The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [22]
Agnes turned fourteen during the second week in September, when the deep purple heather burst into full bloom. Her hair had grown long enough to be less conspicuous as she roamed the wynds around the Green. Janet had completed her sentence just in time for Agnes’s birthday and the lingering remnants of summer warmth.
The days were soon shorter as autumn approached and October’s heavy rains returned. By November, the sun all but disappeared. The first snowflakes fell in December and posted a stark reminder of the holiday celebration that had gone so terribly, terribly wrong nearly two years ago, when Agnes was involved with the gang of burglars. This year, Agnes and her blue-eyed chum managed to sing holiday songs and pilfer their way through the season without getting caught.
On December 31, Glasgow came alive in holiday celebration. Agnes and Janet brought 1834 to a close as they bellowed out a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne,” written by national poet and favorite son Robert Burns. Church bells across the city chimed at the stroke of midnight. This was Hogmanay night, Scotland’s most important holiday, elevated in importance because of a long-standing ban on Christmas. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Presbyterian Church forbade Christmas celebrations, fearing pagan origins among its traditions.
Hogmanay traditions, practiced continually since the 1600s, marked the season of rebirth as days became longer and nights shorter. Scots cleaned their homes thoroughly, paid off their debts, and burned juniper branches to ward off evil spirits for the coming year. Inside Glasgow’s west-side mansions, holiday merrymakers feasted on whiskey and steak pie. This was followed by traditional black buns, a type of fruitcake filled with raisins and currants, covered with pastry. If Agnes and Janet were quick enough on their feet, they’d lift a bun or two from a delivery basket left unattended. After all, Hogmanay was a high holiday for thieves. An abundance of revelers carried bottles of whiskey from door to door, and as midnight approached, inebriated celebrants provided easy picking for their watches and their money.
The upper crust exchanged gifts on Hogmanay and practiced a custom called “first-footing.” Depending on who it was, the first guest to enter a home after midnight brought either good or bad fortune for the new year. Visitors delivered coins and packages of coal, signaling the wish for security and warmth. According to folklore, the preferred first guest was a tall, dark, handsome man, because he was more likely a “true” Scotsman than someone fair-haired, perhaps descended from Viking invaders who terrorized Scotland for three hundred years. A redheaded first-footer was considered bad luck, a redheaded woman the worst of all.
Janet’s bright hair caused her own bad luck, as she stood out in Glasgow’s wynds. She was arrested again for petty theft on February 16, 1835. While Janet plodded through another mill sentence, Agnes took Helen Fulton, a kimmer (young girl) from the Goosedubbs neighborhood, under her wing.
Then, shortly after Janet’s return, Agnes was arrested for petty theft. On April 14, 1835, the comely fourteen-year-old was sentenced to another sixty days in Mr. Green’s mill. The grey-eyed lass fingered the locks that would be mercilessly shorn. Her hair had just started to grow out, and now she was back in chains. Back to the bothy again, bloody bad luck.
Agnes took her place in the cart with the other prisoners. The wagon creaked forward as the workhorse headed down the familiar path toward the mill. Yellow marsh marigolds and white hawthorn buds marked Agnes’s trail of frustration.
Frolic o’ the Fair
Agnes spent the spring in the mill, but was happily released from picking wool before temperatures reached 120 degrees inside the building. Through a