And when everything had settled down the Ollamh Ìleach was given a great reward and MacAoidh of the Rhinns was rewarded for his services, and this Mac a’ Phrior, he got the estate of . . . Coul and Sunderland and these two pieces of land were held separately from the rest . . . of this part of the island till a few years ago. That piece of land had a separate proprietor.
And, as I’ve said before, the Arran men, instead of going back to Portnahaven and taking the boats they had left there back to Arran, they crossed the moors and got boats on the other side of the island to take them across to the mainland, and from there they could get over to Arran.
And as everyone [in Islay] knows, a few years after that, fighting broke out among all the clans so that the poor MacDonalds had to flee to Ireland at the end of the day, though Colla Ciotach fought many a battle trying to win back the land of his ancestors.
They built a fine big castle out in Antrim, by the shore, right opposite Islay, and ever since that time, for this part of the island and especially the Rhinns, there has been a warm feeling and a great deal of trade between the two countries . . . up to the time of just before the First World War, when the fishing declined as in many parts of the Highlands, and the young lads went off to the war. Since then the link between the two islands has fallen off, till now there’s not much trade or understanding of each other between the two countries, though there was a great warmth for many centuries since that time, three hundred years ago: this place had a warm feeling for Ireland.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
This select bibliography includes the principal sources cited in the Notes which follow. As abbreviated titles have been used in the Notes, for ease of reference here sources have been listed alphabetically in order of these abbreviations.
AFH
Hannah Aitken, ed.: A Forgotten Heritage, Edinburgh 1973
Arv
Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore, Uppsala 1945–
AST
Peter Buchan: Ancient Scottish Tales, Peterhead 1908 (reprinted from the Transactions of the Buchan Field Club)
AT
Aarne-Thompson type number in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson: The Types of the Folktale, Helsinki 1964 (FF Communications No. 184)
Béaloideas
The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, Dublin 1928–
CSD
Mairi Robinson, ed.: The Concise Scots Dictionary, Aberdeen 1985
F
Types from the University of Edinburgh School of Scottish Studies provisional catalogue of fairy and other supernatural legends
FL, FLJ, FLR
Folk-Lore/Folklore, London 1890–(successor to The Folk-Lore Journal, 1883–9, and The Folk-Lore Record, 1878–82)
FLI
Sean O’Sullivan: The Folklore of Ireland, London 1974
FOC
Alexander MacGregor: The Feuds of the Clans, Stirling 1907
FOS
Ernest Marwick: The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, London 1975
FTFL
James MacDougall: Folk Tales and Fairy Lore (ed. George Calder), Edinburgh 1910 (partially reprinted as Highland Fairy Legends, ed. Alan Bruford, Ipswich 1978)
FTI
Sean O’Sullivan: Folktales of Ireland, London 1966
FTTC
Duncan Williamson: Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children, Edinburgh 1983
GAB
J. G. McKay, ed.: Gille A’Bhuidseir/The Wizard’s Gillie, London n.d.
GFMR
Alan Bruford: Gaelic Folk-Tales and Mediaeval Romances, Dublin 1969 (also as Béaloideas 34)
GMK
Alan Bruford, ed.: The Green Man of Knowledge and other Scots Traditional Tales, Aberdeen 1982
The Highlands
by Calum I. Maclean: three differing editions, London 1959, Inverness 1975 and Edinburgh 1994; cited by chapters only
KBA
Sheila Douglas, ed.: The King o the Black Art and other Folk Tales, Aberdeen 1987
LEM
Lady Evelyn Stewart-Murray’s MSS. (see note to tale No. 11)
ML
Types from ReidarTh. Christiansen: The Migratory Legends, Helsinki 1958 (FF Communications No. 175)
MWHT
J.G. Mckay, ed.: More West Highland Tales, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1940 and 1960.
OLM
The Viking Society, Old - Love Miscellany of Orkney, Shetland
PRS
Robert Chambers: The Popular Rhymes of Scotland. Cited from the ‘New Edition’, reissued at various dates later in the last century: the first edition was published in 1826, but the tales, or most of them, do not seem to have appeared until the third (‘much enlarged’) edition of 1841.
PSFA
W. Grant Stewart: The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland, Edinburgh 1823 (facsimile reprint London 1970)
PTWH
John Francis Campbell: Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols); cited from 2nd edition, Paisley 1890–93, or by tale number where possible: see Introduction note 25 for publication history.)
SA
Sound Archive of the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh .
SD
K. C. Craig, ed.: Sgialachdan Dhunnchaidh, Glasgow n.d. (after 1944)
SND
W. Grant and D. D. Murison edd.: The Scottish National Dictionary, Oxford 1931–76.
SOCB
Séamus Ó Duilearga: Seán Ó Conaill’s Book (translated by Máire MacNeill), Dublin 1981
SS
Scottish Studies: The Journal of the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 1957–
SSH
John Gregorson Campbell: Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland/Scottish Highlands, Glasgow 1900
SSU
Angus MacLellan: Stories from South Uist (translated by J. L. Campbell), London 1961
STT
D. A. MacDonald and Alan Bruford, eds.: Scottish Traditional Tales, privately printed, Edinburgh 1974
T
Tocher: Tales, songs and traditions from the archives of the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 1971–; cited by numbers, not volumes
TGP
Peter Narváez, ed.: The Good People. New Fairylore Essays, New York 1991
TGSI
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Inverness 1871–
TIF
Types from Seán Ó Súilleabháin and Reidar Th. Christiansen: The Types of the Irish Folktale, Helsinki 1963 (FF Communications No. 188)
TMI
Types from Ernest W. Baughman: Types and Motif Index of the Folktales of England and North America, The Hague 1966 (Indiana University Folklore Series 20)
TUD
Joe Neil MacNeil: Sgeul gu Latha/Tales Until Dawn (translated and ed. by John Shaw), Edinburgh 1987
UAB
Pàdruig Moireasdan: Ugam agus Bhuam (ed. D. A. MacDonald), Steòrnabhagh (Club Leabhar), 1977
W
Types from the School of Scottish Studies’ provisional catalogue of witch legends (see SS 11: 1–47)
W&S
Lord Archibald Campbell (general ed.): Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, Argyllshire Series (5 vols.), London 1889–95
WSS
John Gregorson Campbell: Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland / Scottish Highlands, Glasgow 1902
Seven of these tales can be heard as
they were told on the cassette
Scottish Tradition 17
SCOTS STORY TELLINIG
GREENTRAX RECORDINGS
C9017 Edinburgh 1995
The tales included from this book are:
The Three Feathers (Andrew Stewart, Blairgowrie)
The Humph at the Fit o the Glen and the Humph at the Head o the Glen (Bella Higgins, Blairgowrie)
Silly Jack and the Factor (Jeannie Robertson, Aberdeen)
The Boy and the Brüni (Tom Tulloch, Yell)
Keep
ing Out the Sea Man (James Henderson, S. Ronaldsay)
The Fiddler o Gord (George Peterson, Papa Stour)
The Greenbank Pony (Tom Tulloch, Yell)
With three other stories:
One-Eye Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes (Betsy Whyte, Montrose)
Daughter Doris (Davie Stewart, Kintyre)
The Angel of Death (Stanley Robertson, Aberdeen)
All recordings are from
The School of Scottish Studies’
Sound Archives
NOTES
Abbreviations have been used for frequently cited sources: for full details of these publications see the Select Bibliography.
Other abbreviations: AJB Alan (James) Bruford, DAM Donald Archie MacDonald
Where the name of the transcriber and/or translator is not given, these functions were carried out by the editors. Tale titles in brackets were supplied by the editors or collectors rather than the storyteller.
Introduction
1 See Edwin C. Kirkland, ‘The American Redaction of Tale Type 922’, Fabula 4:248–59, and Alan Bruford, ‘ “The King’s Questions” (AT 922) in Scotland’, SS 17:147–54.
2 See Neil Philip, The Cinderella Story, Penguin Folklore Library, Harmondsworth 1989:17–20 and passim.
3 The Scots Magazine, May 1976, p. 208.
4 FL 47:190–202.
5 The Scots Magazine, July 1976, p. 342; August, pp. 446 and 448. In fact until very recently I had forgotten one other previously published Scots text, the only one told at full length, in a little book of rhymes and games from Forfar collected by Jean C.Rodger, Lang Strang, Forfar n.d. (1948):45–6, ‘Bedtime Story’, where the trousers are ‘stuntifiers’ and the cat is ‘Old Killiecraffus’.
6 Walter Gregor, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland, Folk-Lore Society, London, 1881, Chapter X, ‘Evenings at the Fireside’ (adapted from ‘Evenings in the Farm Kitchen’ in his earlier An Echo of the Olden Time from the North of Scotland, Edinburgh 1874, which gives a fuller description of the stories). Quotation from p. 55 of the later book.
7 Ibid. p. 57.
8 T 31:64–5, from Mrs Kate MacDonald.
9 T 31:62–3.
10 A. T. Cluness, Told Round the Peat Fire, London 1955:134 ff., ‘The Wreck of the Harvest Rose’. The Laaf fishing (the a is actually short, but the double a is established by convention) affected life throughout Shetland for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, since it took most of the men away from home for the summer months, and its stories of heroism and hardship have permeated the islands’ tradition.
11 Gregor, op. cit.:55–6.
12 Ibid.: 57–8.
13 PTWH 1:V–VI.
14 lbid.: VI–VII.
15 Tom and Liza Tulloch, SA 1978/68.
16 T26:81.
17 Betsy Whyte’s The Yellow on the Broom (Edinburgh 1979) and the Introduction to Duncan Williamson’s Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children (FTTC, 1983) and several of his later books fill in parts of this picture.
18 See David Buchan. ‘Folkloristic Methodology and a Modem Legend’, in Reimund Krideland (ed.) Folklore Processed (Studia Fennica Folkloristica I, Helsinki 1992): 89–103. The quotation from Pendennis, episode 19, which first appeared in 1850, is on p. 90–91.
19 See GFMR part 1, and for theories on the Fenians, J. F. Nagy, The Wisdom of the Outlaw, Berkeley 1985 and Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present, Maynooth 1990, chapter 9.
20 Some folklorists use ‘variant’ where we use ‘version’, and literary terms such as ‘redaction’ where we use ‘variant’.
21 Duncan Williamson’s Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children (FTTC, 1983) is the first of half a dozen published by Canongate, of which perhaps the most interesting is Don’t Look Back, Jack! (1991); A Thorn in the King’s Foot (Penguin Folklore Library, Harmondsworth 1987) is the best of those published outside Scotland. Stanley Robertson’s Exodus to Alford (Balnain Books, Nairn, 1988) is the only one of several books from these publishers to consist mainly of traditional tales. See review in SS 30:107–16, and biographical features, with tales and ballads, in T33 (Duncan) and T40 (Stanley).
22 Actually printed as ‘the volfe, of the varldis end’, but an emendation (‘volle’ or ‘velle’?) has been suggested since Chambers PRS if not before. See The Complaynt of Scotland, ed. A. M. Stewart, Scottish Text Society, 4th Series, vol. 11, Edinburgh 1979:50.
23 AST: 4; ‘The Red Etin’ begins on p. 13.
24 P. C. Asbjørnsen and J. I. Moe, Popular Tales from the Norse, translated by Sir George W. Dasent, Edinburgh (Edmonston and Douglas) 1859. Campbell’s title as well as his choice of publisher followed Dasent’s.
25 See PTWH, and MWHT 4.
26 See W&S; the volume editors were the Revd Duncan MacInnes, the Revd James MacDougall (see also FTFL) and the Revd John Gregorson Campbell (see also SSH and WSS.)
27 Carmichael is best known for his collection of Gaelic prayers and charms Carmina Gadelica, but he published a number of stories including Deirdire (Edinburgh, London and Dublin 1905), which is considerably edited from its oral original (see Scottish Gaelic Studies 14:1–24). Father Allan MacDonald’s work is described in Amy Murray’s Father Allan’s Island, J. L. Campbell and Trevor Hall’s Strange Things and elsewhere, but as far as I know none of the stories from his collections have been published in full. For Lady Evelyn Stewart-Murray see notes to tale No. 11, ‘Lasair Gheug’, below.
28 Campbell’s Sia Sgialachdan (Edinburgh 1939) and Craig’s Sgialachdan Dhunnchaidh (SD, Glasgow, after 1944), both privately printed for the editors, publish only Gaelic texts, though Campbell provides English summaries. Craig’s other publications of stories are similar, but come from J. F. Campbell’s MSS. Campbell’s Tales of Barra Told by the Coddy (privately published, Edinburgh 1960) and Stories from South Uist (SSU, 1961) on the other hand, give only the English translations. For a fine independent collection recently published from Cape Breton Island, Canada, in Gaelic and English, see TUD.
29 See T39 for an appreciation of Calum Maclean’s work.
30 John Mackay Wilson, a Berwick printer, published a series of these tales retold by various authors in up to ten volumes, reissued many times in the late nineteenth century, but easier to pick up cheaply than to read.
31 Volumes 1 and 5 of W&S are largely clan legends.
32 These were collected by John Dewar, one of J. F. Campbell’s former helpers, and translated by another, Hector MacLean, for the Duke of Argyll; one volume of the translations has been published (The Dewar Manuscripts, vol. 1, ed. John MacKechnie, Glasgow 1964) but DAM has begun to work on a more scholarly edition including the Gaelic text.
33 V. Y. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, Bloomington (Indiana) 1958. Revised edition, Austin (Texas) 1968.
34 See notes to tale No. 30, below.
35 See SS 22: 1–44, Arv 37:117–24 and 103–9, and T31.35–66.
Children’s Tales
1a The Old Man with the Ear of Corn SA 1969/5 A8. Recorded from Mrs Dolly Ann MacDougall, Urugaig, Isle of Colonsay by the editors, with Ian Fraser. T3:98–9 (with Gaelic text); STT No. 2. A family tradition which Mrs MacDougall, a farmer’s wife with an interest in her island’s lore, passed on to her children and grandchildren. AT 1655, ‘The Profitable Exchange’, classified among tales of lucky accidents, is in some ways closer to chain tales like ‘The Old Woman and her Pig’ (AT 2030, compare the Gaelic Biorachan Beag agus Biorachan Mór or Murchag is Mionachag, PTWH No. IX): there the elements in the chain are connected by a logic which has no relation to the real world – a mouse asks for a cat to hunt it – and the same is true of the exchanges here. The girl in the sack exchanged for a load of stones comes into many ogre tales, but here she has no reason to expect she will be thrown into the loch: the story ends as inconsequentially as it began.
1b The Old Man with the Grain of Barley SA 1968 /183 A4. Recorded from Mrs Kate Dix, Berneray, Harris, transcribed and translated by Ian Paterson. T20:124–7 (with Gaelic text), part of a feature on
this remarkable Gaelic storyteller and poet, who had held on to her native language and traditions through over thirty-five years in Oban and Sunderland with a husband who never learned Gaelic, though he made sure his children did. Here the sequence of lucky accidents has a happy ending and indeed seems to be intended from the beginning: it seems more usual for them to happen in different houses. Compare the Barra version in Béaloideas 4:105.
2 The Grey Goat SA 1964/6 A1. Recorded from Hugh MacKinnon, Cleadale, Isle of Eigg by DAM in February 1964. SS 9:108–13 (with Gaelic text); STT No. 3. Hugh MacKinnon, an outstanding source of local historical traditions and a meticulous stylist (see feature filling all of T10), needed some persuasion to tell this story normally told by mothers to children, which he learned from his own mother probably before 1900. AT 123, ‘The Wolf and the Kids’, in Gaelic includes stylised formulae which would not be out of place in a hero tale: in fact Alexander Carmichael interpolated the impressive oath the birds swear in the published text of the Deirdre story he recorded in Barra (see Scottish Gaelic Studies 14:18). We have tried to render the style of this language in the translation.
3a The Fox and the Wolf and the Butter SA 1965/10 B4. Recorded from Calum Johnston, Eoligarry, Barra by DAM in March 1965. STT No. 25. For this notable Gaelic piper, singer and storyteller (another who had spent all his working life away from his native island) and his sister Annie, see the feature in T13, with an appreciation by Dr John Lorne Campbell. AT 15, a trickster fable often told in Europe of the clever fox and the stupid bear, as usual in Gaelic replaces the bear by the wolf (madadh-allaidh, ‘wild dog’, opposed to madadh-ruadh, ‘red dog’, the fox) which has not been extinct in Scotland so long. The clever names for the babies to be christened are the main point of the story, but Gaelic versions add the oath in which, as J. G. Campbell says (W&S 5:117), ‘the Gaelic C corresponds to the English Wh’, giving the nonsense asseveration a very questionable sound. The cask of butter washed up on the beach adds a touch of Hebridean local colour. See SS8:218–27 for a version from Hugh MacKinnon, with a sequel.
Scottish Traditional Tales Page 41
