and objects so long buried that they had been half forgotten came
back to view and use.

Storm-stead shows used to emphasize the severity of a Thrums winter.
As the name indicates, these were gatherings of travelling booths in
the winter-time. Half a century ago the country was overrun by
itinerant showmen, who went their different ways in summer, but
formed little colonies in the cold weather, when they pitched their
tents in any empty field or disused quarry, and huddled together for
the sake of warmth, not that they got much of it. Not more than five
winters ago we had a storm-stead show on a small scale; but nowadays
the farmers are less willing to give these wanderers a camping-place,
and the people are less easily drawn to the entertainments provided,
by fife and drum. The colony hung together until it was starved out,
when it trailed itself elsewhere. I have often seen it forming. The
first arrival would be what was popularly known as "Sam'l Mann's
Tumbling-Booth," with its tumblers, jugglers, sword-swallowers, and
balancers. This travelling show visited us regularly twice a year:
once in summer for the Muckle Friday, when the performers were gay
and stout, and even the horses had flesh on their bones; and again
in the "back-end" of the year, when cold and hunger had taken the
blood from their faces, and the scraggy dogs that whined at their
side were lashed for licking the paint off the caravans. While the
storm-stead show was in the vicinity the villages suffered from an
invasion of these dogs. Nothing told more truly the dreadful tale of
the showman's life in winter. Sam'l Mann's was a big show, and half
a dozen smaller ones, most of which were familiar to us, crawled in
its wake. Others heard of its whereabouts and came in from distant
parts. There was the well-known Gubbins with his "A' the World in a
Box," a halfpenny peep-show, in which all the world was represented