The King and the Lamp

by Duncan Williamson

  O-oh, jist within minutes the young lassie wis cairried doon o’ the stretcher an placed i’ the smiddie. The auld man says, ‘Now, everybody out!’ He closed the door. An the young lassie’s lyin, legs twistit, head backside-foremost – the identical tae the young wumman that he had seen in the smiddie a long time ago! The smith said, ‘If he can dae it, so can I!’

  So he kinnelt up the fire an he placed her on the fire. He blowed, and he pumpit an he blowed an he blowed, an he blowed an he blowed an he blowed an he blowed. And he burnt her till there were no a thing left. (Noo, he had tellt the king tae come back in two hoors. ‘Two hoors,’ he tellt the king, ‘yir daughter’ll be as well as cuid be.’)

  So, efter he collectit all the bones oot the fire, he put them on the top o’ the anvil. He got the hammer and he choppit an he choppit, he grint them all doon and he gathered them all up, put them on the top o’ the anvil. An he sput in it. He waitit. He mixed hit again. An he sput an he waitit. But he sput an he waitit, he sput an he waitit, he sput an he waitit. But no, there was no answer, nothing wad happent. Then he heard a knock at the door.

  He says, ‘That’s them comin fir me. Ach well – it’s death fir me an the’re nothin I can dae aboot it.’ He opened the door, and in cam the young laddie, brother! In walked the young laddie an he looked at the blacksmith.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you,’ he said, ‘a long time ago, not tae dae whit ye see another body daein!’ And he drew his hand, he hut the backsmith a welt the side o’ the heid and knockit him scatterin across the floor! ‘Now,’ he says, ‘sit there an don’t move!’

  The young laddie gaithert the ashes that wis scattert on the top o’ the anvil in his hands, an he sput in them. Then he mixt them up, an he waitit … a thing like reek cam oot o’ the anvil aff o’ the bones, a thing like reek cam oot. Then the thing took a form … the mos beautiful lassie ye ever seen – the king’s daughter back – laughin and smilin like the’re nothing happened!

  And he said, ‘You sit, don’t move! Don’t you move one move! Sit an wait till we’re gone before you open that door!’ He walked over an he pit his hand inta his pocket, ‘But, I’m no gaun tae lea ye bare-handed—’ he says, ‘haud yir hand!’ tae the auld blacksmith. ‘Noo, remember again: never never dae whit ye see another body daein!’ Another seven gold sovereigns in the auld blacksmith’s hand. ‘Noo,’ he says, ‘remember, never let hit happen again as long as ye live! And don’t open that door till we’re gone.’ Jist like that the young laddie an lassie walkit oot.

  An then there were a clappin o’ hands an the music startit, and everything died away. The auld blacksmith sat an he sat and he sat … then he heard a knock at the door. He got up and he opened the door, in cam his auld wumman.

  She said, ‘Are ye there, John?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘God bless ma soul an—’

  She said, ‘Dae ye never think o’ doin any kin o’ wurk atall, do ye sit an sleep all day? Nae wonder we’re puir.’ She said, ‘Here’s yir wee cup o’ tea – drink it up – I see a man comin alang the road wi a horse, an you better get the fire kindled up!’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie,’ he said, ‘thank God, Maggie, thank you, my doll, my darlin, thank you!’ An he pit his airms roon her, he kisst her.

  She says, ‘Ach ye go, John, what dae ye think yir daein? It’s no like you ataa! Were ye asleep, were ye dreamin?’

  ‘Mebbe,’ he said, ‘I wis dreamin, Maggie, mebbe I wisna. I better kinnel the fire up.’ He luikit doon: here’s a man comin doon the road wi a pair o’ Clydesdale horses.

  He tuik the horses into the smiddie, the man pit the horses in the smiddie, an he said, ‘John I want a set o’ shoes.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘wait a minute, I hev tae go intae the hoose fir some nails. I keep em i’ the hoose.’

  Man says, ‘I’ll jist light ma pipe bi the smiddie fire ti ye come back.’

  Aul Jock went roond the hoose. He ways to the aul woman …

  She says, ‘Ye’ve nae tobacca!’

  He says, ‘I want ma pipe an my tobacca.’

  She says, ‘We need tobacca – it’s finished an ye’ll hev tae wait till we get money – when ye get them horses shod. Ye ken we’ve got nae money fir tobacca.’

  Shoves his hand i’ his pocket, he said, ‘We’ve nae money hev we?’ Hand in his pocket, brother – seven gold sovereigns in his pocket – he says, ‘Here, Maggie!’

  She says, ‘The name o’ God, where you got that?’

  He said, ‘I made that while you thocht I wis sleepin.’ An that’s the last o’ ma story. So ye can believe that – if it’s true or a lie!

  1 back the – back at the

  Afterword

  Duncan Williamson was born in a tent on the shores of Loch Fyne, near the village of Furnace in Argyll, on 11 April 1928. he was the seventh of a family of sixteen. His father was Jock Williamson, born in 1892, a travelling basket maker and tinsmith. Betsy Townsley, his mother, was born in 1895 in Muasdale, Kintyre. Duncan can recite the genealogy of his family back to his great-great-grandparents. Both Duncan’s parents were illiterate, but his forebears on both sides were famed singers, pipers and storytellers, and had an enormous wealth of orally transmitted lore.

  The King and the Lamp is dedicated to Duncan’s mother’s mother, old Bella Macdonald, who was a legend in Argyll – still is to this day. Duncan recalls her vividly: ‘Nobody would turn Bella Macdonald from their door when she came hawking, because they thought it was bad luck to turn old Bella away. She was like a fairy! She was small and was so kind-hearted she had a pleasant word for everybody. I mean, if she went to somebody’s door and they did turn her away, she would say, “God bless you, missus and thank you very much for your kindness,” and walk away without spite.

  ‘Her son, my Uncle Duncan, stayed with his mother all the days of his life. After travelling Perthshire and before the long cold winter months set in each year, he’d say, “Granny, I think the best thing we can do is mak wir way back to Furnace tae your dochter Betsy and Johnnie. At least we’ll have a good place to stay, auld wumman, and you’ve got a bing o’ friends in Argyllshire.” Uncle Duncan could bring her back there and my father, being lonely, with about sixteen weans and just my mother to talk to, welcomed his brother-in-law. Father would say, “Okay, Dunkie, we’ll just lift the side o’ the barrikit, brother. I’ll pit yir wee tent for you and Granny aside the barrikit”. So he opened the main tent, which was as big as a large living room, drew a couple of sticks aside, and built Duncan’s wee tent. It was just another room added to the kitchen. We used the same fire and Granny was happy to be back with her daughter Betsy; now she had her daughter, she had her son and all her grandbairns. She had her pipe and could sit by the fire and crack. My daddy always kept a big fire in the middle of the tent, just on the ground. But there was no drink, no, no drink. It was too hard to get food, never mind money for drink. When the dark winter nights came Uncle Duncan would tell stories past the common and Daddy would tell a story. My mother would tell a crack and then – “Come on, Granny, tell us a story!” There were fifteen or twenty of us in there, but we weren’t strangers, we were all our own family and she felt happy – she was home. But anyway, that was the story, how much happiness we had. We were poor, really poor, we’d had hungry times. But you believe me, we had some good times too. It was really good – what we wanted in one thing we gained in another, see what I mean, we couldn’t lose. We had our granny whom we loved so much, we had our uncle whom we loved so much, and we had our father and mother to tell us stories. Food isn’t everything in the world; that’s all we really looked for. We didn’t pay any rent or need any electricity, we just bought a bottle of paraffin for the wee crusie lamp hanging inside the barrikit, which gave enough light for everybody.’

  THE TRAVELLER’S WAY OF LIFE, 1914–55

  Life was hard for the travellers, an outcast minority group, but the hardest time was at the beginning of World War I when fathers were called to the army and mothers were left alone to ta
ke care of the children. They needed their fathers because travellers were very very poor in these days, without the luxurious caravans, cars, lorries and televisions many have today.

  In winter they stayed in one place in a barrikit, a three-part structure made from strong saplings bowed and tied, covered with canvas and other suitable materials, anchored to the ground with big ropes and rocks. The barrikit was dome-shaped, twelve feet high with a hole at the top for the fire-smoke and fifteen feet across, with room for seating up to twenty people. Kitchen tables were on one side, trunks and boxes on the other side for clothes, keepsakes, the man’s pipes, tin making tools and so on. There was plenty of head-room for standing, hanging up rabbit skins and wet clothes. The floor was earthen with an open fire in the middle – ‘if the fire wasnae shared you werenae welcome.’ On either side of the dome were smaller bow tents made from young rowan, birch or hazel saplings bound together at a height of about five feet. These were the sleeping quarters separated by entrance covers from the main barrikit. One was for the children, one for the parents and possibly another for a family relative. A drain was dug around the whole structure to channel away rain and melting snow. Before the family started travelling again, the barrkit was burned and a new one made the following autumn.

  But in the month of March, or April, when they moved off, every child would have to help carry something – a certain amount of clothes, canvas, sticks and string to tie the sticks for the bow tent, a hatchet for splitting logs, a saw for cutting firewood, the snotem [an iron crook for hanging pots over the open fire], the tea kettle, cooking utensils and basins for washing at the riverside. Travelling was really hard – I mean, you were tired and you wanted to sit down to rest but your father kept walking on.

  No food was carried, the mother would have got their food as they went. She sold the father’s handmade wares, baskets or tin items, at farmhouses or in villages. If she couldn’t get money she traded them for food: she would prefer this, because shops were very far between. When the father came to a camping place he’d lay down his bundle and say, ‘Children, we’re staying here for the night.’ The children took all they were carrying and left it down beside his bundle. He would say, ‘Children, you know what you’ve got todo!’ Right, some would go for sticks, some for water. While he put the bow tent up – one long enough to accommodate all the family asleep – and while the children brought firewood, themother kindled the fire. There were no tables or chairs, spoons, knives or forks. Themother carried ten or twelve tin plates the father had made and one ladle for putting meat on the plates. No matter what the children got to eat, they ate it with their fingers. Then the mother would make the bed at the very back of the tent for the youngest ones, the two-to three-year-olds who were usually sleepy. The father would go for his bundle of sticks and packed them on the fire, right close to the tent outside the door. (The bow tents had no inside fires.)

  The children all sat round the fire and as the night got darker they crept in closer! They got kind of frightened if they were in a strange place, but the father would always keep his big tools for making tin wares lying beside him in case he should need them for defence. Then they would say, ‘Daddy, tell us a story.’ He’d say, ‘Well come on there, weans, gather round, I’ll tell ye a story.’ During the summer months it was likely that four or five travelling families would meet in the one camping place (until the mid-1950s when large numbers of the travellers’ traditional camping sites – regularly used by certain families for centuries – were closed or destroyed by those in authority). If families were related to one another, their tents would be built in a circle around one fire; otherwise the tents were spaced wider apart with separate fires. At night-time after supper, the men would get together around the fire. They would start talking and telling ‘cracks’, short stories, to each other. One would say, ‘I ken a story for the weans,’ and they would come in close to the fire – suppose there had been a dozen you could have heard a pin drop. He might have told them a ghost story to make them quiet and stay close.

  The most terrifying aspect of life for a traveller child would have been the encounters with schoolboard officials which sometimes resulted in a child being taken from their parents, brothers and sisters, and put away to home-schools.1 The law required one hundred and twenty days in school annually for each child aged between five and fourteen. But some districts were stricter than others. Dumbarton, Greenock, Paisley, Glasgow (and for thirty miles around), Ayrshire and Stirling were areas where traveller children were taken to home-schools.2 It didn’t matter if the children were dressed like bene hantle [cant for ‘gentry’] the police made the family stand in the road while the Cruelty Inspector said, ‘Look, you and you never attended school (if there was no proof to the contrary, i.e. officially marked attendance cards) – right, get into the car – off to the home!’ Many of the children of travelling families ended up there before and after World War I. But some districts didn’t bother. In Perthshire, Angus, Fife, Argyll and Aberdeen the authorities maintained that the traveller children weren’t suffering as long as they were along with their mummies and daddies.

  Travellers often went up glens around Aberfeldy, Killin, Pitlochry and Perth and no one cared if the children weren’t in school, for they were helping their fathers and mothers. That’s all the education they needed – to learn how to survive. But the children who were interested in schooling got books and taught themselves if they wanted to. Traveller children were taught to work when they were five years old. The first job would have been thinning turnips on their hands and knees. From the age of three or four they experienced the labour by sitting on their mothers’ backs and watching. Potato gathering was the most important contribution the young children made towards the family’s maintenance – with all children chip-ping in, one week’s pay might more than equal the total income of the previous half-year.

  More valuable than learning how to read and write were the skills of the traditional trades traveller parents taught their children. Traveller women took their daughters with them everywhere, showing them every little quirk and corner of the hawking business. And hawking went on every day. If you didn’t hawk, you didn’t eat. The mother’s main role was food supplier. If a young traveller lassie did not know how to sell, to beg or go to the houses, her future was doubtful: young traveller lads, potential husbands, might speak of her, ‘Och, she’s a bonnie lassie richt enough but what good is she? She’s only fit for the country folk, no good enough for a traveller. What can she dae? She cannae beg or hawk or sell because her mother never trained her.’

  Some traveller women didn’t train their daughters to hawk round the houses because they wanted them to find other lines of work, get off the road and be something. Once I overheard my mother say, ‘Lassie, if ye live the life that I live ye’ll never be any better, all you’ll end up wi is a bing o’ weans and dae the things that I’ve done.’ Some lassies didn’t want to do it because they felt deeply ashamed, and in these cases the mothers never forced them: it was not uncommon for the village children to shout, ‘Oh, look at the tinkies, look at the tinkies!’ at a group of travellers hawking houses. But there were also young travellers who weren’t bothered by the rude remarks of the country folk. A lassie who was not taught to be ‘a real traveller woman’ very likely remained single until the age of seventeen or eighteen, which was considered old to be single. The lassie who was as good as her mother at hawking would have been ‘snapped up’ by a traveller laddie at a very early age, perhaps fourteen.

  For a traveller laddie there was no choice. It didn’t matter what he could do, he was qualified to marry a traveller woman. The fathers taught their sons every single thing – poaching, basketmaking, tinsmithing. The sons were the favourites. They were interested in whatever their fathers did: they knew if they didn’t watch and do the things their fathers did, they couldn’t do it for themselves when it came to their turn.

  Among the old travelling people marriage was a very serious ans s
trictly defined event. According to traveller law, a man and woman were married once they spean a night together out of sight of their parents. And travellers marry for life. A youngman who has a young wife can come in to an encampment of travellers, crack and tell stories, sit and make baskets and feel free. As a married traveller man or woman you enjoy all the privileges of being in and joining the family circle. Birth is also a very important event – when news that a baby is born to a young couple reaches travellers, they will go and see – even if it means walking for miles, and bring what they can aford to the new baby. They do this because they believe that new baby. They do this because they believe that new baby might marry into their family, might become one of theirs, which naturally does happen among these people! All travellers are connected to each other in Scotland, connected to one extended kin group. Death is the most sacred event, when passage to the Other World is carefully prepared. As a traveller you are buried with a little cup, a piece of bread and a coin. Death is a beginning of time, when you really come to live. You need your jug and your wee piece of bread with you to carry you on your journey and your silver coin to pay your way into the Land of Eternity.

  SOURCES; TRAVELLER BELIEFS

  The King and the Lamp is a collection of stories drawn from books Duncan Williamson and I have already had published: the first, Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children (Canongate, 1983), was composed for a children’s audience, to educate young people, travellers and non-travellers alike, about the wealth of heritage in traditional story-telling. The first part of The King and the Lamp includes four stories (‘The Hunchback and the Swan’, ‘The Goat that told Lies’, ‘The King and the Lamp’ and ‘The Boy and the Boots’) from Fireside Tales. ‘The Cockerel and the Fox’, ‘The Fox and the Goat’, ‘Lion and the Four Bulls’ and ‘Boy and the Snake’ were fist published in The Genie and the Fisherman (Cambridge University Press, 1991), fifteen Scottish traveller tales presented in a graduated collection for primary school children. Making up the balance, and at the core, of Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children (part one of The King and the Lamp) are four stories chosen from our Christmas collection, Tell Me a Story for Christmas (Canongate, 1987).