Face behind the ballad of The Fornet
February 2007
John Bruce: Born in Oldmeldrum in 1816, Jock started his working life as a baker, setting up a business in George Street, Aberdeen.
by Jim Fiddes
Ae Martinmas term I gaed to the fair
To see the braw lasses and snuff the fresh air
I fee’d wi’ a mannie to ca’ his third pair
They ca’ him Jock Bruce o’ the Fornet.
When I gaed hame to this man Jock Bruce
He lives owre at Skene in a blue-sclated hoose
Sae keen in the fair, but he looket sae douce
When I gaed hame to the Fornet.
The ballad John Bruce o’ the Fornet, sometimes called John Bruce o’ the Corner, is one which is not often sung today. There is a 1930 recording of the great Willie Kemp singing it as well as a more recent version from the Elphinstone Institute by bothy ballad singer, Jock Duncan.
As bothy ballads go it is unusual in actually naming the farmer concerned, but thereafter follows a classic pattern by criticising the conditions of the place, for example, in describing the horses:“For they’re a’ cripple nags at the Fornet”. It then goes through the workforce one by one – gaffer, foreman, baillie and loon, even giving a description of Bruce’s daughter:
To the kirk ilka Sunday she wears a fite veil
And a yaird o’ her goon ahin her does trail
And her hair is tied up like my aul’ horses tail
To charm a the lads o’ the Fornet
Fornet is not far from Lyne of Skene and Skene House and the 1871 Census confirms that John Bruce, then aged 54, did indeed farm South Fornet, a farm of 210 acres employing six labourers and a boy. This was a reasonable sized holding and Bruce farmed it from 1870-1885 before retiring to live in Aberdeen.
Further investigation reveals that Bruce was more than a typical North-East farmer of the time. He was a controversial figure, well known throughout the area and beyond, ever willing to air his views and tackle the establishment.
Born in 1816, he was brought up in Oldmeldrum where his father was a baker. He also began life as a baker, setting up in business in George Street, Aberdeen. Before that he lived for a few years in London. In The Hungry Forties: Life under the bread tax, edited by Jane Unwin and published in 1904, he contributed a few pages describing the hardship he encountered in the 1830s as a journeyman baker in London.
“Every night the bakers had to begin work at 10 o’clock, and when the dough was made we had a mouthful of supper and then lay down on the bare boards, with a sack above us, for an hour until the dough was ready when we commenced and worked making bread and serving customers until seven or eight in the evening.”
Worn out by this, John Bruce returned to Aberdeen. Eventually, though, he gave up the bakery and became a tenant on the farm at Lightnot near Oldmeldrum where he farmed 120 acres and employed three labourers and a boy. At the same time he also held the agency of the Town & County Bank at Oldmeldrum. Subsequently he moved to the larger farm of South Fornet in the parish of Skene.
According to his obituary in the Aberdeen Free Press, “he received comparatively little education in his early life, but by study and self-improvement he had come to be an exceedingly well-informed man, familiar with much that is best in literature, and keenly interested in the history of all great reforms”.
All his life John Bruce seems to have been involved in radical politics – Chartism, Free Trade and later issues connected with rural affairs. In The Hungry Forties, written when he was in his 88th year, he again rails against the power and privilege of the aristocracy in his early days, when they were allowed free postage on their own and their friends letters and correspondence, to the extent that “their women-folk were sending their lap dogs and fancy birds through the post free, when after a while a new postmaster put an end to it”.
This anti-aristocracy line was echoed in 1887 when Bruce attracted controversy at the Mar Agricultural Association as chairman of the show dinner. Letters appeared criticising him for attacking “in a very wanton and insolent way, absent members”. What happened was that the parish minister proposed a toast to the ‘proprietors of the district’. Bruce replied that as there were no landlords present he would say a few words on their behalf. He began, to laughter, “How hath the mighty fallen. Time was, as you can all remember, when the chair at the Mar Agricultural Show dinner was filled either by a lord, a laird, or a baronet, while today the gap has had to be filled by the poor, distressed individual now before you”.
He went on to criticise the lairds for not doing more to help the tenants in the depressed times on the land. A few reduced rents but, “there are not a few landlords who may be seen driving to and from the church on the sabbath day, who refuse to grant their suffering tenantry any redress whatever, and trust to landlord-made laws backing up their cruel behests”.
It is reported that this was actually one of the most moderate speeches made by Mr. Bruce. Nevertheless it was radical for the time, although the Mar Association voted 15-3 to approve Bruce’s remarks.
John Bruce was an ardent campaigner and this included speeches, rallies and letter writing. His obituary says that he was constantly in demand for meetings and conferences and was one of the leaders of the great rally held in the Music Hall at the formation of the Farmers Alliance. Prior to taking the farm at Fornet he had campaigned against the game laws, but it was when he moved to Fornet that he really became known for his views, being one of the founders of the Scottish Farmers’ Alliance. For many years he was also a member of the Skene School Board. He was a regular contributor to the Aberdeen Free Press, even after he retired from farm life and moved to Great Western Road in Aberdeen.
His mind remained active until he was nearly 90, when he wrote of events in his early life, and described the celebrations that took place in Aberdeen after the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832.
“On the morning of the great procession held in Aberdeen, extending one and a half miles in length, I and two other young men rose at one o’clock in the morning and travelled to Aberdeen from Oldmeldrum, and took our places in the procession.”
This shows remarkable political awareness and enthusiasm given that he was only in his teens.
At the time of his diamond wedding anniversary in 1898 the press notice states, “Mr Bruce still takes an active interest in politics, and everything that tends to the improvement of the condition of the people”.
In 1900, when aged 84, he addressed a meeting of the Aberdeen Trades Council in the Trade Hall, Belmont Street, on the subject of farm and domestic servants. He criticised the fact that crofters had been driven from the land and a stampede to the town had begun.
“The country is losing the cream of its population. So long as our industrial and commercial enterprises kept advancing, our political guides gave themselves little or no concern about the depopulation of the country districts.”
His obituary in the Aberdeen Journal ends “Mr Bruce was a man of wide sympathies, and if occasionally he was somewhat impetuous in manner, he was warm-hearted and kindly, and up to the end of his life maintained those independent and original characteristics which made him so conspicuous a figure in the public life of the community.”
George Walker, local author, bookseller and baillie in the city of Aberdeen, was a cousin of Bruce and gives a more personal and controversial view of the man known throughout the North-East at the time as ‘Fornet’. In Walker’s hand-written notebooks, held by Aberdeen Central Library, he writes: “I suppose no farmer in the country was better known for his quarrelsome temper than he was; in this respect he was his father’s child. His penchant for writing letters he derived from my aunt, his mother.”
Then later: “My cousin Johnie Bruce has always been a fikey, fidgety and knattery men and therefore most difficult to deal with both in his business connections and in his family relations. What a blessing to all it is that he can blow off steam by a ‘letter to the editor’; but for that safety valve he must have exploded!”
This temper is echoed in the last verse of the ballad:
The hairst bein’ dune, and the weather bein’ bad
We were a’ turned oot wi’ a pick and a spad
He tore aff his jacket, the aul nickum gaed mad,
Hurrah for John Bruce o’ the Fornet
Willie Kemp’s recorded version actually has the last line as:
and he danced and he raved at the Fornet.
Walker goes on to say: “He died in December 1905 with no friend or relative to tend him. His wife separated herself from him for a year or two, but rejoined him in his illness and died in his house some years before him. All his numerous children had either left him or were driven out when they got situations or were married.
“His bad temper seems to me to have been inherited from his father, his gift of facile expression from his mother, my aunt. Almost all the Moir family, but especially the females, had a bit of genius in them.”
In truth his family were well scattered, with four sons in America, one in France, a daughter in New Zealand and the rest of his family in Britain, but none in the North-East.
No doubt Walker had his own family reasons for his views on John Bruce, but Bruce does seem to have had a temper. Equally, he did care about he conditions of working people, especially those on the land.So there we have Jock Bruce of the Fornet. A fiery, independent, self-opinionated man, perhaps, but one who cared about social issues and the condition of the rural areas. Like another strong-willed farmer in Sunset Song, he was not afraid to criticise the lairds and landed aristocracy. He deserves to be remembered and not just in song.
Aberdonian Jim Fiddes studied History at Aberdeen University. Librarian for Gray’s School of Art & Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, chairman of Skene Heritage Soc., Secretary of Aberdeen Town & County History Soc. He has written a history of Gray’s, a history of Pitfodels and Garthdee, and is writing a history of the Scott Sutherland School for this year’s anniversary.
This is an article from the February 2007 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.