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Facts and Events
THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN Family Stories
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CAMIT
DREVER
HARCUS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to all who have
assisted in preparing this family history, in
particular Robert Burgar and Peter Harcus.
Dorothy Drever
Toronto
December 31, 1956
WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT ORKNEY
It any of you produce a youngster who is a natural for boats or fishing or who in a quiet way is more than normally fearless of storm and wind and danger, perhaps his Norse ancestry stirs within him.
Arletta Camit was the daughter of William Drever of North Pharay, Orkney, and the descendant of men and women with Norse blood in their veins whose calibre may be judged from the members of the family still living in Orkney and in other parts of Scotland.
The Orkney world of the Drever and Harcus ancestors was, and remains, a storm environment. "It seems unlikely that any coast in visited more wrathfully by the sea's waves than the Shetlands and the Orkneys, in the path of the cyclonic storms that pass eastward between Iceland and the British Isles. All the feeling and the fury of such a storm, couched almost in Conradian prose, are contained in the usually prosaic "British Islands Pilot's.
“In the terrific gales which usually occur four or five times in every year all distinction between air and water is lost, the nearest objects are obscured by spray, and everything seams enveloped in a thick smoke; upon the open coast the sea rises at once, and striking upon tho rocky shores rises in foam for several hundred feet and spreads over tho whole country.”
“The sea, however, is not so heavy in the violent gales of short continuance as when an ordinary gale has been blowing for many days; the whole force of the Atlantic is than beating against the shores of the Orkneys, rocks of many tons in weight are lifted from their beds, and the roar of the surge may be heard for twenty miles; the breakers rise to the height of 60 feet and the broken sea on the North Shoal which lies 12 miles north-westward of Costa Head, in visible at Skail and Birsay.”1
But in spite of the terrible sea surrounding it, some of the land was good; it was unencumbered with forest and had bean farmed long before the Norse found it. In a chambered cairn on the Calf of Eday itself (Eday is Pharay's parent isle) impressions were found of the pottery buried there of grain "almost certainly of beer – a kind of barley which is still grown in Eday to-day and which has therefore an island ancestry running back well-nigh 4,000 years."2
Attracted by the fertile land, the Norse ancestors, descendants of those fighting Vikings of the Sagas, settled down among these island, perhaps finding some of the ear1ier Pictish inhabitants there, and came to terms with the sea and land. And a very good job they made of it.
But down through all the years their far greater achievement, I would submit, was with themselves. Facing daily the worst the elements could do and in a practical fashion making the best of life as they found it, their values were founded on bed rock, Among those quiet, serene people a man is judged by what he is, not by what he owns.
If a man had a sound root overhead, a good Sunday suit, and adequate food and clothing for his daily work, that was enough. He could than afford the time to become the genuinely cultured people that the Burgars are, the time to be interested in ideas, the time to know the names of the flora and fauna around them, the time to live, to enjoy each day as it comes.
However, those tiny islands have never been able to support all her sons, and for some the Hudson's Bay Company provided the opening they could fill to perfection. Sea voyages and the long solitudes and rigours of life in the Canadian north held few terrors for them. (Some of them married Indian wives, and one of the western Indian chiefs who had helped to improve the status or the Indians in Canada, who was presented to the Queen during her visit to Ottawa in 1957 and who is a personal friend of John Diefenbaker, the Prime Minister, is Chief Joseph Drever of Saskatchewan.) Some went to Australia and New Zealand; indeed they can be found in almost every corner of the globe.
Now this tendency is intensified. Rising shipping costs have made it well-nigh impossible for the people of the North Isles in the Orkney group to live, and the condition which led to the complete abandonment of Pharay in 1946 is now affecting Eday. Whereas the farmers of the Orkney Mainland who possess sufficient capital to keep abreast of modern farming practices may be very prosperous indeed, the North Isles farmers are forced to vacate the farms wrung from the heather during the last four thousand years.
Therefore, if you will visit Eday while it is still an occupied is1and it may, alas, be necessary to go soon, You will never regret any effort involved to reach it. You will come away, not only with a lasting memory of the integrity of its people, but perhaps under the spell of the islands themselves.
“The Northern Isles are more reserved. To begin with they are not mountainous, and are seldom even impressively precipitous. Nor are their colours generous. Rather they are subtle, quiet – an infinite variation upon greys and greens that melt into the surrounding sea and sky. They do not impress themselves upon the newcomer but insinuate themselves gradually into his consciousness. And having become aware of them in this way, he will not look for them to change. Nor will he ever forget them. If a man has once fallen under their peculiar allurement he will find upon his travels in the bright and variegated south that his mind will return for refreshment again and again to the quiet greys find greens, the long lasting half light and the wide horizons of these scattered pieces of land that lie between the north Atlantic and the north of the North Sea. He will find too that they will return to his memory unbidden, unexpectedly and sometimes, yes sometimes, even more insistently than do the splendours of the Hebrides. This is their own magical quality.3
Above all, it is rewarding to keep in touch with the family. It is only through the devotion of Mary Fleming Drever, William's wife, who know how much Orkney meant to William and might mean to his family, and through the reciprocated constancy of the Orkney Burgars and Drevers that this story could be written. Mary Drever corresponded for twenty five years with people whom she loved but was destined never to meet.
Eric Linklator, "The Ultimate Viking". Harcourt, Brace, 1956.
V. Gordon Childe, "Man Makes Himself.
“The Orcadian” published in Kirkwall as a weekly newspaper.
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THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN Family Stories
| The Drevers and Harcuses of this story came originally from a little island known as Pharay which lies between the larger islands of Eday and Westray in the North Isles group. It is tiny indeed, with a total length about 1½ miles and an average width of about half a mile. Thus in a storm the spray from it's great western cliffs completely across the Island, The little abandoned island once so fully of activity.
Pharay, whose name means “Sheep Island”, was being lived in during Neolithic (New Stone Age or Early Farming) times, as a barrow or burial mound near it's north end proved. How continuous its later occupation was it is impossible to say, since its name does not appear in the Orkneyinga Saga or in any of the early Rentals, and its skattable value is unknown. Before 1600 it became the property of the Westray Balfours and in 1734 through the marriage of a Balfour heiress it passed to the Stewarts of Brough. It is believed that the island farm names do not go back beyond the sixteenth century.
The farms were eight in number and of these the names of four appear most often in this story: Cott, Doggerboat, Hamar and Windy wall. The last family left the island shortly after world War II, and now the tremendous winds and weather are left to work their will with the sturdy stone dwellings and farm buildings.
The history of the Drever and Harcus Families as such is beyond the scope or this smal1 book The Drever and Harcus names are, of course, common in the Orkneys, but we are concerned only with those of Pharay origin. The genealogy to be found in the appendix begins early in the nineteenth century with the marriage of David Drever and Ann Reid and of James Harcus and Marianne Allen. It contains fragments of information regarding many of their descendants, but we have singled out for stories only two men, William Burns: and William Drever, cousins who were brought up at Cott as brothers and in temperament, in physique, mush akin.
These two Williams are, if you like, the Orcadian-at-home, and the Orcadian-abroad, the William Burgar who to continue to live in the "Happy Isles" and the William Drever who refused to budge from his rose clad cottage on Ontario Street in Guelph, Ontario once he had found its haven.
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| MEET THE FAMILY
In the summer of 1952 Harry Camit and Dorothy Drover visited a number of Harcus and Drever relatives in Scotland and Orkney and found it an unforgettably satisfying experience. '
July; 24: Crossing the Scottish border at Carter Bar and continuing through the lovely Peeb1es country we drove our Morris Oxford car to Edinburgh and there encountered the first of the Drevers. This was first cousin John Drever, the son of Gillies. He lives at 12 Rostalrig Road, Leith, not too far from the golf course where James II used to play. He is an enthusiastic gardener who looks like William of Guelph and behaves like Pater Harcus of Toronto. I liked him and his wife and family immensely. Had quite a party, at which Bella must have used up all the Drever meat rations for weeks. Son Gillies and his bride Nessie, and badminton-champion bachelor David, handsome in blazer and flannels, were there too.
July; 28: Driving to Portsoy in rain and cold wind I wondered in what bleak spot we would find John's three sisters. In the town we were directed by a red-cheeked man to go "doon the brae" and indeed down the hill we found Burnside Cottage, the dearest little house tucked away from the wind, and Lily Drever standing by the gate in its stone-dyked rose-filled garden waiting for us. Indoors all was warmth and cheerful open fires and pleasantness. Much good chat with all three -- Frances, Annie and Lily – much looking at photos and cards. An excellent dinner.
About 9.45 Harry wanted to walk, so the girls dressed me up in many layers of warm clothes for a ten minute walk to look at an angry sea. Grey stone houses. Forbidding, but no doubt plenty of cheerful fires within.
July 29: Breakfast and good talk and ironing of Harry's shirts by open fires. Soon we were eating one of Annie's buns, and than off through a rather grey day to Fraserburgh. Drove down the steepest road in existence to a tiny fishing village named Crovie. Solid little grey stone houses just above high tide mark with a blank wall facing out to sea against which the winter storms would batter. As we walked along the narrow street between the houses and the sands the Drever girls were recognised by a handsome woman, who was cleaning fish and surrounded by whirling sea-gulls, as a member of their "church". This is some sort of Christian fellowship which holds property as belonging to all and entitles each to go and stay at the house of any of the brothers, and in general tries to work out the most literal interpretation of the New Testament.
Then we wont on to Fraserburgh, the centre for the herring fleet, to find that it had just left two hours before and would not be back till the next night. However we did see the mackerel boats and visited the sheds where they were gutting herring and hanging them up to smoke. Very bloody. Back to Portsoy, Harry more and more charmed by everything about this place --perhaps especially by the accent and the soft Orkney voices with the lilt at the end of the sentence. Walked in the evening around the village. Saw St. Comb's (St. Co1umba's) well. Weather dull and cool but no rain to speak of. Sea beautiful. A final talk, presents for everybody all round, and to bed. Wednesday, July 30: Up and away early in rain which soon cleared, giving us a perfect day for the most spectacular drive I've ever had. Very exciting and very beautiful. The road follows the east coast north from Inverness high above the North Sea. We reached Thurso, in spite of all the sheep in Caithness sleeping in the middle of the road, by 5.30 pm., and secured the last two rooms in the annex of the Royal Hotel.
Went down to see Peter's brother and sister, Bill and Lily Harcus, in the evening, at Scrabster. Felt at home at once. Both Bill and Lily were a lot of fun, and reminded me very much of Peter and Johnnie in Toronto. We walked along the pier and out to the lighthouse, had supper, and want back to the hotel.
Thursday, July 31: Short walk with Harry to see Thurso (the town is a favourite with Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) and to see an early, new ruined, church. Dinner with the Harcuses - and finally at 2.30 we were away en the St. Ola.
Orkney: My excitement had bean mounting about this phase of the trip the whole time we had been in England and Scotland, and by this time it was almost unbearable. The Pentland Firth, the roughest water in the world, managed to he relatively smooth. I saw one man being sick after the St. Qla had dropped about 20 feet a few times, but it wasn't Harry, who had already proved himself an excellent sailor.
Orkney looked wonderful. High rounded hills of Hoy. The Old Man of Hoy. Uncountable myriads of birds eddying like snowflakes below the Hoy cliffs. Finally Stromness near and than Maisy Drever Walls, who turned out to be every bit as nice as her sisters and brother whom we had already met.
To Kirkwall by bus. Maisy's house was full of books and warmth and delightful colour. She has two sons: Davie, about 12 or 13, and crazy about hens and determined to be a farmer, and Alfie, who is equally crazy about boats -- Merlin Rocket dinghies to be exact. Had an excellent "tea" (four meals in Scotland: breakfast, dinner, tea at 5, and supper at 9.30 or 10.00 and went out for a walk. Charmed of course, by Kirkwall.
Friday; August 1: Up at 5 am for the Great Day. Off at 6.15 on the little steamer, the Earl Sigurd, for Eday (pronounced Aday). Grey mists, but not enough to stop the steamer. Alfie assured us that the skippers of the North Isles ships could sail the islands blindfolded. Island shapes could be seen faintly through the mist, and in two hours we had arrived at the little south pier on the island of Eday.
Recognized Bob Burgar on the pier without difficulty from his photo in uniform in World War I. Had a ride in a Vauxhall to the dear little frame house called Fersness Cottage where Mary Stewart Burgar and her father lived. William was a benevolent patriarch with a white beard, Much talk. Another excellent chicken dinner.
At 2 pm Mary Stewart and Bob and I left in a fishing boat with Mr, Neil for the island of Pharay where the two Williams, and indeed Mary Stewart and Bob too, had been born. Saw seals on the shore as we approached. Were left at the bare geo jetty to explore this deserted island for three hours. Mist and light rain.- Wet heather. Sheep and cattle now shelter themselves in the houses where the various branches of the family used to 1ive. Stone crofter's houses, stone-roofed, stone-floored, stone-walled, designed to withstand the worst the wind could do. Fascinating but rather difficult experience, because I was moved beyond words.
Robert and Mary Stewart were of course excellent companions for this trip. They had both grown up on Pharay. They showed me the crow's nest into which you must try to throw stones from the Surrie Geo, and the muckle (big) well where William of Guelph and Robert had sailed their model fishing smack. They taught me the Orkney names for plants I knew (clover blooms are "curlydoddies") and I practised in vain for the correct accent. Robert seemed to know the name of everything. Before long he showed us a nesting, Fulmar's Petrel.
Finally we had reached the hill at the north end of the island. There I heard the stories of the drownings of at least three of our relatives, among them Robert's own grandfather in the narrow strait before us between Pharay and its "Holm" or little satellite island. Then, of course, there was the story of the Pharay heroes and their rescue of the stranded crew about Christmas of 1908. There too is the stone wall built right across the end of the island in a single winter to keep out the wild sheep.
Then we started back along tho Atlantic side and this was quite break-taking. Enormous cliffs, geos (voes) or narrow vary coop ravines, all named and all splendid, and far down below white beaches, turquoise water, and white surf. Finally the Kirk-yard, walled and very lonely, perched high on a cliff at whose foot the tremendous Atlantic storm waves break everlastingly. Peaceful and quiet and wreathed in mist and rain when we saw it.
We had lunch in the rain standing on a magnificent promontory, than back to the Bere noust to the boat. Mr. Meil come for us and took us to Fersness by compass, pretty wet and glad to return to the peat fire.
Saturday, August 2: Slept with Mary Stewart in a box bed on a straw tick. A box bed is enclosed on three sides and the fourth faces the fire -- in this house now an iron stove whose pipe goes out through the original fireplace, and on which Mary Stewart was cooking with the iron utensils designed for hanging on a hook in tho fireplace. Spent the morning talking with William. If it had not been for breaking the Museum contract I would willingly have stayed on the island of Eday for at least a year, Just to be close to William. It was apparent that his days on this earth were numbered (he died the following December).
Harry was staying, also very happily, at Bob's house, traditional in construction;but with modern additions including electric light powered by a small petrol paraffin engine. He went out in the morning with the boys to make the rounds of the lobster pots. He was to tell me later many times how kind Daisy and the others had been to him.
In the afternoon Robert, Harry; and Fred came for me in a boat with an outboard motor, again by compass because of fog, and we made the circuit of Fersness Bay, with Fred looking like a young Viking as he stood steering the boot as though he were skiing. Met Daisy, Bob's pleasant wife, who is related to me on the Drever side, and their handsome young daughter Elsa. I had the comfortable feeling with Daisy that I had known her always, that there was no need to spend time "getting acquainted.” Bob says she "has proved herself one of the best, and her price is certainly far above rubies.”
It was Bob and Daisy who had been chosen for the honour of lighting the beacon fire on Stennie Hill, Eday, for the night of the coronation of Elizabeth II. In much the some way signal fires have been lit on the Ward hills of the Orkneys for thousands of years.
Fred got busy building a peat stack, but the rest of us walked up the hill back of the house to see the Standing Stone (splendid) and on to the "Pict's House" (also splendid) which had been excavated by Mr. Calder. Through the mist we could hear the crying of the bird known as the "red necked diver."
On to Garrick House, the Laird's house, built 1633-35 by Lord Kinclaven who was created Earl of Carrick by Charles I. So the house is over 300 years old, "a quaint old building, pleasantly situated on the margin of the Sound.” In this mansion during the eighteenth century Malcolm Laing wrote the greater part of his history of Scotland, and here, long before; James Fee of Clestrain captured Pirate Gow and the crew of his ship the “Revenge” (see Walter Scott's novel "The Pirate"). Marwick says: "The house in romantically situated close to the beach, with a lovely hillside sloping up to shelter it from the west. It has a splendid view out through the northern entrance to Calfsound, which is guarded on either side by high majestic rock bastions -- on the west by the exquisitely tinted red sandstone cliffs of the Red Head of Eday, and on the east by the contrasting rocks of the Grey Head on the Calf." This view we could not see because of fog, but the garden was lovely, and the house fascinating, though the furnishings were indifferent. Daisy and I were appalled at the kitchen equipment, the kitchen being of course in the basement. Good library, especially of Orcadiana, and a large African game collection. The Laird, Harry Hapden, and his family were not arriving till Wednesday.
Back to Robert and Daisy’s to eat a wonderful meal (Daisy being a splendid cook) including a huge lobster. Have since discovered from Don Sutherland at Toronto who did mine disposal work in Orkney during the war that you ordinarily make four meals on one Orkney lobster! As I was leaving, Harry was going out fishing with Robert and Fred, where he succeeded in catching 23 cuithes in one hour: Hams to M.S.'s in Tom Reid's car.
Saturday, August 3: Church, Simple, sturdy little building surprisingly bright inside, not far from a standing stone put up a few thousand years ago by some of our ancestors who had not yet heard of John Knox. This was the church where William of Guelph used to go, rowing across from Pharay. Good preacher, good music, John Miller drove us home.
In the afternoon Mary Stewart and I climbed Fersness Hill (291 feet). Mary Stewart showed me where they cut the peats for which Eday used to be famous and just before the fog really came down we had a beautiful glimpse of the old tower on Egilsay and at Rousay. All navy blue and si1ver. Splendid.
After tea we went to see the quarry from which mush of the red sandstone for St. Magnus Cathedral and the Earl's Palace had come. I was growing very sad at leaving, particularly parting from William. I hoped to see Mary Stewart and Bob and his family again but could not hope to see William. He was a wonderful man.
Mondays August 4: Left for the pier by car about 8.30, Mary Stewart and Robert coming with us. We found the Earl Thorfinn had already docked, and we were soon away.
Could see the Islands much more clearly than on the outward journey. At dinner I discovered that a very shy Sanday man had just come from working with the great Prof Gordon Childe on an iron-age broch. Would have given my eye-teeth to have visited the site.
As we passed the Seal Skerry we saw a number of fat seals, and a friend of Robert's told me one of the seal-wife legends in a proper saga-telling voice as we hung over the rail watching. At the approach to the harbour at Kirkwall the strong tides swung the boat like a cork.
Maisy and Alf met us at the boat, took our bags, and sent us off to the Cathedral and the Earl's palace. Saw some trees. Had a very interesting time.
In the evening I drove a car Ali had rented over the Churchill barriers (a shattering experience because there was so much play in the wheel and there were no fences an the barriers to keep the car from going into the sea), and visited two second cousins at New Green, Holm; John Drever, one of the Pharay heroes and his sister Mary. The barriers are amazing and, I'm told, have changed life in the south isles considerably.
Tuesday August 5: Shopped for a half-hour to spend the generous gift of Mary Steward and her father on Orkney weaving. Then with Harry to the Bishop's palace, the Mousie Tower, where old King Haakon died. To visit a niece of Mr, Logie's, Mary Wilson, and then dinner. Orkney cheese!!
Off in the car; again thanks to Alf's generosity; with Harry driving this time, to Maeshowe (megalithic tomb), to Skara Brae (wonderful stone-age village by the Bay of Skail1), to another Earl's palace at Birsay, tea, a walk by a burn where it flows into the sea, a visit to Kirbister, a farm house with the peat fire actually burning in the middle of the floor and the reek (smoke) going out through a louvred-hole in the roof (this was a fantastic place), than the Ring of Brogar, the Standing Stones of Stenness. Stonehenge minus picnickers and guided tours. A day !!! Impossible to describe all this. Instead I would refer you to Eric Linklater and Hugh Marwick, and beg you to go and see it for yourself.
Wednesday, August 6: Again it was hard to leave Maisy and her sons who are all treasures. As Alf saw us off at Stromness I wished I could jump into a row boat and take off across the Atlantic at once so that 1 would not forget one impression, one inflection of a voice, since the night we had first met John and Bella Drever in Leith.
However we had one more happy encounter with kinsfolk before we were to continue south in Scotland -- at Scrabster with Bill and Lily Harcus. We had crossed the Pentland Firth via the St. Ola without incident though Bill told us when he met us at Scrabster that over the weekend the lifeboat crew had been called out. A fine dinner with Bill and Lily, with all of us talking at once. They came on with us as far as Wick and than returned home.
And that was it. Another world, and a precious one.
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To all of the family, tor their warmth and kindness, for everything they did for us, for all the big things and all the little things, our heartfelt thanks.
MORE FAMILY, MORE AND MOREAND MORE
One cold, cold New Year's morning (1947) when the scrimmage for the ba' would have been going on in Kirkwall for hours, Peter Harcus and I stood in the snow in Toronto at the end of the Harbord Street car line waiting to meet a cousin from St. Paul“ Minn., Mary Jean Drever. She had called Peter to say that she was in Toronto at some religious conference and we stood there apprehensively wondering what sort of forbidding person to expect who was going to some to Peter and F1ossie's New Year's dinner. Finally off she came, a gay little person in saddle shoes in the snow looking quite like Marjorie Camit Gibson, and what a wonderful New Year's we all had together:
Another such meeting took place in the airport office in San Francisco in August, 1954: Ina Drever Ridler and I trying to find each other in the bustle. Again it was no problems Ina looks so much like Maisy Drever Walls in Kirkwall. She took ms homo (2042 - 48th Avenue) to the San Francisco equivalent of Maisy's home-- the some lovely colour and cheerfulness, and a jewel-like small garden complete with lily pool. How we talked for two days. And we could have gone on for weeks. Anna Dunlap, Ina's niece, came over from Berkeley the first night, and that was another joy. Such a party with William Ridler, pretty Annabelle and her husband Arthur. Ina of course took me on the rounds of the sights of San Francisco, but wonderful as such a city is, it was not to be compared with the experience of getting acquainted with a first cousin whom one had little expected ever to see.
The next year (1955) on route to the home of Gladys Camit Mortin in Wisconsin, I called on William Drever of 815 - 14th Street, Racine (phone 3-8427). Here again was a Drever, far from the Orkneys, but with the unmistakable physique, manner, and personality of the Drevers of the North Iles. Dark and small; they - we - must surely carry some of the blood of the Picts whom the Vikings may have found in the Orkneys. This William is from the farm known as Sanger (Sanquhar?) in Rapness, Westray, and his mother was known as Bell of Sanger. His father was a cousin of the Peter Harcus of Doggerboat. A gentle, delightful Person.
Later, in July of 1956, he was to write: "Yes, I was well acquainted with Robert Drever of Moe. He built my father's boat that he went fishing with and I remember when a little boy coming out of school it was a terrible snow storm and blew me in the ditch. A big girl took my hand and took me home. We had to walk two and a half miles, when we got home all our folks wore sitting by the fire crying. Father and his men had gone to sea that day and there was little hope of them surviving. His cousins wife had give small children and there were nine in our family. His boat was only a small 14 ft a keel and many big boats went down that night. In the morning Mother took me up the hill and the storm had abated between showers and cleared up. Mother had a spy glass and she saw a little boat tacking up by Pharay and said it was our boat. You can imagine how we all felt when we went to shore in meet them. It was a miracle. They bad run before the wind and got to Shapinsay. The people where very kind and took them home for the night."
William took me to. call on Peter Drummond of Bredakirk, Guith, Eday, who lives at 1100 - 12th street, Racine. His wife before her marriage was Mary Wilson of Millbounds, Eday. It was a very brief call, but long enough to look through a photograph album and find Bob Burgar's face smiling up at me.
And there was a day when I believed that apart iron my sister and her family that I had no relatives on my father's side, well, relatives who were real: There must surely be rascals and bores in this family, but I haven't met them yet.
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