by Jess Smith
A woman filling her kettle from the burn found her. The blood was splattered across the autumn grass and down over the sand, where the lassie used to build sandcastles at the burnside. The mother’s screams were heard for miles, as the sight of her bonnie wee lassie’s body was indelibly imprinted on her mind. The two brothers knew only too well what had to be done. They would find the beast before the law did and mete out their own punishment. Travelling folks had little respect for the law, and if retribution was to be made then the victim’s relatives carried it out.
They packed a haversack and set out after him, ensuring that their distraught mother was in the safe hands of folks who promised they would take care of her. People say the lads found the monster a mile north of Comrie, washing himself at the burnside. One can only imagine what form of justice was dealt to that man, the devil who had robbed them of their baby sister, at the hands of those two heartbroken young men.
‘What did they do to him, Edie?’ I asked her.
‘Let’s just say that good breath was wasted in him, pet,’ was her reply.
They say that the poor mother, filled with hate, cursed his soul to the spot where he savaged her lassie. Moreover, from that day a tree at the fateful site bore in its trunk an uncanny resemblance to a man’s face, and neither leaf nor bud grew on that tree since!
‘Good God in heavens, Edie, that put the thought of the tablet out of me right enough. Why did you tell me such a tale?’
‘Well, being a travelling lassie, and one who is not far from womanhood, it does no harm to be wary of strangers and not so trusting. Now, I think this sweetie is ready for tasting.’
Baby Bairn would come into my thoughts and dreams again, but not today—I had some tablet to eat. What a delight for the gods it was. Never have I tasted such wonder. Edie gave me a square before putting the rest in a biscuit tin. The piece was far too little to satisfy me; I just had to have more, but how? I wasn’t a thief, or forward enough to do an Oliver Twist and ask for more. No, the only thing to do was to make my own.
I was only too aware of the gleaming bus awaiting its visitors. There was no way under Heaven’s fluffy clouds that Mammy would allow the desecration of her bonny wee stove, but I had no choice— my taste-buds were in total control.
Sneaking in I checked the press to see if there was enough butter, milk and sugar, and there was. The big jam pan was plonked on the heat and off I set—my first attempt at tablet-making. Soon the bubbles began to plop on the surface, and the same aroma I’d enjoyed at Edie’s began to fill my own home; the taste-buds were doing a tango on my tongue. I kept a vigil between the pot and the door to see that Mammy wasn’t coming back. She had wandered off in the direction of the caravan of Maggie Bunt, a Border gypsy. Once that pair got to yapping I knew that it would be at least an hour before the lips closed again. Swirling the spoon clockwise so as not to antagonise Auld Nick, I soon had something resembling what Edie had produced. Time to finish my task.
I dropped a little into a cup. Yes, it formed a ball. Time to remove the pan from the heat, and by God, it seemed I was going to get away with it after all!
‘Now,’ I remembered Edie saying, ‘don’t forget, when handling hot pans, always wrap a cloth round the handle.’ So, with these wise words in mind, I reached over the stove to remove a dishtowel from the wee cupboard above. As I did so I knocked something out of its place and stood open-mouthed as it fell into the pan. What happened next was like a scene from a Walt Disney cartoon. The contents spewed up and over the side of the pot; hot browny liquid shot up like mini-rockets, hitting the bus roof. It spewed over everything like molten lava from the belly of an active volcano. It was unstoppable! Mammy’s neat and tidy cushions and curtains, arranged just so for her expected visitors, were spotted with tan-coloured drippy blobs. And still the eruption continued, sticking to the Tilley-lamp, covering the back window and running down the Paisley-patterned seats— it missed nothing. Never had I seen the place look so awful; I was dead for sure. This was out of my control. Flying like a banshee I tore across on my wee legs to fetch Edie; she would know what to do. We all met together at the same time—Mammy, Daddy, Edie, me and, who do you think? That’s right, our visitors.
Edie laughed (she was the only one) when she realised what had happened. ‘You silly lassie. You’ve knocked enough baking soda into the pan to make puff candy for Scotland and all her neighbours!’
Not only had I learned the art of tablet-making that fine Sunday, but I had made puffy into the bargain. Two treats for one day, wouldn’t you say?
Well, after things were cleaned up, the visitors gone, and one of my ears near pulled from its socket by Mammy, I took the time to remember the tale Edie had told me. As I lay in bed I told it to my mother. She said she too remembered that crime, and that in the papers at that time there was a report that ‘a headless body, thought to be a vagabond’ had been found a mile or two from St Fillans at the mouth of Loch Earn. Could it have been the killer? It may well have been. Travellers say that the brothers buried his head beneath the roots of the cursed tree, so that his spirit would look on the spot where he took the life of the beautiful and innocent Baby Bairn.
Recently I told members of Perth and Kinross Council why the tree with the imprint of a contorted face had a history, and without a word they sent someone to cut it down. It is now a small bench for weary walkers to rest upon. I walk down there. I get weary feet. But it’d be a cold day in hell before I rest on the twisted soul bench.
We bade farewell to the couthy folks of Ayrshire, and before finding the road for Fife, we spent several days in Perthshire. Daddy’s sister Lizzie lived in Muthill, a tiny village south of Crieff, and it was there we headed.
In the area of the ‘Sma’ Glen’ I remember falling asleep to the whining of the engine, and rain pelting off the roof. Several sharp bends on the old road wakened me. The window wipers fought hard against the ferocious rain, prompting Daddy to find a lay-by to rest things down. Mammy wiped condensation from the window nearest her and stared out. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘is this not the Grey Lady’s field?’
‘It’s the only spot big enough to stop for the night,’ answered Daddy. ‘And I need to investigate a grinding sound I heard from the engine.’ Mammy’s eyes widened as she turned to look at us. She said that when she was a lassie, traveller folk never stopped at the roadside next to the ‘Grey Lady’s’ field, and here we were, right in the very spot. I was curious.
The story goes that after Culloden a young woman hid her husband in a cave near their tiny cottar house, but the English Redcoats put the lad to the sword after discovering him there. She believed the soldiers would never have found the cave, had a tinker not told them where it was. The distraught woman, before ending her life by hanging on a rope tied to the rafters in her home, cursed every travelling tinker. A shepherd tending his sheep heard her curses as she hung from the rope. He immediately went to her aid, only to find an empty house. So the curse of the Grey Lady was born.
The rain stopped, leaving a mist-shrouded glen. If ever a place had an air of haunting about it, then this was it. Mammy gave me the kettle, telling me to fill it at the burn. I remember a feeling of icy coldness as I looked back at the mist creeping over the bus; in an instant it was gone from view. As I knelt down to fill the kettle, something brushed against my face. Leaving the half-empty kettle in the burn I stood up to see who had approached me. Thinking Mary was playing tricks, I swung round to see, but there was noone there. Feeling hair rise on my neck I swiftly retrieved my kettle and started making my way back towards the bus, but try as I might I could not find where it was. My heart was pounding so much it was the only sound I heard. Then I saw her: a woman had appeared from nowhere and was standing feet away from me! I froze. Water soaked my socks and shoes as the kettle fell and spilled. She towered over me, wispy grey chiffon like the mist itself shrouding her thin form. I was at her mercy, unable to move. I watched as she knelt down at the burnside, then removed a long cloak and
began washing it in the water.
Ignoring me, but obviously aware of my presence, she folded the wet garment and laid it on a flat stone. Then very slowly she got to her feet, swaying all the time. I stared, still unable to move and terrified, as she spoke cryptic words in rhythm: ‘You shall meet him on the Samhain. If he throws not the silver coin then the Kelpie shall take him away.’ With that, she circled round me with a swishing scream and was gone. Fear shot through me, and taking to my heels, not knowing where I was going, I ran and ran.
‘Jessie! Jessie! Wake up, lassie, you’re dreaming.’ I opened my eyes to see my mother leaning over me. We were still on the road, rain still pelting off the windows, as Daddy called to us that Muthill was in sight.
‘Thank heavens I was only dreaming, but what a strange dream.’ I told everyone, including Auntie Lizzie.
‘You had a Banshee dream,’ she told me. ‘It should have meaning. Let me know if anything comes of it, lassie.’
Something did come of it, but that’s later on in my story. I hope you stay with me.
Dreams...
We are the messengers of life,
The passing strangers in the night.
In flights of fancy we may seem
A yellow road of sheer delight.
We set the rhythm and the tone,
The mind to stretch in many ways;
We touch the soul, the heart, the bone,
We are the masters and the slaves.
We are the guts of life’s machine,
The passion of forgotten time,
We are the blankets or the ice,
We are the names on parchment signed.
We are the aches, the hurt, the blight,
We are the angels or the freaks,
We can delay the planned awake,
Then take great care before we speak.
We are the keepers of each thought,
To each one’s own in deepest sleep;
This strong desire to dream alone
Does help the Lord one’s soul to keep.
Charlotte Munro
32
SCOTIA’S BAIRN
Back at Lennie’s Yard, Daddy positioned the bus in its usual stance. Out of storage came the prefab, and with or without planning permission it was soon sealed onto the bus. Water and electricity were plumbed and plugged in and we were ready to face another winter.
Several times I heard Daddy say he felt the bus was getting dodgy, and perhaps this winter might be its last. I couldn’t face a truth like that, so I blotted it from my mind. Mammy didn’t want to run the Formica shop because folks were not as keen on it any more. This pleased him, as the road to England could be hazardous in bad weather. Anyway, he had had bad bouts of bronchitis the previous winter and was happy to stay at home. The Fordy had long since been scrapped. My mother cried that day because she’d grown so fond of the wee van that resembled a frog with a swollen head. It was replaced by a more modern version, which Daddy used to eke out a living painting the odd farmhouse or two.
The thought of going back to school bullies brought me out in a sweat, and I was relieved that I qualified for two weeks’ exemption to go tattie lifting. Farmers in the area employed fourteen-year-olds because they were short of adult workers to gather in their crops. Two weeks, however, is hardly any time at all, and soon I was imprisoned within high walls surrounded by my cruel torturers.
Apart from running the gauntlet with these degenerates, I enjoyed some school subjects to an extent. Art was always my favourite. Mr Heggie, the art teacher, felt my portrait of an American Indian merited public viewing, and so entered it into an exhibition run at that time for schools in the area. It impressed several experts and my old craggy-faced squaw hung for a time in an Edinburgh art gallery. Just thought I’d mention that.
Cookery was another fun subject, and guess what, I passed my recipe (well, Edie Dalrymple’s, to be honest) of butter tablet on to the cookery teacher, who said it tasted better than hers. So there’s two contributions a travelling lassie left at Loughborough Road School in the early sixties. What impressed the headmaster, and he invited my parents in to tell them, was my flair for writing magical tales. I had written an essay about a dying princess and the heroic efforts of a gypsy lad to save her. Our English teacher gave us the assignment of no more than five hundred words on any subject we liked. I got totally lost in my tale, and before I knew it had notched up five thousand. When I presented my effort to the teacher she took one look and said ‘Take it away, it’s far too long.’ I was shattered, given that I’d worked well into the night, and as I walked down the corridor my eyes welled with tears. Mr Rollo, the head, asked why the sad face. Taken aback by such concern, I dropped my satchel at his feet, my essay pages sprawling over his highly-polished shoes. While he helped gather them up, I told him in a whisper why the sad face.
‘Leave the story with me for a day or two, I’d like to read it,’ he said.
Next day his secretary gave me the letter inviting my folks to see him. He asked that I be there, and when I think back on how proud they were it makes me feel so warm inside to think their wee travelling lassie could please such a prominent person.
‘This girl has great potential as a writer,’ he told them. ‘I don’t usually do this, but if you want there are certain teachers who could help further and nurture her abilities.’
Daddy thanked him, saying if that was what I wanted then by all means please to go ahead.
As I looked at the three faces staring at me and waiting for a response, I went quite red and mumbled that I’d think about it.
‘Come back and discuss it with me, lass,’ Mr Rollo said, as he shook my parents’ hands in parting.
Of course I’d no intention of going to college or taking extra lessons; all I wanted was to travel! So I never saw the inside of his office again, but I must admit he was a good man. One thing he, the cookery teacher and art teacher overlooked, though, was that their attention was turning the bullies into jealous fiends. Sleekit kicks beneath desks had my shins permanently black and blue. Wicked jibes, pulled hair and elbowed cheeks had become my daily dose, and with each day something deep within my weakened, terrified brain was stirring. How long would I be prepared to take this? When, if at all, would I snap? One day I’d show them, but not today.
Mammy had taken to hawking again, because Daddy’s bronchitis was worsening and they argued constantly about his smoking. Doctors told him his lungs were very weak, and one said that within five years he’d be a goner. This did slow him down somewhat and he cut his smoking to a few a day.
Granny Power was into her eighty-fourth year, and everybody took turns sitting in the evenings with her. I remember one foggy night whilst I was there. She was in her chair by the fire and I was at her feet. Granny loved brushing my hair, and while I sat nestled against her legs I felt a shiver run through my spine. The brush fell from her hand. When I turned to see my dear old Granny, she was deathly pale. The rose had left her cheeks, and even I could see something was wrong. She gently stroked my hair, asking if I’d fetch her shawl from the bedroom, before saying she needed Mammy. I felt she shouldn’t be alone and told her so. She took my hand, brushed it across her lips and repeated her request. Something inside said I had to obey. As I walked up the road to fetch my mother, I had a feeling I’d never see my beloved Granny again and I was right.
That night, circled by her family, she slipped peacefully away. (Love you.)
For the next few weeks relatives came and went, visiting us and talking over old times. Travelling people do this after a loved one goes; they try to keep the memory of the departed alive for as long as they can.
Thankfully, as a result of a fortnight of tonsillitis following Granny’s death, I was freed once more from my school tormentors.
Remember my dream, where the Banshee spoke a cryptic phrase to me? Let me disclose an incident to you. See what you think.
Several times that winter night kids came a-calling—‘Guisers, welcome the
Guisers.’ Halloween brought painted faces and weirdly-dressed bairns singing songs, reciting Tam o’ Shanter and doing somersaults. We moved the seats back to make space for our bath filled with apples for dooking, then we strung some string from the bus-door to a nail hammered into a kitchen shelf, on which we tied sticky treacle scones. Soon the wee prefab was packed with dripping wet-haired faces and black-mouthed bairns having a grand party. It was almost eleven when Mammy wound things up for the night. By the time we’d cleaned up, midnight was upon us. My younger sisters were bedded. I was about to go to bed myself when a loud knock at the door made me leap from my floppy slippers. Thinking teenage guisers were prowling, Daddy called out that we were in bed. The caller knocked louder and wasn’t going away, so my father opened the door to see a stranger standing there. ‘I’m looking for Patrick,’ he said.
‘No-one here by that name, lad, but there’s a lorry-driver sleeping in his cab round at the gate might know,’ answered my father.
Mammy joined Daddy and jokingly told the man that it was the first day of November and by tradition he should throw a silver coin in our door to make sure enough money came into the house during the coming year. The stranger, horrible man that he was, spat and said, ‘Tinks look better in oblong boxes.’
Daddy slammed the door in his face, refusing to speak any more with such an uncouth person.
Mammy made light of him, saying, ‘The things you see at a prefab mouth fair lowers the tone’.
No sooner had she spoken when a loud screeching of brakes from the main road had us throwing on coats and dashing out to see what had happened. A baker’s van was rammed into a lamppost. Trays of breadrolls were scattered at the open rear doors, and lying in a crumpled heap, lit up by the van’s headlights, was the rude man whom we’d encountered minutes before.
The Banshee’s dream came true!
‘You shall meet him on the Samhain [Halloween]. If he throws not the silver coin then the Kelpie shall take him away.’