Crossroads and Characters

47. HOLIDAYS FOR TATTIES.

Outsiders might raise an enquiring eyebrow at the long school holidays scheduled in the Perthshire area for mid-autumn term, but old-timers know why there's such a holiday: 'it's for tattie-picking, always has been, as far as we can remember'. Village children early in the century knew that tattie-picking would mean money for a new pair of winter shoes. Mothers and children did most of the picking. Each would be given a 'bit', an assigned length of drill to pick. Smaller children would get 'halfbits'. A horse-team pulling a digger would turn up the potatoes, and the pickers would put them in baskets. Men would load the baskets into carts. For groups like this at Garvock, it was back-paining work, from 8 to 12, an hour off, then 1 to 5. But some farmers gave a longer lunch: they didn't want to work the horses too hard.