Hearth and Home
In the setting up of a cottar's living-room in one of the cottages adjoining the Weigh House, no specific date was intended, the object being to record the general picture of the pre-machine age rural worker's home, and to rescue for this display furnishings from local cottages about to be demolished or reconstructed.
The fireplace, built-in exactly as it was in a Falkland cottage, differs little from the type depicted by Sir David Wilkie in his paintings such as "The Cut Finger" or "The Saturday Night." The iron kettle hung on the rantree (hook up the chimney), the kail-pot bubbling on the warm stone hob, the bannocks toasting by the bars of the fire would be a sight as familiar to teh young Wilkie in the early years of the 19th century as it was to a Ceres visitor to the Museum recalling his boyhood experiences at the end of the same century. His Saturday treat was "twa treacle scones" hot from the gridle as a reward for rocking the bairn in a cradle such as shown by the fire.
The grey panel with swivel door, taken from a Balmullo cottage, conceals an already existing salt-hole by the hearth: on the other side a saut-backet of wood serves the same purpose of keeping the salt dry near the fire. Once reclaimed the hard way in the saltpans of the Fife shore at Methil, Dysart and Culross, salt retained its reputation as a precious commodity. Its usefulness extended beyond mere savour in the days when herring or a piece of home-killed ham had to be preserved over many weeks as a variant to the normal diet of porridge, kail and potatoes.
Oatmeal was kept in the wooden meal-backet or in a larger meal girnel. A pottery version of the meal barrel was produced by the Kirkcaldy Factory of Morrison and Crawford who specialised in a type of slipware introducing streaks of a secondary colour on to the basic with the aid of a branch of broom. The sponge-ware bowl of the Links Pottery, Kirkcaldy, know as "Young's Pottery" in the early 20th century when barins of the era decorated their sandcastles with the pottery waste.
In the general hearth display in the Main Exhibition Room there is a swey on which to hang the pots or kettle above either an open fire or kitchen range, aided by links or chains of varying lengths. Other fireside companions were the steel fender to be burnished every Saturday, and iron fire-dogs, some commemorating national figures such as General Gordon at Khartoum on his camel, or others made at local foundries depicting farm animals. Bannock spades to turn the scone or oatcake show a pleasing variety in design, as do Girdles forged in a number of Smiddies in the neighbourhood. The girdle has a long association with Fife, as the Hammermen of Culross were granted an early royal monopoly in the making of the straight handed griddle. One of the smaller hoop-handled ones on display has a history of its own; its Fife owner, then on the domestic staff of King George VI at Buckingham Papce, used it to supplement the wartime rations of her colleagues.
Elsewhere in the Museum are signs of the rising standard of living of the Victorian and Edwardian Middle Class - moulds for decorative plasterwork on ceilings, joiner's heavy moulding planes for more elaborate doors and skirting boards; porcelain, glass and silver plate for the table. There are signs too of the late Victorian love of gadgetry in the knife cleaners, marmalade cutters, pressure cooker, and in the sewing and knitting machines.
As the money wage gradually took over from payment in service, the cottar's wife might be able to add to the basic furnishings e.g. Wally Dugs, perhaps sold at the door by a travelling pedlar. A wedding or a betrothal might produce from the employer a gift of a loving jug or pair of Toby Jugs. When the Will was read a clock might be inherited, a Waggity Wa': two examples are on show from Cupar and from Ladybank. Inherited too would be Granny's best teacups to be kept safely in the closed Press or open Dresser.
The built-in Box Bed had been a long established domestic tradition in Scotland. In the 16th century the English traveller Fynes Moryson recorded "Their bedsteads were then like Cubbards in the wall, with doores to be opened and shut at pleasure, so as we climbed up to our beds." The better-off household thereafter introduced fourposters and other free-standing furniture, but in the small rural home lack of space and money dictated the retention of the box-bed even into the 20th century.
The example in the Museum, from Collessie, is without doors, of the open recessed type, and is currently displayed with the model of grandfather in bedclothes holding a horn to his deaf ear. There are accounts of as many as six bairns at one time sleeping crossways in a bed of this kind. With the bed are the original red and white cotton valences and the mattress of straw covered in sacking -- a use of local material that would make replacement easy for any farm hand changing master and tied home at the term.
The tin cruisie light - the one on view was found on the rafters of a Ceres cottage -- would be supplemented first by a candle or a candle reading lamp, and then by the paraffin lamp. In no case can it have been an adequate light either to read the Family Bible (bought in instalments in Markinch in the 1870's) to spin and prepare thread for the loom, or to produce the handmade extras like the clootie or rag rug and the patchwork quilt made of gleanings from the dressmaker's clippings.