Our annual exhibition was held in the Mission Hall from 13th to 20th June. This year's display was focussed on a remarkable set of farming diaries that were kept by the Storie family of Cocklawfoot from 1911 to 1947 - see above. Entries are often brief, but cumulatively they build up an extremely vivid picture of a way of life that has now sadly diminished, if not entirely disappeared.

We are grateful to Karin Maroney for allowing us to borrow the diaries, most of which have now been transcribed and archived. Also many thanks to Dorothy Sharpe for letting us use photograhs and information from her exhibition on life in the College, Bowmont and Kale valleys and to Margaret Rustad for transcribing the diaries and invaluable help.

The exhibition allowed us to make use of our spruce new meeting place. The exhibition was very popular, with over 250 people dropping in. We made over £214.00 in donations

On Saturday 12th June YHS members joined a group from Peebles Archaeological Society for a guided walk around the Dormount Hope deer-trap, led by Dr Piers Dixon. The weather was glorious and the deer-trap itself fascinating. The stone and earth dike is huge, completely surrounding Dormount Hope. Who could have constructed such a massive and costly structure? When? Piers Dixon's thoughts on these and other questions are available on a Vimeo webcast which Peebles Archaeological Society have made available via their website - click HERE. Password to access the talk is Lunula (with a capital L). The photo above shows Piers adressing the group on the site of the dike, while the photograph below shows the party descending into the valley itself and gives some sense of the enourmous area which the trap enclosed; the cottage in the distance is Peelinick, last inhabited in the 1930s.

The cutting shown above was published in the Berwick Advertiser on 24th March 1932, in an article on nicknames. The village is not named, but it is almost certainly Yetholm - at any rate two of the names listed in it (Hairy Matthew and Cripple Matthew) can be shown to have been used in the village in the nineteenth century. This post will look at the story behind 'Cripple Matthew', although the facts that can be uncovered reveal a dark and unpleasant character.

Firstly, Yetholm's 'Cripple Matthew' was not, as the article claims, a Douglas, but a Blythe. His death certificate (1888) shows that he was the child of John Blythe (brother of King Charles Blythe) and Rachel Douglas. He was 77 when he died and was born, according to his prison records, on the 18th July 1812. His parents were gipsies based in Yetholm, usually described as hawkers, as was Matthew himself, though sometimes as a 'basket maker' or, towards the end of his life, 'shoe maker'.

We known that Matthew could play the pipes, presumably the Northumbrian or Border pipes. In 1861 a huge crowd turned out to ride the parish boundaries, on this occassion in particular to assert the right of Kirk Yetholmers to graze on the common land in Halterburn, which was under threat. The Kelso Chronicle (5th July 1861) gives a long description of this particular rideout, including the fact that ' "Cripple Matthew", mounted on his brown palfrey, with the bag-pipes under his arm, led the way to the tune of All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border.' His talents as a piper are again alluded to a couple of years later, after the death of his uncle King Charles, when, for a brief period, Princess Helen ascended the throne and held a 'jovial dance on the green' on Fastern's E'en. Esther her sister, living in Coldstream, was not having this and turned up to chase Helen away. Cripple Matthew apparently provided music for the dancing, but seems also to have been at the centre of the brawling that soon replaced the dancing: 'Amidst the mirth and jollity, there were several rows, and "Cripple Matthew" the piper came in for a dreadful onslaught. At one time he was assaulted by eight members of his tribe; but Matthew Blyth, although cripple, is no imbecile, and he laid on his opponents such dreadful blows, and so dexeterously warded off theirs, that he ultimately triumphed over them.' (North Briton, 4th March 1863. which lifted their account from the Border Advertiser).

That he was rather a rough chap probably surprised no one. By the 1860s Cripple Matthew had chalked up quite a criminal record, most notably a sentence of seven years transportation for stealing wheat and potatoes from Hoselawbank Farm (although he seems to have served his sentence in Britain). His time in prison doesn't seem to have led to repentence and reform. On his release he seems to have attempted to fence stolen goods, as he is almost cetainly the 'Matthew Blythe, basketmaker, Kirk Yetholm' who was charged with trying to 'wickedly and feloniously reset and receive' thirty-three fleeces 'knowing the same to have been stolen' (Southern Reporter 24th July 1862). Fortunately for him the verdict on this occasion was Not Proven.

Other appeaances in court were often the result of violence. In 1855 he was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment for violently assaulting his wife (Elizabeth Hope). In 1857 he was sentenced to six months in prison for assault. However all of these crimes were a prelude to the series of sex offences that he was to committ, starting in 1864. In that year he was jailed for six months for sexually assaulting a pre-pubescent girl. Then in September 1868 he was charged with assaulting and raping two young girls, Ann Ferguson and Elizabeth O'Neale*. He was found guilty and sentenced to eight years penal servitude. The judge, Lord Cowan, commented that 'a more disgusting case has seldom come before us' (Teviotdale Record, 19th September 1868).

His extensive prison records have survived and are publically available. The fact that he was a cripple is duly recorded - 'Large indented marks of wound on outside, inside and behind right knee. Right leg shorter' (click on the image to read more fully):

His records also include a photograph of him, taken in 1874, a few months before he was released (from Woking Invalid Prison) on license in January 1875:

Prison records show that he corresponded with his wife while in jail, though whether he was welcomed back in Yetholm with open arms is uncertain. In 1877 his wife and son were found guilty of attacking him, though the cause of the quarrel is somewhat murky. Back in the village he seems to have earned a living as a shoe maker, an occupation which he was put to while serving time. That is how he is described in the 1881 census, when he is living with his wife and son in Kirk Yetholm. It is also possible that he spent some time in an asylum - a Matthew Blythe was admitted to Roxburgh District Asylum in October 1882.

Unfortunately, his career as a paedophile continued and in 1885 he was sent to prison for a final time for assaulting a child:

By the 1880s Yetholm was making much of its gipsy history, projecting an image a carefree way of life and promoting itself as a holiday village nestling in the beautiful Cheviot Hills. Cripple Matthew's story is a salutory reminder that life in the village was no different, then as now, from anywhere else. It is sad that one of the few nineteenth photographs we have of a Yetholm gipsy is Cripple Matthew's grim prison mugshot. It is perhaps worth remembering that Cripple Matthew was the uncle of Andrew Richardson Blythe - another 'cripple', having had his right arm shot-off when a very young child - and who, from perhaps an even more impoverished background, became a teacher, kirk elder and community benefactor (see HERE).

Next month's blog will be about 'Hairy Matthew' - a somewhat more attractive figure!

*Elizabeth O'Neale's background is unknown, but her surname suggests an Irish origin. Ann Ferguson was the daughter of Hugh Ferguson, an Irish hawker resident in Kirk Yethom in 1851. Relations between recently arrived Irish gipsies and the longer established Scottish gipsies were not always very amicable. Queen Esther was prejudiced against them. Hugh Ferguson himself was arrested in 1856 as he was said to be involved in the brawl at St James' Fair, Kelso, which resulted in the death of Robert Mills. The outrage caused by this murder resulted in a mob burning down the recently erected Roman Catholic chapel in the town. Ferguson was subsequently released for lack of evidence.