Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan (Penguin Classics)

PENGUIN
CLASSICS

GORDON JARVIE
began his career as an English teacher, later working as a textbook publisher and writer. His recent books include the
Bloomsbury Grammar Guide
(2nd edn, 2007) and
100 Favourite Scottish Poems to Read Out Loud
(2007); and with his wife he has written several
Scottie Books
for children. His recent poetry appears in
Poems Mainly from the East Neuk
,
Fife
(2007) and
Another Working Monday
(2005). He lives near St Andrews, in the East Neuk of Fife.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce copyright material: A. P. Watt Ltd for the story ‘The Magic Walking-Stick’, by John Buchan; the late John Lorne Campbell of Canna for ‘Why Everyone Should Be Able To Tell a Story’, from his
Stories from South Uist
(1961); two poems, ‘The Kelpie’ and ‘The Rowan’, by Violet Jacob, from
Voices from Their Ain Countrie: The Poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob
(2006, ed. K. Gordon), reprinted by permission of Malcolm Hutton; David Higham Associates for the story ‘The Lonely Giant’, by Alasdair MacLean, from
The Noel Streatfeild Summer Holiday Book
(1973); Birlinn Ltd for the story ‘Thomas the Rhymer, Son of the Dead Woman’, by Margaret Fay Shaw, from her
Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist
(1955); the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh for the story ‘The Man in the Boat’, by Betsy Whyte, reprinted by permission. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of works published in this book. If any material has been included without appropriate acknowledgement, the publishers will be glad to make amendment in future editions.

I should like to thank Judy Moir for practical help in kick-starting the revision of this project; Jane Robertson for a meticulous editorial eye; and staff at the National Library of Scotland for providing all the professional support with sources that one could possibly expect, help that was as resolute and apposite for the 2008 edition as for the 1992 original.

Do you believe in fairies?… If you believe, clap your hands.

J. M. Barrie,
Peter Pan

In Scotland as elsewhere, fairy tales are part of a rich and wide-ranging folk tapestry. And as the countryman Barnaby said long ago (in James Hogg’s story ‘The Wool-Gatherer’), ‘Ye had need to tak care how ye dispute the existence of fairies, brownies and apparitions! Ye may as well dispute the Gospel of St Matthew.’ The Scottish folk tapestry covers a multitude: fairy lore sits alongside stories of the ‘Otherworld’ and the Celtic
sidhe
, of seers and second sight, of witchcraft, black and white, of cures, omens and taboos, of clan lore, myths and legends from Scottish history. Even geography provides Scots with a wide scatter of fairy names such as the Fairy Bridge in Skye (by Dunvegan, with its Fairy Flag), Schiehallion (‘the fairy hill of the Caledonians’), Ben Hee and Ben Tee (‘fairy hill’, from
Beinn Shìth
and
Beinn an t-Sithein)
, Mullach Sithidh (‘fairy summit’) and Stob an Fhir-bhogha (peak of the Fir-Bolgs, one of the mythical races of Irish fairies).

This anthology tries to reflect some of this background, and includes stories – and poems – based on the work of those indefatigable collectors of folk tales: Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg and Robert Chambers in Edinburgh and the Borders, Robert Burns in the west, and J. F. Campbell in the Gaelic-speaking part of the West Highlands and the Hebrides. Also included are stories by some great Victorian and twentieth-century writers, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Andrew Lang and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

We have to remember that as late as the seventeenth century in Scotland the Brahan Seer (Kenneth MacKenzie) was prophesying the building of the Caledonian Canal and the coming of the railways, and foretelling how the hill of Tomnahurich (also
called Tom-na-Sitheichean, or the Fairies’ Hill) would end up under lock and key with the spirits of the fairies chained within: in 1859 it was duly laid out as the town cemetery of Inverness. And right up to that period, long after the heyday of the Scottish Enlightenment, instances of ghosts, ‘visions’ and second sight were widespread in Scotland, often involving deaths, marriages, boats and journeys, battles, drownings and other calamities.

It is also useful to remember that the burning of the last ‘witch’ in Scotland took place at Dornoch as late as 1722, less than seventy years before Robert Burns wrote his poem about Tam o’ Shanter. Epilepsy, miscarriages, suicides and all sorts of misfortunes were widely attributed to witchcraft. The notion that a witch couldn’t pass across a running stream was widespread; Tam o’ Shanter was familiar with this folklore, which was why he rode pell-mell for the comparative safety of the Brig o’ Doon. Once over the river, he knew he’d be safe from the witches…

We need to recall, too, examples of cures, omens, auguries and taboos. Violet Jacob’s twentieth-century poem ‘The Rowan’ highlights the still-common view that a rowan tree had certain protective powers in warding off misfortune and evil spirits, while other plants possessed different properties. There was also a widely held belief in the healing powers of certain wells, whether in the matter of overcoming infertility in women, or curing consumption, or overcoming deafness. A spring near Ayr was said to have cured Robert Bruce of his leprosy. There were firm views about the auspiciousness (or otherwise) of undertaking important projects on certain days of the week. Quarter Days were particularly lucky, for example.

All these notions remain a part of the
dualchas
(culture), especially in rural areas, even if less pervasively than in the past. The following anecdote illustrates this. A friend, who had moved to Skye in the 1980s and was in the process of making his cottage habitable, proposed to cut down a rowan tree that threatened to block the light beside the front door. He happened to mention the matter in conversation with the late Sorley Maclean (1911–96), a distinguished poet and one-time headmaster of Plockton High School, a man who had seen active war service in North Africa and Europe. Sorley strongly advised against the
removal of the rowan. When my friend professed scepticism on the matter, Sorley (who hadn’t visited the house) asked on which side of the house the door was located. My friend thought for a minute, and then replied, ‘The north side.’ Sorley then shook his head and said, ‘Especially do not remove a rowan tree on the
north
side of the house.’ The tree still stands, a sain (or form of protection) against ill: a symbol of the culture and wisdom of the North-West Highlands that has not been eroded by modern life.

Part Five of this collection is called ‘Letting Go?’ and comprises three more recent texts that are not fairy tales in the traditional sense, but which successfully continue to feed off the spirit and atmosphere of such tales. Violet Jacob has already been referred to. Many of her poems, including the two printed in this collection (‘The Kelpie’ and ‘The Rowan’), famously achieve a spooky atmosphere of part-Christian, part-supernatural fear of the unseen that once kept youngsters running scared of the dark shadowlands and the world ‘beyond’. Assisted by references to kelpies and rowan trees, the story called ‘The Man in the Lochan’ achieves a similar frisson. These texts remind us that, living as we all now do – theoretically – in an age of reason and rationality, we remain susceptible to the world ‘beyond’, and are still engrossed enough to write and read recent stories and poems about it. Many other good writers have continued to mine this seam: Helen Cruickshank, Marion Angus, Betsy Whyte, Robert Rendall, Peter Ratter and Stanley Robertson among them.