Maggie
(Margaret Johnston, 1866-1933, was my husband’s
great-grandmother.
He did not, of course, know her. Nor did he know her only
daughter,
who had 11 children, then died young.
They trekked from Scotland, from Dumfries.
Her father was named ‘Husbandman’
in Cumberland’; to you and me,
farm labourer. Their ‘reiver’ clan
stole cows. Its girls, in quieter years,
staged subtler raids, caused hurtful wrongs,
yet beamed at dawn, listened with tears
to sentimental songs.
While she lugged bales of dressmaking
to stone-built villages and farms,
her Queen grew grey. Maggie’s takings
embraced two babies in her arms.
Frederick, at nineteen, found a farm
named ‘Fort’, high on a Border hill,
its ‘Cowman’, till the war’s long storm,
a gardener, once the guns fell still.
Her only daughter had two names,
‘Lily’, brave flourish of white flowers,
the second, odd, the family name
of a Scots farmer, half an hour’s
tramp from the cottage, that stone shack
where her arthritic parents lived.
Its walls breathed damp. Do not go back.
Did she cast off, firmly, forgive?
She married, late, a widower
who called her child his ‘Daughter’. Then
the censure of the Census taker
added ‘Step-Daughter’, in black pen.
Yet here, with fresh cloth, Maggie comes.
Scrambling up fells, her stride stays strong.
First sun strikes her worn face. She hums
a sentimental song.
Alison Brackenbury
Notes:
Margaret’s parents, in the Census entry for 1901, called her
‘Maggie’. Their ‘Grandson’, Fred, aged 9, was living with them.
‘Maggie’ would have been pregnant, again, with Lily.
‘Cast off'. Finish sewing, then make small firm stitches, as
close together as possible, to stop previous stitches unravelling.
