Shoemakers
For the eighteenth century
My mother's family were village shoemakers.
Always the eldest, Alexander.
The rest of the large broods
Had to fend for themselves:
Labouring, emigrating, dying.
This was ten miles southeast of Glasgow in Scotland.
The Pettigrew family has been there
As far back as records go.
No-one knows where they came from.
Rumours of Huguenots from Picardy
Seem to have been scotched.
Most of the family is now in New Zealand,
But Australia and Canada are presences.
The story is all up on the Web
And has many visitors. Twenty years research.
My Aunt Nan married a shoemaker.
(We were farmers by then.)
It's in the genes.
I wear my shoes until they fall to bits.
Then I buy another pair of the same.
My latest were made in Portugal.
Skilled trades were hereditary in the old days.
You were born to it.
And a shoemaker was a cut above a cobbler.
We didn't starve.
Nowadays a Portuguese peasant operates a machine.
I suppose we were peasants then.
So was Wagner's Meistersinger.
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