George Scroggie
Farewell to Tarwathie--
Adieu, Mormon Hill--
Land of my fathers
I bid you farewell.
Your hills and your valleys,
Your mountains of heath--
Still dear to my heart
Is the land of my birth.
Adieu to my comrades--
May God bless you all;--
My friends and relations
I bid you farewell.
For a while I must leave you
And go to the sea--
Heaven prosper the bonny ship
That I will go wi'
May He who never slumbers
From danger us keep,
While viewing his wonders
On the mighty deep.
Our ship she is rigged
And ready to sail,
Our crew they are anxious
To follow the whale.
Where the icebergs float,
And the stormy winds blow;
Where the land and the ocean
Is covered with snow.
The cold clime of Greenland
Is barren and bare;
No seed time nor harvest
Is ever known there.
The birds here sing sweetly
On mountain and dale;
But the songsters are mute
In the land of the whale.
There is no habitation
For man to live there--
The king of that country
Is the fierce Greenland bear.
But when I am sailing
Upon the wide main,
Be cheerful and happy
Till I come again.
And you my dear mother,
O weep not for me,
But trust in His mercy
That ruleth the sea.
Who saves on the ocean
As well's on the land,
For we are all guarded
By His mighty hand.
He rides on the billows
And walks on the wave--
His arm is powerful
To sink or to save.
And though I be absent
You need never fear;
There's no place so distant
But God will be there.
I will pray night and morning,
Dear parents, for you;
For the hope of returning
Takes the sting from adieu.
George Scroggie
from "The Peasant's Lyre, A Collection of Miscellaneous Poems"
Strichen, Aberdeen, printed by William Bennett in 1857.
(The poor quality aerial photograph above of Tarwathie Farm was taken by Dwight in July 2002 through the glass in a picture frame in Mrs. Jean Murray's house in Mintlaw. A better picture is located on the Rettie Family Tree page (link below.) The lower photograph shows the "ancient" Tarwathie ruins--only a pile of stone--near the exact center of this photograph taken by Dwight in July 2002 without benefit of a telephoto lens. The age of the ruins is unknown at this time. The stone building in the right foreground is at the modern Tarwathie farm.) The farm buildings at the left distant are on North Tarwathie, one of three farms having the Tarwathie name near Strichen.
* * *
In January 2006, I learned of extensive family history research having been done by June Raw on the Cardno family. Cardno was the surname of Dwight's paternal grandmother. Jane Cardno Rettie. She was born at West Tarwathie farm and came to the United States as William Rettie's wife in 1901.
In an interesting collection of Cardno-related materials is this from a news clipping in 1938, which confirms in part the fact that there were sea faring men in the family (albeit perhaps distant) in the last half of the 19th Century. Davie Cardno would have been born in 1854.
Obituary from the Buchan Observer : 15th March 1938
Davie Cardno sails home :
Mr David Cardno,
Peterhead, one of the last and best known of our whalermen, died at the home of
a relative in Aberdeen last week at the age of eighty-four.
He made his first voyage to the Arctic as a boy seventy-three years ago by
stowing away aboard one of the local fleet of whalers, and for over forty years
engaged in the whaling and sealing expeditions to Baffin Land and other parts of
the frozen north.
He sailed on many of the noted whaling ships including the Windward, Jan Mayen,
Xanthus, Lord Saltoun, Polar Star and Eric, and he was a noted harpooner.
The Cardno web site is located at www.cardnogeneology.com.
* * *
In February 2006, June Raw sent me the complete 1851 Aberdeenshire crew list. Thank you, June! On that list of perhaps a thousand men I found 8 men with the last name Cardno. Their occupations were: Boatsteerer (3 age 19, 21, and 23); Harpooner and Skedman, an occupation whose description I have not yet found (age 52); a Seaman (age 21 ); an apprentice (age unknown); a 2nd Mate (age 50); and the Master of the vessel ENTERPRISE (age 35.) Also found were 2 men with the last name Rettie: a sailmaker (age 34) and a seaman (age 32); 3 men named McLennan were also listed as whalers; and 1 man with the name Strachen listed as a whaler. All of these surnames are close family names, especially Cardno and Rettie, but as the genealogy for Murdo McLennan shows both that surname and others are in the family line.
Fifteen whaling vessels on the 1851 crew list showed Peterhead as their hail port; 2 whaling vessels (including the ENTERPRISE) showed Aberdeen. The men ranged in age from 19 to 50. All of the whaling vessels were under sail.
In 1851, just six years before George Scroggie published his little book of poetry, there were perhaps close to a dozen whalermen from Aberdeenshire, any one of whom might have been the person in "Farewell to Tarwathie," intending "To follow the whale."