Scottish Traditional Tales

by A. J. Bruford

  75 (Rescued by a Seal) SA 1970/244 B7. Recorded from Mrs D. Anderson, Fetlar, Shetland by AJB. STT No. 57. Mrs Anderson, who asked for her name not to be used when she was alive, was a charming, dignified lady of eighty-four, and told fine stories as well as singing some of her father’s sea songs. Versions of this story since Hibbert’s Description of the Shetland Islands (1822) all say the seal hunters were from the island of Papa Stour (or occasionally Scalloway) and went to the Ve Skerries off the west coast of Shetland: the story probably came to Fetlar with Papa Stour families cleared in the last century from one island to the other by the Nicolson lairds who held land in both. Descendants of one of these families, the Hunters, gave me some words of seal language – possibly Norse – which the seal mother said; Hibbert’s names for her and her son, Gioga and Ollavitinus, seem to be Latinised Norse; another version gives the marooned seal hunter the Nordic-sounding name of Herman Perk, and overall the story seems to date from a time when Norn was still spoken in Papa Stour, 250 years or more ago.

  76 (The Limpet Pick) SA 1975 /163 A2. Recorded from Andrew Hunter, South Nesting, Shetland by AJB. First published in T34:274 as part of a short feature on this retired seaman from the east side of the Shetland Mainland. I first heard of Andrew Hunter as a maker of kishies, baskets of straw and rushes once used to carry almost anything on these treeless islands, but soon found he carried almost anything about his home area in his own memory, including historical and supernatural legends. He was eighty-seven when this was recorded and still as clear-headed at ninety: the paragraph at the end of the story could speak for most of the storytellers in this book. This legend is a migratory type (F29) well-known in Shetland, but with several close variants in the Hebrides (cf. SSH: 284–5; Arv 37:120–21) and Ireland (cf. FLI No. 23). It should be explained that ‘went to get a boat’ means ‘from Norway’: Andrew had just said in another story (No. 83a below) that in the days of the haaf fishing (see note 10 to the Introduction) all the boats in Shetland came from Norway in kit form, and the seal was probably a ‘Norway Finn’ or Lappish witch rather than a sea fairy. Limpets were gathered for ground-bait for fishing from the rocks. Bassel: a struggle. The fishermen’s taboo-name skjön (‘j’ pronounced as ‘y’), used at sea, when you were not supposed to say ‘knife’, is said to be from a Norse word related to ‘shiny’, but it is remarkably like Gaelic sgian, ‘knife’.

  77 (The Magic Island) SA 1971/262 A2. Recorded from James Henderson, South Ronaldsay by AJB. T26:95–6; GMK: 93–4. Such tales (F14) are apparently related to early Gaelic accounts of a fairy ‘earthly paradise’ on an island overseas, as well as to accounts of vanishing islands off Orkney (FOS:26) and the Hebrides (‘Rocabarraigh’, now used to translate Rockall). Christiansen has a type ML 4075, ‘Visits to the Blessed Islands’, but says they are ‘told as actual experience’. This story, however, has parallels in the plot of a Caithness tale (‘ ’E Silkie Man’, serialised in OLM parts II–III, about a woman abducted by a seal to a chasm on the coast of Stroma) and Gaelic stories of seemingly dead cows taken by the fairies (e.g. MWHT No. 58). The father’s refusal to rescue his daughter is a nicely cynical touch which gives this story a character all its own. Ower weel means just ‘very well’.

  78 (The Last Trow in Yell) SA 1978/63 B6. Recorded from Tom Tulloch, North Yell by AJB. T30:370; GMK:97. Stories of the fairies’ final departure overseas (F31) are well-known in Northern Ireland (whence they go to Britain!) and Kipling put a Sussex version into his Rewards and Fairies, where they take a boat to France. There are occasional tales from mainland Scotland in which they have left for an unspecified destination (AFH:122), or shipped from Caithness to Orkney, for instance – and drowned in the Pentland Firth (see T28:226). A brief reference from Jamesie Laurenson on the same page in 728 shows that Fetlar had the same story of the old woman saying the ‘Picts’ had gone to the Faeroes, naming the same famous minister of the joint parish of Fetlar and North Yell, James Ingram, who moved to Unst in 1821 and ‘came out’ at the Disruption, still preaching after his son succeeded him as Free Church minister of Unst and dying there at the age of 103. The Yell version, however, adds the fiddler, who did not touch fairy food, but for whom time passed normally, not as in tale No. 64b above, perhaps because these were trows (the same word as trolls), in some parts of Shetland taken as equivalent to fairies, but not in North Yell, as Tom explains. Their hadd is the word for a wild beast’s lair. Other words and phrases: aless: except; asaed: beside; Collyifa: Cullivoe; hidmast: hindmost, last; ipö owld Yül E’ën: on Old Christmas Eve (5th January); leem: crockery; on a doil-hoit: in a depressed state; t’owt: thought.

  Legends of Witchcraft

  79 The Broonie SA 1978/61. Recorded from Mrs Betsy Whyte, Montrose, by AJB as she told the story to a Scottish Ethnology 1 class in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies on 30th April 1987. T44:125–9, with some comments on the value of storytelling to cairds. The basis of this is a witch legend perhaps best known in the ballad ‘Willie’s Lady’ (Child 6) but also told of various Highland chiefs’ sons and others (SS 11:24; W8). The Brownie here advises the father as the ‘Belly Blind’, a similar helpful household spirit (‘Belly’ is usually ‘Billie’, i.e. brother), does in the ballad, but also takes an active part. The Brownie going for the midwife is usually a separate legend of which Allan Cunningham gave a Nithsdale version to Cromek (AFH: 36). Travellers naturally feel an affinity for this spirit, which is shunned by most people, but if well treated does much good for little reward.

  80 (‘London Again!’) SA 1960/10 A4. Recorded from Angus MacLellan, South Uist, by Calum Maclean. STT No. 58. This type (W21; SS 11:27–30) is very popular in Gaelic, but the majority of versions have the words of command (typically ‘Off to London!’ and ‘Kintail Again! ’) in English; there are Lowland Scots, English and Irish versions, and there is a reference to another in the 1591 pamphlet Newes from Scotland (SS 14:189–90). Burns collected a version set at Alloway Kirk (ibid: 190–91) which is half-way to the alternative version involving invisible fairies (in Burns’ story they are visible and possibly human witches) whose cry of ‘Horse and Hattock’ someone imitates, and this can be traced back to the seventeenth century (Robert Pitcairn, Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland 3:604 note). In this form the story is known from Ireland to Norway (ML 6050, ‘The Fairy Hat’). For both witches and fairies in Scotland the hat (‘hattock’ means a little hat) is usually more important than a broomstick or ragwort stalk to ride on. The majority of Gaelic versions are set in Kintail, and the search for a keel which at the end is provided by the gallows frames the story very neatly.

  81 The Tailor and the Fishing Wives SA 1964/66 A2. Recorded from Peter Morrison, Grimsay, North Uist by DAM. T16:312–7 (with Gaelic text); UAB:59–62 (Gaelic only). This type too (W5; SS 11:21), depicting a witches’ meeting as something like a Women’s Guild trip to the seaside, seems to be a Lowland type taken less than seriously by Gaels. In other versions, however, the witches are actually drowned, and an early variant from the Tomintoul area in the east Highlands (PSFA: 171–8) gives quite a lurid account of a witches’ sabbat on a pool in the river Avon.

  82 (Duart’s Daughter) SA 1965/18 A3. Recorded from Nan MacKinnon, Vatersay by Lisa Sinclair. STT No. 60. This type takes the morality of the witch trials more seriously: the chief burns his own daughter for a sorcerer’s apprentice fault of being unable to stop what she has begun, and for what she has learned at the school (no doubt in the Lowlands) that he himself sent her to. The type (W7A; SS 11:22–3) is related to ML 3035, ‘The Daughter of the Witch’ (in most versions the girl learns witchcraft from her mother), and again there is an inland variant from further east (near Forres, PSFA:2 10–14), where instead of sinking a ship the girl merely stops ploughs in their tracks, a feat which (unlike sinking the ship) appears in Norwegian versions.

  83a (The Three Knots) SA 1962/53 A4. Recorded from Donald MacLellan, Tigharry, North Uist by DAM. STT No. 59. Donald MacLellan (Domhnall Aonghuis Mhóir) was a piper an
d a good tradition bearer. His telling of this story shows a well-practised style more usual in fictional folktales, but this is definitely a local tradition: he heard it from the late Alexander MacQueen, whose grandfather was said to have been one of the crew involved. This legend type (W31; SS 11:31–33) is not in Christiansen’s catalogue (ML), but it is well known in parts of Scandinavia (see Béaloideas 19:34), and a recent study has uncovered a handful of Irish versions: it was certainly localised in many parts of Northern Scotland. Witches in Orkney would still sell a favourable wind to becalmed whaling ships about 1800 (see Preface to Walter Scott’s novel The Pirate, and cf. FOS: 53). The basis of the plot is the same idea as in the story of Aeolus and his bag of winds, which drive Odysseus’ ship back the way it came when the curious sailors open the bag, in Book 10 of the Odyssey, so it is over 2500 years old. Gaelic versions may have the witch who causes the harmful weather at home and the helpful one at the other end of the voyage, so it is not always a matter of accusing people in another island of being witches, but the story is told of Barra men going to Tiree, Tiree men going to Barra (T32:77), and similarly between Sutherland and Lewis, Caithness and Orkney and so on. The end may be the loss of boat and crew, boat only, or the crew being driven back to where they started from: in this version and the next they get off lightly.

  83b (The Three Knots) SA 1975/163 Al. Recorded from Andrew Hunter, Nesting, Shetland by AJB. T34:273–4. Shetland versions see the witch as living in Norway, perhaps a Lapp or ‘Norway Finn’: there was a regular trade, mainly bringing in wooden material such as boat kits, between Shetland and the west of Norway until the First World War, and it is often pointed out that Lerwick is nearer to Bergen than to Aberdeen.

  84 (Dark Lachlan and the Witches) SA 1981/1 Al. Recorded from William Matheson, North Uist/Edinburgh by himself. T35:308–9 (with Gaelic text), part of a full issue devoted to this notable tradition-bearer, collector and expert on Gaelic songs, genealogy and many other aspects of his native culture, on his retirement from university teaching. The type, W40B, ‘Witches Fail to Sink a Ship’ (SS 11:35) is a reversal of W40A, ‘Witches Sink a Ship’, where they likewise settle on the mast in the form of crows or black cats until there are enough of them to overcome the magic powers of the helmsman, and the boat goes down. That is mainly associated with one famous loss of a ship within sight of land, when Iain Garbh MacLeod of Raasay was drowned in 1671, and this story has only been collected from South Uist, possibly referring to an actual occasion in the eighteenth century, when ‘Alasdair nam Mart’ MacDonald of Boisdale, whose epithet ‘of the cows’ testifies to his success as a cattle-breeder and salesman, and Lachlan MacMhuirich of the hereditary line of poets to his chief, MacDonald of Clanranald both flourished. William Matheson heard the story from Duncan MacDonald and others in South Uist. The MacMhuirichs, and especially this ‘Lachlann Dubh’, may have got the reputation of being magicians, which they enjoy in tradition, simply because they could read and write and had a collection of manuscripts in classical Gaelic.

  85 (John MacLachlan and the Girl) SA 1968/245 B. Recorded from Donald Sinclair, Bailephuill, Tiree by Eric Cregeen. STT No. 62b. Told in Gaelic, but the opening paragraph is from a conversation in English. Donald Sinclair (Dòmhnall Chaluim Bàin, 1885–1975) was Tiree’s best-known tradition-bearer, whose father had told many stories to the minister collector John Gregorson Campbell who died in 1891 (see e.g. SSH and WSS). See T18:41 ff. for Eric Cregeen’s appreciation of this small bachelor crofter and shoemaker with an endless knowledge of everything from Fenian lays to Tiree families and locally composed songs. In this case he was getting a little vague in his old age about the hero of this story, which at different times he told of the nineteenth-century doctor and bard from Morvern named here, of Dr MacLaurine who became factor of Tiree in 1800 and was credited with having the Black Art, and with the ‘Ollamh Muileach’, the Mull Doctor – one or other of the local branch of the Beaton family who had been physicians to the Lords of the Isles and also had a reputation as magicians. The last is the most usual hero for this type, which has been classified as an international folktale (AT 285B*, ‘Snake Enticed out of Man’s Stomach’), but is more like a migratory legend – in Scotland more usually about a toad or frog, in Ireland a newt or lizard or a ‘demon of hunger’ (Ion-chraois) in the earliest version, which is the basis of the Middle Irish satirical tale ‘The Vision of Mac Con Glinne’, written in the twelfth century. Moreover, here the creature, generally said to cause insatiable hunger, is nearly always tempted out with the smell of meat rather than the sound of running water after a salty diet, as in the catalogue description (cf. PTWH 2:382).

  86 (The Dancing Reapers) SA 1954/57 A15. Recorded from William MacDonald, Cùl na Ceapaich, Arisaig, by Calum Maclean. T15:256–61 (with Gaelic text and tune). William MacDonald, a retired crofter from a family of noted tradition-bearers, was described by Calum as ‘a splendid storyteller [who] stands when reciting stories’. You can still hear him thump the floor with his stick (or the table with his fist?) on the recording of some fine hero tales, as he emphasises the rhythm of one of the runs which he recited at high speed and with great enthusiasm. This story is told of Michael Scot in the Borders (AFH: 52–3) and MacDonell of Keppoch (GAB:92–5), one of several seventeenth-century chiefs credited with magic powers, in the Highlands, as well as less well-known characters like this MacGregor, or in Betsy Whyte’s version a ‘Black Laird’ called MacCallum. Sometimes it is a drink that is refused, sometimes the dancers die of their exertions, but the setting is always harvest time.

  87a (The Borrowed Peats) SA 1970/231 B2. Recorded from Tom Moncrieff, North Roe/Virkie, Shetland by AJB on 12th September 1970. STT No. 61a. Most memorates and some migratory legends of witchcraft in recent times are concerned with the belief that witches could ‘take the profit’ of milk and butter, either by being able to milk other people’s cows or by extracting the goodness which made butter from it, so that the witch got a churn full of butter and her victims got none. Since there are many reasons why butter may not form, especially when as in the Northern Isles whole milk rather than cream was churned, because of the by-products the storyteller mentions, there were many accusations of this sort of witchcraft, and indeed there is good evidence that women in Shetland still tried to practise it up to the 1930s. The quotation from Burns’ ‘Address to the Deil’ shows that the belief had long been known in mainland Scotland too. There were also many stories of how the spell had been broken, and this is one known in both Gaelic and Shetland variants. Tom Moncrieff got this story from the same old woman born in Lunnasting in 1830 who was the source for his tale No. 42 above. ‘Twa colls’ means two or three burning peats, rather than bits of coal: it was thought unlucky both to have to ask for them to light a fire that had gone out or to be asked.

  87b (The Borrowed Peats) SA 1965/18 A6. Recorded from Nan MacKinnon, Vatersay, by Lisa Sinclair in April 1965. STT No. 61b. It is not clear in this text, but in other Gaelic versions the butter does not appear in the housewife’s churn but in the water the tailor put the peats into.

  88 (Milk in a Tangle) SA 1965/18 A10. Recorded from Nan MacKinnon, Vatersay, by Lisa Sinclair. T38:42–3 (with Gaelic text). This looks like a local memorate, but is migratory: there is a Tiree version in WSS:9.

  Robbers, Archers and Clan Feuds

  89 (The Girl Who Killed the Raiders) SA 1968/47 A2. Recorded from Malcolm Robertson, Baleshare, North Uist and transcribed by Angus John MacDonald. STT No. 19. Malcolm Robertson (Calum ‘Illeasbui’ Nèill) belonged to a family noted as storytellers and tradition-bearers. Like No. 56 above, this story uses the historical background of cattle-raiding by sea, and adds some North Uist place-names, but no family or even clan names: the rest is pure international folk-tale, AT 956B, ‘The Clever Maiden Alone at Home Kills the Robbers’ – though in this case she is alone in their own tent. The sequel of the surviving robber coming to court the girl is part of the type, which may be familiar from Morgiana in the story of Ali Baba. Bent or mar
ram grass, on the other hand, is something which grows plentifully in Uist and is traditionally used to make horses’ harness, though it seems unlikely that if this very hard grass had been used as its bridle a horse would be tempted to eat a knotted rope of it.

  90 Spòg Bhuidhe SA 1971/5 B6. Recorded from Donald MacDougall, North Uist, transcribed and translated by Angus John MacDonald. T7:210–15 (with Gaelic text). Like the previous tale, this is an international novella of robbery, AT 952*, ‘A Sausage and a Revolver’, though the type-index only lists versions from Finland and Lithuania: we have another version recorded in South Uist. The historical background of Highland harvesters coming home with their wages from the Lowlands, or more often Highland drovers returning from the Falkirk Tryst with the price of the cattle they had sold (e.g. T24:316–9), often provides a plausible setting for such tales of outwitted robbers. The robber’s nickname may owe something to the legend of a supernatural robber, the ‘yellow-footed weaver’ of Gairloch who attacked travellers in the form of a goat (hence the word for an animal’s foot rather than a human one: see PTWH 2:110–12 and SS 11:17–18 for the type, W2).

  91 Dark Finlay of the Deer SA 1955/168 A11. Recorded from John Finlayson, Druimbuie, Lochalsh by Calum Maclean. T39:158–61 (with Gaelic text). John Finlayson (‘Iain Smoc’) was one of Calum Maclean’s favourite storytellers: he describes him in The Highlands Chapter VII as ‘absolutely steeped in the traditions of Lochalsh and Kintail. It was enchanting to listen to him, for with him the past seemed as living as the present.’ His slightly formal style, aware of his audience, includes some stumbles and hesitations that have not been shown in the translation. This clan legend, set here in the context of the sixteenth-century feud between the MacKenzies of Kintail and the MacDonalds of Glengarry and Sleat, is one of several migratory types about archers. The bow is not generally thought of as a Highland weapon, but until guns became more available towards the end of the seventeenth century Highlanders going as mercenaries to the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, for instance, were still carrying bows. This story is most often associated with Iain Beag MacAnndra, ‘Little John MacAndrew’ in Strathspey, who was really so small that the MacDonald raiders, from Keppoch in this case, raiding the cattle of the Grants, easily took him for just a herd-boy: it is not made clear how Finlay warned his wife to treat him as a herdsman, but perhaps it was a prearranged plan.