The Lassie with Bare Feet


Oftentimes when visiting Michelle and Greg my attention is drawn to this picture of a mother and daughter in the Shetland Islands taken about 1930. The girl has bare feet and, this is a fact, the children there would shed their shoes in the summer but wore boots in the winter!
The mother is Michelle's maternal Great Grandmother and the 5 year old child her Great Aunt, Elizabeth Jamieson [Betty.] The mother, Agnes, is approximately 40 years of age in this photo!
Betty's husband often went away to the whaling station in South Georgia for a year's work with Salvesen's of Leith producing whale oil and other products - a tough place and tough work - dark, cold and remote. I can remember as a young lad visiting Cape Town and crews homeward bound having their clothes burnt because of their stench.
Her Great Grandmother has a kishie on her back loaded with peat for heat and cooking. A kishie is a soft straw basket and it has a kishie-baand -the rope to carry it on the shoulders. The folk in Shetland have a saying - "Every day brings its ain kishie-baand" and that means every day brings it own problems. Problems are burdens.
You can understand my fascination with this picture..........

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