Sookin' Berries Read online

  SOOKIN’ BERRIES

  JESS SMITH

  was raised in a large family of Scottish travellers. She is married with three children and six grandchildren. As a traditional storyteller, she is in great demand for live performances throughout Scotland. Jessie’s Journey was the first book in her autobiographical trilogy, which continued with Tales from the Tent and concluded with Tears for a Tinker. She has also written a novel, Bruar’s Rest.

  This eBook edition published in 2013 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  First published in 2008 by Birlinn Ltd

  Copyright © Jess Smith 2008

  The moral right of Jess Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-84158-778-3

  ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-747-9

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1 A GHOST TALE FROM KINCLADDIE

  2 LUNARIA

  3 CLACH MOR

  4 JEANNIE’S GOLD

  5 THE ROBIN’S CHRISTMAS SONG

  6 THE CHAPMAN’S LAST PHARAOH

  7 FOXES SHOULD BE FREE

  8 BULLIES

  9 THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND

  10 THE PROUD HIGHLANDER

  11 THE HEAD

  12 A GOOD DOGGY

  13 THE DEVIL’S HELPER

  14 THE BOORAK TREE

  15 FROZEN BOOTS

  16 THE CRUEL MILLER

  17 DAVIE BOY AND THE DEVIL

  18 I CAN FLY!

  19 A NATURAL LOVE

  20 TINY

  I dedicate this book to Shirley, who suggested the title

  INTRODUCTION

  In this book I have tried to share tales I have gathered from my people – the Scottish Travellers, or, as they used to be called, Tinkers. I owe an immense gratitude to the many oral tellers who, without question or doubt, freely handed over their rich treasure-trove of stories which have never been put down on paper until now.

  Like torn letters, broken jewellery and odd buttons, the ancient tales were kept in a mind-box, one that was carefully handed down from parent to child. How old the stories are is anybody’s guess, and only now have I been given the opportunity to share them with you through this book.

  It has given me a great deal of pleasure over the years to be able to relive this collection of rare tales with schoolchildren of varying ages. I do hope you enjoy them too.

  In every corner of the earth we find lovers of stories; every one of them has the desire to listen to or to read tales. Each one of them loves to be captivated by a story, one that holds your imagination from the first paragraph to the last. Many of us thrive on unsolved mysteries and dark, fearsome ghost stories. In fact if a story makes our hair rise on our necks and the skin crawl, then that’s brilliant – the more impact the better. Nothing beats curling under a duvet, head and shoulders propped up on feathery pillows, with that favourite book in hand.

  Outside the bedroom window a howling gale rips into the darkness of the night; rain-lashed windows add reality to the imaginary beings flitting feverishly from page to page, and fear of the unknown lurking in the shadows adds to the mystery of the book. Your eyelids grow heavy, they feel lead-lined, yet you are still kept awake by the burning desire to know ‘who done it’, or ‘what if the demons get out of the sack?’ Was the corn-stacker really a natural human being or something dark and demonic?

  I have been a gatherer of tales for most of my life, and I suppose it all began when I was a wee girl. I shared a home with parents, seven sisters and a shaggy dog. It could be said that I lived a different sort of life from other children, because ‘home’ was an old blue bus. We were known as travelling people, and our people, it is believed, had lived in Scotland for two thousand years.

  About a generation before I came along, my people lived mainly in the country, weaving baskets, carving horn spoons, making wooden flowers, clothes pegs, brooms and pot scourers created from heather stems bunched together.

  As is the way with all ancient skills, progress and technology have brought modern materials and methods, so out went the old ways. With them, the culture of a people and all their customs, language and lifestyle had to go too, to make room for the new. My generation worked in harvesting, potato-gathering, berry-picking and hay-stacking. Heavy-duty tractors and diggers with multi-pronged teeth made sure a farmer’s fields yielded his desired tonnage of tatties, and as we gathered them up, we suffered from sore backs and wearied legs.

  Evening was our favourite time, when Mum, after tidying up the camp, would whistle to us wherever we were playing and give orders for bed. Hurriedly dressed in jimmy-jams, I’d get a quick wash in a nearby stream and then position myself in a circle of eager faces at the feet of the family storyteller. Before bed we nearly always had stories. With chin resting on scraped knees, elbows tucked in to allow room for another listener, and with a soft breeze whispering round, we were ready to be transported to another world.

  The same gentle breeze would stir the finger points of thin branches reaching from a nearby giant oak. They’d touch the top of my head of tousled hair and add extra excitement to what lay ahead. Eyes popping like bubbles I’d listen intently to our storyteller. Tales of darkness, creepiness and disaster with added gore swirled like the smoke of the fire around my straining ears. Tales eddied in my head like whirlpools in a torrent, I’d leave the crackling sticks of our campfire behind and enter into a world of never-ending stories. Fantastic!

  In winter time, Traveller children had to go to school. At first I hated being forced to attend, but as I grew older and realised how important it was to be educated and have the same knowledge as other children, I eagerly ran to school. Sadly, bullying of Traveller kids was normal, but I learned to rush around so that the bullies couldn’t catch me. Being able to read and write was very important to me.

  The law stated that we had to attend school until April and go back there in October. This allowed us to do planting of potatoes, corn, turnips, barley and fruit such as strawberries, raspberries and – in England – apples. We then had a break travelling around the countryside until harvest-time. When this cycle of agriculture was completed, we went back to school, properly dressed in uniforms paid for by the money we made from our hard work. I received my first pay at the tender age of six, being so young that my employer, the farmer, gave it to Mum.

  If you are aged round 10 going on 100, then you’re a fine age to read, absorb and hopefully remember forever these ancient oral tales of Scotland’s travelling people. What I’d like you to do in this book is to come with me on the road, back to those days when it was time to pack up, get going and take the way of our ancestors. I want you to imagine that, as my friend, you are by the campfire listening to and hopefully remembering stories that have been handed down from one generation of Travellers to the other. Some of these tales go so far back in time it is impossible to say how many hundreds of years old they are.

  When time came for berry-picking, we arrived at the campsite prepared for us by the fruit farmer, and the first thing we did was seek out other Traveller children. In those days kids from different parts of Scotland would be added to our numbers; all eager to work and play.

  As the season went on, tired and weary after picking berries all day und
er a hot July sun, we couldn’t ask for anything better than to sit in the evening gathered around the feet of a certain old man: the magical storyteller.

  As we make our way through the tales of this book together, remember that some of the stories are rather creepy, and some can even be considered frightening and horrific! Of course there are lighter tales, some quite funny, and one or two for younger readers. Indeed there is a little bit of what everyone fancies, whether you are young or old. If you are an older reader, settle down with a mug of cocoa. If you’re a younger reader and have some homework to finish, then why not do it now, then we’ll waste not a minute more. Here’s the first tale...

  1

  A GHOST TALE FROM KINCLADDIE

  told by Jimmy Somebody

  Quite when this incident happened, Jimmy, the teller of the tale, couldn’t say exactly. No one had told him in what year he was born, so his age was always a guess. But on that late autumn day when I sat in his small pensioner’s house in Perth, ‘Gateway to the Highlands’, listening like an eager child to his story, it was apparent from his grey hair and rounded shoulders he’d been on the earth for some considerable time. My guess is that the events of this story must have happened around 1920ish.

  My host began to set the scene:

  On the outskirts of Dunning, about a mile to the north of the church tower, we were given permission by a local farmer to winter-settle in a forested area, known locally as the Roman Wood, in return for doing farm work. Both mother and father were fairly strong and would find employment until spring. There were lots of jobs around the farm, and included piling stones (my sister Katy and I had done that sometimes), cleaning pigsties and hen huts, stacking hay for animal feeding, snaring rabbits and many other things around the farm outhouses. Each year farmers in Perthshire waited eagerly for their Tinker workforce, knowing that without them a farm could easily run into disrepair. From early morning until late at night, my parents both worked hard. While they were at work all day, Granny kept her eye on Katy and me.

  People called us wandering Tinkers after our forebears, who mended pots and pans and sharpened kitchen knives and all that kind of stuff. Tinkle, tinkle was the sound we made as we came into villages. We’d fix the pots and bring a wee bit gossip from other parts. That’s how we got our name. My parents didn’t do pot-mending, but we lived in a tent and when springtime came we moved on, so the name of Tinkers stuck.

  Local kids didn’t like us, because they thought we were dirty and stole things, but we didn’t like them either. Sometimes a nice schoolteacher would come and visit us to see if we wanted to attend school, but because of those hostile kids we didn’t go. So me and Katy spent all our time together just playing in the woods or fishing small trout from the burn.

  When Granny was small, her tent was built of animal skins; mainly deer hide. But that was in the olden days before more modern materials came in. Dad was lucky enough to buy a big tarpaulin cover from the goods depot at Perth Station, which had been used to protect train-hauled goods from rain damage. It was a deep green colour, the same as grass and trees, and when it was put up deep inside a wood it gave us quite good camouflage.

  Dad came back one night after having a few drams with other Tinker folks, and even though he was almost on top of the tent he didn’t see it in among the bushes. Katy and me were laughing and playing hide-and-seek with him. He fell over one of the tent ropes and mother told him off for drinking strong alcohol.

  For over a week they didn’t speak a word to each other, until Granny baked scones. Those scones looked so tasty, Dad took a bite out of one too soon. He burned his mouth and made mother laugh. She gave him a hug and then a drink of water.

  One day, after our parents set off for work, we left Granny snoozing by the outside fire and went to explore the forest. For ages we climbed silver birch trees, swinging from top to top like two monkeys. Katy tore her dress and scratched her thigh, so that was the end of that!

  Then for a time we followed a small hedgehog foraging for food. By its size it wouldn’t survive a winter of hibernation, so Katy decided to wrap it in her cardigan and take it home. I wanted to find a supply of slugs and moths, and let it fatten on them, but my wee sister said she’d rather look after the creature herself. That way she could keep an eye on it. Every winter she insisted on being a surrogate mother to some undernourished animal or bird. Mother, as usual, would be annoyed, but my sister took her stubborn streak from Dad, so into her cardigan went the prickly beastie.

  After an hour or so, when we’d walked from our tent to the edge of the forest, we saw a woman. This was not unusual, apart from the fact she looked frightened; like she was being chased by something or someone. Her hair was all straggly, not brushed properly and tied up, just blowing wildly. Her clothes were tattered and torn, her eyes staring dead ahead.

  I called out to see if she needed our help, but she kept on running, ignoring me. Katy saw that in the grass and brushwood a black cat was running at the woman’s heel and called to it. The cat miaowed at us, then started off again behind the woman. I began running after them, but Katy said that if she ran her wee hedgehog would get shoogled up. So I took the beastie from the cardigan and put it inside my pocket. She sternly warned me not to run too fast, or else her pet would die for sure or get petrified with fright!

  On and on went the woman, fleeing as if a demon from hell was on her heels, the cat behind her and us following. Suddenly, just as we were about to give up the chase, an inexplicable, extraordinary thing took place; the woman ran right through a tree, and just disappeared! We took one look at the tree, then at each other, before collapsing with fright.

  Katy’s bottom lip was trembling with the shock, when the cat came up and licked her hand. She stood up, and as she stooped to stroke the pussy it ran off towards our campsite. Our heads were still full of the vanishing lady, but we chased after the cat. When it got to the camp, it ran right through Granny’s legs and into our tent.

  Katy was clapping her hands and screaming, and it was just as well I’d got the wee hedgie in my pocket! Granny awakened with a jolt, nearly swallowing the clay pipe that she had lodged between her bottom teeth. When she saw how upset and terrified we were, she thought that someone was chasing us. She leaned down and grabbed hold of a thick tree branch.

  We assured her there was no one there. I knew she’d not believe our mad woman story, but when Katy said a cat had gone into the tent, Granny’s face lost every bit of its colour. The stick dropped from her fingers, and she began packing her belongings into the cart, murmuring in a strange tongue, and barking orders that we should pack up too. When I reminded her that Mother and Father would soon be home, tired and hungry, she seemed not to care, and said we’d meet them on the road. Within an hour the tent, with no sign of the cat, was down and folded. Baskets, pots, pans and all our worldly goods were neatly piled into our two-wheeled cart and the donkey yoked up.

  Katy, although in a state of shock, said we had to feed the hedgehog and find it a home. No matter what, her wee beastie had to be cared for. Granny had previously made a pot of stew. With a ladle, she plopped some into a small dish. And while Katy sought out a deep hole under a nearby tree, the wee prickly scoffed every last drop. Then, totally unperturbed by events, it quite happily waddled inside the hole and curled up. Only then did Katy take Granny’s hand as we walked out of the wood.

  About a mile up the road we met mother and father. They were very angry and shouted at Granny, but when she told them an ‘omen’ had entered the tent, they understood and resigned themselves to finding another campsite, even though night was almost upon us. Kincladdie Wood at the other end of Dunning was a favoured spot, so we made for there. By the time we’d set up tent, lit a fire and reheated the stew, our eyes were heavy and bodies bone-tired.

  I was last into bed, so it was my job to douse the fire and close the tent door. As I did so, a strange glow in the sky frightened me. I called for my family to come and see. Father said it looked like a fire,
and a big one at that. Mother said she was so tired the sun could have fallen from heaven and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to her. I sat up for ages watching the orange phenomenon until the want of sleep sent me off to bed too.

  Early next morning, after Mother and Father left for work, me and Katy washed our faces in a nearby burn, said cheerio to Granny and set off to play. As we explored our new play area, we heard Father calling. He had been looking for us. On their way to the farm our parents had met old Rab, the shepherd. This elderly man had been up all night with everyone from the village and the surrounding houses, putting out a haystack fire! The burning haystack, according to Rab, was right next to our previous campsite. Everybody thought that our tent had caught fire and that we must all have perished. When old Rab saw us coming along the road he was so happy he wanted us to go up with Granny to celebrate at the farm.

  Many people came to see us, including the Provost of Dunning, who wanted to tell us how relieved he was that no one had perished in the flames. Granny told him and a stunned audience that it was Maggie Walls, a woman once famous as a witch, who had come and warned us of danger by leaving her cat as an omen.

  Folks who lived round there knew full well that when Maggie was burned as a witch, although everybody searched for her cat, it was never found. Her cat is still her guardian. We Travellers know from ancestor stories that Maggie was a simple Tinker herb-woman who had never hurt a soul. Folk had got all excited in those olden days with an extreme type of religion, and were burning lots of people who knew only the ways of Mother Earth and not the teachings of the ‘good book’.

  Granny herself was a wise old woman, and if she’d been around in those days would probably have shared Maggie’s fiery end!

  Back at the camp, Katy was devouring her third jam-filled scone, when she looked at me and then ran off towards the old camp ground. She was shouting as I chased after her that Hedgie had been left behind near where our tent had been, and she had to find out if the wee animal had perished in the fire.