Raining this morning, the first time since Monday 12th. It faired in afternoon. Very close. Motored to Henderland, Sundhope, Newarkburn, Dunsdale, Hospital + Shawpark. Got back at 1. Message to Harry Scott, Tower Street.1 Dry cupped him for lumbago. Motored to Kirklea at 6.30 + went with the Ogilvies2 to a concert in Ashkirk Hall where I recited ”Tam + the Leechs”3, “The Pill + the Bottle”4… [section of text deleted].
1 This is possibly Henry Hughes ‘Harry’ Scott (1890-), clerk at a woollen factory, son of Robert Scott, woollen weaver, and Janet Scott née Hughes, recorded at Tower Street in the 1911 Census with his family. Harry married Mary Bell Turnbull in 1911 at Selkirk, had two children, Janet Hownam Scott (1911-) and Robert Dickson Scott (1913-), both born at Tower Street. Harry was recorded, a costing clerk at Gardiner’s tweed manufacturers, living with his own family at Ettrick Terrace, Selkirk in the 1921 Census (though his father Robert appears to be recorded at Tower Street in the 1923 Valuation Roll so it is perfectly feasible that Harry was there for some reason in 1923).
2 William Henry ‘W H’ or ‘Will’ Ogilvie (1869-1963), author, journalist and one of Australia’s great Bush poets, and Katherine Margaret ‘Madge’ Scott Anderson (1879-1965), daughter of Thomas ‘T’ Scott Anderson of Ettrick Shaws.
3 Tam and the Leeches from ‘The Auld Doctor, and Other Poems and Songs in Scots’ by David Rorie (1867-1946), D.S.O., M.D.C.M, D.P.H., doctor, folklorist and poet (“Faith there’s a hantle queer complaints | To cheenge puir sinners into saints | An’ mony divers ways o’ deein’ | That doctors hae a chance o’ seein’ | The Babylonian scartit bricks | To tell his doots o’ Death’s dark tricks.” etc.
4 The Pill and The Bottle were two poems by Dr John F Fergus (1865-1943), published in ‘Fancies of a Physician, Medical and Otherwise, in Scots and English, Brown Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1938.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 