Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan

by Gordon Jarvie

  ‘Yon bairn will be a bonny mate for you, Maister Randal,’ said old Simon Grieve. ‘Deed, I dinna think her kin will come speering after her at Fairnilee. The red cock’s crawing ower Hardriding Ha’ this day, and when the womenfolk come back frae the wood, they’ll hae other things to do forbye looking for bairns.’

  When Simon Grieve said that the red cock was crowing over his enemies’ home, he meant that he had set it on fire after the people who lived in it had run away.

  Lady Ker grew pale when she heard what he said. She hated the English, to be sure, but she was a woman with a kind heart. She thought of the dreadful danger that the little English girl had escaped, and she went upstairs and helped the nurse to make the child happy.

  CHAPTER IV

  Randal and Jean

  The little girl soon made everyone at Fairnilee happy. She was far too young to remember her own home, and presently she was crawling up and down the long hall and making friends with Randal. They found out that her name was Jane Musgrave, though she could hardly say Musgrave; and they called her Jean, with their Scots tongues, or ‘Jean o’ the Kye’, because she came when the cows were driven home again.

  Soon the old nurse came to like her near as well as Randal, ‘her ain bairn’ (her own child), as she called him. In the summer days, Jean, as she grew older, would follow Randal about like a little doggie. They went fishing together, and Randal would pull the trout out of Caddon Burn, or the Burn of Peel; and Jeanie would be very proud of him, and very much alarmed at the big, wide jaws of the yellow trout. And Randal would plait helmets with green rushes for her and him, and make spears of bulrushes, and play at tilts and tournaments. There was peace in the country; or if there was war, it did not come near the quiet valley of the Tweed and the hills that lie around Fairnilee. In summer they were always on the hills and by the burnsides.

  You cannot think, if you have not tried, what pleasant company a burn is. It comes out of the deep, black wells in the moss, far away on the tops of the hills, where the sheep feed, and the fox peers from his hole, and the ravens build in the crags. The burn flows down from the lonely places, cutting a way between steep, green banks, tumbling in white waterfalls over rocks, and lying in black, deep pools below the waterfalls. At every turn it does something new and plays a fresh game with its brown waters. The white pebbles in the water look like gold: often Randal would pick one out and think he had found a gold-mine, till he got it into the sunshine, and then it was only a white stone, what he called a ‘chucky-stane’; but he kept hoping for better luck next time. In the height of summer, when the streams were very low, he and the shepherd’s boys would build dams of stones and turf across a narrow part of the burn, while Jean sat and watched them on a little round knoll. Then, when plenty of water had collected in the pool, they would break the dam and let it all run downhill in a little flood; they called it a ‘hurly gush’. And in winter they would slide on the black, smooth ice of the boat-pool, beneath the branches of the alders.

  Or they would go out with Yarrow, the shepherd’s dog, and follow the track of wild creatures in the snow. The rabbit makes marks like this ∵, and the hare makes marks like this ; but the fox’s track is just as if you had pushed a piece of wood through the snow – a number of cuts in the surface, going straight along. When it was very cold, the grouse and blackcocks would come into the trees near the house, and Randal and Jean would put out porridge for them to eat. And the great white swans floated in from the frozen lochs on the hills, and gathered around open reaches and streams of the Tweed. It was pleasant to be a boy then in the North. And at Hallowe’en they would duck for apples in tubs of water, and burn nuts in the fire, and look for the shadow of the lady Randal was to marry, in the mirror; but he only saw Jean looking over his shoulder.

  The days were very short in winter, so far north, and they would soon be driven into the house. Then they sat by the nursery fire; and those were almost the pleasantest hours, for the old nurse would tell them old Scots stories of elves and fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some other awful bogle, should get her; and in the dancing shadows of the firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot – birr, birr – and that whirred and rattled as she span and told her tale. For people span their cloth at home then, instead of buying it from shops; and the old nurse was a great woman for spinning.

  She was a great woman for stories, too, and believed in fairies, and ‘bogles’, as she called them. Had not her own cousin, Andrew

  Tamson, passed the Cauldshiels Loch one New Year morning? And had he not heard a dreadful roaring, as if all the cattle on Faldonside Hill were routing at once? And then did he not see a great black beast roll down the hillside, like a black ball, and run into the loch, which grew white with foam, and the waves leaped up the banks like a tide rising? What could that be except the kelpie that lives in Cauldshiels Loch, and is just a muckle big water bull? ‘And what for should there no be water kye, if there’s land kye?’

  Randal and Jean thought it was very likely there were ‘kye’, or cattle, in the water. And some Highland people think so still, and believe they have seen the great kelpie come roaring out of the lake; or Shellycoat, whose skin is all crusted like a rock with shells, sitting beside the sea.

  The old nurse had other tales, that nobody believes any longer, about Brownies. A Brownie was a very useful creature to have in a house. He was a kind of fairy-man, and he came out in the dark, when everybody had gone to bed, just as mice pop out at night. He never did anyone any harm, but he sat and warmed himself at the kitchen fire. If any work was unfinished he did it, and made everything tidy that was left out of order. It is a pity there are no such bogles now! If anybody offered the Brownie any payment, even if it was only a silver penny or a new coat, he would take offence and go away.

  Other stories the old nurse had, about hidden treasures and buried gold. If you believed her, there was hardly an old stone on the hillside that didn’t have gold under it. The very sheep that fed upon the Eildon Hills, which Randal knew well, had yellow teeth because there was so much gold under the grass. Randal had taken two scones, or rolls, in his pocket for dinner, and ridden over to the Eildon Hills. He had seen a rainbow touch one of them, and there he hoped he would find the treasure that always lies at the tail of the rainbow. But he got very soon tired of digging for it with his little dirk, or dagger. It blunted the dagger, and he found nothing. Perhaps he had not marked quite the right place, he thought. But he looked at the teeth of the sheep, and they were yellow; so he had no doubt that there was a gold-mine under the grass, if he could find it.

  The old nurse knew that it was very difficult to dig up fairy gold. Generally something happened just when people heard their pickaxes clink on the iron pot that held the treasure. A dreadful storm of thunder and lightning would break out; or the burn would be flooded, and rush down all red and roaring, sweeping away the tools and drowning the digger; or a strange man, that nobody had ever seen before, would come up, waving his arms, and crying out that the Castle was on fire. Then the people would hurry up to the Castle, and find that it was not on fire at all. When they returned, all the earth would be just as it was before they began, and they would give up in despair. Nobody could ever see the man again that gave the alarm.

  ‘Who could he be, nurse?’ Randal asked.

  ‘Just one of the good folk, I’m thinking; but it’s no weel to be speaking o’ them.’

  Randal knew that the ‘good folk’ meant the fairies. The old nurse called them the good folk for fear of offending them. She would not speak much about them, except now and then, when the servants had been making merry.

  ‘And is there any treasure hidden near Fairnilee, nursie?’ asked little Jean.

  ‘Treasure, my bonny doo! Mair than a’ the men about the toon could carry away
frae morning till nicht. Do ye no ken the auld rhyme?

  Atween the wet ground and the dry

  The gold of Fairnilee doth lie.

  ‘And there’s the other auld rhyme:

  Between the Camp o’ Rink

  And Tweed-water clear,

  Lie nine kings’ ransoms

  For nine hundred year!’

  Randal and Jean were very glad to hear so much gold was near them as would pay nine kings’ ransoms. They took their small spades and dug little holes in the Camp of Rink, which is a great old circle of stonework, surrounded by a deep ditch, on the top of a hill above the house. But Jean was not a very good digger, and even Randal grew tired. They thought they would wait till they grew bigger, and then find the gold.

  CHAPTER V

  The Good Folk

  ‘Everybody knows there’s fairies,’ said the old nurse one night when she was bolder than usual. What she said we will put in English, not Scots as she spoke it. ‘But they do not like to be called fairies. So the old rhyme runs:

  If ye call me imp or elf,

  I warn you look well to yourself;

  If ye call me fairy,

  Ye’ll find me quite contrary;

  If good neighbour you call me,

  Then good neighbour I will be;

  But if you call me kindly sprite,

  I’ll be your friend both day and night.

  ‘So you must always call them “good neighbours” or “good folk”, when you speak of them.’

  ‘Did you ever see a fairy, nurse?’ asked Randal.

  ‘Not myself, but my mother knew a woman – they called her Tibby Dickson, and her husband was a shepherd, and she had a bairn, as bonny a bairn as ever you saw. And one day she went to the well to draw water, and as she was coming back she heard a loud scream in her house. Then her heart leaped, and fast she ran and flew to the cradle; and there she saw an awful sight – not her own bairn, but a withered imp, with hands like a mole’s, and a face like a frog’s, and a mouth from ear to ear, and two great staring eyes.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Jeanie, in a trembling voice.

  ‘A fairy’s bairn that had not thriven,’ said nurse; ‘and when their bairns do not thrive, they just steal honest folk’s children and carry them away to their own country.’

  ‘And where’s that?’ asked Randal.

  ‘It’s under the ground,’ said nurse, ‘and there they have gold and silver and diamonds; and there’s the Queen of them all, that’s as beautiful as the day. She has yellow hair down to her feet, and she has blue eyes, like the sky on a fine day, and her voice like all the mavises singing in the spring. And she is aye dressed in green, and all her court in green; and she rides a white horse with golden bells on the bridle.’

  ‘I would like to go there and see her,’ said Randal.

  ‘Oh, never say that, my bairn; you never know who may hear you! And if you go there, how will you come back again? And what will your mother do, and Jean here, and me that’s carried you many a time in weary arms when you were a babe?’

  ‘Can’t people come back again?’ asked Randal.

  ‘Some say “Yes”, and some say “No”. There was Tam Hislop, that vanished away the day before all the lads and your own father went forth to that weary war at Flodden, and the English, for once, by guile, won the day. Well, Tam Hislop, when the news came that all must arm and mount and ride, he could nowhere be found. It was as if the wind had carried him away. High and low they sought him, but there was his clothes and his armour, and his sword and his spear, but no Tam Hislop. Well, no man heard more of him for seven whole years, not till last year, and then he came back: sore tired he looked, ay, and older than when he was lost. And I met him by the well, and I was frightened; and, “Tam,” I said, “where have ye been this weary time?” “I have been with them that I will not speak the name of,” says he. “Ye mean the good folk,” said I. “Ye have said it,” says he. Then I went up to the house, with my heart in my mouth, and I met Simon Grieve. “Simon,” I says, “here’s Tam Hislop come home from the good folk.” “I’ll soon send him back to them,” says he. And he takes a great stick and lays it about Tam’s shoulders, calling him coward loon, that ran away from the fighting. And since then Tam has never been seen about the place. But the Laird’s man, of Gala, knows them that say Tam was in Perth the last seven years, and not in Fairyland at all. But it was Fairyland he told me, and he would not lie to his own mother’s half-brother’s cousin.’

  Randal did not care much for the story of Tam Hislop. A fellow who would let old Simon Grieve beat him could not be worthy of the Fairy Queen.

  Randal was about thirteen now, a tall boy, with dark eyes, black hair, a brown face with the red on his cheeks. He had grown up in a country where everything was magical and haunted; where fairy knights rode on the leas after dark, and challenged men to battle. Every castle had its tale of Redcap, the sly spirit, or of the woman of the hairy hand. Every old mound was thought to cover hidden gold. And all was so lonely; the green hills rolling between river and river, with no men on them, nothing but sheep, and grouse, and plover. No wonder that Randal lived in a kind of dream. He would lie and watch the long grass until it looked like a forest, and he thought he could see elves dancing between the green grass stems, that were like fairy trees. He kept wishing that he, too, might meet the Fairy Queen, and be taken into that other world where everything was beautiful.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Wishing Well

  ‘Jean,’ said Randal one midsummer day, ‘I am going to the Wishing Well.’

  ‘Oh, Randal,’ said Jean, ‘it is so far away!’

  ‘I can walk it,’ said Randal, ‘and you must come, too; I want you to come, Jeanie. It’s not so very far.’

  ‘But mother says it is wrong to go to Wishing Wells,’ Jean answered.

  ‘Why is it wrong?’ said Randal, switching at the tall foxgloves with a stick.

  ‘Oh, she says it is a wicked thing, and forbidden by the Church. People who go to wish there, sacrifice to the spirits of the well; and Father Francis told her that it was very wrong.’

  ‘Father Francis is a shaveling,’ said Randal. ‘I heard Simon Grieve say so.’

  ‘What’s a shaveling, Randal?’

  ‘I don’t know: a man that does not fight, I think. I don’t care what a shaveling says: so I mean just to go and wish, and I won’t sacrifice anything. There can’t be any harm in that!’

  ‘But, oh, Randal, you’ve got your green doublet on!’

  ‘Well! Why not?’

  ‘Do you not know it angers the fair– I mean the good folk – that anyone should wear green on the hill but themselves?’

  ‘I cannot help it,’ said Randal. ‘If I go in and change my doublet, they will ask what I do that for. I’ll chance it, green or grey, and wish my wish for all that.’

  ‘And what are you going to wish?’

  ‘I’m going to wish to meet the Fairy Queen! Just think how beautiful she must be, dressed all in green, with gold bells on her bridle, and riding a white horse shod with gold! I think I see her galloping through the woods and out across the hill, over the heather.’

  ‘But you will go away with her, and never see me any more,’ said Jean.

  ‘No, I won’t; or if I do, I’ll come back, with such a horse, and a sword with a gold handle. I’m going to the Wishing Well. Come on!’

  Jean did not like to say ‘No’, so off they went.

  Randal and Jean started without taking anything with them to eat. They were afraid to go back to the house for food. Randal said they would be sure to find something somewhere. The Wishing Well was on the top of a hill between Yarrow and Tweed. So they took off their shoes, and waded the Tweed at the shallowest part, and then they walked up the green grassy bank on the other side, until they came to the Burn of Peel. Here they passed the old square tower of Peel, and the shepherd dogs came out and barked at them. Randal threw a stone at them, and they ran away with their tails between their legs.<
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  ‘Don’t you think we had better go into Peel, and get some bannocks to eat on the way, Randal?’ said Jean.

  But Randal said he was not hungry; and, besides, the people at Peel would tell the Fairnilee people where they had gone.

  ‘We’ll wish for things to eat when we get to the Wishing Well,’ said Randal. ‘All sorts of good things – cold venison pasty, and everything you like.’

  So they began climbing the hill, and they followed the Peel Burn. It ran in and out, winding this way and that, and when they did get to the top of the hill, Jean was very tired and very hungry. And she was very disappointed. For she expected to see some wonderful new country at her feet, and there was only a low strip of sunburnt grass and heather, and then another hill-top! So Jean sat down, and the hot sun blazed on her, and the flies buzzed about her and tormented her.

  ‘Come on, Jean,’ said Randal; ‘it must be over the next hill!’

  So poor Jean got up and followed him, but he walked far too fast for her. When she reached the crest of the next hill, she found a great cairn, or pile of grey stones; and beneath her lay, far, far below, a deep valley covered with woods, and a stream running through it that she had never seen before.

  That stream was the Yarrow.

  Randal was nowhere in sight, and she did not know where to look for the Wishing Well. If she had walked straight forward through the trees she would have come to it; but she was so tired, and so hungry, and so hot, that she sat down at the foot of the cairn and cried as if her heart would break.