19 The Story of Ossian Linguistic Survey of Scotland Gaelic tape 965. Recorded from Alasdair ‘Brian’ Stewart, Culrain, Easter Ross, by David Clement. T29:292–301 (with Gaelic text), the last item in a feature on this youngest of the three traveller Alasdair Stewarts, one of only two living storytellers known to us who still tell the longer Gaelic heroic tales. He learned this story from his grandmother, Mrs Susie Stewart (née MacArthur) born in Argyll, who died in 1938 aged ninety-one, whom he used to visit regularly during the winters when the clan were housed in Lairg, Sutherland, asking for stories and getting them only when she was in the mood.
Ossian (James Macpherson’s version of Scottish Gaelic Oisean, Irish Oisín, meaning ‘little deer’) is the most usual narrator and so supposed author of the mediaeval ballads of the Fenian (or Ossianic) Cycle. He is supposed to have told them to St Patrick, who wrote them or had them written down. This story is not based on any surviving ballad or romance, but is known in the oral tradition of both Scotland and Ireland: part of it is supposed to explain why the accounts we now have of the Fenians have gaps in them, and also to prove that ‘there were giants in those days’ among men, beasts and birds. See PTWH No. XXXI for other versions, and Béaloideas 54–5:48–56 for a comparison of Scottish and Irish versions. There are various explanations of how Ossian lived longer than the other Fenians: in Ireland he goes to the otherworld or Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, where time passes faster, as in tale No. 64. Here he has a magic ring from his fairy wife who came to him as a hoodie crow (feannag): the taboo on mentioning what form he first saw her in is paralleled in PTWH No. LXXXVI and a story of literary origin, Léigheas Coise Céin, ‘The Healing of Cian’s Leg’ (cf. W&S 2:206–77 and GFMR:134–6).
20 The Princess and the Pups SA 1976/109 B3. Recorded from Mrs Betsy Whyte, Montrose, by Linda Headlee (now Williamson) on 7th August 1976. T23:258–61, the first story in a feature on this remarkable traveller woman, well-known for her autobiographical books The Yellow on the Broom (Chambers, Edinburgh 1979) and Red Rowans and Wild Honey (Canongate, Edinburgh 1990). A third volume now in preparation will include versions of most of her stories, so we have used fewer than we might have chosen otherwise: but this one is so unusual that we cannot leave it out. Like the previous story it comes from the Gaelic cairds of Argyll, through Betsy’s mother, the source of most of her stories, who was a Johnston born in Argyll and sang Gaelic songs, though her generation did not speak Gaelic. Betsy remembered about it and told it unexpectedly to AJB in July 1976, to his astonishment, and made the recording next month at his request. Five or six years later, when Betsy was asked to tell it to students in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies, she could remember nothing about it.
This story is part of the Fenian Cycle and accounts for the origin of Fionn’s hounds Bran and Sceolang, born to his aunt who had been turned into a bitch by her husband’s fairy lover, and snatched as puppies along with the king of Dublin’s new-born baby by a giant from the sea: Fionn himself goes in pursuit, with the help of a set of wonderful helpers evidently borrowed from a version of the international Märchen AT 513, ‘The Extraordinary Companions’. It forms part of the late-mediaeval written frame-tale Feis Tighe Chonáin (‘The Feast at Conan’s House’), and is translated by James Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin 1955), Appendix A. It became popular in oral tradition, and though none of the names have survived in Betsy’s Scots, her story is much like the Argyll Gaelic version in W&S 3:1–16. Chore gaanies is caird cant. Canny: slowly; hijcht or hair, more often hilt or hair, is a variant on the phrase ‘hide or hair’; wyde, widd: wade, waded.
Trickster Tales
21 The History of Kitty III-Pretts ‘A Scottish Nurse’s Stories’ (Jeannie Durie, Fife, mid-nineteenth century: see above, note to tale No. 6). T18:67–71. A lively version of AT 328, ‘The Boy Steals the Giant’s Treasure’, the English ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Scottish versions, however, consistently have a girl as hero. Compare Walter Gregor’s ‘Mally Whuppie’ (AFH:114–7) and J. F. Campbell’s ‘Maol a Chliobain’ (with summaries of three other Argyll Gaelic variants, PTWH No. XVII). Gregor and Campbell’s best variant also share the bridge made of one or two hairs. At the end (1:274) Campbell mentions a similar story called ‘Kate ill Pratts’ from Perthshire, referred to by a reviewer of Chambers’ Popular Rhymes (PRS), which is evidently this tale and title. ‘Ill pratts’ or ‘pretts’ is Scots for ‘naughty tricks’. Cappy: wooden cup; money: mony, many.
22 Riobaidh and Robaidh and Brionnaidh SA 1965/15 B2. Recorded from Neil Gillies, Glen, Barra, by DAM on 30th March 1965. SS 10: 92–104 (with Gaelic text); STT No. 21. Neil Gillies, ‘Niall Mhìcheil Nìll’, was a fine storyteller with a vigorous dramatic style: his sisters were known as singers, and the daughter of one, Flora MacNeil, has a national reputation. AT 1535, ‘The Rich and the Poor Peasant’, Hans Andersen’s ‘Big Claus and Little Claus’, often has two persecutors of the trickster hero in Gaelic: see PTWH No. XXXIX. The tale-type is beautifully constructed, with one episode leading logically to the next, but it is typical of trickster tales in two ways: the villains are incredibly gullible, persuaded by greed to do things like killing their mother for sale, but the ‘hero’, though he starts as their victim, is also totally amoral, asking his mother to change beds with him so that she is killed in his place. In the final episode the ‘hero’ is usually to be thrown into the loch (or river or sea) in a sack or barrel and persuades the shepherd to take his place with promises of wealth or salvation.
23 The Butler’s Son SA 1953/158/1. Recorded from Samuel Thorburn, Glendale, Skye, by James Ross in July 1953, and transcribed and translated by him in SS 7:18–27. STT No. 22. Sammy (Somhairle) Thorburn, Waterstein, learned his stories before 1914 from his father, ‘Somhairle Beag’, well-known as a storyteller in Glendale. The Thorburns were one of the Border families who came to the Highlands as shepherds after the Clearances, but learned Gaelic and adapted completely to the local culture. AT 1525, ‘The Master Thief’ can involve many episodes, but Gaelic versions usually end with the test, after which the hero may give up crime and settle down: cf. PTWH No. XL, and contrast No. XVIId in which he is hanged in the end, as prophesied, despite all his success.
24 The Farmer Who Went Back on His Agreement SA 1969/91 A2. Recorded from Angus John MacPhail, North Uist, by Angus John MacDonald. Transcribed by Mrs Peggy MacClements. AT 1000, ‘Bargain Not to Become Angry’ is the first of what Aarne listed as ‘Tales of the Stupid Ogre’. These are actually just short motifs, nearly always strung together in groups, and this one, which holds together a group, is always told of a mean farmer rather than a giant or devil in Scottish and Appalachian versions, where the penalty with a strip of skin is also normal. This is probably why the trickster is often called Mac a’ Rùsgaich (Mac Rùsgail, Mac Rùslaig), ‘Son of the Stripper’, as in ‘Campbell of Islay’s’ PTWH No. XLV, though he also features in stories of seduction. The theme must have helped to relieve the feelings of ill-treated farm labourers much as both ballads did. Some of the words are hard to translate, as Campbell found: the agreement is not to repent (gabhail aithreachais) or ‘take the rue’, as Campbell says; the names the farmer calls the trickster mean literally ‘son of misfortune’ or ‘son of bad luck’, a pattern well-established in Gaelic but sounding rather oriental in English, so we have translated freely. The second episode (AT 1005, ‘Building a Bridge or Road with the Carcasses of Slain Cattle’) in Gaelic versions apparently involves building a causeway across a bog, stadhar chasa-caorach, ‘sheep’s feet stepping-stones (?)’ a phrase Campbell had never heard, which may only survive through this story. The third (AT 1006, ‘Casting Eyes’) involves another old idiom, damh-shùil, ‘an ox-eye’, a fixed stare which might be described now as ‘bug-eyed’ – but that would not fit the story!
25 Willie Take-a-Seat SA 1956/55 B1. Recorded from the Revd. Norman MacDonald, native of Staffin, Skye, by Calum Maclean. Transcribed by Morag MacLeod. Norman MacDonald served as m
inister in several parts of the Highlands and Islands (he was in Islay when this was recorded) and collected traditions in all of them. He was a modern example of the folklorist ministers of the late nineteenth century, and published articles on Gaelic legends and beliefs in the Swedish folklore journal Arv (vols. 14 and 17), with the encouragement of Calum Maclean. This story, from which a long historical introduction about the old woman and the cattle-raiders has been cut out, accordingly has a rather studied literary style, and may largely derive (like talc No. 35, see below) from a published text of the late nineteenth century. Again the words of the dialogue are difficult to translate, and we have simply given an approximation which aims to convey something of the flavour and sound as well as the meaning of the words. The final pun in the Gaelic on the word bàrd is fairly pointless: ‘he was neither tall nor short (cha b’àrd is cha b’ iseal e) but of a middling height’, so we have substituted an English pun with rather more relevance. The basic type, the native variant of AT 1544, ‘The Man Who Got a Night’s Lodging’, is extremely popular in Gaelic, but the hero’s name must surely have been influenced by a Scots version which has not survived: in ‘Uilleam Bi’d Shuidhe’ the name in Gaelic has no particular significance, and is not the most common name (like Seán in Irish versions), but ‘Willie Set Ye Doon’ or the like in Scots sounds like an invitation, ‘will ye . . .’ The later part of the story, which does not always appear, resembles AT 1533, ‘The Wise Carving of the Fowl’, a popular theme in early Ireland, but the wording of the rhymes is very obscure.
26 The Parson’s Sheep SA 1969/154 A2. Recorded from Gilbert Voy, Orkney/Glasgow, by AJB on 20th December 1969. STT No. 23; GMK:39–40. First published in SS 14:93, with comparisons of other Orkney versions of this type, AT 1735A, ‘The Bribed Boy Sings the Wrong Song’ and one from Jeannie Robertson. Gib Voy was an Orcadian from Inganess in the East Mainland who had lived fifty years in the Glasgow area without losing his native accent, more notable perhaps for his knowledge of songs, some of them used by his son Erlend in the group The Clutha, than for stories. He heard this song-story from his father, who used to sing it at weddings before 1900 ‘much to the disgust of my mother’, and it may have been Gilbert himself who added an invented Orkney name and extra dialect when he was asked to contribute to an Orkney record, ‘A Night at the Bu’, in the 1930s. The tale-type has translated its rhyme into several languages – it is first recorded in sixteenth-century Spain – and the same story told all in verse as a ballad (in quite different words) has also been recorded in Orkney and Aberdeenshire (T4:118–21). Orkney words: blashie: rainy; faelie dyke: turf wall; peerie: little; scrythe: a swarm; uncan yowe: strange ewe.
27 How to Diddle SA 1974/190 Bl. Recorded from George Jamieson, Selkirk, and transcribed by Ailie Munro. T15:247–9. AT 1585 ‘The Lawyer’s Mad Client (Patelin says “Baa!”)’, a mediaeval joke against lawyers which has spread throughout Europe and beyond. Whistling or animal noises or anything that suggests the accused is ‘not all there’ may replace diddling, but the pun between the words for cheating and singing without words adds an extra point. The tune here seems to be from Johann Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’: for a longer and more Scottish diddle compare a Gaelic version of AT 1351, ‘The Silence Wager’ (SS 10:182–7), with the same title as the next story.
28 The Tailor and his Wife SA 1955/132 A8. Recorded from Alasdair Stewart, Easter Ross traveller (see above, note to tale No. 16) by Calum Maclean. STT No. 24. AT 1730, ‘The Entrapped Suitors’, another mediaeval joke, here satirising three other professions. Tailors are often portrayed as weaklings, but the use of the scissors proposed here also comes into an eighteenth-century cartoon. ‘Taking pictures’ translates the Gaelic A’ tarruing dealbh, which could mean drawing portraits before it suggested photography.
29 The Wren SA 1957/40 A8–B1. Recorded from Alasdair Stewart (‘Aili Dall’), Sutherland traveller, by Hamish Henderson. STT No. 26. This third Alasdair Stewart (actually the oldest and the first recorded) was the uncle of ‘Brian’ (see above, note to tale No. 19) and wintered with his family in Lairg: Hamish Henderson travelled with them for several weeks on their summer routes in 1955, 1957 and 1958, and recorded a great range of tales from Aili Dall (‘Blind Sandy’ in Scots – blind only since middle age). This animal fable is rather different from his many hero and wonder tales, but has the same vivid, colloquial, throwaway style. It is a version of AT 248, ‘The Dog and the Sparrow’, but the trickster hero is an even more insignificant bird than the Grimm story’s sparrow, though at the same time the wren, ‘King of the Birds’, has a mythological aura that makes him more believable as a nemesis on the farmer who despises him. The plot is less logical than in Grimm, where the sparrow is avenging the dog she has befriended on the carter who ran him over. The carter’s load of wine, normal in the Rhineland but not in Sutherland, is ingeniously explained, but the killing of the wren’s sheep ‘hostess’ (the Gaelic word means literally ‘godmother’) by a fox – how does he find out? – is no reason for his inexorable persecution of the farmer: we have to forget logic and just enjoy the tale.
Other Cleverness, Stupidity and Nonsense
30a (The King’s Three Questions) SA 1967/1 A3. Recorded from Angus Henderson, Tobermory, Isle of Mull by AJB on 26th January 1967. T5:156–9 (with Gaelic text); STT No. 28. Angie Henderson, a retired blacksmith and crofter from Tobermory, was an old friend of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies who passed on all sorts of information to our fieldworkers, including some quite old stories learned like this one from his father, also a blacksmith. This is a typical Gaelic version of AT 922, ‘The Shepherd Substituting for the Priest Answers the King’s Questions’, perhaps best known in English as the ballad Child 45, ‘King John and the Bishop’. The pattern corresponds best to the ‘Old French Redaction’ in Walter Anderson’s classic study of the type: see SS 17:147–54 for a study of Scottish variants, including the type which opened our introduction. The final question is usually simple: “What am I thinking?”
30b The King and the Miller SA 1955/37/1. Recorded from John Stewart, Perthshire traveller, by Maurice Fleming. T21:169–71; GMK:28–30. This John Stewart, the father of the ‘Stewarts of Blair’ (see above, note to tale No. 9), was noted as a piper as well as a storyteller, and unusually for a caird, kept a farm at Tullymet for some years. Maurice Fleming, a journalist from Blairgowrie who for many years edited The Scots Magazine, was the first to record old John and several of his family in 1955, not long before he died. His Scots traveller variant of AT 922, learned from his parents, corresponds to Anderson’s ‘German Servant Redaction’ and seems to have arrived across the North Sea, whereas the Gaelic redaction probably followed the Highland chiefs’ wine route from France by the West Coast of Ireland. Dour: gloomy; gia: by (the time).
30c (Donald and the Skull) SA 1972/32/6. Recorded from Donald John MacKinnon, Horve, Barra by Peter Cooke and Morag MacLeod; transcribed and translated by Morag MacLeod. T5:152–5; SS 17:50–53 (both with Gaelic text). Donald John MacKinnon (or ‘Rabbie Burns’) was probably the best-known bard composing Gaelic songs in Barra in the 1970s. His tale is an unusual combination of the questions from 30a above with a frame borrowed from a moral tale well-known in Africa and among black people in North America: see Richard Dorson, American Negro Folktales (New York 1967): 146–8. The African tale simply ends with the beheading of the character corresponding to Red-Haired Donald (Domhall Ruadh) on the spot when the skull fails to speak. The most likely source for the Barra version is perhaps a tea clipper or other large merchant ship in the days of sail, where both Hebridean and black sailors were often in the crews. Gilleasbuig Aotrom, on the other hand, is a historical eccentric from Skye (see T45:163–8), who became known to Gaelic speakers elsewhere mainly through the writings of the Revd. Norman MacLeod.
31 The One-Eyed Miller and the Dumb Englishman SA 1957/10 A1. Recorded from Colin Morrison, Barvas, Lewis by James Ross on 5th April 1957. T1:24–27 (with Gaelic text). The Scottish variant of AT 924
, ‘Discussion by Sign Language’ has been catalogued under 924A, where the debate is understood by at least one participant to be about theology, but its heading ‘Discussion between Priest and Jew’ is hardly applicable here. The defeated party is normally English in Gaelic and in Scots, and Walter Gregor mentions it being ‘greatly in favour’ at the farm fireside (Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland (London 1881): 56–7). In this version, do not ask how the dumb man explained how he lost!
32 (The. Poor Man’s Clever Daughter) SA 1966/50 Al. Recorded from Peter Stewart, Barvas, Lewis by John MacInnes. STT No. 29. Peter Stewart, ‘Pàdraig Sheonaidh’, was originally a traveller tinsmith from the Ross-shire mainland, who in middle life was given a site beyond the cultivated ground of Barvas, where he built himself a house and settled down: his skill as a storyteller was appreciated by the more open-minded of his neighbours. AT 875, ‘The Clever Peasant Girl’, uses various sets of riddles in different versions, but always ends with the heroine’s complete victory: the ending here emphasises her independence much better than that in the catalogue, where the king is ‘moved to forgive her’ when she takes him as her dearest possession.
Scottish Traditional Tales Page 44
