by Jess Smith
‘There’s documents needing taken south to Edinburgh, send him there for a few months!’
So McPherson ordered his son to complete this task. He promised that when he came home, and if she was still on his mind, then he’d receive the blessing of his parents to court the gypsy girl.
Happier now, with a clearer view of his future, James met his love on the windswept beach and relayed the news. They parted with a long and loving embrace. ‘I shall take ye tae be mine when I come home, Mary-Ann, will ye wait on me?’
‘Aye, that I shall, my bonny laddie, but heed these words afore ye go. For three nights in a row, auld Michtie Jean has been wailing intae the night. She telt me she saw my blood running frae the gallows o’ the Merket Cross in Banff. I havenae been able tae sleep fer worrying.’
‘Nobody will herm ye, lassie, and I’ll be back yince ma business is done. The Michtie wife is shrivelled wi’ gossip, and you’d dae weel no tae pay heed tae her.’
She touched his lips, smiled, then with a nod of her head she disappeared along the cliff tops, wind blowing through her raven-black hair. She could have told him her news, but thought better of it. If he came to her it had to be without compulsion; the baby shifting in her womb might have forced the young gentleman in him to do the proper thing. She didn’t want that: she wanted his love for her, and not his heir.
Next day James set off for the capital, leaving her worried for his safety, while his family worried more about a bloodline staying intact.
When he was due back she had news: a son, a child from his loins. One who’d be brought up proud and strong? But weary is the heart that seeks and never finds, for poor young McPherson never saw his boy. He fell as the victim of a raging storm which caused his horse to stumble, sending his body over a deep ravine to be shattered far below on jagged rock.
Mary Ann was destitute, heartbroken. It was almost as if they were never meant to be together. But mother and child needed protection, and it was her people who rallied to her, giving support and security.
When word reached them that their son had fathered an only grandchild, the McPhersons tried to influence Mary-Ann into giving him to them. He would be brought up as a gentleman, even although his blood was half-caste.
‘No,’ she screamed at old McPherson and Grant when they approached her cave north of Cullen, ‘I will feed and claithe my ain wean!’
Big burly men chased the pair away, and so it was that the young James McPherson was brought up by the Gypsies. His grandfather left the area after that. Some say he and his lady found shelter with a cousin in England.
A fine fiddle was a gift to the boy from his beloved mother for his seventh birthday and he took to it like a natural: its music flowed from his expert hand.
He grew strong in the midst of wild pastures, with a fine physique that caught many a lassie’s twinkling eye. He’d be heard oft times under summer moonlit skies serenading a wench or two on his violin.
‘Dark shadows hold evil eyes,’ announced auld Michtie Jean one night as she brushed against him on a cliff top. ‘Watch oot fer the black hert o’ Grant,’ was her parting warning. He laughed and paid no heed to the back-bent old hag, who spent more time whistling among the wind and rocks after dark than she did in womanly duties during daylight hours. Yet it would have been better had he heeded the old woman, because soon a braggart came among the quiet folk of the Moray country. And the one I speak of was related in some dubious way to Grant himself; he was Donald by name. I say dubious, because rumours followed him from the Border country, where he had dealings with cattle reivers. He had blamed them for stealing a neighbour’s beasts, whereas the truth was that it was he who had paid the thieves to carry out the dirty deed. On being discovered, he fled with his daughter to live under the protection of his kinsman, Grant.
The story went on that Mirrell, his daughter, was fond of visiting houses of ill repute. One night, in one of these ale-houses, ‘Maggie Mair’s Well Hole’, she heard McPherson buskering. He was playing a kilt-rousing reel, which had a full house of revellers clapping hands and stomping feet. When she saw him, something stirred in her breast, her heart filled with desire. ‘Will you dance with me, handsome fiddler?’ she asked, tucking a handkerchief between her sweat-soaked bosoms and running her hand across his thighs. Embarrassment forced him to push her hand away, while he still managed to hold his bow.
‘Take me home, handsome fiddler,’ she demanded, thinking a simple gypsy would rise to her command and do exactly as asked. But James was no ordinary beggar, and being his own man, politely refused. Used to getting her own way, she stamped her foot down and again ordered him to see her safely home!
Unnerved by her manner, he stopped playing his fiddle, draped a tweed plaid over his shoulders, and disappeared into the night. He’d little time for women who drank alongside men, half-clothed and loud-mouthed. On his way home, his cousin Gordon reminded him of who she was, adding, ‘best not to annoy the Grants, they have power tae hang every gypsy in Scotland if they take it on themselves.’
James couldn’t have cared less, his love was his music. What harm could come to a musician?
Well, as it happened Grant had taken a grudge against a family of gypsy basket-weavers who’d taken up residence on the outskirts of Banff. One market day he whipped a half-wit boy who was seen annoying his horse. A simple altercation between the boy’s father and Grant began a simmering hatred that would drive him to rid the county of all gypsies. Mishaps of little or no criminal intent started to be used against them. If one lost something and didn’t find it, then a gypsy had stolen it. If a cow took sick, or dog or goat, then a gypsy curse was to blame. Blue babies were the result of an ‘evil eye’. On and on flew the accusations. To avoid harm, many gypsy families left the area rather than face the gallows.
Mary Ann Gordon decided she and her son should uproot and go inland, where the peat moors would offer more in the way of a safe haven.
‘I’ll play ma fiddle, mither, in the Buckie Inn afore we gang awa. I hear tell it’s tae be full o’ fisherfolk; yin o’ them’s gittin merried.’
Strange, but at that precise minute his mother heard auld Michtie Jean whistling in the wind; it made hair rise at the base of her skull. She pulled a shawl over her head and begged him not to go.
‘For why, mither? I’ll tak a few bawbees at a weddin’; surely ye ken hoo generous the fisherfolk are?’
‘Forget these people, Jamie. The Laird o’ Grant and his wicked friends are death-dealers. And there’s stories that yon Mirrell would pay money tae see ye pert wi’ yer breeth fer spurnin’ her advances yon nicht in Maggie Mair’s Well Hole.’
‘Thon’s a spoilt lass, gi’en far too much her ain way as a bairn. I have nae fear o’ the likes o’ her. Some pair cratur will tak her fer a wife, and may the devil be his uncle if he does.’
The sea splashing on seaweed-covered rocks, mingled with a far-off whistle of auld Michtie Jean, was all she heard as her Jamie set off to entertain the friendly fisherfolk.
Leopards don’t change spots, and so it was with Donald Grant, who had slipped back into his clandestine ways of cattle-lifting. He employed several wild men who were always happy to do his bidding for a few pennies and a bellyful of drink. After all, what blame could be cast on them, when everybody knew it was gypsies who were the real culprits?
Now, as the devil would have it, on the night of that wedding a great many beasts had been spirited away from pastures green. ‘The gypsies have stolen near on fifty cattle,’ came the accusation from a young man running breathless into the crowd of good folk who were enjoying the festivities at the Buckie Inn.
All eyes turned to the fiddler. ‘Is this your doing?’ demanded Grant.
‘I heard him telling his cousin Gordon he’d keep us all busy.’ Merrill screamed, seeing her chance for revenge, adding, ‘He’s the leader, and I tell you it’s his men out there stealing our guid beasts.’ Merrill had her platform, inciting the crowd of wedding guests who were filled and fi
red by the whisky. ‘Black-faced vagabonds, they would rather steal from decent honest folk than pay for a morsel of meat!’
James knew these people were not going to allow him to leave the inn, so he made no attempt to escape as eager men ran forward with ropes to tie him.
‘I am innocent o’ this crime, and all ye ken it. But God and a fair judge will set me free.’
Grant leaned forward and whispered to the heavily ensnared prisoner, ‘You’ll swing like a pendulum, McPherson, for I’ll be your judge. You and that witch o’ a mother will leave nae mark on the land o’ Moray.’
Mary Ann begged Grant not to condemn her innocent son, but no amount of pleading would change his mind. ‘Have ye ever heard o’ a braggart that plays a fiddle like an angel?’ she cried. ‘Ye must ken his father and grandfather, Sire, there was nae bad in them neither. Please let him go away with me, I promise ye never a sound o’ us will ye hear again.’ But all the pleading in the world failed to move the stone that was Grant’s heart: James McPherson had to die. This was a travesty of justice. Mary Ann knew that if she got word to the High Court, her son would be fairly treated. Her determination led her to pay a rider to take news of this unlawful case to the High Court in Aberdeen, and she prayed some form of justice might prevail.
On the sixth of November, the eve of the execution of James and his cousin Gordon, he asked for his fiddle. The wish of a condemned man was granted, and as the wild and desolate cliffs screamed with an early winter storm he wrote a final piece. His Rant was filled with hatred for all who would do him harm. His innocence and the injustice he suffered ran through his fingers into his bow to yield a masterpiece.
It was not known either by him or his mother that the High Sheriff of Aberdeen had taken an interest in the trial. He saw a miscarriage of justice and so sent a pardon. It should have arrived at noon, but during the night the town clock in Banff was put forward an hour. This was because news of the imminent pardon had been leaked to Grant, and he had the clock interfered with.
A crowd gathered on the ring of twelve. The hooded hangman waited, fingers running over the knotted rope. Mary Ann lay at her son’s feet, sobbing, and Grant sneered from his official window overlooking the Mercat Cross.
‘Give tae me yer fiddle, McPherson,’ shouted a lone woman: it was Michtie Jean.
‘I’d rather burst it ower ma knee as gi’e you, ye auld witch, ma precious fiddle.’ As he brought it up and down heavily against his leg, the pull on the rope around his neck tightened; the fiddle splintered; a jagged piece tore into his thigh and blood oozed freely.
‘McPherson blood shall spill upon the Merket Cross,’ whispered the old hag into Mary Ann’s ear, ‘your son’s blood!’
Gordon’s body followed James’s with an instant break upon his neck. No sooner had the noose squeezed away their last breath, when a shout rent the air. Hooves tore hard into the cobbled street, an exhausted horse snorted with hot sharp pants as its rider ran in haste, waving a paper above his head. ‘Hold the execution, I have a pardon frae Eberdeen!’ Too late: both men were at that moment being pronounced dead.
Grant never had much status from that day, and it is thought he spent many an hour looking over his shoulder. His sleepless nights sent him into a mad state and Merrill ended in a whorehouse.
The good people of Macduff were able to substantiate the falsification of the clock in neighbouring Banff, because the timepiece there kept the right time. According to my storyteller, relations between the two towns were strained from then on.
Aye, this was a great story: fact and fiction mingling together, one gently easing the other along. I was fourteen when I heard it told. There was a man in the campsite that night listening around our fire who told another version, but needless to say his was just as entertaining. Before we upped sticks and left there, I can honestly say I felt as close to Jamie McPherson as a long-devoted sister might.
20
BAGREL
It had been my pleasure, while growing up as one of Perthshire’s agricultural travellers, to enjoy the rich vein of diversity among them that even as a youngster I was keenly aware of. To the outsider it was easy to imagine all of us were the same, but that was simply a myth. ‘We’re all Jock Thamson’s bairns,’ is a true saying, but who’s to say Jock didn’t put it around a bit?
Let me share some characters with you now, and a cup of tea might be a good idea at this point.
Now you’ve poured that tea or coffee, what better place to start than by the campfire, kettle boiling away. Auld Tam Troot had just brought home a great big bunch of kindling. Nancy, his spouse of forty years, was in the process of ladling his broth into a cracked bowl, when without warning a great muckle cow galloped right into their midst. We won’t linger on the spot as soup, bowl, ladle and burning water went heavenward, then showered back down to cover auld Tam, Nancy and their visitor.
Lurid oaths rent the sky, and that’s why we won’t tarry there. Instead it’s to a worried farmer trudging through fields of mushy gutters that we’ll go.
‘Last time I let yon ba’ heid o’ a man near ma coo. Every time she sees him, her backsprent rises intae the air, she shak’s her ba-hookie an’ awa she goes. Lord A’mighty, whit will ah dae without ma Sally? When I git ma hands on that wee bagrel, I’ll squash him like a worm.’
The ba’ heid he referred to was a tiny wee man, almost dwarflike, who tramped the country. He wasn’t a traveller, tinker, gypsy or vagrant, in fact nobody knew what group laid claim to him, because he couldn’t speak—as dumb as a mountain bawd [hare] was the wee man.
In glen areas he might have been looked upon as a ‘Broonie’, that mystical wee creature who, for a scone and a drink of milk, would do jobs around farmyards that no other hands would do. For instance, cleaning the hen pen and spreading the chicken dung onto fields. This foul-smelling stuff made even stones grow, such was its richness of compost. He’d clean the sties of dirty ‘roll-in-gutter’ pigs until they were spotless. In fact he’d undertake any job unfit for human nostrils without a word; just a wee bite and drink and then he’d be gone. The difference between our little lad and the Broonie was that the latter was expected to turn anyone who saw him to stone. This superstition forced him to live in caves or under trees, creeping out only under a night sky.
Well, that very morning, while our wee bagrel was simply minding his own business, not bothering a soul, his appearance at her field entrance had obviously stirred Sally into a panic. Her one-cow stampede, however, didn’t half make a mush of Tam and Nancy’s tent—flattened to a pancake, it was.
Tam caught the tired cow and was tying her to a tree, when our little man came whistling up the road, totally unaware of the havoc in his wake.
Nancy, like everyone else who laid an eye upon him, smiled, but didn’t leave her stare too long upon his face which, and God forgive me for saying this, was not very bonny! Well, for starters, he’d a wart on his chin like a river stone, and a huge hump on his back. His windswept black and grey hair, thick and wiry with white streaks, danced down around his waist. His eyeballs rolled in their sockets as if they had a life of their own. But the beauty of him was in his strength. Some say he could lift a raging bull with one kick. Maybe that’s why very few approached the bagrel, who stood four feet tall on a Sunday.
When he saw the devastation and debris scattered throughout the usually tidy campsite, he lifted his shoulders, throwing his hands out and palms up, asking with his gesture, ‘what happened here?’
Still not making full eye-contact, Nancy used her hands to imitate horns, and slapped her bum to indicate a large back end such as a cow might sport.
The wee man smiled, making his acknowledgement with a thumbs-up.
Auld Tam came back from securing the cow and said his hellos. ‘Gi’e the bagrel a drink o’ tea, Nancy,’ he said.
His able spouse had already built the fire and refilled the kettle, which was just beginning to boil, as a very irate farmer rushed into their midst. On seeing the reason f
or the disappearance of his only cow he lifted his cromach to bring it down upon the bagrel’s back. ‘You bloody half a man, I’ll tan ye for spurring ma coo, the devil’s in ye!’
‘No in ma company, fairmer,’ hissed Tam, wrenching the stick from his hand.
‘I own this land ye’re campit on, Tam, an I swear if ye so much as lift a finger tae stop me whipping this curse frae a witch’s womb, I’ll mak sure ye niver set a fit here agin!’
Tam knew full well there wasn’t a place for miles where he and Nancy could winter-settle, yet he was a godly man; and what kind of sleep would his conscience allow him, if he let a poor defenceless creature take a whipping for simply being ugly? And he had never believed stories of the wee man’s brute strength; how could someone so small hurt anyone?
‘Sorry, fairmer, about yon cow o’ yours, but I canna stand back and see a six-fitter like yersel take a rochet temper oot on a wee bagrel.’ He turned and threw the stick into a now blazing fire.
‘Ye kin pack whit ye have and be off my land within the hour; an’ thank that lump o’ useless flesh fer yer ruin,’ the farmer said, pointing at the dumb dwarf who seemed rigid with fear. Red-faced and spitting with temper, he turned about and was soon gone to console himself at the loss of Sally.
‘Well, handy man you are, eh Tam? Now where dae we go with the first snows roaring down frae the north? You’ve left us hameless, and all because o’ him.’
Tam shook his head at Nancy’s lack of tact towards a helpless dwarf who never bothered a soul, and began gathering what little hadn’t been crushed by the cow. Then something dawned on him: where was the wee lad? In all the commotion they had failed to see him slip away after the farmer left.