuits, habits and manners of their populations being so nearly identical.
“John Thomson was one day, along with several piscatory brethern, finishing a sederunt in the public house which has for ages, until lately, driven a prosperous trade in Usan. His wife was impatient for his return, for he had been ‘lang a coming’ and, determined to break off his potations, she ushered herself into the room where he and his bottle companions were, and delivered herself of a burden of righteous indignation against her husband and the company, but failed to attract John to his home.
“After she retired an ominous silence brooded for a few moments around the table, but was effectually dispelled by this celebrated bull, uttered by the redoubtable John Thomson, ‘Drink awa’ lads, and never mind — my wife’s nae man ava’.”
No mention of Jock Tamson’s bairns here, but neither is it mentioned that he was the innkeeper and that his home was the adjoining room. An entry in the Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review of 9 December 1859 states: “Died at Usan on the 7th instant, Margaret Ruxton relict of the late John Thomson, Innkeeper, Usan, aged 73 years. Friends at a distance will please accept this intimation.”
I have been unable to find an entry at the time of John’s death in 1839 and since the census returns didn’t start until 1841 he is not in them either. I do know that they are both buried in Maryton churchyard alongside Margaret’s parents, David Ruxton and Isobel Cromey. David and Alexandrina, two of their 10 children, died young and are buried there also. The eight surviving children were Mary, Margaret, Annie, George, Jemima, Jean, another Alexandrina and Isabella. My family is descended from Isabella and her husband John Allan.
My family history tells the story of one of the Thomson girls being asked by a gauger on the lookout for smugglers where ‘so and so’ lived. She replied, ‘Naebody here o that name, we’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns’. Could it have been the daughter, not the father, who was the originator of the saying?
In the early 1900s D.H.Edwards wrote Among the Fisher folk of Usan and Ferryden and Around the Ancient City, which also contain the story.
“Many years ago there was an old fashioned hostelry in Usan, which was a favorite resort for Montrosians, and where, after a visit to the elephant rock, St Skeoch, and the Buddon, they were wont to indulge in fish dinners, tea, and speldings and something stronger.”
He goes on to recount my family tale, with minor alterations. It would appear that either the sayings were added to in the telling or each author decided which bits to use. Everyone agrees that Jock Tamson was something of a boozer, though.
A few people have told me the saying is much older and has its origins in Fife, but they have never given me any proof. It could be that it was ‘my’ John Tamson’s father who first said it and perhaps he came from Fife, but there is no proof.
George Paul Chalmers, the Scottish artist who was killed in a street accident in Edinburgh in 1878, painted three portraits for Mrs Thomson as a thankyou gift because of her ‘great kindness to a young and struggling artist’. One of these portraits was presented to Montrose Museum about 20 years ago, and is still there. One was sold in auction in Newcastle and one is in America. Who took the painting to America? The daughter named Jemima married a Mr Jones and went to Buffalo, New York, where she seems to have vanished.
Another daughter, Mary, married David Hunter and they had two children who also had two children until we come to James ‘Chisholm’ Hunter. Chisholm married either in America, or went to America already married, and had a daughter, Ouida May, who had two sons. Either of these families could be in possession of the portrait. Do any of these people know the story behind the paintings, or do they lie forgotten somewhere?
My Aunt Mary died in 1994 at the grand old age of 91,and many of the addresses of distant family members were lost.
Maybe some day I will have the time to root around in cemeteries and census returns and parish records, but until then, whether your name is Thomson or Allan or Hunter or Jones or Towns or Strachan or McLeod or…och there are too many to mention and what does it matter? For surely we’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns.
Wilma Thompson is a hotelier who writes articles and short stories for national magazines in her ‘spare’ time. Her best-selling novel is nowhere near completion.
This is an article from the September 2001 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.