300 The Buchanites and Crocketford. 



were Clare men ; others hailed from Connaught. There was 

 the usual rivalry, which the Saturday drinking bouts often 

 fused to heat of battle. One evening the fighting was trans- 

 ferred from the legitimate fighting ground of the public-house 

 to the lodging-house, with the result that the Connaught men 

 were ejected. " I'll never loight a poipe in the Clare lodge 

 agin," wrathfully exclaimed a Connaught rnan ; and the name 

 Clare Lodge, or Castle Clare, has stuck to the house ever 

 since. Thus simply do places often get their names. 



Castle Hardships got its name as simply and at a much 

 earlier date. It lay just outside the village proper, and con- 

 sisted of an irregular little cluster of two-storey houses, once 

 busy and thriving enough, but doomed to fall in time into 

 perfect keeping with its name. It was a " wet castle " in 

 those days. The very children got a five-gill bottle of penny 

 wheep or treacle yill for their penny from under the red flash- 

 ing sign — " Strong Ale and Porter." As for their elders: 

 on one occasion the messenger had so many bottles of whisky 

 to bring from the inn for the thirsty ones that for very shame 

 she brought them in the watering-can in order to deceive the 

 villagers as to her real errand ! No wonder the weaver there 

 resident received a newspaper one morning from a frolicsome 

 friend, addressed to " The Orphans' Home, The Drunkard's 

 Den, Castle Hardships, near Starvation Point, Crocketford." 



Shuttlehill, now Burnside, explains itself. So does the 

 Kiln planting, where a malt kiln once stood. Crocketford 

 may be Crockett's ford, or possibly, as MacTaggart suggests, 

 the Crooked Ford. All that one can safely assert at present 

 is that there certainly was a ford in the neighbourhood. No 

 evidence is forthcoming which can clear up the " Crocket " 

 part of the name. 



But the magic wand of change had been waved over the 

 brisk old village. Inevitable forces were at work, distant 

 but far-reaching ; and they were even in those busy days of 

 the fifties eating at the very roots of the prosperity of our 

 remote ToUbar. Machinery had for years been gathering 

 within its octopus grasp the many crumbs that were wont to 

 fall to the spinner and the handloom weaver ; and the railroad 

 was now in like manner threatening the existence of the old 



