Horses

Delivering peats to Stornoway in 1921

I remember a few horses in Tong. If you had 10 shillings to buy a horse, you were an important person in the village. 

Some of the young village men who worked in Glasgow could get an old horse for next to nothing. The horses were transported to the island on the coast ship, it was quite normal as they carried cows and sheep in those days. The horses although they were old, could be worked as pairs for ploughing, here in the village.

There was even a horse that came all the way from New Zealand! Yes a member of the Stewart family at No 11, worked for the New Zealand Shipping Company. Young men and women were obliged to send money to their parents in those days. When another Tong man’s ship happened to berth at a port in New Zealand, he gave him the money to buy his father (Stewart 11 Tong) a horse in Glasgow and get it sent onward to Tong. 

What a nice surprise for his father as a letter was the only way of sending messages in those days. The horse would have arrived long before the letter was delivered anyway. 

Rev Angus A Macdonald, Tong 2023