Dougie MacLean

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #126 (October/November 2006).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Dougie MacLean

Roll On, Wee Fergie

by T.J. McGrath

Clang, carr-uppity, putt-putt... In the old days a Ferguson tractor plowing the hard fields during the cool brisk winds of an early spring sent many a farmer's heart a-racing. Named after Harry Ferguson, an Irish inventor and pal of Henry Ford, a Ferguson tractor relies on the three-point hitch system, an innovative engineering feat by which ploughs and other implements are attached to an agricultural tractor. After Ferguson's death in 1960, most of these tractors were still reliable workhorses on small farms around the world, but finally -- with the slog of time and the arrival of big corporate farms using slick, fuel-guzzling, monstrous Caterpillars, John Deeres, and Kubotas -- many of these trusty little appliances were left out in the pasture to rot, stuck in farm graveyards with other cast-off tools and engines, or cut up for replacement parts. Nowadays, if you have a little luck and good eye for spotting the Ferguson insignia on the front of the engine, you might find some lonely and silent Ferguson tractor shoved behind a corner in a dilapidated barn or left motionless in the back 40, where weeds, rust, and neglect embrace the tired body.

The foremost Ferguson tractor-spotter around the hills and dales lately is Dougie MacLean, considered to be one of Scotland's best folk musicians. He has been known to bring his own 1947 model Ferguson tractor (painted gray and dubbed "Wee Fergie") onstage with him during performances of his "Rural Image: A SongVision Symphony," a grand production worthy of Strauss and Christo, which was presented at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow [Issue #124]. The sight of an old tractor on an important stage is a powerful message to some: Scotland is quickly losing vast amounts of farm land to commercial developments or outsiders who want to invest in Scottish soil as a tax write-off. Old Scottish ways and means are quickly disappearing.

MacLean, a champion of the farmer, the poor, and the disillusioned middle class, is ready for the storm. To back up his point of view, he has been known to drive his own "Wee Fergie" down some Scottish streets and back roads, a protest to a runaway society, some would say, obsessed with fast profits and disposable consumer goods.

[cover #126]