Tales from the Tent Read online

  TALES FROM THE TENT

  JESS SMITH

  was raised in a large family of Scottish travellers. This is the second book in her bestselling autobiographical trilogy. Her story begins with Jessie’s Journey: Autobiography of a Traveller Girl and concludes with Tears for a Tinker: Jessie’s Journey Concludes. She has also written a novel, Bruar’s Rest. As a traditional storyteller, she is in great demand for live performances throughout Scotland.

  This eBook edition first published in 2012

  First published in 2003 by Mercat Press Ltd

  Reprinted in 2003 and 2005

  New edition published 2008 and reprinted 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Copyright © Jess Smith 2003, 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.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-179-8

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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

  Version 1.0

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1 BACK ON THE GREEN

  2 A CONVERSATION WITH WULLIE

  3 A KINDRED SPIRIT

  4 THE SEVERED LINE

  5 THE TOMMY STEALERS

  6 SANDY’S KILT

  7 HARRY’S DOGS

  8 THE GHOSTS OF KIRRIEMUIR

  9 THE BANASHEN

  10 PORTSOY PETER

  11 FAIR EXCHANGE

  12 THE BLACK PEARL

  13 JEANNIE GORDON

  14 THE BORDER GYPSIES

  15 THE LAST WOLF

  16 DAVIE BOY AND THE DEVIL

  17 WINTER IN MANCHESTER

  18 KING RUAN AND THE WITCH

  19 HELENA’S STORY

  20 MANCHESTER HOGMANAY

  21 THE LETTER

  22 BACK ON THE ROAD

  23 THE KELPIE

  24 HEADING NORTH

  25 WULL’S LAST DIG

  26 TRUE ROMANCE

  27 ROSY’S BABY

  28 A WARM NIGHT

  29 SUPERNATURAL APPARITIONS

  30 RINGLE EE

  31 BLAIRGOWRIE

  32 DEAD MAN’S FINGERS

  33 FORGET US NOT

  34 CRIEFF, THE FINAL FRONTIER

  35 FOR THE LOVE OF RACHEL

  36 THE OLD TREE BY THE BURN

  37 THE END OF TRAVELLING DAYS

  38 BRIDGET AND THE SEVEN FAIRIES

  39 THE PROMISE KEPT

  GLOSSARY OF UNFAMILIAR WORDS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Jessie’s father aged 15 with his boyhood friend, Wullie Donaldson

  Jessie’s mother and father in 1942 (Pitlochry)

  Jessie’s mother holding Babsy (Aberfeldy)

  Jessie and her sister Renie

  Jessie aged 14 with her mother, Jeannie, in Kirkcaldy

  Jessie aged 14 with her father, Charlie, in Kirkcaldy

  Jessie’s mother fooling around in Lennie’s Yard, Kirkcaldy

  Jessie’s sister, Janey, in front of the bus

  Sandy Stewart, the ‘Cock o’ the North’

  Tiny the dog

  Jessie and Davey on their wedding day in Perth, Hogmanay 1966

  Jessie with her daughter, Barbara

  Jessie’s children—Barbara, Stephen and Johnnie

  Jessie with Johnnie and Stephen in 1983

  Jessie with two of her sisters, Charlotte and Janey, and her mother

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There is a countless army who inspired, prodded, encouraged, laughed and cried with me whilst I was writing this book—many thanks for staying the course.

  Dave the rock; Daddy and Mammy—never far away; Bonnie, Rosie, Rebecca, Meghan, Nicole, Jason; The Golden Girls; wee pal—cousin Anna; Janet Keet Black; Mamie for Keith’s poem; David Cowan; Glen neighbours; David Campbell the book man; Portsoy Peter (deceased).

  A special thanks to Robert Dawson (my radgy gadgie); John Beaton; Catherine; Tom and Seán.

  And a great big thanks to Michael G Kidd who wrote Where do I Belong? especially for me.

  I am eternally grateful to the Scottish Arts Council, who through a fine grant allowed me the freedom to research further than I could otherwise have done.

  I dedicate this book to Mac, of the old tattered journal

  INTRODUCTION

  Those of you who came with me on ‘Jessie’s Journey,’ when I told you about my life in our blue Bedford bus with Mammy, Daddy, seven sisters and Tiny, the wee fox terrier that could run rings round rats, will have an idea where we are going. To those who did not, then let me take you through the Scottish travellers’ life, a life of folklore, murder and mystery. Humour jumps on board too, folks!

  Will you believe my tales? Perhaps aye, or maybe not. For what is fact and fiction in life when a falling snowflake can lead a young mother to trek upon a treacherous mountain in a blizzard perilously putting her two little boys in danger?

  Would you like to hear of the threesome who dared to bury a Royal Duke in the wee coastal graveyard filled to capacity with tramps, vagabonds and tinkers? More to the point—was there room for him?

  Those hounds of Harry’s, were they really dead? Did he survive because it wasn’t his time?

  Deep beneath gorse bush and thistle, were those the fingers of a dead man? Or something even more sinister?

  She killed her daughter! Didn’t she?

  Well now, are you with me? Are you coming, reader, into my world, the travellers’ world, where children learn about Bonnie Princess Charlotte, and her evil quest to unite the clans? Think you can handle that? More to the point, will historians of Jacobitism accept it?

  What a strange night old lovelorn Peter had when the mistletoe seller came a-calling...

  Do you know there are creatures of the night that come within a moor wind? I hope you never have the misfortune to meet one! Perhaps a wee early warning never to unlawfully enter a place of the dead might help.

  In Jessie’s Journey I told you of life in the bus. What I failed to divulge was, as death claimed night, that there sometimes came the ‘Tall Man’. Why?

  I bet you’d love to hear Mac’s story. I can say with hand on heart you’ll never hear of another such start to a new life.

  Why was Wullie Two so called? Laugh with me on this one, folks.

  I have many, many tales and stories to share with you. Get the cup, boil a kettle, comfort the bones—oh, and don’t forget to lock the doors, because you never know, now, do you?

  So, reader, are you coming with me on the road?

  You are!

  Great!

  Who needs sanity anyway?

  1

  BACK ON THE GREEN

  My bus home of ten previous summers was gone and everyone told me to stop greeting about its demise and get on with life. Sister Shirley reminded me daily that I was fifteen years old, with a whole life spread out before me. A world of wonder waiting to be explored, so get on with it.

  But how could I? The neat bedroom she prepared for me with girlie curtains and bedspread to match stank of scaldy (settled) life and made me puke. I wished I was a road tramp with skin as brown as toads, eating out of deerskin lunzies and laying my filthy body down to sleep behind bumpy-stoned dykes, with a star-encrusted heaven as my roof. But a fifteen-year-old female woul
dn’t last long. On the other hand I knew survival wasn’t impossible, not with the knowledge I’d accumulated on the road. We travellers are born survivors.

  Shirley was kindness itself and tried her best to make me feel at home. So I bit my lip and said nothing about my true feelings.

  The women at Fettykil Paper Mill in neighbouring Leslie, where Carl—Shirley’s then husband—found me a job, mothered the life from me. They recognised how unhappy I was. One of them called Stella was from travelling stock and she said she knew how I felt. At break there would be a fairy cake or half a Mars Bar and sometimes a wee drink of ginger (lemonade) propped against the paper-bag-holer machine I used. I knew it was Stella who left those treats because once I had told her how my Mammy did things like that in the bus. Whenever the old tonsillitis left me with a vile taste in my mouth she’d put sweets and tit-bits under my pillow or in my sock, anywhere I’d perk up on finding them.

  Still, all the kindness in the wide world failed to remove my misery, and one day round about three on a Friday afternoon I collapsed at the paper-bag-holer machine. Not before plunging its giant needle straight through the index finger of my right hand, may I add. The factory doctor asked me if a period was the reason. Embarrassment turned me pure red in the face and silent. So he diagnosed period pains, even though it wasn’t anything to do with that. The nurse was a wee bit more concerned and asked if there was a problem. I don’t know if it was her gentle voice or the way she tilted her head as she bandaged that throbbing bleeding finger, but it opened the flood gates and I told her of my yearning to be home on the road with my own folks. ‘Lassie,’ she whispered, ‘away you go, pack your bits and pieces, and whatever you do don’t come back here on Monday.’ If I’d been offered a free dip at the contents of Fort Knox I’d not have been happier than when I left the high-walled paper mill as soon as I did.

  I hugged Stella with tears of unbridled joy. She laughed and said, ‘My God, girl, you’d think ye were gittin oot o’ the stardy.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve been in one,’ I told her.

  Shirley wasn’t too pleased when she heard I’d had it with the scaldy life. In fact she was mortified, but what else could I do? What choice did I have? None.

  Within three days Daddy and Mammy came over to Glenrothes and removed me, wee brown leather suitcase and all. I can’t say I wasn’t sorry to leave Shirley, because all through my young life she was the heart of the bus, she was a fire when there was no coal in Wee Reekie, and I knew we’d miss each other. She was now a scaldy; her days of travelling had ended, Scotland’s roads were a wee bit quieter from then on.

  Shirley may have left the road but the road never left her, and for starters here is a wee poem by her to give the coming chapters a bitty atmosphere.

  The Berries

  We a’ went tae the berry picking,

  Aye, when we were young,

  Wi’ oor luggies, hooks, strings and pails,

  Boy, did we have fun.

  We went in the summer, when the berries were ripe

  And the sun was high in the sky,

  Wi’ oor sloppy joes, jeans and boppers sae white,

  A bottle o’ juice an a pie.

  We met lots o’ new friends and shook lots o’ hands

  And greeted the auld weel kent set.

  Sticky juice o’ the berries wis stuck roond oor mooths,

  It’s a sight I’ll never forget.

  We sookit the big yins, then made oorselves sick,

  And mother wis fair black-affronted.

  We turned a shade green, were in bed for a week,

  A doctor wis a’ that we wanted.

  We grafted an blethered, rested and sang:

  While filling oor pails it wis fun.

  We a’ went tae the berry picking,

  Aye, when we were young.

  Charlotte Munro

  Oh my, what a delight for the eyes of a traveller lassie who’d been locked off the road for a full two months! The berry campsite was brimming with trailers, hawker’s lorries, vans and lurcher dogs. The women, with heads of thick hair wrapped in multi-coloured head squares, were all cracking and gossiping. Younger lassies showed off slender figures, flashing smiles and gold-ringed ears. Men were spitting on their hands and doing deals over horses or motors or whatever they fancied. I felt the giant butterflies bursting into life inside my young breast—I was home, back on the green. If you’re not a traveller then you’ll be thinking I went mad. If you are, well, need I say more?

  Mary, Renie and Babsy circled round and hugged me until I worried if I’d have a chest to breathe again. That was a grand welcome, but nothing like the one wee Tiny gave me. I swear if yon dog could talk he’d have poured the love of every day he’d missed me through a tottie wet tongue right into my ear.

  Without the bus, things would never be the same again, I knew that much, but I’d settle for the Eccles caravan and large Ford van Daddy had replaced it with. I named that motor Big Fordy. (Remember Wee Fordy? Makes sense, doesn’t it?)

  My parents realised they’d made a mistake by taking me off the road. I later heard Daddy tell Mammy that ‘Yon lassie o’ oors is like me when I was a youngster, Jeannie—a thoroughbred gan-aboot.’

  Mammy nodded and said, ‘Aye, Charlie, I’m thinking she’s a throwback from the old yins.’

  Something completely different had become a fixture in our circle—a male! Mammy’s sister Annie’s boy Nicky had joined us, and was to prove invaluable as Daddy’s right-hand man with the spray-painting. He had his own caravan, and was the reason frying steak was on our menu from then on.

  Someone else had joined our crew whilst I was trying out the scaldy life—Portsoy Peter. He was a pal of Daddy’s, who went back as many years as my parents did. He hailed from Morayshire. I can say this, with hand on heart, that more folks than I care to remember came through our lives, but no one sticks so vividly in my mind as this expert of the gab art, Portsoy, King of the Con! He was a con-artist second to none. Soon I’ll share some of his expertise with you, but first I’d like to tell you about ‘Wullie Two’.

  2

  A CONVERSATION WITH WULLIE

  For as long as I could go back in my mind, Wullie Two was part of the ‘berries’. Nobody knew much about him but the minute a fire was lit, there was Wullie. ‘A wee bit simple,’ some would say. Others would just say he never grew up. He wasn’t violent or anything like that, in fact the opposite was the case. He would go to the pictures with us young ones, sit on the back of the seats and shout out at John Wayne, ‘Git yer heed doon, man, the Indians are coming!’ He believed that the film being projected in front of his eyes was really taking place. Then we would all shout at him, ‘Git yer heed doon, Wullie, the picture-house man wi the torch is comin.’ This of course was double the entertainment for us, laughing ourselves silly at the antics of Wullie as he dived below our feet, thinking he’d be turfed out before the film had ended.

  This is a conversation I had on a quiet Sunday with the guid lad.

  ‘Why are you called “Wullie Two”, Wullie?’

  ‘Weel, ma Mammy had four laddies, an as she wisnae very good wi names she cried us all the same. Wullie One, Wullie Two and so on.’

  ‘But how come she called you all Wullie?’

  ‘The scaldy hantel call a man’s private johnny, a wullie, and as ma faither used his tae give us a “jump start”, then that’s why we’re all cried that.’

  ‘Have you any sisters?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Only the one.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I dinna ken, but she wis a beautiful lassie.’

  ‘Have you forgotten her name?’

  A silent pause made me wonder if I’d upset him somewhat, so I asked if he didn’t wish to answer. His response turned me silent.

  ‘Ma sister nivver had a name, neither had she a man tae herself.’

  ‘Was she fussy with lads?’

  ‘No, she fell in l
ove with a greyhound, and when she had a litter o’ pups ma Dad sent her packing.’

  I tried to stifle the surge of laughter welling in my throat, but I don’t believe anyone could hold back after such a comment, so I let rip. When I’d composed myself Wullie’s next words sent me back into overdrive.

  ‘Ye may well laugh, but she’s rich noo, yon sister o’ mine, because ivery yin o’ yon dugs went on tae tak first place on Scotland’s racetracks, ivery yin!’

  ‘Oh, Wullie, what a man you are. Where were you born, anyroad?’

  ‘Ma Mither found me sleeping in a pot o’ pea an ham soup, huddlin’ in ahent a puckle boilt bones.’

  Just when I thought my sides would split his finishing comment left me in stitches.

  ‘It was rare an’ warm in yon pot!’

  So there you have it, folks, my memory of a born comic. No script, no rehearsal, just a pure untapped rarity of golden delight. However, the more I think about Wullie, the more a certain Rattray man’s words keep turning over in my head. His nickname was Shakims, and as he said, ‘Who’s the more foolish—him who tells the tale or him who believes it?’

  3

  A KINDRED SPIRIT

  Here is the story of Mac.

  The July sun was never as hot as it was that day, so once I’d reached the grand sum of one pound and ten shillings worth of berries picked, I dropped the wee metal luggie tied round my waist and headed home. The berry farmer wasn’t too pleased with my early withdrawal from his heavily-laden fruit field and called after me, ‘Where are you going, young un?’

  I had hoped he wouldn’t miss me, but as the rain had poured solid the two previous weeks, this cratur was desperate to see all hands on deck to transfer his yield of fruit, which was hanging heavy, from bush to baskets. I had no wish to lie, so as the pinky of my right hand had earlier suffered the fierce sting of a big orange and yellow bumblebee, I used this as my excuse. He tutted and warned me to ‘mind and make sure you work double hard the morra.’ Poor man, little did he know cousin Nicky had removed the bee’s painful spike over two hours earlier, and although the pain was still there it certainly didn’t warrant a ‘sicky’. But after I’d soaked my head under the waterspout behind the farmhouse I was more than glad that the day’s berry picking had come to a close. Betsy Whyte was outside her trailer boiling a kettle of tea water on an iron chittie and waved over to me. ‘Aye, Jess, it’ll be a sunbathe you’ll be up tae, lassie.’