Hughie, talking about his parents’ home in Inverness: The only job that I ever did, and it would be kind of a crazy job [today] — see, there were sixty-five windows in the house. And there was I forget how many storm windows.

Dave: Sixty-five storm windows!

Hughie: But imagine going up on a ladder. And I did all that.

Dave: This would be like a wood-framed window, as large as the house window.

Bruce: With one big sheet of glass.

Dave: Or it might have grids in it. Probably it did back then. There’d be the panes and you’d have to put them in with glazing compound. But the thing would be the size of the regular window, so it would weigh a ton.

You remember the Brothers’ place in Alfred? We had those kinds of windows, and at the hardware store you’d get a set of nails with a big wide head. And every two nails would have the same number on them, like “17″ or “18.” And you’d put one nail on the window, and one nail on the storm window, because sometimes it wouldn’t fit…. I remember that because this was a real old place.

(The window in the photo is an example of the old-fashioned storm window.)

Hughie: It was a hell of a job one time. We used to take the storm windows down and put them in the garage. My brother John, he went in and he had a target, he put it over there, and he broke twelve.

Bruce: What was he shooting?

Hughie: He was just trying to practice with a rifle. I had to get six panes [of glass] from Cheticamp, from L.D.’s.

Bruce: All the glass that they had! One summer, didn’t you fix windows at home? Like buy a gallon of glazing compound and replace all the glazing in the windows, especially on the side?

Hughie: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was easier on the front, because of the roof on the little verandah. The other ones there, you’d have to get the ladder, the double ladder.

Dave: And the window would be heavy!

Hughie: Ohhhh, yeah.

Bruce: I wouldn’t want to do that.

Hughie: After a while, we started letting a window or two stay up there. That was just as good, because the goddamned place was cold anyway. Even if we had windows and storm windows on every window, it was still cold.

There was Duncan MacNeil, right across the street from us, he came over. Duncan had kind of a queer limp, you know. Going up on the ladder, and my father came home and saw that. He gave me a going over, “Don’t let that man go up that ladder!”

Dave: When did they move into that house?

Hughie: Our house? Wait now… I was about 12 years old.

Dave: So, 1925 or so.

Hughie: Yeah, ’24 was when they moved down there.

Dave: You said one time you didn’t think of that as your house, but wherever they lived before. Where were you before?

Hughie: Oh, where did we live? Do you know where my dad’s store was? Well, right down that row of houses. We lived in one of them. You wondered how in hell they could ever — with my grandmother, somebody else, and a maid, and all those goddamned kids…

Dave: That was MacIsaac Street, was it?

Hughie: No, no. On the other side, right across the street [across Central Avenue]. My grandmother, after my grandfather died, she came back down. She didn’t go to church, you know. She was Catholic, of course. My grandfather, Hughie, he was the Protestant, like my dad.

My grandmother was with us, and we had a maid, and at least seven kids. You’d wonder where in the hell they would all fit.

Just think in the wintertime when you had to go…they had a coal house, and a shithouse. And that’s where you’d go. And every time I think of — Pa would be taking the toilet paper from the store.

One woman wrote to Eaton’s wanting to get toilet paper. And they wrote her back and they said get the catalog and get the number and everything. So she wrote back and said “If I had the catalog, I wouldn’t need it.”

Dave: Was there central heat in the new house?

Hughie: According to what room you where in. Holy Christ, they had a little stove, and out in the kitchen the stove. They didn’t have a furnace, there wasn’t a furnace at that time.

Bruce: That big house wouldn’t have a furnace?

Hughie: We had to get a new one right away — you’d get more heat with a match. With all those windows and no insulation.

I often wondered, tried to figure out after my grandfather died — Grandma came down to live with us. I think it was either six or seven, six kids, and my grandmother, and a maid — in a two bedroom house.

Dave: The maid probably slept in the kitchen.

Hughie: God only knows. I’ll never forget when my grandfather died. My grandmother came out and she stood at the casket, you now, and said the rosary. I don’t think she said it from the time she got married because Grandpa was a real Protestant. And Grandma with no reading or writing. She could talk English and talk Gaelic but that was all.

I don’t know, before we went to sleep they must have given us something so we’d sleep and hung us up on hooks. I don’t know in the name of God — think there were three bedrooms, three small bedrooms.

Dave: So you and Dannie and Roddie and Johnnie…

Hughie: There was myself, and Johnnie, and Danny… and then the girls were Cassie, Mary, Sadie, they were home in the Red Rows.

They must have hung us up on a hook or something. There was nothing but I think it was three bedrooms and a hallway.

My father, he bought that house, the one with all the windows in it, four thousand dollars. Everybody in Inverness thought Pa was a millionaire to pay four thousand dollars for a home.

• Dave, Bruce: two of Hughie Ferguson’s sons
• Hughie Ferguson’s parents: Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall
• The Brothers’ place: a school in Alfred, Maine, run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction
• “My grandfather, Hughie”: Hugh Ferguson (1856 – 1926), father of Mattie Ferguson
• My grandmother: Catherine MacIsaac (died 1936, aged 90)
• The Red Rows were rows of small, duplex houses in Inverness, most of them originally owned by the coal mine, and most painted red. I was nearly an adult before I learned it was “Red Rows” and not “Red Rose” like the tea. — Dave

My cousin Frank once wrote about a report issued in Scotland that projected that in the future everyone in the world would be named Macdonald or descended from a Macdonald. “In other words,” Frank wrote, “they’re predicting the best of all possible worlds.”

That world just came much closer.

On my mother’s side of the family, the Macdonald connection is clear. And if anyone were uncertain about it, the spirit of Jack D would likely appear to set things straight.

On my father’s side of the family, though, I’d known about MacDougals and MacIsaacs and MacFarlanes. Then, just a few weeks ago, I came across a family genealogy posted by a Donald MacFarlane.

The extensive family tree he’s created shows, first of all, that he has a connection to Mrs. Mattie (born around 1890). Her parents were John MacDougall (born around 1870) and Catherine MacLennan (born around 1870).

And Catherine’s parents were Roderick MacLennan (born around 1850) and Catherine MacFarlane (born before 1847).

The significance is that Catherine MacFarlane (Hughie Ferguson’s great-grandmother), according to Donald MacFarlane’s website, is a direct descendant of Ranald MacDonald (1352 – 1389), the son of John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles. Ranald is the namesake of the MacDonalds of Clanranald.

Ranald’s father was John, Lord of the Isles; John’s father was Angus Og MacDonald; Angus Og’s father was Angus Mor MacDonald.

And Angus Mor’s father was Donald, son of Ranald, who in turn was the son of Sorley (or Somhairle, or Somerled). Even that Trump guy would have to concede that this is THE Donald of all Donalds.

That Donald (1190 – 1269) is the namesake for all of Clan Donald.

If all this research is right — and you can’t always be sure they kept meticulous records three hundred years before Columbus — then it’s 21 generations from the father of all MacDonalds to Mrs. Mattie.

Frank: Frank Macdonald, son of Freddie Macdonald and Catherine Gillies
My mother: Greet Macdonald, daughter of Jack D Macdonald and Annie Belle Rankin
Mattie: Mattie Ferguson, father of Hughie Ferguson
Mrs. Mattie: Sarah MacDougall, wife of Mattie Ferguson
John MacDougall: father of Sarah MacDougall
Catherine MacLennan: wife of John MacDougall, mother of Sarah MacDougall
Roderick MacLennan: father of Catherine MacLennan
Catherine MacFarlane: wife of Roderick MacLennan, mother of Catherine MacLennan

To visit Donald MacFarlane’s genealogy site, click here.

One of the things I remember about Inverness was the times we spent on vacation there. Mom and Dad would farm out the five kids to various relatives so that we wouldn’t be such a burden to one family. John would stay with uncle Danny, Art would stay with uncle Roddie, Dave would stay with someone else(?) and Anne Marie would stay with aunt Billie. I spilt my time between aunt Billie’s with mom or with dad at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

As a young child, I was fascinated with the idea that the hot water heater was connected with the stove. Aunt Sadie would be up early to fire up the stove for breakfast. After breakfast, there would be enough hot water to do the dishes, do the laundry and begin to prepare for supper. She would roll out the wringer washer and do the laundry in the kitchen. She would utilize her time during loads to bake the world’s greatest sugar cookies! The laundry would then be hung out on the line. (It was summertime and it wouldn’t take long to dry. During the winter it would be hung in the attic.)

After supper, which would include vegetables, gravy, meat, rolls, and etc., the entire kitchen would be cleaned up and everything put away. Then the hot water would be turned off. Dinner would consist of biscuits, cookies, fruit, cheese and whatever happened to left over.

As a kid, not having to take a bath at the end of a long summer day was something I was not used to.

• Mom and Dad: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
• John, Art, Dave, Anne Marie: Hughie and Greet’s kids
• Aunt Billie: Greet’s sister
• Aunt Sadie: Hughie’s sister
  
• Uncle Danny: Hughie’s brother
• Uncle Roddy: Hughie’s brother
• Grandma and Grandpa: Hughie’s parents, Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall

Le Aonghas Mac ‘ill Fhaolain / by Angus Y MacLellan

Thig a nall ‘s thoir dhomh do làmh
Ann ad ghluasad na biodh dàil,
Chum ‘s gun innsinn ann an dàn
Meud a’ ghàidh thug mi do Mhattie.

Come on over, take my hand
Don’t delay in coming,
So that I can tell you my song
How great is my regard for Mattie

Bha mi’n dè ‘s a’bhaile shìos
Thainig sid’ nach robh gum’ mhiann,
Gaoth a’ sèideadh trom ‘on Iar
‘S frasan lionmhor tighinn gu talamh.

Yesterday I was downtown
When unpleasant weather arose,
The wind blew hard from the West
With frequent showers falling.

Dhèonaich mise anns an am
Ionnsaidh thorit air tighinn a nall,
Ged a dh’fhiach cha deachaidh leam
Leis cho trom ‘s a bha a’ghaillionn.

It was then I wanted to
Try to come over,
Even though I was unsuccessful
Because the storm was so fierce.

Sin nuair thainig caraid ghaoil
A thuirt rium am briasthran caomh;
“Seo mo charbad ‘s bheir e saor
Thu an taobh a tha do dhachaidh.”

Then came my dear friend
Who said to me in kind words:
“Here’s my car for free
To take you homeward.”

Se MacFhearghuis grìnn a bh’ann
Bha cho caoimhneil rium ‘san am
Iarmad uaislean gun mheang
A bha thall an Tir nam Beannaibh.

It was the fine Ferguson
Who was so kind to me right then,
The descendant of true gentlemen
Who once lived in the Land of the Mountains.

Beannachd leat is seo mo làmh
Ge b’e dè tha dhomh an dàn,
Gum bi cuimhn’ agam gu bràth
Air cho càirdeil ‘sa bha Mattie.

Fare thee well and here’s my hand
Whatever might lie in store for me,
I will forever remember
Mattie’s great generosity.

Angus Y MacLellan was keeper of the lighthouse on Margaree Island, and a contemporary of Mattie Ferguson. He wrote many songs and poems in Gaelic, including ‘S E ‘m Bèth aig Matà a Fhearr.

This is the poem mentioned in the story of Mattie Ferguson and Angus Y (also here at Cousin Agam Fhèin).

David: Do you remember your grandparents?

Hughie: My grandfather was Hughie.

Greet: And his grandmother lived with them after the grandfather died. She couldn’t speak English.

Hughie: With the Gaelic, oh, yeah. They did a lot of talking about it.

David: What did he do?

Hughie: He was a coal miner… You’re darn right it was hard work, and the pay was poor, but I guess they were satisfied with it.

Greet: They only had two children, eh?

Hughie: Yeah, Pa and Uncle Dan.

Greet: And nobody ever saw Uncle Dan.

Hughie: No, after he left home, he never came back. He was about 20 or 21. Grandpa Ferguson told him he’d have to smarten up. “Why don’t you do like Mattie?”

Danny drank and Pa never had a drink. So Danny left.

They start hearing from his writing to Grandma once a month. And it wasn’t very much news, but Pa was very glad to have it. To say “we were over to see Sandy Ferguson” or something like that, living out in California where he was.

February 26, 2006

Very young in life, I unfortunately contracted polio. As a result I was required to be tied down in bed or sitting in a chair so as not to put any strain on my leg.

My grandfather, Mattie Ferguson, and my uncle, Danny Ferguson, would come from the store frequently and bring me balls of string to unravel to keep me occupied, and fruit to eat.

One particular day, Uncle Danny came from the store with some grapes for me. As I eagerly devoured them, he asked me, “Doesn’t your mother ever peel those for you?”
From that point on, I always asked my mother for grapes that were peeled, and she was ready to choke her brother-in-law. As if having three young boys wasn’t enough, now she had to peel grapes!

[Hughie Ferguson's brother Johnny] died before John [Ferguson] was born [April, 1948]. I went home from Halifax because we didn’t have any money to have a baby in Halifax, and it would be cheaper at home. So I went home to Inverness in March, and Johnny Ferguson picked me up at the station because he had a car. And he drove me home.

And he said to me on the way up to Jack D’s, he said, “I have one hell of a sore throat.” He was sucking those cough drop things.

And he came in with me and he talked with Momma and Poppa for a bit, and then he left. And Momma said, “My God, how good John Ferguson looks. I wish our Freddie would put on a little weight.”

Freddie was after having stomach surgery and he was skinny as a rail.

And anyway, I don’t remember what day it was, but it was about two days later when I got up in the morning I came down stairs and Poppa said, “John Ferguson died.”

I said, “What John Ferguson?” And he said, “Hughie’s brother.” He died that suddenly.

He apparently had diphtheria.

It was wintertime, March was winter down there . He went home and got very sick that night, and the next day he was taken to the hospital.

Well, I didn’t have any way of knowing any of this, and he died the next night. And since it was diphtheria, they couldn’t have a wake. He went from the hospital to the church with a closed casket, and was buried like that.

And then they quarantined Mina and the three kids for, I don’t know, a month or something they were quarantined.

So when that happened, Sadie [Ferguson] went over. She said, “I’m going in quarantine with with Mina. She can’t stay there alone with three kids,” you know.

And Hughie used to sneak over at night. Janice said that today. She said, “I can remember Frank Chisholm coming over and passing the pie in through the window.”

John died that suddenly. It was an awful shock to the town. Mattie was upset about it, very upset. Because there was no need of anybody dying of diphtheria at that time….
You could have had a shot for it.

Like Mattie said, if he’d had the old doctor, Dr. Proudfoot, who was real good– Dr. Proudfoot would have smelled it. He would have swabbed that right away, you know… but nothing much was done.

And Dr. Ratchford was the doctor who was looking after him, and very shortly afterward, Dr. Ratchford left town and went to another town.

But it was horrible. There was no excuse for anybody dying of diphtheria. That was in the 40s, and he was only 33.

Johnny Ferguson: son of Mattie Ferguson, brother of Hughie Ferguson.
John Ferguson: son of Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald.
Poppa: Jack D Macdonald, Greet’s father.
Momma: Annie Belle Rankin, Greet’s mother.
Freddie: Greet Macdonald’s brother.
Sadie: Sadie Ferguson, sister of Hughie and Johnny.
Mina: Elizabeth MacFarlane, wife of Johnny Ferguson.
Janice: daughter of Johnny Ferguson and Mina MacFarlane.

When Mattie had his store (for about 100 years) there was something unique to Inverness that took place in it. He had a soda fountain, a beautiful butterscotch-coloured top on a green base and behind that were all the wonders of the soda fountain for making milkshakes.

There was a mine manager who lived in Inverness long before my time whose name was Tom Chew. He was a regular visitor to Mattie’s and he had a special request for the fountain. All he wanted Mattie to do was squirt chocolate into a glass of milk and mix it up, and he would gulp it down. It was a near daily ritual, and caught the interest of other patrons, and since it was cheaper than a milkshake it had economic appeal.

People began coming into Mattie’s store and asking for a Tom Chew.

When I was very young, and Mr. Chew had already departed Inverness, Wesley Ferguson and I would occasionally come into the store and order a Tom Chew (6 cents). It was cold and delicious and today children would call it chocolate milk.

However, the story continues beyond the boundaries of our town because it is no longer possible to count the number of people who left Inverness to look for work elsewhere in North America who didn’t return for a summer and relate the ignorance of the rest of the world:

“I walked into a drug store in Toronto and ordered a Tom Chew and they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”

In the early 1970s some friends and I received a grant to collect history and folklore in Inverness County. It would have been a much better project if we had known anything about what we were doing but our motives were pure and the ghosts and the stories were many, as were the still living who remembered when the mines opened, etc.

But our budget was small. We had one tape recorder, would interview someone, take the tape back to the office and transcribe it, then ERASE IT! God, what was lost.

Anyway, I approached the family of Angus Y. MacLellan about his Gaelic poetry and his wife gave me a box of his writings. I had enough sense to know that we should transcribe and return and everything did go back to the family with a single exception.

Among the writings was a pencilled verse on both sides of a long envelope. It was in the Gaelic of which I knew nothing, but I could decipher the Gaelic for Matthew Ferguson, so I brought the envelope down to your grandfather, wanting him to translate it for me.

We sat at the kitchen table and I told him why I was there and what I had brought and he took it and read it. He became quite emotional and misty-eyed and told me it was a song about his store and how if you ever needed a friend you would find one there.

I don’t recall much more of what passed between us except that I was aware that Angus Y. was dead, that Jack D. was dead, and that the poem or song probably made him lonely, clearly made him lonely, so I left and I left the envelope with him.

Later, reading Angus Y.’s song (in translation) about Mattie’s store [see Mattie's Store is the Best] I detect a sense of fun in it, and I believe it was also a fairly well known song at the time.

The song I brought to your grandfather was unfamiliar to him from what I could see and I have wondered since then if there was a second song. The first tells of the products and the quality of service, etc, but from what Mattie said about the song, and he only told me what it was about, not a line by line translation, this was a different, more personal celebration of their friendship.

These were not emotionally expressive men in my memory, and probably the song I took to Mattie was one Angus Y. never sang for them or anyone. I don’t know that he ever sang for them ever, although they were close friends who would get together when Angus Y. was away from the lighthouse, and I know one of the projects they tackled or challenged each other with was the making of new words to encompass the changing world around them.

My father told me this, that they would come with English words for new gadgets or inventions and the task would be to find a root word in the Gaelic upon which they could incorporate the modern world as they experienced it. No record was ever kept of that ‘game’ that I am aware of.

…The song itself I am afraid no longer exists unless it is stored in whatever papers still linger from Mattie’s time because my crime was not returning it to the Angus Y.’s and deciding to leave it with Mattie instead.

Seisd:
I hiuraibh o, i hiuraibh o
Tiugainn mar so ma thu connradh bhuat
I hiuraibh o, i hiuraibh o
‘S e’m bàth aig Matà a fhearr.

Chorus:
I hiuraibh o, i hiuraibh o
Come along if there’s anything you need
I hiuraibh o, i hiuraibh o
Mattie’s store is the best.

‘S e Matà fear gnothuich as ciataiche
Tha ‘n diugh an taobh stigh de na criochan so
‘N a sheasamh mu d’choinneamh ‘g a d’riarachadh
Chan iarr e obair as fhearr.

Matthew is the most elegant businessman
Who dwells today in these parts
Standing in front of you, satisfying your needs,
He could not ask for more congenial work.

Ma tha cupa no bruis agus siabunn bhuat
No na bhios ad dhith thoirt na fiasaig’ dhiot;
No cungaidh a dh’uraicheas d’fhiacalan
‘S e’m buth aig Matà a fhearr.

If you need a cup, or brush, or soap,
Or whatever you need to shave your beard
Or medicine that will freshen your teeth,
Mattie’s store is the best.

Ma bhios tu a’sgriobhadh gu nigheanagan
‘S ag innse do ghaoil dhaibh an diomhaireachd;
Biodh agad am paipear as finealta
As a’bhuth aig Matà a fhearr.

If you’re writing to young girls
And you wish to divulge your love for them
Get yourself the most elegant notepaper
From Mattie’s store—it’s the best.

O chaileag ma’s math leat gach suil bhi ort
‘S na gillean air mhire ‘g a d’ionnsaigh-sa;
Dean cabhag is ceannaich am fudar-a
Tha ‘s a’bhuth aig Matà a fhearr.

O young girl, if you want to attract every eye,
And have young men in a frenzy to approach you
Make haste and buy the powder
In Mattie’s store—it’s the best.

Gun tuit iad cho grad ‘s ged a bhuiailteadh iad
Nuair chi iad cho grinn ‘s a than’n snuadh bhios ort;
Ma chuireas tu pairt air do ghruiadheanan
‘S e an rouge aig Matà a fhearr.

They drop down as if they’d been struck
When they see how enticing your skin is
If you apply some to your cheeks:
Mattie’s rouge is the best.

Ma leagair le cnatan no fiabhras thu
‘S tu fulang mar dhuine ‘g a riaslachadh:
Gu deimhinn aig Matu tha iocshlaint dhuit
Dean fhiachainn ‘s bidh tu na’s fhearr.

If you are laid low by cold or fever
And suffering like a man being mangled
Truly, Mattie has a cure for you
Try it, and you’ll feel better.

Ma bhuailear gu grad leis an deideadh thu
‘S do chlaigeann a’ dol as a cheile leis:
A bhurraidh, na fulang is leagheas ann
‘S e’m bàth aig Matà a fhearr.

If you’re suddenly struck by toothache
And your head is splitting because of it
You clown, don’t suffer when there’s a cure:
Mattie’s store is the best.

Tiugainnibh, tiugainnibh, ‘n ar ciadan sibh
Is sgiathaibh cho luath ris na riabhagan leam:
Tha baile is baile, ‘s gach bial a’glaodh,
‘S e’m bàth aig Matà a fhearr!

Come along, come along in your hundreds
And fly with me, as swiftly as the larks.
Every town and village, every mouth is shouting:
Mattie’s store is the best!

From An Innis Aigh (“The Happy Island”)
by Duncan Hugh MacLellan