51 (St Fillan and the White Snake) SA 1972/13 B3. Recorded from Duncan Matheson, Camus Luinie, Kintail, Wester Ross by DAM and Ian Fraser. STT No. 36. Duncan Matheson, a genial, bearded crofter, known as ‘Stalker’ from one of his past employments as a deerstalker, is skilled in many country crafts: he was invited to Australia to build a cairn of stones from every parish of Scotland for their bicentennial, and has been filmed thatching houses with heather and rushes. He is also an authority on Kintail legends and Gaelic songs who has contributed to the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness as well as the archives of Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies. St Fillan (Faolan, early Irish Faelán, ‘Wolfling’) is a Dark Age missionary associated with Kilillan in Kintail, but better known from Strath Fillan in Perthshire where his relics are kept and he may in fact be buried – though there may have been more than one saint with this fairly common name. The basis of the legend is actually an international Märchen type, AT 673, ‘The White Serpent’s Flesh’, though the result of tasting the snake is not understanding animals’ speech as in the type catalogue but the power of healing, as in PTWH No. XLVII. The incident may be set in France because mediaeval Gaelic doctors went there, to Montpelier, to study medicine; and the way in which Faolan tastes the snake’s juice seems to be modelled on the way Fionn mac Cumhaill got his ‘thumb of knowledge’ by using it to flatten a bubble on the skin of the magic salmon he was roasting, and then putting it in his mouth to cool. The verse about the Knoll of Tears is a version of one attributed to St Columba, mourning the distance from Iona to Derry. The indented paragraph about the healing well (which seems to be the reason why St Fillan is depicted as a medical missionary) is inserted from the conversation after the story was told, and the following paragraph about how the spring lost its powers is a migratory motif attached to several holy wells in the Highlands.
Origin and Didactic Legends
52 The Hugboy SA 1966/43 B9 (b + a). Recorded from Mrs J. J. Leith, Harray/Stenness, Orkney, by AJB on 29th August 1966. STT No. 37. Mrs Leith, an important source for women’s work, songs and many aspects of Orkney life, is described in a brief feature in T47. She became a good friend whom I always visited on fieldwork in Orkney, but on my first visit in 1966 she was rather shy of the tape-recorder and read this and other stories from notes left by her late husband Peter Leith (senior), which may be direct from oral tradition but could owe something to a version in the Viking Club’s Old-Lore Miscellany. The two legends are both typical origin legends on different improbable scales. In fact ‘hugboy’ is the name originally not of a giant, but of the guardian ghost of the first settler in a farm, the dweller in the howe or burial mound, Norse haug-búi – not usually as sinister as Tolkien’s ‘barrow-wights’, more like a Brownie (see tale No. 79), sometimes helpful, sometimes mischievous (FOS: 39–42).
53 Dubh a’ Ghiubhais SA 1955/164 B7. Recorded from Ann Munro, Laide, Wester Ross, by Calum Maclean on 13th September 1955. STT No. 38; T39:114–7 (with Gaelic text). Miss Munro was the teacher at Laide Primary School when Calum called in that afternoon, and she vividly describes how he enthralled the children in T39:97–8; his own account of how she had revived Gaelic in the school is in Chapter 7 of The Highlands. Neither of them mentions her own traditions which he recorded, including this excellent version of a local legend. This story seems to be a deliberate invention to account for the blackened pine stumps in peat bogs (once split into ‘fir candles’, see introduction p. 5): princesses and witches from Lochlann (Norway) often appear in Fenian ballads, and may have spread from these, perhaps in the wake of the Ossianic controversy, into local legends, where they are often said to be buried in cairns which may in fact be Neolithic chamber tombs or even natural hillocks. Seven versions are summarised in a catalogue of witch legends (SS 11:25–6) where this is numbered (W)10.
54 (The Pabbay Mother’s Ghost) SA 1958/161/1. Recorded from Nan MacKinnon, Vatersay, Barra by James Ross. T38:46–7 (with Gaelic text) – this is the last item in a feature which opens with a description of Nan by Barbara McDermitt, who visited her the year before her death in 1962. This small friendly woman, who never married but raised the four young children of her sister who died suddenly during the Second World War and kept house for their father from the time he was discharged from the Navy until he died, was famous for her vast repertoire of songs, but recorded great quantities of proverbs and stories (mostly local legends) too. This is the shorter and more coherent of two stories accounting for the success of local families (male as well as female members) as midwives.
55a (Luran and Iaras) Donald John MacDonald MSS, pp. 77–9, taken down from his father Duncan MacDonald, Peninerine, South Uist (see above, note to tale No. 18). Translated by Peggy McClements. T28: 218–9 (with Gaelic text). This South Uist variant of the Luran story (F128) is the only one that involves a fairy lover; in others the fairies may steal Luran’s cattle, Luran may steal a fairy cup (cf. tale No. 70a) or cauldron (cf. tale No. 67), or Luran may be the name not of the herdsman but of his dog (SSH: 52–7) – the one common element is the comment about the hard oatcakes, usually followed by advice to eat porridge (lite) or something softer, and normally this is misleading advice, which the fairies hope will slow him down. The only origin element in this variant is that other versions explicitly say that the fairy suitor was called Iaras and the loch and cairn were called after him.
55b Luran SA 1965/10 B3. Recorded from Calum Johnston, Barra, by DAM. T13:172–5 (with Gaelic text); STT No. 39a. Here the story has been turned upside down to encourage children to eat their porridge (brochan), by claiming that it not only makes you big and strong, but makes you light and nimble, which the usual version of the story makes it clear is just a fairy confidence trick. (Brochan can certainly mean gruel, a thinner mixture than lite (porridge), but it probably means ordinary thick porridge here.)
55c Peerie Merran’s Spün SA 1973/59 A7. Recorded from Tom Tulloch, North Yell (who heard it from his mother as a child) by AJB in April 1973. STT No. 39b; T28:205; GMK: 92. This is both an origin legend and a didactic legend, with the same message as the last one (though this one actually says ‘gruel’; according to John Graham’s Shetland Dictionary ‘gruel’ in Shetland means porridge!). At least in this case porridge gives strength, though it sounds as if the weakening of just one small female (Merran is the Shetland form of Marion) among the hundreds of fairies who would be needed to carry a whole headland was enough to bring it down, in the manner of the kingdom that was lost all for the want of a horseshoe nail. More usually it is sandbars and reefs that are said to be the ruins of a broken fairy bridge; the Ness of Houlland, a promontory continued by a line of two islets, looks very like a broken bridge, but it points north-west into the open Atlantic, so it cannot be interpreted as a bridge to anywhere believable and must be on its way to Yell Sound at the other end of the island. Some of the usages as much as the words may need explanation: caa: shift (food, in this case); laen: loan; quhile: until; shün: soon; smaa: narrow; thatten: such; wänts: lacks; yondroo: there.
56 Black John of the Blizzard SA 1962/51 B2. Recorded from Angus MacKenzie, Hougharry, North Uist, by DAM in October 1962. STT No. 40. Angus MacKenzie (‘Aonghas (mac Alasdair) ’ic Anndra’) was a crofter, carpenter and wheelwright who for some time taught woodwork in North Uist schools, as well as being a fine raconteur and a composer of local humorous songs. There is some factual basis for this story: (1) historical records confirm the tradition that cattle-raiding was carried on by boat in the Western Isles (cf. tale No. 89), and the feud between the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan and the MacDonalds of Sleat, who were overlords of North Uist, in the early 1600s certainly included such raids by the MacLeods, one of which led to the Battle of Carinish in 1601. (2) The nickname ‘Black John of the Blizzard’ (lain Dubh a’ Chafaidh, more exactly ‘Black-haired John of the Drifting Snow’) apparently belongs to a real person who seems to have been claimed as ancestor by people in the small island group of Heisker, and there may well have be
en a genuine tradition that he moved there from the furthest west part of the main island of North Uist. (3) There is a headland called Rubha na Marbh, ‘The Point of the Dead’, in Heisker. Almost certainly, like similar names in other small islands, it means the place where the local dead were embarked for burial in a churchyard on the main island. On this basis, we may suspect, this dramatic and improbable story was simply invented to explain how the point and the pilot each got their names.
Legends of Ghosts and Evil Spirits
57 MacPhail of Uisinnis Donald John MacDonald MS 3:236. Recorded from his father Duncan MacDonald, South Uist, on 7th July 1953 (see above, note to tale No. 18). Translated by John MacInnes. T8:240–1 (with Gaelic text and detailed notes). Uisinnis is a hilly peninsula protruding from the area to the east of the highest hills in South Uist, now totally uninhabited, and a suitable setting for this nearest approach to a vampire story from Scotland. Other versions set the story less far back and make the sinister grandfather an incomer, a shepherd perhaps from the Lowlands (he is called Crawford in one version, but usually MacPhail) rather than a native Uist man. He will eat his wife and daughter-in-law, but not his granddaughter who is of his own blood. The internal door would have been hung in a wooden frame, including a wooden doorstep (maide-buinn) on top of the packed earth floor, and the dead man was digging though the earth under this doorstep. This is almost an origin legend, accounting for the pit (an unusually large hole of the sort that may appear in the middle of any earth-floored ruin whose roof has fallen in and let in the rain), but it is actually a migratory type: versions are localised in ‘the hills of Ross-shire’ (WSS:52) and Berneray, Harris.
58 Mór Princess of Lochlann Donald John MacDonald MS 1:68–72. Recorded from his father Duncan MacDonald, South Uist, on 2nd May 1953 (see above, note to tale No. 18). Translated by Mrs Peggy McClements. T25:12–15 (with Gaelic text). This is a variant on a story well known in Uig, Lewis, where the woman is the mother of the prophet Coinneach Odhar, known on the mainland as ‘the Brahan Seer’ but claimed in Lewis as a native, who foresaw the future by looking through a stone with a hole in it given to his mother by the Norse princess. It is not clear why Hebridean graveyards, far from anatomists and resurrectionists, should have needed to be watched, and some versions of the Lewis story say that the woman did it as a dare. ‘The mouth of the ford’ seems to mean the seaward end of the ford across the sands between South Uist and Benbecula. A tangle (stamh) is a stalk of coarse seaweed (cf. tale No. 88).
59 (Myze Keys) SA 1970/244 Al. Recorded from Tom Tulloch, North Yell, by AJB (the first story he ever told me). T30:352–3. Tom was gravedigger at the kirkyard of Ness or Breckin from 1937 to 1976, in succession to his father. Similar stories about gravestones or standing stones taken, for instance, to replace the threshold of a house are common enough, but this is the only one I know with a wooden grave-marker. Like several other old Shetland churches, this one was apparently said to be an ‘aamos kirk’, built by the survivors of the shipwreck to fulfil a vow (aamos) made when their lives might have been lost in the storm. Possibly they were supposed to be Dutch: the name ‘Myze Keys’ sounds like a combination of the Dutch names ‘Mies’ and ‘Kees’. ‘Tree(s)’ in Shetland could mean anything made of wood in these almost treeless islands, from a ‘gruel-tree’ (a spurtle to stir porridge) to a ‘rigging-tree’ (the ridge-pole of a house). Biggit: built; fan’: found; keen: ken, know; kirn: (butter-)churn; krockit: knocked; scauff’ldin: scaffolding.
60a Alasdair Mór mac Iain Làidir SA 1963/51 A1. Recorded from Donald Alec MacEachen, Aird Bheag, Benbecula, by DAM on 21st October 1963. STT No. 45a; F114. Donald Alec MacEachen was a first-rate local antiquary with a deep knowledge of his native island whose untimely death was a sad loss to Gaelic tradition. It is difficult for us now to understand why breaking this seemingly arbitrary taboo should bring what seems to be the Devil to threaten the man with death. In FTFL: 302–7 a mainland Alasdair Mór is threatened by an Uruisg (a water-spirit shaped like a satyr or the god Pan, with the hind-quarters of a goat) who simply turns up without mention of any taboo, presumably because he haunts this river: he certainly intends to eat Alasdair. The taboo against emptying potato water (or any dirty water) after sunset, however, has a long history in Ireland (see Séamus Ò Duilearga’s paper in Féilsgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill (ed. E. Ua Riain, Dublin 1940):522–34) though again the penalty is being taken by the Devil or the fairies rather than violent death. A cock hatched in March was believed in Scotland and Ireland to have special powers against evil.
60b (The Night Fishermen) SA 1968/217 Al. Recorded from Mary MacLean, Grimsay, North Uist by Angus John MacDonald. STT No. 45b. In this version of the story there is a clear Protestant Christian message: the punishment is for breaking the Sabbath, though unwittingly. As in the mainland Argyll version cited above (tale No. 60a), the stranger makes it quite clear that the other fishers are to be part of his share of the catch – sgiolam there like cealasag here seems to be a word made up for the occasion.
61 MacPhee’s Black Dog SA 1968/227 A9–B1. Recorded from Peter MacCormick, Hacleit, Benbecula, by Angus John MacDonald. STT No. 43, F112. Peter (Pàdraig) MacCormick was one of a group of fine storytellers in Benbecula recorded by Calum Maclean in the 1940s and 50s, though he tended to be overshadowed by his wife Kate, a quite remarkable traditional singer. Versions of this legend are attached to lonely places called Àirigh na h-Aon Oidhche all over the Highlands: the Benbecula one, marked on the Ordnance Survey map as an ancient monument, may not have been a sheiling at all. Sheilings in their main traditional use as sleeping quarters and dairies for the girls and unmarried women looking after the cattle at the summer pastures were natural places for young men to come courting, and the wish of the unmarried men to have their sweethearts follows naturally, but a wish for something impossible brings nemesis. The women may be called fairies, witches, Green Women (as in the variant which inspired Water Scott’s Glenfinlas in Part III of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border) or baobhan, a name originally given to the Old Irish war-goddess Badb, the hoodie-crow, and used in modern Ireland for the Banshee. They may have bone beaks or cloven hooves, but the young men evidently do not notice them in time. The Black Dog, useless until ‘his day comes’, belongs to a more elaborate form of the legend about MacPhie of Colonsay and a party of hunters in a cave on the Isle of Jura (SSH: 109–22). Dogs which fight supernatural opponents regularly lose their hair in Gaelic tales, and the ‘battle fury’ cooled by milk and water is like that attributed to Cú Chulainn in Old Irish tales. The cry to the dog, ‘bios-eara’ (the hyphen simply shows the stress is on the second syllable and the s is not a sh sound) is meaningless in Gaelic but appears in several South Uist and Benbecula versions of this story (sometimes with a T, ‘bisterra’ in English spelling). It might simply be a corruption of a command used by Lowland shepherds to their dogs.
62a Àirigh an t-Sluic Donald John MacDonald MS 3:239. Recorded from his father Duncan MacDonald, South Uist, on 7th July 1953 (see above, note to tale No. 18). Translated by John MachInnes. T11:92–3 (with Gaelic text). Like the previous tale, this story concerns a lonely sheiling; its name could be translated as ‘the Sheil of the Pit’, and Peter MacCormick followed the previous tale by telling a version of No. 57 above (STT No. 42) set not at Uisinnis but at this place a few miles further north on the east side of South Uist, where he had been himself and seen the pit dug by the dead man. He said the old man’s body was too heavy to move when his son used the conventional funeral blessing in the name of the Lord, but could be moved when he said ‘Let’s set out in the name of the Evil One’. In the present story the old woman is apparently a witch who cannot be taken by the Devil because of the captain’s Bibles and her own cock. The quite different emphasis in the story that follows is more usual.
62b (The Cock and the Skipper) SA 1974/196 Al. Recorded from Tom Robertson, Collafirth, Delting, Shetland by AJB on 18th September 1974. I met Tom Robertson, son of a fine storyteller in this isolated communit
y and unlike many younger Shetlanders very interested in his own traditions, by chance at his now abandoned croft-house of Quam at the head of the valley, and this was the first of his father’s stories he recorded for me. In this more typical version there is no suggestion that the targets of the supernatural attack are themselves evil, only unlucky in failing to realise that the cock has protected them: in effect this is a tale of fate. Compare a very similar Gaelic version from Nan MacKinnon published by Anne Ross in SS 7:219–20, and an Irish one, SOCB No. 109; the same point is made by an Irish inland variant with different details, FTI No. 35. Tae: tea; voe: inlet.
63 Tarbh na Leòid SA 1956/159/3. Recorded from Donald MacDougall, Sruthan Ruadh, Malacleit, North Uist by DAM. STT No. 46. Donald MacDougall, retired blacksmith and crofter, is a cousin of DAM, and descended from a long line of MacRuries, armourers, blacksmiths and bards. He has recorded many interesting songs and stories: an important source of his stories was his great-aunt Christina MacRury. The Scottish Gaelic water-horse (each uisge) may tempt men or children to ride it and then plunge into a loch, but it also appears as a young man who seduces girls and if successful devours them (SSH:203–15; F58). There might be some relationship between this story and a Norwegian legend, ‘The Sea-Horse and the Sea-Serpent’ (ML 4085), but the sea-horse there acts as a protector and the each uisge is a creature of freshwater lochs, not the sea – which makes it unusual that here it is driven into the sea. Sacred bulls appear in early Irish tales such as the Táin, and it is not surprising to find a Gaelic bull bred as a protector. On the other hand the story seems to have Norse roots: the Norwegian equivalent of the water-horse (which can take both horse and human form) is called nökk, Old Norse nykr, and DAM has pointed out that the loch in Heisker that must be meant in the story, ‘some distance from the village’, is called Loch Snigreabhad (Sniogravat on the Ordnance Survey map), which almost certainly goes back to Old Norse nykravatn, ‘loch of the nykr’. The name Tarbh na Leòid also does not mean ‘MacLeod’s Bull’, but it might come from the Norse name of the ancestor of the clan, Ljótr – or from an obscure Gaelic word Ieòd, ‘mangling’.
Scottish Traditional Tales Page 46
