An addendum to the previous post 'A Bit of Butter Bother'.
    Session records for Yetholm survive from the early 1690s. The photograph above shows one of the earliest surving entries, from 1691. It reads 'John Turnbull and Wm Main is ordered to speak to Isoble Turnbull about hir curning milk or whey the last Lords Day and to report'. John Turnbull and and William Main were elders and clearly someone had reported seeing Isobel Turnbull hard at work churning on the Sabbath.
   The kirk session acted - in the days before local magistrates or a regular police force - as a court to try and maintain good order in the community, either as regards personal relationships or worship. Most of the early cases they dealt with involved trying to get men to acknowledge and take responsibility for the illegitimate children they had fathered. One one occassion they had to deal with a case of incest, though the father and daughter involved fled the parish before it was sorted out. But they also dealt with offences towards God (especially cursing by invoking the name of the devil) and infringements of the Sabbath, as here. In most such cases the offender usually apologised and promised not to repeat their behaviour. In this case, unfortunately, we don't know how Isobel Turnbull responded when the Elders knocked on her door.

Yetholm History Society archives contain a treasure trove of precious documents and photographs recording life on the hill farms of the area. In many cases, we have these because of the generosity of individuals who have donated or allowed us to copy family documents. We are also grateful to local organizations like Yetholm Border Shepherds’ Show who have deposited documents with us for safe keeping. 
   Among more mundane matters recorded by the minutes of a Shepherds’ Show meeting in February 1934, such as classes, judges and the vexed new problem of providing car parking, there is an account of a heated argument about the first prize for butter awarded at the previous show:
    Mr W claimed that Mrs W’s right to have got first prize for fresh butter, as the 1st prize ticket had lain all the day on it. He read some letters from other competitors who had seen the 1st prize ticket lying on Mrs W’s butter. The attending members’ book was produced which showed that the 1st prize had been awarded to Miss Murray, Holefield, and to whom the prize had been awarded.
The dispute was only finally settled when the ‘attending member’ was sent for and stated she was ‘positive the prize was awarded to Miss Murray and that she had placed the 1st prize ticket on Miss Murray’s butter.’
   The dispute gives us a glimpse of the importance of butter-making and a reputation for excellence in making it for women’s role in the economy of local hill farms. George Storie, head shepherd at Cocklawfoot, noted with pride, in his diary of 1911, that his wife, Jean Crozier, made 6 pounds of butter one week in April and 4 the next. In October of the same year, she ‘churned for hours’, though how much butter she made is not recorded.  Some of this butter would have been used in the home; Jean kept house not only for her husband but also for three under-shepherds and an endless stream of visitors. Some would, however, have been sold.  The hard, skilled work of butter-making and its importance for the household economy was described by Elizabeth Anderson in her memoir of Borders hill farming life in the 1940s (The Hill Folk):
   Butter was made once a week on the day before the grocer came. Butter and eggs were given to the grocer in exchange for goods such as tea, sugar, rice, currants, treacle, salt etc. The cream was collected in the same pitcher twice a day for a week, stirring after each addition and allowing it to become sour. . . Kirnin’ could be a time-consuming activity; a monotonous turning of the handle of the kirn which in turn rotated the wooden breaker until the butter ‘broke’, the kirniemilk was then drained off and retained for baking.
   The next step was the rinsing of the butter with cold water and kneading out any residual kirniemilk with the heel of the palm. This was done in a wooden tub – the butter bowie – and the rinsing process was repeated until the water was clear. Salt was added with the last rinses.
   Finally the butter was weighed into pounds, patted into neat oblong shapes using the ribbed wooden butter-hands and marked in individual ways – often using a carved wooden stamp, which was our trademark.
     This was not the end though: all these wooden utensils had to be washed scalded and put away.
Elizabeth Anderson describes two kinds of kirn: ‘The large end-over-end kirn, on a stand, and a smaller table variety, both made of wood.’  Gil Telfer remembers his mother using a smaller kirn at Calroust, with paddles put in from the top. She used this to make butter every week. 
    Before moving with her shepherd husband to Cocklawfoot, Mary Little lived at Mounthooley in the College Valley.  We know she had a reputation as a butter maker and that her butter was in demand because, by coincidence, Yetholm History Society has a postcard, written from Kirk Yetholm to Mary Little while she was at Mounthooley (see image below). The card asks her for some of her butter and seems to suggest arrangements for someone to get to Westnewton to pick it up.  The date is illegible, but the card must have been sent between 1936 and 1939. The writer appears to be catering for ‘visitors’, perhaps she runs bed and breakfast accommodation, and is anticipating meeting Mary Little at the ‘Show’, perhaps Yetholm Border Shepherds Show.  No doubt Mary Little hoped to eclipse both Ms W and Miss Murray with her butter entry.