The first four stories of The Broonie, Selkies and Fairies (part two of The King and the Lamp) were published by Canongate (1985) in a book by the same title. ‘Mary and the Seal’ was originally published in Fireside Tales, and ‘Selkie Painter’ was the first of fourteen Tales of the Seal People (Canongate, 1992). These stories are based in the clan Williamson traveller territory, Argyllshire and Scotland’s West Coast – from Kintyre north to Appin and inland from Campbeltown to Glen Fyne. All the stories here have a moral thrust and an ‘Other World’ theme.
Travellers believe seals are just folk, sea-people. Selkies (or ‘silkies’ a word derived from the softness of the skin of the seals) means the same to the mas ‘seal-folk’ or ‘seal-people. Not all seals are selkies, but some can take over the form of a human being, be a human, or take away a human to become a seal. This was taught down through the ages among the travelling folk. Where do the stories come from? Duncan Williams on got more selkie stories from the country folk than from the travellers. Most of the stories started with those Gaelic-speaking non-travellers who had wee crofts on the shore.
Another deep belief with the travellers about the Other World concerns the fairies. You see, travellers travel a lot during the summer months with their weans. Now, they don’t like them to be cruel, no way in this world, and hurt wee animals and pull wee flowers. You know the contrivances of weans, they’ll get into wicked things. Taking wee moths and pulling their wings off, or killing a butterfly in the summer-time, or pulling the heads off the wee flowers – that’s evil, according to the tradition, that would bother the fairies. Traveller children are taught this; it is a kind of code, a discipline to keep them in hand. For example, you don’t touch a moth – it could be a fairy in disguise. Moths and butterflies are associated with the fairies. You see, if the old travellers had got a curse put on them, they made a butterfly out of the tree bark. That was to break the curse. They cut a strip of bark and made a shape of a butterfly and kept it till the curse went off them. There are many cracks and tales about the fairies with the travellers. There’s plenty of folk believe they have heard ‘a fairy tune’, music played on the fairy pipes or the fairy fiddle. And if anybody is a good piper, the travellers say he can ‘play like a fairy’, meaning he plays the right notes in the right manner. Fairies never teach people lessons, but they have ‘gifted’ people. If a traveller woman is really good at reading hands, telling fortunes truthfully, travellers say that woman has ‘the gift fae the wee folk’. The gift was not made to her, but to her mother and her mother before her and her mother before her – you see, the gift passes on. And if a wean is clever – can stand at six months or walk at nine months – they say, ‘Oh, that wean’s gifted …’
In the summer-time if a wean is born to a fairy at the same time as a wee wean is born to a mortal, and the fairies know their baby is going to grow up to be a ‘mongol’ and is never going to be right, they won’t keep it. The fairies only keep babies that are going to be healthy, strong, and clever. So, before they would destroy or kill a deficient baby, they will switch it over: they will go and take a mortal wean, and put in its place their one, and let the mortal folk look after it. In the story of the ‘Taen-Awa’, the fairy wean that comes is evil. It knows it isn’t in its own dominion and that its own folk have put it away among strangers. That’s why it cries so much – to return the fairies’ wicked deed. But the travellers have a protection against the fairies, you see! My mother used to stick a needle in the wean’s bonnet at night-time – the fairies can’t take the wean as long as something made of steel is fastened to its clothes. The fairies steal babies during the three months of summer (May–July), and some travellers never get their weans back. Some are wee delinquent weans all the days of their lives. If there is a retarded person in the family, travellers believe this wean was given to them when their own one was ‘taen awa’. But they love it just the same; even though it is bad and wicked, it is still loved.
The people of the Other World, the selkies and fairies, have the freedom, have the power, they are immune from persecution by the local public and can’t be disturbed. People of the Other World are part of nature, and the traveller Williamsons believe most strongly in a spirit of nature called ‘the Broonie’. Broonie stories are different from other kinds of story: they have no happy ending, they only have a lesson. That’s why the Broonie couldn’t come as a king or a prince, nor as a soldier or policeman or priest. If the Broonie came in the form of a minister, how was he going to walk up to a house and teach people a lesson? If a priest or a doctor or a lawyer came to a body’s house, they would change completely; they wouldn’t be theirsel but putting on a front to welcome a high person. No, the Bronnie always comes in the same form – the wee old tramp man, about five feet tall, with the wee white beard and the two blue eyes, the kindly old creature of a man who never insults, never hurts, is always looking for work and he’s always hungry. His famous meal, he loves a bowl of porridge and milk, or a bowl of soup. (See ‘The Broonie’s Farewell’.) It’s something that goes back many many years, long before your time and mine, long before Christianity … about the supernatural being who was cast down to take care of us, the humble folk. You see, the Broonie is a spirit that never dies. It isn’t exactly the blueness of his eyes, it’s their brightness and youth! The travellers believe dullness is a sign of old age; so as far as they believe the brightness of the blue eyes is to show that youth and the spirit are in his eyes.
Duncan Williamson’s great repository of ‘Jack tales’ is the source of part three of The King and the Lamp. ‘Jack and the Devil’s Purse’ was first published in our Canongate collection of devil stories May the Devil Walk Behind Ye! (1989). ‘Jack and the Witch’s Bellows’ is here reprinted from Fireside Tales, and the other two, ‘Death in a Nut’ and ‘The Ugly Queen’ were published in our well received Penguin collection, A Thorn in the King’s Foot (1987). The Jack tales were so popular, and time-honoured, that three collections were proposed for publication, after our first Don’t Look Back, Jack! (Canongate, 1990). For further comment on the significance of this folktale genre see Barbara McDermitt’s Introduction to this volume.
The final group in The King and the Lamp is a selection from the twenty-four stories, A Thorn in the King’s Foot (Penguin, 1987 and Mondadori, 1990, an Italian translation). The travellers call these barrie mooskins, that is, very good stories (cant). After narrating ‘The Thorn in the King’s Foot’ Duncan explained, ‘It’s what you call “a story for a winter’s evening”. As I told ye, it’s no a story fir tellin i’ schools, hit’s a story fir when ye want tae sit round an listen tae a story.’ Long winter tales involve the complicated, psychological development of a character, not unusually a king; in contrast to those simpler stories with a higher density of changing scenes, as in most Jack tales.
The telling of long stories was in circumstances where the narrator could break for intervals, to have a cup of tea or perhaps take up other activities. This was one sure way of building suspense, and the quality of attention shown by traveller listeners to their story-teller nurtured his art, sustained him. Duncan has explained, ‘It wis whan all the children went to sleep and all the people who were fed up listenin tae this tales went away to bed, an some people who loved stories, mebbe two and three would sit round the fireside, they’d put on mair fire, make more tea and carry on with the story. And they all had to stop for a cup o’ tea or a crack and a smoke, an then carry on the next bit. Noo that’s the wey it wis taught to me, that’s the wey hit went on.’ ‘The Giant with the Golden Hair of Knowledge’ and ‘The Thorn in the King’s Foot’ were each told in this way over a period of several hours, with breaks in the narration and intervals for refreshment.
The twenty-six stories making up The King and the Lamp: Scottish Traveller Tales I have written from my verbatim transcriptions of story-telling sessions, hundreds we recorded for the Sound Archives of the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh University from 1976 to 1986. Twenty-three of the tales
have been anglicised, with their dialogues retaining as much of the narrator’s spoken dialect as I have deemed possible – intended for a readership not necessarily Scottish and for folk who may never have heard Scots. But three stories, ‘The Cockerel and the Fox’ (opening the collection), ‘Tatties from Chuckie-stanes’ and ‘Boy and the Blacksmith’ (ending the work) are dialectal transcriptions, showing the rich tapestry of sound created by a narrator thoroughly engaged with his own most natural audience, close traveller friends and family members.
Linda Willamson
Edinburgh, June 2000
1 home-schools: officially named ‘industrial’ or ‘day industrial schools’, these were not orphanages or boarding schools; but were certified institutions (thirty in Scotland at the time of World War I) operating until 1937 after the Day Industrial School Act, 1893, where tinker children would have been committed if their parents were found to be neglecting their education, in accordance with Section 118 of The Children Act, 1908.
2 See ‘Report of the Departmental Committee on Tinkers in Scotland’ (HMSO Edinburgh, 1918)
References
The Concise Scots Dictionary, ed. Mairi Robinson. 1985 Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Original recordings lodged in the main chronological series of tapes in the Sound-recording Archives of the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. SA 1976/62 to 1986/4.
‘Report of the Departmental Committee on Tinkers in Scotland’. 1918 Edinburgh: HMSO.
Tocher: Tales, Songs, Tradition, Selected from the Archives of the School of Scottish Studies; No. 33 (pp. 141–87). 1980 Edinburgh.
Williamson, D.
1983 Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children. Edinburgh: Canongate.
1985 The Broonie, Selkies and Fairies. Edinburgh: Canongate.
1987 Tell Me a Story for Christmas. Edinburgh: Canongate.
1989 May the Devil Walk Behind Ye! Edinburgh: Canongate.
1990 Don’t Look Back, Jack! Edinburgh: Canongate.
1992 Tales of the Seal People. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Williamson, D. and L.
1987 A Thorn in the King’s Foot: Folktales of the Scottish Travelling People. Middlesex: Penguin.
1991 The Genie and the Fisherman: And Other Tales from the Travelling People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1996 Rabbit’s Tail. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Glossary
ae a certain (person)
afore, fore before
ainsel self
amines most amazing
amint am I not
an than
ane one
as low as as sure as the death of
at that
away with the birds gone mad
awfa (e), an a great many
ay (e) always; yes, indeed
bachle misbehaved man
back back at
bairn child
bannock round flat oatmeal cakebarrie
bargued wrangled
barrie mooskins very good stories (cant)
barrikit large dome-shaped traveller tent, winter quarters
beautifules most beautiful
ben further into
bene hantle gentry
bide stay
bild built
bilow below
bing, a a great many
bit, a a small piece of
bithout without
blethering trivial talking, babbling
bonnie beautiful
bow tent small summer structure built of saplings bowed and tied
Broonie, the the spirit of nature, the last of a generation
burk kill secretly and sell body for research; from Burke; body-snatcher
burn stream
by my lane without a companion
byre cowshed
cam came
canny careful(ly)
carry-on rowdy behaviour, mischief
catch take
ceilidh song and story get-together (Gaelic)
chuckie-stanes white pebbles
clypes lies, idle reports
collie black and white sheepdog
collop slice of meat
cool cowl, close-fitting cap
country folk non-travellers
couples pairs of rafters
cowpled overturned, over-balanced
crack chat, news, gossip; short story
cratur dear one (creature)
creel deep basket for carrying fish, etc.
croft Highland farm
crusie open lamp with a rush wick
cry call
dashit damned
day, the today
deith death
destroyed avenged
done did
doubt expect, believe
dram small drink of whisky
drop, wee small amount of (liquid)
efter after
em them
er her
event even
fae from
fasselt was busy; from fassen
feart afraid
flyer cleverer
forbyes as well, besides
freends friends
gang go
garron pony small, sturdy, Highland horse
gaun; -na (e) going; going to
gets on to attacks with words, accuses
gev gave
gie; gied; gien give; gave; given
girnin grumbling, fretting peevishly
gloamin twilight; dusky
grannies’ tales old wives’ tales
greet; gret cry; cried
guddle catch fish with the hands
ha (e); hev have
haet, a nothing at all
ha’penny halfpenny coin
haps covers
heck wooden press for holding hay so a cow can stand and chew
hen-wife wise woman who deals in poultry
hes has
het heated
hissel himself
hit it (emphatic)
hoolits owls
hummed and hawed discussed, argued
hunderd hundred
hunkers haunches
hurl pull, push, or whirl along
i’, ind in
im him
ir your
jeejament cursed
jist just
keek peep
ken know
kinneled kindled
knowe hillock
kye cows
landed arrived
lea leave
learned taught
look at make any impression upon
mair; more more; for what’s left of
makkin making
mavis song thrush
mebbe maybe
messages groceries, shopping
moich crazy
nattering idly chatting
neep turnip
never not
night, the tonight
noo, the just now
nor or
nothing anything
o’; on (d) of; on; about
o’er, ower over
on’y only
onything anything
oxter under part of upper arm; support with under-arm
pad narrow leg of the path
peat turf block used as fuel
piece spread slice of bread, sandwich
puckle small amount of
raiked searched thoroughly through
reek smoke
rummle shake vigorously
run ran
’s is
scart’t scratched
scraped an scratched tried to get work
selkie seal-person; from selch (seal)
set sail set off travelling, walking
shaken shook
shelfie chaffinch
shot, a a ‘turn’
sing-songs singing parties
sit, sut sat
skelp smack
smiddy, -ie smithie
sno
tem iron crook for hanging pots over the fire
sort repair, fix up
speak to trouble; attend to
sprachled clambered
sput spat
stone-dyking dry-stone dyke building
strae straw
sweerin reluctant, unwilling
sweeties candy
swey movable iron bar over the fire
swinged whined
taen-awa baby taken over with the fairies
taste, a a very small amount
tatties potatoes
thae those
theirsel themselves
the’re there’s
think presume, expect
this these
thon that; those
tile hat top hat
tin articles of tin
tinker nomadic tinsmith or metal worker; also, used contemptuously for one of the Scottish Travelling People (travellers)
tooken taken
top, the on the top
tottery messy, unkempt
touch harm, interfere with
traveller one of the Scottish Travelling People
twa two
two–three a few
universt between us united our efforts
wag-at-the-wa clock pendulum wall clock
wapped wrapped, folded
warran’ warrant
wean wee one, young child
wearying longing
well on under the influence of alcohol
whar where
wheesht be quiet!
wi with; by
wonst once
yese, youse you
yin one
yon those
you may care it’s hopeless
About the Author
THE KING AND THE LAMP
Duncan Williamson was born in 1928 to a travelling family originally from Argyllshire. Leaving school at the age of thirteen Duncan became an apprentice stonemason and worked steadily, gaining expertise as a cattleman and horse dealer, living under canvas close to the animal kingdom on the shores of Loch Fyne and later in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and Fife. A powerful singer of the ancient ballads and skilled in playing the mouth organ, the tin whistle and the Jew’s harp, in later life he has become particularly well known for the telling of traditional stories. Many of these tales have been recorded for the School of Scottish Studies Sound Archive; written and edited by his partner Linda, they have been published by Canongate in several well-received and influential collections
The King and the Lamp Page 32