Jessie's Journey

by Jess Smith

  The Kelpie, as folklore teaches, was the ancient death-horse sent by the devil to bring a soul home. In our stranger’s case it had taken the shape of the bread van.

  He’d been killed outright. The driver sustained no more than a slight bump to the head. And who was Patrick? He was the lorry-driver sleeping unaware in his cab. He later told my father that the stranger was his girlfriend’s ex and he was out to get him.

  So, reader, watch for dreams where a tall woman wearing a wispy grey shroud enters into your sleeping mind and leaves a message of dread.

  Well, Christmas came and went. Ne’erday brought resolutions: Mammy’s going to stop dying her hair lilac and Daddy has thrown the fags to the back of the fire. Shirley, Janey and Mona have all added to the family by one baby each.

  The 10th of March, my fifteenth birthday, had passed and by law I’d almost finished with school. I’d leave come the Easter holidays. If it hadn’t been for the bullies, my last days at school could’ve been happier. However, something a lot worse broke my heart. Daddy had been giving away bits of my bus-engine. The first time in my entire life I ever screamed at him was when he gave a man the dynamo and cylinder-head, because he was giving away the heart of the engine. Without these parts my bus was dead! Nothing hurt me more: not measles, mumps, chicken-pox or my sorest bout of tonsillitis, or, come to think of it, bullies.

  Daddy said the bodywork was crumbling and the windows were cracked. No, the bus had to be scrapped!

  I went to school that morning feeling as if I’d been at a funeral, and try as I might the feeling wouldn’t go away. It was the day of prize-giving, and although I was presented on stage with three certificates I still felt despondent.

  Making my way home, lost in thoughts of losing my summers, I failed to hear those oh so familiar voices echoing behind me until they were on my heels. ‘Tinkie, Tinkie, cold bum. Yer Mammy cannae knit. Yer Daddy’s lying drunk in the auld village nick!’ They went on and on with volleys of curses, followed by disgraceful lewd innuendoes. I hurried my pace, and turning the corner, standing upon the humpbacked railway bridge, stood three lassies, leaving two lads at my rear. ‘They’re determined to get me before I leave this day,’ I thought, as the fear they’d put me in for four years returned. One lad came up behind, wrenched my leather satchel and threw it over the bridge. ‘My bag,’ was all I could think, ‘My precious bag that Mammy bought me.’ I thought on her hawking street upon street, legs aching, doors slammed in her face, fat, roller-headed women parting with pennies to hear their fortunes. My tender loving mother, with the little money she saved, bought, through the greatest love, that satchel!

  Butterflies in my stomach turned to hulking buzzards until I felt they would burst out my chest. Hands began shaking, mouth and throat went parched dry. My eyes stared through red pools, almost leaving their sockets. There weren’t five kids in my presence. There were five rats needing scoured from the Earth. I don’t remember much from then on because I snapped. Years of torment, losing my bus, no future in travelling, brought forth a demon I didn’t know I possessed. Handfuls of hair sprouted from clenched fists, every nail was imbedded with skin and blood, great waves of strength swept my being and with every blow I rained down screams of ‘Bastard bairns!’ I only came to, so to speak, when a black-faced miner grabbed me, saying they had all ran away.

  They ran, those evil youngsters who’d made my life a misery for so long, ran! I could hardly believe it.

  The miner’s mate retrieved my satchel from the track after a goods train had trundled over. It must have been blessed, that wee bag, because it hadn’t even one scratch.

  There were a few rips and tears on me, however, and I was glad to find the family out when I got home. Having the bus to myself, I lay down on the courie doon and sobbed until my eyes were swelt sore like balloons. By the time the family arrived, my broken heart was hidden and I told no-one about the bullies. Many years later I wrote these words to those people who tormented me.

  SCOTIA’S BAIRN

  Yes, it may be said you are ‘better’ than I, your peers have obviously blessed you with a grand home, fine clothes, the best schooling, good food etc.

  I, on the other hand, saw life from the mouth of a ‘tinker’s’ tent.

  But I have felt the breath wind of John o’ Groats.

  I have seen the hills of Glen Coe clothed in purple heather, heard her mountain tops whisper a thousand curses on the murderers of the MacDonald bairns.

  The ghosts of Culloden brushed against my cheek as I sat on a rock seat, watching heaven’s lightning streak across the land to the sea beyond.

  Can you say you’ve tasted the first ripened strawberries of Blairgowrie?

  Sucked on rasps until their red juices filled your taste-buds with flavour fit for the Gods?

  Is there a time in your life you’ve washed in the early morning dew, in a field flowering with cowslip, pink clover, and wild daisies?

  Did you ever swim below the belly of a giant basking shark?

  Have you sung to a curious seal?

  Have you heard the weasel’s whistle pierce the eardrums of a hypnotised rabbit?

  Seen the fear in the eye of the Monarch of the Glen as the stalker’s finger pulls back upon his gun?

  Did your protective parents tell you tales of the feared Fian Warriors of Glen Lyon?

  Do you know how old the Yew Tree of Fortingall is?

  Have you ever listened to a deaf child sing a beautiful Scottish ballad, music and words unwritten?

  Have you tasted the morning milk from the cow before she suckled her calf, or tasted the freezing waters of a burn at its source?

  Have you ever watched the dolphins follow the Lord o’ the Isles as she sails majestically from Oban to Mull?

  Saw a fight to the death between two Traveller warlords ruled by their forefathers, adhering to the rules of their clan?

  Have you seen the Banshee washing shrouds at the river’s edge in the thick ghostly mist of a lonely glen?

  Have you held the hand of an old woman as she breathes her last breath and stretches her body for the last time?

  I am a Child of the Mist, what are you?

  I am ‘Ethnic’, you are the accepted. I tell a tale of your ancestors, you are taught not to!

  Would you converse with a road tramp?

  Does a ‘Tinkers’’ encampment fill you with excitement, or do you draw back in disgust?

  Do you give thanks for each breath God gives you, or do you take life for granted?

  We are different, you and I: I am the wind in your hair, you are the voice of mistrust.

  I am the blue of the Atlantic as she thrusts her watery fingers into Scotland’s west coast.

  You are the gate that stops me from entering the forest.

  I am the grouse in the purpled heather, you are the hunter who denies me my flight.

  I am the salmon as she leaps to her favourite spawning stream, you are the rod who would end my epic journey.

  I am the seed of all who went before me. I am from the brave ones who hid, not burned the tartan. I am from those who spoke the Gaelic in secret places. I am part of the ‘true Earth’, the sea, the sky—

  I am ‘THE SCOTIA BAIRN’.

  Soon the month of May, when we usually were well on the road, passed. Shirley moved from her wee house in Mackenzie Street to the new town of Glenrothes. ‘Come and live with us, Jessie,’ she said. ‘You can get a job in the local paper mill; there’s money to be made.’

  Daddy had already made up his mind about scrapping the bus and bought a second-hand Eccles, a four-berth caravan. Two beds, one for him and one for the lassies. My home, the bus, was gone.

  ‘You go and live with Shirley for a while,’ said Mammy. ‘If it’s not what you want then Dad will come for you.’ I think my parents recognised how attached I’d become to the travelling life, and knowing there was no future on the road, this was their way of severing me from it.

  I did get a job, at the Fettykil paper mill in
Leslie, the neighbouring village to Glenrothes. I made three pounds and fifteen shillings a week, of which two pounds went to my keep. Even to this day, on thinking of the place with its hot, vile smell and towering walls lined with giant rolls of uncut paper, not to mention the clattering whirling of massive machines, I cringe. It was awful. Thank God for the older women who, knowing how unhappy I was, took me under their wings and made the job human.

  I had, for the first time in my life, a bedroom. Shirley looked after me well enough, even though she suffered from a bad back and had two children to look after. But, oh God, how I missed the road and my bus. One Sunday I cycled the seven miles to Lennie’s Yard. I was curious—was he still there? Yes, he was, but I would have done better not to seek him out, because the scrap-man had removed his wheels and the door was half-open. I looked inside, disturbing several pigeons who flew screeching by me. I went inside and sat down on the torn faded Paisley-patterned seat. I remembered all those years of fun, laughter and tears. My heart tore in two and I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep forever.

  How old he looked, the silvery chrome trim was hanging from his side, paint flaked from every exposed corner. A long, jagged crack in the back window went from top to bottom like the one in my heart.

  We were dying, he and I. He facing a scrapyard, me leaving the road. They told me, the wise ones, my life was just beginning, but if that was so, then why did I feel like I was witness at my own funeral?

  Wee Reekie’s lum had hit too many trees, and was all but gone. No more to warm Mammy and me as she sat telling the tales that are scattered through the pages of this book, or to put the red back into my father’s cheeks after a freezing day gathering rags from cold doors.

  I closed my eyes to blot out reality and went back in time. The bus was all shined up. The curtains were tied back with little bows. Daddy sat behind the wheel, ready for the open road. Mammy leaned gently on his shoulder, running a hand through his thick black hair and whispering lovingly in his ear, ‘Where to now, Macduff?’ Rolling up his shirt sleeves, wrapping an arm round her waist he’d answer, ‘Brigadoon, here we come!’

  Fragrant lily-of-the-valley toilet water wafted from every corner. Sisters giggled with excitement, wondering if the same handsome laddies they’d canoodled with the previous year would be returning to the Berries come July.

  Wee Tiny was eager to impregnate as many bitches as would wander by his nose searching for a suitable mate.

  The big black kettle was suspended from its chitties, always on the boil.

  I thought of Inveraray’s ghostly Jail and the surrounding bracken-covered hills. Friendly farmers who’d spend an hour cracking round our campfire, and not-so-friendly ones who threatened us if we failed to leave their land. West Coast beaches with hidden caves and jagged rocks, stirring me to write tales of witches and seers.

  I so wanted things to be as they were. To hell with growing up. To hell with a career, husband, children, a grand house. I had no thoughts on a future. The past suited me just fine. The bus, with both security and freedom, had conditioned me. I was afraid of the wide world. I would never fit into the pattern of things. What kind of place could I live in happily without the sea, the swaying branches of a Caledonian forest, my migrating birds, wild horses, Jake the Adventurer, mongrel dogs, tramps of the road with hearts of gold? This was my world.

  Many years have come since that Sunday morning, and I have learned one thing. Circumstance. We are all victims, pushed along on a road of many bends. Of course, at fifteen I never knew love would lead me to a lovely man and to have three good kids. Nor did I foresee the many friends who came and went in my life. Heartache, without doubt, misses no-one, and I have had my share. But how else do we appreciate the sun, if we do not stand in the rain?

  I am, and till death will always be, a Scottish traveller, but a change in the way my country regards its nomadic people is forcing them to deny their roots and give up the culture that was so well handed down through generations. I have experienced this in my own family.

  The ethnic minority of my people is being cleansed from the roads of Scotland. There is just no place left for the likes of Charlie, Jeannie and their bus full of bonnie lassies!

  GOODBYE OLD BUS, YOU WERE A STAR.

  THANKS FOR YOUR COMPANY.

  ...and thank you, reader, for allowing me to share my journey with you.

  GLOSSARY OF UNFAMILIAR WORDS

  baggy—minnow, small fish

  bissum—impudent, worthless person

  cadgers—hawkers, itinerant dealers

  chavie—friend

  chitties—stand for a kettle, tripod

  coorie doon—snuggle down, cosy bed

  coupies—rubbish collectors

  deek—see

  donner—wander, stroll

  dross of strength—power, vigour

  fee-ed—hired for a period

  gadgie—man, fellow

  gairn—small horse

  girning—whining, grumbling

  goonie—nightgown

  hantel—crowd of people

  hap—covering, shelter

  hornies—police

  lowy—money, fortune

  luggy—container with one or two handles (used for collecting berries)

  manshie—wife, woman

  menses—hospitality

  moich kier—madhouse, asylum

  moich—mad

  peching—gasping

  ragie—silly, weak-minded person

  routing out—rooting about

  rugger—tough, sturdy person

  rused—agitated, enraged

  scaldy—settled folk

  scranning—starving, hungry

  skleff—thin, flat

  sleavers—slavers, saliva

  spug—sparrow

  stardy—prison

  swingeing—whining, complaining

  thon, thonder—yon, yonder

  throng—thrawn, contrary, obstinate

  wayn—cartload

  yookie—rat

  ENDNOTE

  1. I cannot say who wrote the above verse, because I do not know, but I thank whoever did.

  Jessie’s mother’s birth certificate, stating that she was born ‘in a tent near Tarbert’

  Four generations of the Power family, headed by Granny Power (seated)

  Granny Riley

  Granny Power

  Granny Riley and Auntie Maggie as a chuld

  Jessie’s father, Charles Riley (right), aged 15

  A gathering of relatives at ‘The Berries’. Jessie’s mother is holding ??, bottom left

  Jessie’s mother and father in 1940

  Jessie’s mother and Uncle Charlie

  Jessie’s father (right)

  Jessie’s mother with Mona, Chrissy and Shirley

  The bus that served as the Riley’s home and the ‘wee Fordy van’

  Jessie’s mother and father with her four older sisters, Mona, Chrissy, Shirley and Janey

  Jessie, eight months old

  Jessie’s mother, Jeannie, with her ‘wee Fordy van’

  Mona, Chrissy, Shirley and Janey

  Jess in her school uniform

  Jess and her mother

  Jess at age 14 with her father

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BIRLINN BY JESS SMITH

  JESSIE’S JOURNEY

  From the ages of 5 to 15, Jess Smith lived with her parents, sisters and a mongrel dog in an old, blue Bedford bus. They travelled the length and breadth of Scotland, and much of England too, stopping here and there until they were moved on by the local authorities or driven by their own instinctive need to travel. By campfires, under the unchanging stars they brewed up tea, telling stories and singing songs late into the night. “Jessie’s Journey” describes what it was like to be one of the last of the traditional travelling folk. It is not an idyllic tale, but despite the threat of bigoted abuse and scattered schooling, humour and laughter run throughout a childhood teeming with unforgettable characters and incidents.
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  TALES FROM THE TENT

  In Tales from the Tent, Jess Smith – Scottish traveller, hawker, gypsy, ‘gan-about’ and storyteller – continues the unforgettable story started in Jessie’s Journey of her life on the road. Unable to adjust to settled life working in a factory after leaving school, she finds herself drawn once again to the wild countryside of Scotland. Having grown up on the road in an old blue bus with her parents and seven sisters, Jessie now joins her family in caravans, stopping to rest in campsites and lay-bys as they follow work around the country – berry-picking, hay-stacking, ragging, fortune-telling and hawking. Making the most of their freedom, Jessie and her family continue the traditional way of life that is disappearing before their eyes, wandering the roads and byways, sharing tales and living on the edge of ‘acceptable’ society. Intertwined with the story of Jessie’s loveable but infuriating family, incorrigible friends, first loves and first losses are her ‘tales from the tent’, a collection of folklore from the traveller’s world, tales of romance, mythical beasts, dreams, ghostly apparitions and strange encounters.

  TEARS FOR A TINKER

  In the third and final book of Jess Smith’s autobiographical trilogy, Jess traces her eventful life with Dave and their three children, from their earliest years together. Their adventures and achievements are interspersed with stories of her parents’ childhood, her father’s ‘tall tales’ and the eerie echoes of ghosts and hauntings that she has heard from gypsies and travellers over many years. Fans of Jess Smith will not be disappointed with her latest memoir, full of more unforgettable characters and insight into the travellers’ way of life, a tradition that stretches back more than 2000 years and survives in the rich oral tradition of its people.