Duncan Williamson and
Linda Williamson
THE KING AND THE LAMP
Scottish Traveller Tales
Introduced by Barbara McDermitt
To Granny Bella Macdonald
NOTE ON LANGUAGE
Readers should approach these stories with their ears up front. Because they are written from the oral tradition, the best way to understand them is to let your inner voice, analogous to the mind’s eye, speak them. The words should ring true. As a painter would approach his canvas, I have equipped myself with a complete pallete of colour, including tints. Thus, you will find variations of common words, different ‘shades’ of pronunciations. And, with a selection of brushes, I have responded, realising the in- cantatory storytelling genius of the teller’s own voice.
I heard all these stories
from the story-teller.
I loved them
with a musician’s ear.
If the reader gives me
his voice and inner ear
the page will never
be silent.
Linda Williamson
Contents
Introduction
FIRESIDE TALES OF THE TRAVELLER CHILDREN
The Cockerel and the Fox
The Fox and the Goat
Lion and the Four Bulls
Boy and the Snake
The Dog and the Peacock
Tatties from Chuckie-stanes
The Dog and the Manger
I Love You More Than Salt
The Hunchback and the Swan
The Goat that Told Lies
The King and the Lamp
The Boy and the Boots
THE BROONIE, SELKIES AND FAIRIES
The Broonie on Carra
The Broonie’s Farewell
Selkie Painter
Mary and the Seal
The Tramp and the Boots
The Taen-Awa
JACK TALES
Jack and the Witch’s Bellows
Jack and the Devil’s Purse
Death in a Nut
The Ugly Queen
BARRIE MOOSKINS
The Coming of the Unicorn
The Giant with the Golden Hair of Knowledge
The Thorn in the King’s Foot
Boy and the Blacksmith
Afterword
References
Glossary
Introduction
TRAVELLER STORYTELLING: A LEGACY
It was 1979 on a still, starry autumn night near the shore of Lochgilphead. Inside the Williamsons’ tent Duncan’s famous pancakes had been enthusiastically devoured accompanied by much laughter and noisy talk. Now, already past ten o’clock, it was time to settle down for stories. A fire gently crackled in an old tin drum, a pipe going up and out a hole in the roof emitted smoke skyward. Baby Betsy, curled up in her mother’s lap, was already fast asleep. My own daughter Heather, age nine, sat cross-legged at Duncan’s feet. She loved Duncan’s magic tales and was determined not to miss a one. Thus began another wonderful night when I was privileged to hear a true master storyteller share the stories of his people – the Scottish travellers.
Scotland, and for that matter, the whole English speaking world owe a special debt to the travelling people and most especially to the master storytellers among them such as Duncan Williamson. At one point in the past all Scots/English speaking peoples had access to the same rich well of oral stories and legends, including a wealth of international wonder tales. But it was the travellers who preserved those oral traditions, the birthright of all Scottish people, long after mainstream society relegated traditional fare to fairy tale books for children. Live storytelling as a central part of cultural, community and family life died out first in the urban areas in the early nineteenth century. Improvements in education, better access to books, and the spread of roads and transportation meant such simple entertainment was no longer needed or wanted. However, modern ways were slower to reach far-flung and out-of-the-way areas in the country. This meant storytelling around the hearth continued to have its central place in some isolated crofts and farms throughout the 1800s.
A great nineteenth-century collector of Highland Gaelic oral tradition was John Francis Campbell of the island of Islay. He realised he had to work fast if the oral traditions of his people were going to be preserved. Gaelic storytelling had a stronger hold on the Highlands and Islands than did Scots/English tradition in the Lowlands. Even so, the art was already showing signs of disappearing in Campbell’s day. With the help of local Gaelic speakers whom he trained as assistants, Campbell managed the amazing feat of collecting a total of 791 stories, many of which he published in four volumes called Popular Tales of the West Highlands. In the introduction to his collections, he sets out to explain the gradual erosion of storytelling. First, he says, the minister and then the schoolmaster stifled the old storytellers. Then came modern civilisation in the form of roads, railways, newspapers, tourists, book sellers. Tradition is out of fashion and books are in, was how he summed up the demise of Gaelic oral traditions.
The same could be said of the Lowland Scots traditions which had started to pass even earlier. Nineteenth century collectors of tales in the English and Scots tongues were too late to match the rich Gaelic pickings of Campbell. Sir Walter Scott in the Borders, Robert Chambers in the Lothians and Peter Buchan in the Northeast, three of the most important early collectors, were only able to record a smattering of international wonder tales along with the songs, simple legends, children’s lore and rhymes that were accessible at the time. It is interesting to note what Robert Chambers said about this in the introduction to his chapter on Fireside Nursery Stories in the 1841 edition of his Popular Rhymes of Scotland:
What man of middle age, or above it, does not remember the tales of drollery and wonder which used to be told by the fireside, in cottage and in nursery, by the old women, time out of mind the vehicles for such traditions? These stories were in general of a simple kind, befitting the minds which they were to regale; they derived an inexpressible charm from a certain antique air which they had brought down with them from the world of their birth, a world still more primitive, and rude, and romantic, than that in which they were told, old as it now appears to us.
This shows that Chambers, as was true with other collectors in the nineteenth century, viewed Scottish storytelling as already a relic of the past rather than a living tradition. What they didn’t know was that all this time storytelling was very much alive, certainly in Scotland, both among the Gaelic and the Scots travellers. Why was it that the travelling people carried on this tradition when the rest of Scotland was decisively moving away from it?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TRAVELLING PEOPLE
The Scottish travelling people are an ancient race (as they describe themselves). Though much conjecture has been made as to who they are and where they came from, their true origins have never been substantiated. It is clear they should not be confused with gypsies who arrived in Britain from Europe and the Middle East in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the case of travellers, it is generally accepted that most of their ancestors were indigenous to Britain, and probably had distant links with the itinerant families of early Ireland. As far back as pre-Christian Pictish days, they roamed Scotland as free-spirited wanderers from place to place living in caves or tents. In fact right up to living memory the life style of travellers was nomadic. They moved from site to site as mood and necessity dictated. They were once known as ‘tinkers,’ referring to their skill as tinsmiths. Unfortunately this term took on a derogatory connotation when in more modern times city dwellers scorned these outsiders. For this reason the tinkers renamed themselves equally appropriately as the
travelling people.
Though the origin of the travellers is uncertain, much more is known about their history since the 1700s. Their itinerant life style has always been at odds with the settled community, especially in urban areas where prejudice ran rife against them and, sadly, still does to some degree. Townspeople only saw the travellers as lazy and good-for-nothing. But back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries travellers managed to play an important role in the smooth running of country life. Before major roadways opened up and modern communications changed the face of Scotland, the then tinkers were welcomed as news-bringers to isolated hamlets. They were basket weavers, hawkers, beggars, pearl fishermen, fortune tellers, tool and clock menders, and of course tinsmiths. They could turn their hand to any task and farmers counted on them for many jobs like harvesting the hay, berry picking and lifting the neaps and tatties. But these early travellers also had another function – entertainment. They were welcomed by the rich landowners who hired them for their fine pipers, fiddlers, storytellers, singers and fortune tellers. It must be remembered at this time that the travellers and the country hantle (the travellers’ name for country folk) shared similar oral traditions and much the same superstitions, most particularly a belief in otherworldly creatures and the supernatural. Though the two groups kept socially distinct, they readily swapped songs, pipe tunes, ghost stories, fairy and selkie legends and international wonder tales or Märchen. In this way the travellers continually augmented their repertoires, and in passing-on their newly acquired tales and songs to other travellers as they moved from campsite to campsite, they made the stories their own. And it must be remembered that even after the country hantle no longer told stories or held to the old superstitions, the travellers continued to do so. Besides the shared wonder tales, travellers would also tell their family experiences, memorates and legends. A memorate is a ‘true’ story told about a family member no longer living. Somewhere between personal experience and legend, it comes closer to legend but is specific to that person. Such stories constituted a main form of entertainment, but at the same time they also richly reflect and uphold the travellers’ beliefs and superstitions, thus ensuring the preservation and perpetuation of their own shared heritage.
Always among the travellers would be the recognised master storytellers. These men were honoured for their ability to tell the big Märchen, often about a hero named Jack. Even after such storytellers were long dead, they continued to be honoured by their families who would pass on their stories in their name. The great storytellers who performed publicly at community gatherings were almost always men. The women, often equally skilled, reserved their performances mainly for the family and most especially the children.
The close-knit traveller life as it once existed throughout Scotland began to crumble with the onset of the Great War when travellers were called up to serve in the armed services. But the irreversible damage to their culture only began at the end of the Second World War when many forms of modernisation resulted in the growth of cities and the ultimate shrinking of the countryside. Already the government had long passed a strict law that traveller children had to attend school a minimum of 120 days a year. Now local councils and landowners openly closed down their traditional camp-grounds, forcing travellers, against their will, to move into dismal city council flats. All this was done in an effort to destroy the unpopular traveller solidarity and to get travellers to conform with and integrate into mainstream life.
The travellers did not succumb readily to the pressures of mainstream conformity. Their lifestyle, living close to nature and by nature’s rules, tough as it was, suited their strong spiritual and moral instincts. They saw the settled community as immoral, where people cared more about money and the accumulation of possessions than things of the spirit. Materially travellers were poor, just barely eking out an existence. On the other hand they were rich in the love of close family relationships and in the traditions so necessary for their very survival. So when they were forced to send their children to schools and their camp-grounds were closed to them, they fought back with the weapons that had always served their solidarity, now become even more precious to them. Thus it was that in the face of fierce adversity they doggedly maintained their own customs, superstitions and oral traditions – most especially story-telling.
THE FUNCTIONS OF STORYTELLING FOR THE TRAVELLERS UP TO THE NEAR PRESENT TIME
One of the key functions of storytelling was as a cultural bonding mechanism to save a treasured way of life against the onslaught of outside influences. Traveller stories (some, like the Jack tales known among all the traveller families, and others, like the family memorates and legends, personal and specific to a given family) mirrored the many aspects of their culture and gave them pride in belonging to their ancient roots. Also, the actual act of travellers performing their stories served to validate their culture, and to justify the rituals and belief systems implicit in the stories themselves.
A second function of storytelling was its pleasure factor as entertainment for children and adults alike. Communal entertainment was mostly associated with summers when different families would meet up at favourite camping grounds. Every night around the fire there was music and singing, and most men had a story to tell. It might be a personal experience, a ghost story, a strange happening on the road, or a joke tale. The telling of the long complex Märchen, mostly Jack tales, was a showcase reserved for the best narrators. Each teller would try and outdo the others in winning the approval of the audience. This kind of friendly competition was popular and caused much delight to the listeners. Storytelling as family entertainment occurred in winter as well as summer, and was especially important for the children. Be the narrators mothers or fathers, or grannies and granddads, children heard stories, rhymes and songs from the time they were babies. It was a way of life.
Which brings us to the third important function of traveller storytelling – the role it played in the education of the children. Many parents could see the value of their children learning to read and write and do their sums, but beyond that, the travellers strongly disapproved of schooling. They were horrified to see their children taught in school to measure success by how much money a person earned, or by his or her position on the social scale. These were regarded as destructive values that ran counter to traveller mores. Parents felt the need to counteract such teachings and stories were their teaching tool. So traveller stories served not only to entertain, but they served to pass on the strongly held values of the parents to the young. In fact it was through the ritual of storytelling that traveller boys and girls learned the wisdom of their ancestors – a wisdom both practical and spiritual that prepared them for life within their closed society as well as outside it. Stories offered rich symbolic material steeped in essential truths. Plots revealed the inevitable dualities in nature and human beings: good and evil, love and hate, weakness and strength, cruelty and gentleness, pain and joy – universal opposites intrinsic in society at large but also displayed, often in extreme measure, among the travellers themselves. The heroes and heroines of the stories were their role models, most especially Jack, the number one traveller hero. Jack had to battle the evils of the devil and his warlocks and witches. In doing so, he exhibited traits such as respect for the old and wise, courage, faith, generosity, kindness, cleverness, self-reliance, humour and a will to survive against all odds – all very essential for a traveller’s hard life. Parents wanted their children to grow up like Jack, strong and able. He is always the underdog in the stories, but he comes out the winner in the end. Young travellers were quick to grasp the lessons of Jack and the innate truths the Jack tales revealed, because they had a direct bearing on their own lives. Parents knew that if children didn’t learn these truths when young, as adults it would be too late. Such lessons bound travellers into a sense of group loyalty starting at a very early age.
Other stories the parents told their children were tales about the Burkers from the days of the infamous Burk
e and Hare. Many a family memorate was told of a relative’s near escape from the Burkers who, it was believed, murdered unsuspecting travellers in lonely camps at night in order to sell their still-warm bodies to the medical schools. Besides providing a lesson in how to face danger and outwit an enemy, such tales were used by parents to deter children from wandering away from camp or having anything to do with strangers.
So it was that stories were the teaching tools of the parents. It was no wonder that children learned more at home than ever they did at school where, more often than not, they were badly treated and made to feel like outcasts by both the teachers and the other pupils.
Now there was a fourth function related to the first one. Keeping traditional stories alive was one way to ensure the preservation of the traveller culture and especially its sense of family and history. The stories and their remembered narrators kept travellers in touch with their roots. Duncan, for example, when he is telling stories publicly, always credits past storytellers from whom the stories were passed down. This process of giving recognition and honour to those of a bygone era, of deliberately linking with the past, helps to bind travellers of the present with the spirits of those who have gone before and ensure a living, unbroken heritage.
So it came about that after the demise of storytelling in mainstream society, it was the travellers who continued telling the old stories, quietly and practically unknown to the settled community. They became the custodians of a tradition which has been honoured again in Scotland only in recent years. How did this resurgence happen?
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