Tag Archives: good times

Norah Porteous — Wonderful Artist and Devoted Mother

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This is Jack’s promised post about Lindsay’s mum – –

I promised a post about Norah and her life. When she was relatively young her husband died suddenly and tragically, and she was left to look after three children – Nigel, Fiona and Lindsay. She wasn’t left particularly well off financially.

But she was resourceful and talented and made a plan. She had trained at the famed Slade School of Art in London, specializing in fiber art and water color painting. So she and the kids moved to a rented house in the small town of Culross (pronounced koorus) in Fife; the town is under protection by the Scottish Government and preserved in its original architecture and cobbled streets. Their house was called the Tron House – the most prestigious one and pretty close to the oldest; its lintel stone over the door says 1610.

Attractive historic village in Fife Scotland.

Just at the top of the alley beside it was a dilapidated medieval stone wash-house which Norah bought and converted into a lovely gift shop focusing on her art work and other up-market offerings.

Nigel and Fiona moved on and made lives for themselves, but that left her and Lindsay. Knowing he would likely outlive her, she made it her work to make him self-sufficient and independent. She encouraged his involvement in folk music, believing it would give him a life of his own, which it did.

Wendy and I always enjoyed visiting them, and we were often invited for lunch or dinner, when Norah would set the table with her best china and silver. That’s when Lindsay would ‘code shift’ – speaking very posh in front of his mum, but reverting to a broad Fife accent and language when she left the room.

Her health eventually deteriorated, and their roles were reversed. Lindsay became the care-giver, and her training of him proved important in the end. He kept her from blowing money on psychics, trying to contact her dead husband, as her mind began to wander. In the end, it was Lindsay who looked after Norah.

Probably our favorite story about Norah would be easy to misconstrue: it celebrates her survival instinct and perfect manners coming to terms in a cunning move. We visited her and Lindsay around midnight on Hogmanay one year, when it’s traditional to take a bottle of whisky, a piece of food, and a lump of coal (lang may yir lum reek). This is called first-footing, and you tend to make up to a dozen such house calls on Jan. 1.

Usually you will exchange sips of Scotch from one bottle you bring with you and your host’s, and then carry on to another house with the coal sack, one piece missing from your cake, and a few drams less of the whisky. Norah took her sip from our rather expensive ¼-empty bottle, put it on the mantelpiece behind her (out of my reach), and then said “how generous; thank you.” We smiled weakly and headed for the door, planning to stop and buy another bottle to continue our first-footing.

What a woman!!

A True Friend — Lindsay Porteous!

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Jack was going to do a different guest post, but news intervened – – –

One of the founding members of my old Scottish folk band ‘Heritage’ was Lindsay Porteous. Like most of us, he didn’t read music – he played by ear. But he heard things differently from the rest of us. When he played what would traditionally be considered rhythmic instruments, he would play melody on them—on jaw harps, for instance. His main instruments were the jaw harp, the mouth bow and various whistles and drums. With these he added a very particular dimension to our overall sound.

I often described him as the only true ‘folk musician’ in the band. If he had been a painter, he would have been called a ‘naïve artist.’

Lindsay lived in the Tron House in Culross, Fife, and he built an amazing collection of musical instruments, old medicine bottles, and all sorts of other things. His house featured in many TV series and movies, including Outlander and any others that required a 17th century setting.

He was friendly with, and appreciated by, many of the most revered Scottish folk musicians and became a close associate of the wonderful storyteller and singer Duncan Williamson. His jaw harp prowess resulted in an all-expenses paid trip to judge the jaw harp competition at Grandfather Mountain highland games in North Carolina some years ago, when he was able to visit his own mouth bow hero, Jimmy Driftwood.

He also traveled all over Europe with ‘Heritage,’ and there are many stories of his adventures in Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland. One of our favorites is when his mother* packed him tuna sandwiches for a trip that provided us food money, so he didn’t eat them for five days. When he started to open the Tupperware (in our close and crowded van), we shrieked, “No Lindsay! It’s too late!”

He smiled and pointed to the words on the edge of the plastic box. “It’s okay, lads. This says it keeps food fresh for up to six days.” We cursed Lindsay and the smell all the way to our next gig.

It was Lindsay who introduced ‘Heritage’ to Ian Green of Greentrax Records which, in a convoluted way, eventually led to our final album on Robin Morton’s Temple label. Robin knew Lindsay from his time as a member of the ‘Boys of the Lough,’ when they almost included him on their first album playing jaw harp.

I stayed in touch with Lindsay until recently, and he frequently sent me CDs of his favorite music. But the most anticipated posts were his Christmas letters. Where others glorified their stories, Lindsay reveled in doom and gloom newsletters relating the various disasters of his year. Our favorite quote, one Wendy and I often said to each other in moments of peril or uncertainty, was “My sister’s house is sinking down a mine shaft. The council don’t think they can save it.”

I can only imagine what his newsletter would have said this year – – –

Probably he would be describing his arrival at the ceilidh in heaven with Mike Mustard, Jimmy Dunn, Mike Ward, Davy Lockhart, Alan MacDonald, and Dominique LaLaurie. Dominique was the French lassie who played bagpipes with Heritage whenever we went to France, and we were all in love with her, Lindsay most of all. Now he can twang along again in the heavenly choir.

*Lindsay’s mother Nora deserves her own blog post, which I will get to in coming months. A fabulous lady, she studied at the prestigious Slade School of Art in London and lived a life worthy of its own book—not to mention looking after Lindsay, who was autistic.