Blind Mattie
by D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd, Dundee
Martha Wallace, affectionately known as Blind Mattie to thousands of Dundonians used to wander the streets of Dundee singing songs like ‘My Ain Folk’ or ‘Hame o’ Mine’ and accompanying herself on the melodeon.
Martha was born in Main Street, Dundee, in 1875, the daughter of the boot closer, a man who sewed the uppers of boots in winter, but felt the sting of unemployment in summer when nobody required such footwear. Adding to his worries, his child was born blind.
Mattie was just a lassie when her mother died. For two years she attended Dundee’s School for the Blind where her ear for melody was sharpened even more.
The first time she ventured outside with her melodeon, she sang her way round the back green, reaching her finale in the washing house. There, as she recalled in 1951, she came a cropper. “The tune was Over the Garden Wall” an’ I fell ower a bar o’ soap”,
Led by her friend Maggie Nicol, a Stirling lass who had come to worki in dundee’s mills, Mattie went into the streets of Dundee, playing for the pennies that kept their little home together.
She was a tiny figure, almost too small for her powerful voice, and the weight of her melodeon soon gave her a marked list, a sloping left shoulder.
When your platform is the Hilltown on rainy Saturday nights or a closie in Commercial Street in winter, the weather goes for the joints, of both instrument and player. And Mattie frequently stood out in the sleet and the rain and went home soaked to the skin.
Her wanderings occasionally took her over the municipal boundary into Invergowrie. But she never liked to be away for long from the Dundonians whose kindness brought her between £3 and £4 a week – at a time when the pound was worth something.
Blind Mattie was ‘lifted’ once when a shopkeeper complained that his doorway was being turned into a ‘music hall’. She was escorted all the way to Bell Street by a uniformed officer, nichnamed Soordook, who was promptly told by the tolerant Desk Sergeant to turn round and walk her straight back home to St Mary’s Street.
Mattie used to boast that she could fill the Caird Hall with her voice which was perfectly honed on snuff. She was an inveterate talker. In 1949 she almost got the opportunity to fill Heaven with her voice when she stepped off the pavement in front of a double-decker bus in Ferry Road. Her melodeon was flattened, but Maggie got off with little more than shock.
The city’s Welfare Chaplain advertised in The Courier “Wanted – New Melodeon for Mattie”. He got ten replies, as well as numerous gifts for her. Friends gathered around and arranged funds to provide her with a new instrument. She chose the Hohner Black-Dot Double-Ray and continued her ‘career’, once encouraging the entire Town Council to join her in a chorus of ‘Oh, But I’m Longin’ For My Ain Folk’.
Mattie and her lifelong friend Maggie eventually became too frail to look after themselves and moved into The Rowans Eventide Home to spend their last days of their 70 year friendship together. In the Visitors Book she wrote : Martha Wallace, Employment – Street Singer. Relatives – None.
Dundonians living overseas who did not know her real name but who knew of the small white-haired woman who roamed the streets squeezing a melodeon as she sang, sent letters and gifts, addressed simply, Blind Mattie, Dundee. In the early 1950’s she was visited by the international Footballer Billy Steel. She thought the Dundee and Scotland star was ‘a braw chappie’ and together they did a waltz around the sitting room of the home.
Despite ill-health, Mattie never lost her cheeriness and pawky sense of humour which got her a standing ovation when she made her last public appearance at the Johnny Victory Charity Concert in the Caird Hall in May, 1958, when she sang her favourite song ‘My Ain Folk’.
Maggie Nicol died in 1956. Ironically, having once been paid three shilling a week by Mattie’s father to act as guide to his daughter, she herself became blind.
Mattie died six years later in 1962, aged 86, just a few months after learning by heart the words of The Scottish Soldier after hearing it on the radio. At the funeral service the Minister put into words what the two old friends had felt for each other for so long…”Whether thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”.
There were floral tributes from the Lord Provost on behalf of the city.
A portrait of Blind Mattie and her music box was given to the collection of the McManus Galleries in Dundee. The black Hohner melodeon became one of the most popular features in the Here’s Tae Dundee Exhibition in 1986. It is currently on permanent display in the local history collection in the museum’s ground floor – a fitting tribute to a remarkable woman and one of the city’s most popular worthies.
Box and Fiddle
April 1999
Martha was born in Main Street, Dundee, in 1875, the daughter of the boot closer, a man who sewed the uppers of boots in winter, but felt the sting of unemployment in summer when nobody required such footwear. Adding to his worries, his child was born blind.
Mattie was just a lassie when her mother died. For two years she attended Dundee’s School for the Blind where her ear for melody was sharpened even more.
The first time she ventured outside with her melodeon, she sang her way round the back green, reaching her finale in the washing house. There, as she recalled in 1951, she came a cropper. “The tune was Over the Garden Wall” an’ I fell ower a bar o’ soap”,
Led by her friend Maggie Nicol, a Stirling lass who had come to worki in dundee’s mills, Mattie went into the streets of Dundee, playing for the pennies that kept their little home together.
She was a tiny figure, almost too small for her powerful voice, and the weight of her melodeon soon gave her a marked list, a sloping left shoulder.
When your platform is the Hilltown on rainy Saturday nights or a closie in Commercial Street in winter, the weather goes for the joints, of both instrument and player. And Mattie frequently stood out in the sleet and the rain and went home soaked to the skin.
Her wanderings occasionally took her over the municipal boundary into Invergowrie. But she never liked to be away for long from the Dundonians whose kindness brought her between £3 and £4 a week – at a time when the pound was worth something.
Blind Mattie was ‘lifted’ once when a shopkeeper complained that his doorway was being turned into a ‘music hall’. She was escorted all the way to Bell Street by a uniformed officer, nichnamed Soordook, who was promptly told by the tolerant Desk Sergeant to turn round and walk her straight back home to St Mary’s Street.
Mattie used to boast that she could fill the Caird Hall with her voice which was perfectly honed on snuff. She was an inveterate talker. In 1949 she almost got the opportunity to fill Heaven with her voice when she stepped off the pavement in front of a double-decker bus in Ferry Road. Her melodeon was flattened, but Maggie got off with little more than shock.
The city’s Welfare Chaplain advertised in The Courier “Wanted – New Melodeon for Mattie”. He got ten replies, as well as numerous gifts for her. Friends gathered around and arranged funds to provide her with a new instrument. She chose the Hohner Black-Dot Double-Ray and continued her ‘career’, once encouraging the entire Town Council to join her in a chorus of ‘Oh, But I’m Longin’ For My Ain Folk’.
Mattie and her lifelong friend Maggie eventually became too frail to look after themselves and moved into The Rowans Eventide Home to spend their last days of their 70 year friendship together. In the Visitors Book she wrote : Martha Wallace, Employment – Street Singer. Relatives – None.
Dundonians living overseas who did not know her real name but who knew of the small white-haired woman who roamed the streets squeezing a melodeon as she sang, sent letters and gifts, addressed simply, Blind Mattie, Dundee. In the early 1950’s she was visited by the international Footballer Billy Steel. She thought the Dundee and Scotland star was ‘a braw chappie’ and together they did a waltz around the sitting room of the home.
Despite ill-health, Mattie never lost her cheeriness and pawky sense of humour which got her a standing ovation when she made her last public appearance at the Johnny Victory Charity Concert in the Caird Hall in May, 1958, when she sang her favourite song ‘My Ain Folk’.
Maggie Nicol died in 1956. Ironically, having once been paid three shilling a week by Mattie’s father to act as guide to his daughter, she herself became blind.
Mattie died six years later in 1962, aged 86, just a few months after learning by heart the words of The Scottish Soldier after hearing it on the radio. At the funeral service the Minister put into words what the two old friends had felt for each other for so long…”Whether thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”.
There were floral tributes from the Lord Provost on behalf of the city.
A portrait of Blind Mattie and her music box was given to the collection of the McManus Galleries in Dundee. The black Hohner melodeon became one of the most popular features in the Here’s Tae Dundee Exhibition in 1986. It is currently on permanent display in the local history collection in the museum’s ground floor – a fitting tribute to a remarkable woman and one of the city’s most popular worthies.
Box and Fiddle
April 1999