33 Silly Jack and the Factor SA 1954/90 B15. Recorded from Jeannie Robertson, Aberdeen, by Hamish Henderson, and transcribed by him for the booklet of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies’ privately published disc A002 (1962). T6:172–5; STT No. 27. AT 1600, ‘The Fool as Murderer’, is well-known as a trickster tale, but Jeannie’s obvious sympathy for the mother of a handicapped child puts it into a different class. She learned this story from her mother, William Stewart’s daughter. AT 1381B, ‘The Sausage Rain’, can appear as a separate tale, but here reinforces the message of the goat in the grave: both types, and AT 1381E, ‘Old Man Sent to School’ (see T38:40–41) are also well-known in Gaelic. Bree and broo both mean brow, forehead; craftie placie: croft; flee: fly; hannae: haven’t; lichtit: alighted; lum: chimney, smoke-hole; ’oor: hour; teem’t: emptied, poured.
34 The Wandering Piper SA 1991/7 Al. Recorded from Willie McPhee, Perthshire traveller, by Alan Bruford on 1st March 1991. Transcribed by Sheila Douglas as part of a short feature on Willie McPhee, T44:77–90, in which she introduces this last survivor (born 1910) of the older and more traditional generation of traveller storytellers, a piper too like his cousins the ‘Stewarts of Blair’ (see above, note to tale No. 9), and a welcome visitor to classes in Scottish Ethnology like the one where this recording was made. AT 1281A, ‘Getting Rid of the Man-Eating Calf’, is known from Finland to Mexico, and many Gaelic versions also tell it about a piper, but this version is unusual in the way the piper exploits the misunderstanding. Duncan Williamson’s father (FTTC: 127–35) told it quite differently as a tale of his own escape from the Burkers (cf. tale No. 15 above). Blusted: broke up; canny: cautiously; chapped, chappit: knocked; forbye: also; jouked: dodged; luckit: looked; shedda: shadow.
35 Cailleach nan Cnù and Tàillear nan Clàr SA 1969/13 B3. Recorded from Alasdair MacArthur, Port Ellen, Islay, by the editors and Ian Fraser. STT No. 9. ‘Alasdair Logan’, a distillery worker from Lagavulin, was taught this story by his mother, born Kate Logan, daughter of a shepherd on the small island of Texa, for a competition at the 1929 Islay Mòd, which he won. His mother had been fostered by a minister who taught her to read and write Gaelic, and she had apparently found this story in a book; indeed the naming of the characters and the rather formal language of the story, which Alasdair still knew more or less by heart, suggest that this was a re-telling of the traditional story polished up for a Gaelic book or magazine around the end of the last century. Compare tale No. 25 above; like that story, this Schwank, AT 1791, ‘The Sexton Carries the Parson’, is extremely popular in Ireland and in Gaelic Scotland, where the ‘gouty parson’ of Continental versions is always replaced by a crippled tailor. It is told in Scots too, and our servitor mentioned in the Introduction told me a version of this too that he had heard in a club.
36 The Minister and the Straw SA 1978/68 B2. Recorded from Tom Tulloch, North Yell, by AJB. T30:358–9. A variant of AT 1845 (where the catalogue description does not suggest that the remedy, a placard with similar words hung round a calf’s neck, is successful) known also in mainland Scotland. The boil in the throat burst by laughter appears in a different story told of the Beaton doctors of Mull (cf. tales 85 and 95b above) and Maclaine of Lochbuie. There are many Shetland words, forms and usages: bang is used of any sudden movement; be no persuasion is shorthand for ‘she couldn’t be persuaded not to’; cut: cud; drevoasheens: devotions; gaff: guffaw, laugh loudly; gaw girse: ‘gall grass’, stonewort, used to cure cattle of liver and gall-bladder diseases; hap: shawl; hill-daeks: boundary of the common grazing; krüll: a thick oatcake, hastily or not at all cooked; a loack o fokk: a lot of people; ootset: a piece of land reclaimed from the moorland common pasture; Shetlan ait strae: a straw of the native ‘black’ oats; slip: let go; söt an saut: soot and salt; strae-t’eckit-röf’t: roofed with straw thatch; whinsy: quinsy, inflammation of the throat.
37 Strunty Pokes ‘Tales of a Scottish Nurse’ (Jeannie Durie, Fife, mid-nineteenth century: see above, note to tale No. 6). T3:82–3. See also the beginning of the introduction for this tale-type (AT 1562A). Strunt in Scots can be a form of ‘strut’, or mean ‘go into a huff’, and poke is a bag. The other words sound vaguely Latin, but it is difficult to see what they came from: ‘Gillipontis’ perhaps suggests the Hellespont, ‘Crayantis’ Creation (?) and ‘Dumbalibus’ may originally have been ‘Dame . . .’ rather than dumb.
38 (The Flayed Horse) SA 1975 /179 A2. Recorded from Tom Tulloch by AJB. Probably an Irish tall story originally, with many parallels there: the detail that the barrel contains porter supports this. Versions have been collected throughout Scotland, including a variant where not alcohol but the Evil Eye makes the horse seem dead, but the story seems very popular in Shetland and is often told as having happened in Yell, though I have recorded a version set in Quarff in the South Mainland. Tom Tulloch believed that this version was given its precise setting – the family concerned would have been named to local audiences – by one of his own elder brothers. In Shetland aerands rather than Scots ‘messages’ is the word for shopping; geeg: gig, small open carriage; ipae: on; roo’d: plucked (wool from a Shetland sheep – the normal practice instead of shearing); strampin: stamping, trampling.
39 (Keep a Cool Head!) SA 1971/263 A7a. Recorded from David Work, Shapinsay, Orkney by AJB. T11:86; GMK: 78. David Work, JP, of Ness Farm was a prosperous farmer and cattle-breeder, who could also spare time to welcome a visiting fieldworker and remember songs and anecdotes from the old days. He heard this tall tale from an old neighbour who had moved to Shapinsay from the island of Sanday: it is certainly a migratory type and has been recorded in North America (TMI: 579, motif X1722*(b)) and is known in Northern Ireland. Aimed: threw.
Fate, Morals and Religion
40 (The Skipper Who Marooned a Girl) SA 1965/80 A3. Recorded from Peter Morrison (Pàdruig ‘Illeasbui’ Phàdruig), Grimsay, North Uist by DAM, whose appreciation of this fisherman, crofter, weaver, bard, storyteller and expert ‘on the whole spectrum of the traditional life of his community’ is in T16:303–5. A more detailed appreciation in Gaelic is in Pàdruig Moireasdan, Ugam agus Bhuam (UAB, 1977), where the Gaelic of this story is on pp. 37–8. STT No. 30. The type number AT 930A, ‘The Predestined Wife’, can be used to cover a range of stories with an infinite variety of details, but all illustrating the inevitability of fate.
41 (The Herdie Boy) SA 1977/80B. Recorded from James Henderson, South Ronaldsay/Burray, Orkney by AJB. T26:88, part of a feature on this outstanding tradition-bearer – an expert on the whole spectrum of traditional life in his native South Ronaldsay, despite forty years away working in Edinburgh, mainly ‘on the buses’. This is a brief example of the corresponding type about a predestined husband, AT 930, ‘The Prophecy’, told as a local legend: the farm could have been named though it was not. Most Orkney farmhouses had a corn-drying kiln on the end of the barn where the divination with the ‘clew’ of wool, one of many popular ways of foretelling who you would marry practised at Hallowe’en, could be carried out, and tricks certainly were sometimes played on girls who tried it. Boys (and girls) had to be employed as herds, often from the age of eight or nine up and for next to no pay, to keep the sheep and cattle off cultivated ground, up to 1914 as field walls and fences were still almost unknown in Orkney. An Orkney Mainland version of this story is briefly told by John Firth in Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish (1920), Chapter XXIII, and I have heard (but unfortunately never seem to have recorded) a version about a ‘scaw’d’ (scabby-headed) boy in Unst from Tom Tulloch. Hadds: holds; whar in Orkney is often used as a form of wha, ‘who’, as well as ‘where’ (whar piece?)
42 (Turning the Sark) SA 1970/231 Bl. Recorded from Tom Moncrieff, North Roe/Virkie, Shetland by AJB on 12th September 1970. T7:220. Tom was yet another person happy to pass on his knowledge of all sorts of tradition, most of it from the northern tip of the Shetland Mainland where he was brought up, but some from the old lady mentioned, who came from Lunnasting in the east, and some from the
southern tip, where he came to work on Sumburgh aerodrome during the Second World War, married and settled down. This story of a type of Hallowe’en divination using a nightdress (sark, chemmy, slug) is told with variations – e.g. the man reappears because the girl is just too frightened to put away the sark, rather than because she turns it again deliberately – throughout Shetland, and was known in Orkney and possibly elsewhere. The point here is not so much that the vision comes true, but that it is dangerous to its subject. The international type is AT 737, ‘Who Will be her Future Husband?’ Baughman (TMI) lists five English versions from the Borders to Cornwall and two from North America, involving other customs such as sowing hemp-seed and laying a ‘dumb supper’, and two Irish ones are listed in TIF.
43 (The Stolen Blankets.) SA 1966/19 B7. Recorded from John W. Cockburn, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire by AJB in February 1966. T1: 29. Jack Cockburn, a gentleman farmer whom I have known from the age of eight, is another all-round contributor. This story, which could quite well be true, could also be an unrecognised international tale-type or perhaps rather a ‘modern legend’ of fate or divine justice. I had already read a very similar story in Gaelic about a Kintyre farmer and a caird, collected by Lady Evelyn Stewart-Murray in 1891 (LEM No. 29) before I recorded this.
44a (The Sanday Man’s Drowning) SA 1967/114 Bl. Recorded from Willie Ritch, Rothiesholm, Stronsay, Orkney by AJB on 8th October 1967. T3:88; STT No. 33a. Willie Ritch at Newbigging received me kindly when I cycled out to the far end of Stronsay on my first visit, and took me to see his old neighbour Tom Stevenson (aged eighty-nine) in the nearby Longbigging: in this case the younger man’s version, which came from his mother, a native of Sanday, was recorded first. It is a variant of AT 934A, ‘Predestined Death’; compare ML 4050, ‘The hour has come but not the man’, where a traveller is forcibly prevented from crossing a river in spate by people who have heard this cry from the river-spirit or water-kelpie, but drowns, in some versions, in a tub of water in the dark shed where he is shut up. This version is rather nastier, because the graith-cog was a tub of stale human urine, ‘kept for scouring blankets’ in Orkney, to supply ammonia, just as it was used for waulking tweed in the Hebrides. Heid stoup: head first, head over heels.
44b (The Stronsay Man’s Drowning) Same tape and publications (STT No. 33b) as tale No. 44a above, recorded from Tom Stevenson, a retired seaman from Stronsay with a fund of short legends and anecdotes. By the last century peat was scarce in Stronsay and non-existent in Sanday, so it had to be brought by boat from the neighbouring island of Eday, though it could be carted from the far end of the peninsula of Rothiesholm (pronounced ‘Rowsome’) at the south of Stronsay itself. Whole milk was churned in the old deep ‘plout kirn’ in the Northern Isles, and when the butter was taken out, the churn of buttermilk would be left for drinking, while another was filled with fresh milk.
45 (Ham and Eggs) SA 1969/46 B7. Recorded from Roderick MacKenzie (aged eightyeight), The Olad, South Ronaldsay, Orkney by AJB on 11th June 1969. This anecdote came up in the course of an informative interview on many aspects of local life at the end of the last century with one of the oldest men in the island, but still a very lively one. It really should be heard to be fully appreciated – obviously there is a tempo change from the mowers’ first chant to the second. Porridge (oatmeal boiled in water) and still more brose (oatmeal with boiling water poured over it) were the usual basis for the diet of farm servants throughout the North of Scotland, and there were many complaints about the rarity of meat or anything else but kail (cabbage) to vary it. The type (AT 1567G, ‘Good Food Changes Song’) was well-known in Gaelic as well as Scots and English: both chants might be in Gaelic, but DAM remembers his grandmother telling it in Gaelic with the ‘Ham and Eggs’ chant in English. Ether: or else; scye: scythe; thoyt: thought (a typical South Ronaldsay pronunciation).
46 (Paring Cheese) SA 1969/53 B6. Recorded from Mrs Ethel Findlater, Dounby, Orkney by AJB on 25th June 1969. T1:31; GMK 54. Here again the story came up in the course of a long interview about Orkney life and food: ‘Ethel o Breckan’, well known for her repertoire of old songs and ballads since Dr Otto Andersson from Finland recorded her in 1938, and as a ‘character’ in her own West Mainland community, stayed in Edinburgh for a few days on the way back from an SWRI trip to London and recorded some excellent oral history as well as songs. This miniature moral tale, AT 1452, was in the Grimms’ collection and is known throughout Europe and North America to many who would consider themselves storytellers.
47 (Christ and the Hens and Ducks) Recorded from Roderick MacDonald, Carnoch, North Uist, and transcribed by Angus John MacDonald at Christmas 1967 (fieldworker’s own recording erased after transcription). T1: 14–15. ‘Ruairidh na Càrnaich’, then over eighty, a highly respected member of the crofting community, enjoyed the all-round knowledge of tradition (much of it learned from his grandmother), appreciation of music and soundly rooted world-view more typical of an earlier generation of Gaels. The cycle of stories about Christ and his pursuers does not seem to have been noticed in the Aarne-Thompson (AT) canon, but includes origin legends told in various parts of Scotland, by Protestants as well as Catholics. The miracle of the quickly completed harvest, as in the next story, was originally associated with the Flight into Egypt of the new-born Jesus and his family, but these stories of an apocryphal pursuit of an adult Jesus apparently before his trial and crucifixion have either developed from it in folk tradition, or may possibly reflect myths once told about a pagan divine hero.
48 Why the Beetle is Blind SA 1978/94 B3. Recorded from Duncan Williamson, Argyllborn traveller living in Fife, by David Clement and Linda Williamson. Printed in T33:155–6, as part of the feature in which this outstanding traveller storyteller and all-round tradition-bearer was first introduced to the public by Barbara McDermitt, with a note by AJB and a selection from his vast and varied repertoire. See note 21 to the Introduction for some of his later publications. This ‘holy story’ represents a minor but important area of his storytelling: all traveller stories have morals, and a surprising number (considering that few cairds went to church – for anything but funerals – even a hundred years ago, when almost everyone else did) have an explicit if not an orthodox Christian message. Many caird families, including Duncan’s own, are of Irish descent, and such tales are plentiful there outside church (which Irish travellers too avoid). Sometimes the crop sown one day is being harvested the next, and in Gaelic versions of this story the dung-beetle (ceard-dubhan) protects Christ but another sort of beetle (daol, perhaps the cockroach) betrays him.
49 (The Man Who Stopped Going to Church) SA 1964/32 B10. Recorded from Angus MacLeod, Bragar, Lewis, by John MacInnes. STT No. 34. Angus MacLeod (Aonghus Phàdraig) had a deep knowledge of local history from both oral and written sources and knew the value of each, as well as of songs and less localised traditions such as this story. This is a recognised international exemplum (a parable which may be used to illustrate a sermon), AT 759A, ‘The Sinful Priest’, very well-known in Ireland. The normal theme is the efficacy of the sacrament of the Catholic Mass, the miracle of transubstantiation, even if performed by a sinner (hence the medically doubtful analogy of pure water passing through a rotting carcase) but the message can still be understood in a more general sense when the story is told as here by a Calvinist Protestant. A tacksman was a small landowner who usually held his land from the clan chief.
50 The King of Halifax SA 1971/54A–B1. Recorded from Donald Alasdair Johnson, Ardmore, South Uist by DAM in March 1971. SS 16:1–22 (with Gaelic text and note on the type); STT No. 35. (In translating, we have not attempted to reproduce all the instances of ‘said he’ which are so much a feature of the Gaelic text.) AT 756B, ‘The Devil’s Contract’, is usually associated in Scotland with the mediaeval scholar Michael Scot, who studied in Muslim Spain before becoming astronomer to the Emperor Frederick II in Sicily, and so got the reputation of being a magician in the legends of both Italy and his native Scotland. In Ireland (e.g.
FTI: 144–9) as in a Ross-shire caird’s version (T33:188–95) the repentant sinner is usually a fictional cleric or scholar who has made a pact with the Devil, but in Eastern Europe he is usually a robber, and this may be how the King of Halifax should be seen. Halifax may be an English euphemism for Hell, with which it is associated in the saying ‘Hell, Hull or Halifax’, based partly on the sound and partly on a reputation for harsh sentences in their courts; however, its bad name in Gaelic may rather derive from the use of Halifax, Virginia, as a prison for Loyalists, including many Highland settlers, during the American War of Independence (SS 16:20).
The opening of this version is identical with the opening of many wonder-tales, the birth of a child after the mother has eaten magic fish; sometimes this also involves the promise of the first son as in ‘The Sea-Maiden’ (PTWH No. IV, and variants, AT 300, 302 and 303), where the mermaid is also a sea-monster and hardly less sinister than the Devil. Donald Alasdair Johnson also told a story of this type. The three hermits are like donor figures in wonder-tales, helping the hero on his way, but the third one has another function at the end, where he is punished for questioning God’s mercy to the sinner. The King of Halifax neither performs a spectacular penance (as characters such as Michael Scot in other versions do when they hear for the first time of the bed waiting for them in Hell – but he already knows about that!) nor does he do much to help the boy (the Son of God is the one who argues with the Devil), but what he has done is evidently enough to ensure his salvation. The doves and ravens at the funeral pyre regularly appear in Scottish versions of this story (and other stories like that of the burning of Coinneach Odhar, the ‘Brahan Seer’) and in Breton ones, but seem rare if not unknown elsewhere. The revival of a character on hearing the story they want appears at the end of other Gaelic tales like An Tuairisgeal Mór, also in Donald Alasdair’s repertoire.
Scottish Traditional Tales Page 45
