Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Preface
Aiken Drum – the Brownie of Bladnoch
The Mermaid of Barnhourie
Billy Marshall – King of the Galloway Tinklers
The White Snake
Sealed with a Handshake
The Devil and the Highlandman
In Cold Winters when the Ice was Thick
The Covenanters
The Traveller and the Kelpie
The Bad Bailiff of Rusko
Two Tales of a Respected Minister
Adam Forrester and Lucky Hair
May of Livingstone
Douglas Crosby and the Adder
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch
The Simple Giant
Rowan Reek
Alexander Murray
The Murder Hole
The Rope of Sand
The Earl the Tutor and the King
Stranraer Bugs
Signals from the Other Side
The Pentland Rising
Heather Ale
The Wedding Plate
The Rerrick Poltergeist
The Tinkler’s Tale
The Fairy Who Hated the Irish
Robert Bruce in Galloway
The End of a Curling Match
The Death of Black Morrow
The Murder of Young McDowall
Crossing a Witch
A Simple Girl’s Revenge
Mons Meg
The Ghost of Galdenoch
The Martyrs of Kirkconnel
Lammas Night
The Troublesome Son
The Levellers
Lucky Grier
The Coach with Blue Lamps
St Ninian
The Groom of Arbigland
Legends Surrounding the Death of Grierson of Lagg
Smuggling in the Solway
Sawney Bean
The Crook and the Cairn
The Wigtown Martyrs
‘Craigwaggie’s Meikle Chuckie’
Bibliography
About the Author
Also by Alan Temperley
Copyright
Tales of the North Coast
Murdo’s War
Harry and the Wrinklies
Ragboy
The Simple Giant
The Brave Whale
Huntress of the Sea
The Magician of Samarkand
Harry and the Treasure of Eddie Carver
Scar Hill
Deck Boy
In this collection from the land of Galloway, Alan Temperley pays tribute to the great Scottish tradition of storytelling. Heroes, ghosts and smugglers; witches, martyrs, mermaids and fairies; outlaws, monsters and colourful rogues run wild through these pages. Their stories reflect the magic of some of the most beautiful and dramatic countryside in Britain. Originally told in crofts and rural cottages, these stories grew naturally out of the rich past and the land and lives of the people – wonderful tales. And they remain as alive today as when they were first told.
For
JEAN SLAVEN
with all my love
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.transworldbooks.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 1979
This edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by Mainstream Publishing
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Alan Temperley, 1979
Cover illustration by Susan McNeil (aged 13), first published by Skilton and Shaw, 1979. Graphics by Alan Downs.
Alan Temperley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781780578385
ISBN 9781851580262
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Galloway is sometimes called the Garden of Scotland, and justly so. The region, covering the County of Wigtown and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright – ‘from the brig end o’ Dumfries to the braes of Glen App’ – lies on a south-facing slope with its feet lapped by the Solway and its shoulders propped against beautiful ranges of mountains. From these uplands broad silver rivers wind south through undulating pastures and tracts of woodland, wonderful farming country, to run at length into the Solway Firth. And far off across the water, or miles of rippled sand when the tide is out, are the blue hills of Cumbria.
It is a region of dramatic history. The maps are thick with references to the sites of battles, towers and ruined castles, ancient stones, burial mounds, smugglers’ bays and the graves of martyrs. Each has a tale to tell, though sadly many have been forgotten. And where the map is bare, where today the passer-by sees only a ploughed field or scrubby wooded hillside, until recent years an ancient village stood. Our present towns had not been built and some of these vanished villages and clachans were local centres. The land was rougher and more wild. A scarcely distinguishable ribbon of level moorland or meadow is all that remains of a potholed main road that for centuries took all the foot travellers and horsemen and rattling carriages of that district. The wonderful old railway lines, so recently closed, are already sinking back into the land from which they were hewn.
But there are many histories: this book is an entertainment. My aim in writing it has been to present a simple selection of the old traditional tales of the area. They tell of witches and colourful rogues, family feuds and smuggling escapades, rustic comedy and murders descending into horror, wicked landowners, monsters and fairies. And there are, too, a good number of historical adventures.
Many of the tales were told to me orally, others I have found in old books. Though I have sought to tell the stories simply and directly, it was seldom that they were found so. In every case where it was possible I travelled to the location and enquired locally. Sometimes, in this way, three or four versions of the same story emerged. The one I have recounted seemed to me the most commonly accepted and acceptable, and in many cases I have written or indicated a second and even third account also. There is, of course, bound to be disagreement, and I am glad, for that indicates a living interest. I can only say that I have done my best to be thorough and tell the tales truthfully.
So far as the historical stories are concerned, I have found great disagreement in published sources. Five quite separate fates, for example, are allocated to the Fair Maid of Galloway during the siege of Threave Castle – if she was there at all: Mons Meg is bound to the region by strings of historical myth as tangled as barbed wire: Galloway is described as being both in the vanguard and rearguard of agricultural change. It has not been my brief to hunt deeply among ancient archives and historical papers to ferret out the truth or otherwise of an old tale. On the other hand, it would not do in print, I feel, to show a sublime disregard for historical fact in the manner of the old storytellers. One is on the horns of a dilemma. In many of the old stories, of course, myth and fact are inextricably entwined. I have tried, in recounting these historical tales, to be as accurate as possible, and there is no fact for which I cannot account on good authority. But pure history and traditional legend, of course, rarely make the happiest of marriages.
Another problem has been the Scots language. I need make no apology for the fact that whilst generally characters speak in plain English, they sometimes use broad Galloway Scots, and the occasional Scots phrase is used where it is appropriate in the narrative. To have omitted the Scots would have been to deprive certain speeches of their force and even fame. It is untranslatable. On the other hand, to have maintained it throughout would often have made the dialogue hard to read, have held up the story, and in my opinion would have been artificial. Certainly it would have been artificial for me to attempt it.
The most important reason for writing the book was to present a selection – and it is no more – of the local tales for the people of the district, for those who love Galloway and are absent, and for those who travel here. Also I hope it may remind people in all parts of the country of their wonderful heritage. These stories, which grew over the centuries and are now almost entirely forgotten or ignored, present a glimpse of the life that flourished in the south-west until comparatively recent years. Farms and villages were isolated by the poor roads and limited means of transport: many people did not move more than a few miles from home throughout their entire lives. The stories were told in cottages for entertainment. They grew up out of the history of the land and the lives of the people. And they are as alive today as when they were first told. But now, in the manner of our time, we switch on television, and instead of absorbing the stories of an honourable past, we are battered by the sham and slick drama of the great cities. I would like to think that this collection might do at least a little to redress the balance.
But in most cases we do not read a book of this nature for some objective reason, we read it for entertainment. And it is my hope and belief that these old stories, written by the past and the land and the people of Galloway, will be enjoyed today.
Alan Temperley
Rhonehouse, 1979
My thanks are due to the hundreds of local people who have so readily and with such interest told these stories to me, and so unfailingly helped my enquiries. It sometimes seemed strange, standing in the doorway of a barn with the rain sweeping by, talking to a farmer in wellington boots about witches and fairies; or having introduced myself to a quiet old lady, plunging at once into stories of bloody murder and pillage. I would like to express my gratitude also to the many people who lent me books that were precious to them, and sometimes quite irreplaceable. More particularly I wish to thank Miss Jean Slaven for her great help and encouragement; Mr. James Manson, Rector of Kirkcudbright Academy, for his enthusiasm and readiness to allow the young people to participate; Mr. Robin McLeish and Mr. Tom Collin, Honorary Curator of the Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright, for reading the manuscript and giving me the benefit of their opinion and knowledge; the Dumfries and Galloway Regional Library Service, and in particular Mrs. Jo Laurie, Mrs. Mary Kirkpatrick and Mr. Martin McColl of the Castle Douglas Library, for their kindness and great assistance; and The Scots Magazine for permission to publish substantial extracts from my articles ‘The Boy and the Adder’ and ‘The Yule Beggar’. Finally I wish to acknowledge with appreciation the award of a writer’s bursary from the Scottish Arts Council.
Illustrations by
PUPILS OF KIRKCUDBRIGHT ACADEMY
Under the guidance of
ANNE MCNEIL
Map by Martin Rosindale
Roun’ his hairy form there was naething seen,
But a philabeg o’ the rashes green,
And his knotted knees played ay knoit between:
What a sight was Aiken-drum!
On his wauchie arms three claws did meet,
As they trailed on the grun’ by his taeless feet;
E’en the auld gudeman (Satan) himsel’ did sweat,
To look at Aiken-drum.
“I lived in a lan’ where we saw nae sky,
I dwalt in a spot where a burn rins na by;
But I’se dwall now wi’ you, if ye like to try –
Hae ye wark for Aiken-drum?”
William Nicholson
Darkness spread over the land, the last traces of sunset faded over the Machars. It was All Hallows Eve.
One or two women, shawls drawn about their shoulders against the advancing chill, gathered at the gates and in the doorways of cottages before they should retreat indoors for the night. Children played along the lane.
From far down there came a scream, then a hubbub of cries, and the children came racing and scampering back to the houses, looking behind them with terror as they ran. Way up the lane, dark in the fading light and too far off to see distinctly, a hunched form came stalking towards the houses.
The women in the lane ran to their homes and shut the gates. Calling their men they stood back in the doorways.
The figure drew closer, bare feet slapping on the ground, moaning and humming and uttering fragmentary words beneath his breath: “Aiken Drum … no fee … till your fields for a dish o’ brose.”
The young wife who lived in the first cottage gave a loud cry of fear and slammed her door.
The figure that trudged towards them was truly terrible, more like a monster than a man. He wore nothing but a rough kilt of rushes, his shaggy body was smeared with the mire of the deep Galloway bogs. Dreadful hair hung about his face and shoulders, and at the glare of his eyes a good woman passed clean away into her husband’s arms. He had no nose, and for a mouth only a hideous gash that might have been torn by the horn of a bull. His clammy arms, ending in knotted claws for hands, trailed almost to his feet in the mud of the lane.fn1
By the time he had reached the middle of the village all the doors were locked and barred save one. Frightened, but standing their ground, a goodwife and her husband watched as the creature came towards them and stopped only a few feet away. Unable to stand it, the man drew a swift circle around himself and made the sign of the cross. His wife was too terrified to move a muscle, then suddenly recovering, rushed into the house and grabbed up the big black family Bible. Clutching this to her bosom she ventured once more as far as the doorstep.
“What do you want?” said the man, his voice little more than a whisper. “Tell us, in God’s name, from where you come, and what you want here with us.”
The monster gave a groan, his dreadful mouth moved.
“I come from a land where there is no sky, no water. No home! … Aiken Drum, they call me: Brownie of the Bladnoch. … Work! Have you work for Aiken Drum?”
“No! No!” Again the man crossed himself. “We have no work. Leave us. Leave us in peace. We have no work for you.”
“I seek no wages, no bond, no fee. All I ask is a dish of brose and a clear well, to drink and see my face. I can leap the burn when it is in spate, and milk the cattle, and plough the fields. I can churn the butter, and thresh the corn, herd the sheep on the hills and keep them safe from foxes, lull the children to sleep with songs they have never heard.” His head lolled backwards, his dreadful eyes, full of anguish, glared at the sky.
“No, no! I tell you we have no work.”
But the goodwife thought of their crops still on the fields unthreshed, the autumn ploughing, the decimation of their flocks and poultry by the foxes and wolves. She caught her husband by the arm. “His speech is fair, he seeks no harm. We have plenty of meal. Let us give him a trial for one week.”
When the other wives and men saw that their neighbours were unharmed, that they were not attacked and devoured by the terrifying creature, they crept from their doorways and ventured closer. But when they heard that he was to stay among them and work for his living, they raised their voices in horror.
“No, he must not stay. His very looks make us faint with fear. And who will ever come to the village when they know that Aiken Drum is living among us? He is dreadful, a foul ghost. His presence will blast the village.”
But the goodwife silenced them with a reminder of the work that was unfinished – for they were not industrious villagers – and what must yet be done if they were to survive the following year.
So Aiken Drum stayed. The goodwife had made a good bargain, for the brownie did the work of ten men. By the gleam of the northern lights, and the light of the moon and stars, the fields were ploughed and furrowed, the corn was threshed and later sown, the sheep were tended and herded into folds on the hills.
(One evening, the tale is told, a farmer had requested Aiken Drum to drive his sheep from the hill and pen them in a fold at the end of the village by an early hour. Before breakfast the following morning he went along to see if the job was well done. So conscientiously had the brownie done his work that along with all the sheep from the hillside he had driven down the hares and rabbits also, and they were running about among the sheep’s legs and jumping up the walls of the fold. Not a single sheep was missing. The farmer congratulated Aiken Drum on the excellence of his work. The brownie replied: “Confound they wee grey devils! They cost me mair bother than all the lave o’ them!”)
Soon the villagers grew used to his awful appearance, and the children came to love him, for he sang strange gentle songs to them when they were fretful and could not sleep; and at other times he played and showed them fairy games that they loved. Wherever he was, the children were merry and content. In the evenings, when he started work before their bedtimes, they followed him into the fields.
And all he asked was the wooden bowl of brose that the goodwife left for him on the doorstep every night, and a drink from her clear well. No-one ever saw him eat the brose, but in the morning it was gone. He never even asked for a spoon. And so anxious was he to be helpful that a word, or a wish, and he was there, his gash of a mouth twisted into a smile. Only when the sun was out did he slip away. Also, though the Bible held no fear for him, he could never bear to look upon a certain communion cup of the district.fn2
For a long time the brownie worked for the villagers and unfailingly did his best. At length the act of a young wife drove him away. She was a newly-married girl, and very aware of the proprieties and decencies. It offended her sense of decorum that Aiken Drum should go around in no more than a ragged kilt of rushes. So one night she left a pair of old, mouldy britches, discarded by her husband, by his clean dish of brose.
She did not know – perhaps no-one in the village knew – that any payment for his labours infallibly drives a brownie away, even a gift so poor as a pair of rotten breeks. So Aiken Drum, who needed a place of work and a home, and was so happy among them in his brownie way, had no alternative but to depart. Their bond was broken.
And in the night some were woken from their sleep by his loud cries of distress when he found the breeks by his bowl of brose. Peering from their curtains they saw his hairy form shambling flat-footed away down the lane through the village. Soon he was gone into the darkness and his moans and sighs faded into silence. He never returned.
Some time afterwards his voice was heard by a shepherd up in Penninghame, a few miles to the north. It came from the heart of the bogs in the miles of no-man’s-land Viand before the old Penninghame Forest, but in the darkness the shepherd could discern nothing. The brownie was grieving: “Aiken Drum. Oh, Aiken Drum! Fee and leave! … Weep now, weep! No home! … No home for Aiken Drum!” And as he passed, the shepherd heard the splash of his big feet in the bogs.
But still, they say, when the wind is in the trees, when the Bladnoch Linn is in spate and the water roars through the rocks, if you listen carefully you may make out the voice of Aiken Drum. And children in their beds smile, for they hear him clearly, singing them to sleep as he did so long ago.
fn1 Aiken Drum was given the rush kilt by Nicholson, and this is now accepted. In the original tale, however, he was naked. This more readily explains the gift of the proper young wife – ‘a mouldy pair o’ her ain man’s breeks’. It also gives a second explanation for his departure, for brownies were generally considered spirits too free to be fettered by human clothing.
fn2 McMillan’s Cup was used as a test of orthodoxy. It had originally belonged to John McMillan, founder of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, who was deposed in 1703 from the Established Church of Balmaghie for his nonconformity. The cup was treasured by a follower in the parish of Kirkcowan, the eastern boundary of which is the River Bladnoch. If, upon holding it, the man under examination trembled or showed any other sign of agitation, he was denounced as ‘having bowed the knee to Baal, and sacrificed at the altar of idolatry.’ Small wonder that Aiken Drum found the cup intimidating.
On a clear, cool night in early April, a little Dalbeattie lugger, homeward bound from Whitehaven, drew in towards the mouth of the River Urr. The moon was full, and as the young seaman adjusted the sheet and tidied the deck, the moonlight shone on his dark curls and the side of his face and shoulders. A little distance away the waves curled and broke on the treacherous sandbanks of Barnhourie.
Gazing along the moon’s track the young seaman saw the silhouette of what he took to be a seal’s head dark on the water. He watched and whistled; then whistled again, trying to tempt the animal closer. From further aft the captain shouted: “You should know better than to whistle on a boat – especially with the banks so close.” Looking away and breaking into song, the seaman continued with his work.
The head, however, was not that of a seal. It belonged to the mermaid of Barnhourie, who was utterly in love with the young man. Whenever he returned home, or went fishing along that stretch of coast, she followed his boat, and when she thought it safe, she watched him from the shelter of rocks or some patch of weed. Now, as the Galloway coast came closer, she swam easily, parallel with the lugger.
Soon they shortened sail, and drew neatly into the channel that led up to Kippford at the mouth of the river. In less than half an hour they were moored in one of the narrow creeks.
The young sailor jumped ashore, barefoot in the mud, carrying his clothes and few possessions in a small bag slung over his shoulder. Then he set off up the rough road that led five miles into Dalbeattie, where his pretty wife and children lived.
The mermaid saw him vanish behind a clump of trees, then turned sadly and swam back down the channel between the muddy banks, out into the open water of the Solway. Rocking in the comforting waves, she swam eastwards along the shore to the Needle’s Eye, a high narrow fissure through an outcrop of rocks beneath the crag. It was her favourite spot. There she sat on a weedy stone with the sea lapping about her beautiful tail. The moon moved across the sky. Slowly the tide ebbed, showing the top of the long lines of stake net set in the sand a little distance off-shore. When the water had sunk so far that barely sufficient remained for swimming, she slipped once more into the waves and made her way over the miles of rippled sand to the deeper channels between the Mersehead Sands and Barnhourie Bank.
Further out, in the depths of the Solway, lived her father, a merrow from the Irish coast. Despite his dreadful green body and face – the black beard topped by a nose like a red thorn and little piggy eyes – he was a kindly fellow. The mermaid of Barnhourie, his youngest daughter, had inherited her gentle nature from her father. Her sisters, however, though wonderfully beautiful were avid and cruel, always seeking to lure sailors and fishermen into watery graves with their sweet singing and wiles.
For many months the mermaid had been in love with the young seaman, and the morning following his return from Whitehaven she swam back to Kippford. He was working on the boat with a pot of pitch in his hand. On the shore nearby he had built a little fire to melt the pitch down, and his children were playing around it. Keeping against the hull of a vessel moored a few yards away, where she was sure she would not be seen, the lovely mermaid watched him working. Then she turned her eyes to the children, laughing and calling as they clambered aboard one of the boats drawn up on the shore. An old man called, holding out something in his clenched fist, and they ran across to him. When the mermaid looked back at the lugger, the young seaman was watching her. In his eyes was a look of surprise combined with an expression of wonder that was to remain with her for many months. For a moment she regarded him with some fear, then quietly slipped below the surface.
She swam away, but before she had gone far she paused, then turned and swam back. Clinging to the mooring rope of another vessel, she watched him from behind the stern. He had come to the rail and was scanning the water with his dark eyes. In a minute or two his children joined him, holding out their little hands to show him something, and he gave them his attention.
Less than a week later the lugger sailed. He was gone for three months.
During the shortening spring nights the mermaid sat on the rocks at the Needle’s Eye. When she sang, the fulmars and jackdaws which cawed on the rocks were silent, the moon grew pale – unlike her sisters, for at their song the moon turned red and the stars dripped blood upon the water.
At the end of June there was a great storm. The sands of the Solway were stirred and Barnhourie Bank shifted. A few days later the young seaman returned.
The sea was still rough and the crescent moon showed briefly between ragged tails of dark cloud. The captain of the lugger kept his eyes on the beacons of Southerness and Heston Island, and the diamond glittering on the summit of Criffel.fn1 The wind roared in the rigging, the waves whipped across the deck. No-one knew that Barnhourie Bank had shifted further west than had ever been known before. The lugger was into the broken water before they even saw it. Swiftly the captain flung the helm across and called on his crew to trim the sails. But the following wind drove them onward, and barely a minute later, with a massive lurch, the keel struck the sandbank. Briefly the lugger lifted on the crest of a wave, then struck again, swung wildly as the sea caught her on the beam, and settled with a final splitting shudder on the clinging bank of sand.
The waves broke clear across the sails and soon they were hanging in shreds. The yard-arm snapped like a splinter and fell across the rail. In the wash that swept the deck the captain and other members of the crew were carried away. For a while the young seaman clung to the rigging and the broken spar, then his grip was broken and he, too, was flung into the wild water.
His cries were instantly swallowed up in the wind, but they reached the ears of the mermaid, who sat with streaming hair on the rocks beneath the Needle’s Eye. Her own cry answered his. In a moment she had slipped into the foaming sea and was making her way through the curling masses of water towards the treacherous sandbank.
Already the lugger was being broken up. When she reached him the young seaman was unconscious, tumbling over and over along the sandbanks of Barnhourie. With her slim arms about his waist she bore him to the leaping surface of the sea. He coughed salt water, and the sweet air struggled into his lungs. Soon he was breathing, his dark head lolling on her breast. As consciousness returned they were still a mile from land. He felt her arms, her long hair trailing about his face, the strong sweep of her tail.
Soon they were ashore, on the foaming rocks by the Needle’s Eye. From the blackness of the sea the waves bore in and climbed hungrily up the rocks as if to pluck them back. The roaring south-west wind struck cold through his heavy, sodden clothing. They moved to a small cave nearby, and there, on a bed of bracken, out of the wind, they passed the remainder of the night.
The stars moved round, the tide swelled and sank back, and at length the first light of morning showed in the sky. There was barely enough water in which to swim. Bidding her young lover a reluctant farewell, the mermaid slithered to the shore. Like an eel in a marsh, she splashed and squirmed for a mile, desperately trying to reach deeper water before the tide was gone altogether. At length she succeeded. From the shore the curly-headed sailor saw her rise and vanish like a porpoise, then rise again and splash briefly in the early sunlight.
Beyond her, its mast smashed, already a hulk on the sandbank, lay the wreck of the lugger. Caught in the long, long webs of stake-net, two or three hundred yards off-shore, he saw and recognised the body of one of his shipmates. With the water to his calves he splashed out and brought the man ashore. Then, choosing to wade rather than climb the crags, he splashed half a mile along the shore until he came to a steep meadow. From deep water the mermaid saw him, a tiny figure, climb through the banks of bushes and shrubs and at length vanish above the rim of the hill.
He had fallen in love with her, and throughout the summer he returned to the little cave by the Needle’s Eye. For whole days he neglected his work, and he and the mermaid lay among the wild flowers, with the lichen-yellow crags above them, the birds swooping overhead, and the fresh wind blowing in from the Solway. So completely did she trust him that she stayed while the tide retreated, until the miles of bare sand stretched out from the shore to mingle with the sky against the hazy, mountainous Cumbrian shore twenty miles away.
Sometimes they swam in the glassily calm or wind-rippled pools the tide had left in the shingle beneath the rocks, and she laughed at how clumsy he was, though in fact he swam well. Then he left her stranded and walked back across the sand until he relented and carried her to the grassy hillside in his arms, her long tail gleaming and shining in the sunlight. They were idyllically happy.
But at length he had to return to the sea once more. There was no money, and though he could always get food from the land and sea, his wife and children were becoming ragged and needy. For one last beautiful September day they lay together above the shore. Then he turned away and began to climb the track that he had made for himself towards the summit of the cliffs. Heartbroken the young mermaid slid into the warm autumn sea. Neither looked back, they could not bear it.
The following afternoon, at high tide, he sailed once more from Kippford, bound for Whitehaven and a ship that was to take him to the Americas.
The following April the mermaid’s baby was born. He was a beautiful child, with his father’s dark curls and merry manner, and his mother’s black eyes, webbed fingers and long silver tail. From the first he could swim like a fish.
The young seaman was away for twenty months. It was May when his schooner returned from the West Indies. They had traded among the islands and done well. Alas on the return voyage a fever had broken out and a number of the seamen, including the captain, had died. But now in the first light of dawn the sailors, brown as monkeys, gathered in the shrouds and on deck and looked out once more towards the Cumbrian shore. They had all bought trinkets and presents for their children and loved ones. Their kit bags were already packed in the foc’sle. They looked forward very much to being home. On the port side the Scottish seamen gazed across the Solway to the distant mountains of Galloway.
The mate was on the bridge as they drew in towards St Bees Head. He was a man who had joined the ship during the voyage and did not know the coast well. Sails set, green bow-wave curling as they sped through the dancing waves the last few miles to home, he drove her full upon a submerged outcrop of ragged rocks. For a full third of her length the bottom timbers were ripped open. Instantly water flooded into the holds. The suck of the waves carried the schooner back off the rocks into deep water. Within minutes she was floundering. Then she was gone. In the swirl that remained on the surface a single ship’s boat spun slowly round and round, crowded with survivors. The young Dalbeattie sailor was not among them.
Deep in the Solway off Barnhourie Banks, a second time his cries reached the ears of the mermaid. Leaving her baby son in safety, she swam off in a panic of haste. The rippled sands sped by beneath her, with weedy rocks and fish, and the barnacled ribs of old wrecks. But it was a long swim and nearly two hours had passed before she reached the scene of the tragedy. Two or three drowned sailors floated by her, drifting slowly in the eddying currents above the banks of sand. She passed them without caring. Then there before her, on its side, lay the wreck of the lovely schooner, the sails still set, but torn, and the mainmast spars broken.
Desperately she hunted through the watery cabins for her lover, but there was no sign. Then she quartered the whole area of seabed round about, her tail glinting in the moving fingers of sunlight, but he was not there either. She stopped and listened, but all sounds and signals from him had ceased. Then she knew that he was dead.
For many hours she searched on, while the long day passed. At last she knew that there was no chance of finding him there, so far from her own banks, for the tricks of the tides were unknown to her. Slowly, distressed, she returned to her son at Barnhourie.
The following morning at low water, rising from the clear green depths of her home to look towards the Galloway shore, she saw a huddled bundle dumped by the tide far away across the miles of dappled sand. It was too far off to distinguish, it could have been a heavy skein of seaweed, and yet she knew, at once, that it was not. She swam to the edge of the sandbank, and pulling herself from the water struggled across the wet brown sand, leaving a shallow trench in her wake. As she drew close she saw his dark monkey-jacket and wide seaman’s trousers. Then at last she was with him. He looked very young, and as handsome as ever, as though he was asleep. She knew what she must do.
The tide was flooding, brimming white-edged across the sands with the speed of a running man. Soon it was about them, and in less than an hour she had brought him to the shore. Then, from the hillsides about the Needle’s Eye, she gathered specific herbs and wild spring flowers and weed from the shore rocks. Carefully she mixed and crushed them, and then pressed them between the young man’s lips. Her tears fell upon his eyes, the clear, saltless tears of a mermaid.
With a deep, convulsive sigh, he began to breathe, and in a little while his eyes opened.
He was weak, but lying on the bank in the warm May sunshine, soon his strength began to flow back. And at length they lay once more in each other’s arms among the flowers beside the Needle’s Eye.
Although he lived, however, he was not as he had been before. He had drowned, and the mermaid’s love and power were unable to restore him to his full humanity. Instead, as they descended to the water and the tide washed about his legs, he felt a thrill that he had never known. She left his side and plunged into the sea. Without a thought he followed her, gliding through the sunlit bases of the waves as no man had ever swum before.
Down in the clear depths beyond Barnhourie, in the mermaid’s world, he found his young son. And when daylight was fading all three swam back to the rocks at the Needle’s Eye, and looked out towards the distant lights of Southerness and the stars shining above the glinting waves of the Solway.
Occasionally he returned to the land, for he was anxious about his children. The owners of the schooner, however, were caring for his family, and a year or two later his pretty wife remarried.
Down in the depths of the sea, never growing old, the mermaid and the young Dalbeattie sailor had many children, all with long silver tails like their mother, and curly hair and merry ways like their father. They were very happy. And as the years passed they grew famous among the fishermen and seamen of the Solway, for warning them in storms, and guiding them from danger on the treacherous sandbanks of Barnhourie.
fn1 Criffel is the highest mountain in the district and stands just above the shore. A large diamond is said to shine from the summit in rough weather to give a lead to seamen.
“Can you jas to stariben?
Can you lel a kosht?
Can you besh under a bor?
Can you kel the bosh?
Misto! Romani-chal,
Del les adre his mui!
S’ help me, diri datchen,
You can kur misto,”
Said the Romani chai to the Romani rai.fn1
‘Romano Lavo-Lil’ – George Borrow
Billy Marshall – tinkler, gipsy chief, the Caird of Barullion, king of the randies, claimed by some as the last of the Pictish kings – was commonly accepted to be 120 years old when he died on 28th November, 1792. Many believed that he was older than this, and he himself sometimes claimed that he was born in 1666. In almost every respect he was a remarkable man, and many parishes have claimed the dubious honour of his birth in a gipsy encampment: the most likely, however, seems to be Minnigaff in the Stewartry. He was married seventeen times, most notably to Flora Maxwell, the main prototype of Meg Merrilees, and had many other liaisons in addition. His offspring were very numerous – the precise number is not known, but may be imagined, since three or four were born after his hundredth year.
As a young man he enlisted in the army, and at the age of eighteen was a mercenary fighting with William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne. He enlisted with the Scots Greys and served in a number of campaigns. More than once he was in Flanders under Marlborough. Seven times, altogether, he enlisted or was pressed into the army – and deserted as often. His principal reason for leaving was that he wished to be home in Galloway for the great Keltonhill Fair, the highlight of the gipsies’ year. He claimed, and there is no reason to disbelieve it, that he attended every summer, without once being absent, for more than a hundred years. The tale is told that once being stationed in Flanders he entered the tent of a senior officer who came from the Stewartry – a McGuffog of Rusko – and enquired whether he had any messages he wished carrying to friends back home. When, with some surprise, the officer asked him why, Private Marshall informed him that the Keltonhill Fair was at hand and he planned, as always, to be there. The officer laughed, knowing his reckless character, but took no steps to have him arrested, since they were so far from home. The following roll-call he was gone, and duly turned up at the Marshalls’ encampment in time for the fair.
He was in his early forties, though seeming more like a young man in his twenties, when finally he quit the army and returned to the tinklers. Shortly afterwards he became king, and according to strong tradition, it was brought about by a bloody and murderous act. One day, in private, he bought from a visitor or junior member of the clan a fine knife, which he had purchased at the fair in Ayr the year before and was easily recognisable. That night he used the knife to murder one of his wives and Isaac Miller, at that time the tinkler king, since they had indulged in some amorous adventure. The following morning, by chance, the previous owner of the knife went to rouse the king in his tent, and found him lying on a pallet greatly messed with blood. His body had been stabbed many times, and the long knife lay among the bedding beside him. Realising his implication he took the knife away. With the evidence gone it was given out that the king had killed himself, and he was buried secretly in the hills, in the vicinity of Cairnsmore of Fleet. The murder may have been planned some time in advance, since for a while Billy had been hinting at a close relationship with the chief on his mother’s side. In any case, he then assumed the position, and maintained it magnificently for between seventy and eighty years.
Billy Marshall was ambitious, and a year or two after his election he determined to extend his territories, which ran from the Brig-end of Dumfries to the Braes of Glen App.fn2 He sought to drive further to the north-west, but at the Newton of Ayr he was driven back by an army of tinkers from Argyle or Dumbarton, supported, he afterwards claimed, by Irish sailors and Kyle colliers. Many of the Marshalls’ ponies and donkeys were driven into the river and drowned, and in the retreat they were compelled to abandon great quantities of baggage and equipment – tools, creels, cooking utensils, crockery, pigs, poultry, pots and pans, horns, tents, blankets, and so on. More important, several of the clan were killed, others badly wounded, and some disappeared. Reinforcements arrived, however, and a pitched battle was fought somewhere near Alloway Kirk. Both sides claimed the victory for this, but so great was the loss and distress that Billy Marshall’s territorial ambition was duly curbed, and for many years comparative peace reigned between the rival clans.
The Marshalls and other tinklers were distinctive among the folk of Galloway. Though commonly clad in old clothes, they wore them with a certain air. Many liked to adorn themselves with a bright scarf at the throat or waist, a nosegay, or some bright trinket – familiar in the dress of later gipsies. Billy, it is said, customarily wore a wristlet of lamprey skins. They lived, of course, in encampments, moving from site to site with the seasons, and as local fairs, grazing, whim, and their changeable fortunes dictated. Alone, at festivals, the Marshalls sometimes painted their faces with ruddle – perhaps a direct link with their Pictish past.
Billy’s personal trade was that of a horner, making all sorts of spoons, beakers, combs and ornaments.fn3 He also made bagpipes, flatirons, brass and silver brooches, tins, besoms and bee skeps: the years of the tinklers as tin and tool workers and repairers of pots and pans, were yet to come. Also, though it is not known with what degree of success, the gipsy chief tried his hand as a coiner. And he dealt in horses.
These, generally, were the legitimate activities of the tinklers, and upon them they depended for their living. In addition, however, there were the lawless pursuits that often landed them in jail, or on prison ships that transported them to the colonies. For Billy’s followers were thieves and pickpockets, highway robbers, cattle thieves, poachers and smugglers.
At Keltonhill Fair, rather over a mile from Castle Douglas, the gipsies moved with familiar ease among the thronging booths. They were there with horses, ponies and cattle; up to a hundred tricks to cover a defect. The tinkler women, with deft brown fingers, stole from the stalls and removed scarves, kerchiefs, pins and wallets from the fair-goers. The men, with sharp knives, sliced the thongs of purses and were gone into the swirling crowd. And at some time during the day, Billy Marshall would be found in his round-topped tent, on the ground or the back of a cart, where they camped at Bridge of Dee a mile away. There he sat, receiver of stolen goods extraordinary, with two or three of the tinklers’ swarms of dogs – half mastiff, half lurcher – lying nearby, and the ground and his pallet strewn with takings. It was said that anyone who had been robbed, bold enough to make his way to the tent at this time, would in a good-humoured way be asked to pick his belongings from the pile: there was so much that a single wallet or cane was never missed. It was Billy’s delight to cause a ruction in the drinking tents. Sending his followers inside to inflame the ensuing trouble, he bent beneath the loaded drinking table from outside and sent it crashing to the ground, with a fine spray of beer and splintering of glasses and bottles, bringing the whole assembly into a turmoil.
He was deeply involved with the smuggling trade, and friendly with Captain Yawkins, the most notorious of the smuggling skippers. Often Billy Marshall was there to meet him when the ‘Black Prince’ sailed into Ravenshall, Balcary Bay, or one of the other smugglers’ coves. Sometimes they sat in Dirk Hatteraick’s Cave, yarning, drinking and smoking in the lamplit gloom, while the boat was discharged, casks were lowered on ropes, the pigeon holes filled with liquor, and on the beach swarthy lingtowmen loaded ponies for transport inland. Strings of horses were at his command. Not just four or five, but up to eighty might be seen wending their way through the Marshalls’ territory, bearing the Isle of Man tea, spirits and tobacco to Edinburgh and the markets of the Clyde valley.fn4
Billy Marshall was one of the most famous leaders of the Levellers in the 1720’s. Along with the poor farmers and crofters, the tinklers grazed their animals on the moorlands, and resented their fencing off by the improving landlords. They joined in bands to knock down the new dykes. Billy led a large force of farmers and land workers, as well as his own tinklers. With a wealth of military training behind him, he drilled them in the fields and led them to quiet hillsides for rifle practice. It suited him not to drive the dyke-building labourers away, for in them he found a ready market for the raw spirit his men were distilling in caves and shielings on the Still Brae, among the mountains nearby.fn5
In common with many gipsies – and good-blooded Scotsmen – he liked the whisky himself, and hearing it once denounced as slow poison, is said to have remarked: “Aye, well it maun be damned slow, for I ha’e been drinkin’ it for a hunner years, an’ I’m livin’ yet.”
A man of necessity so much on the move, he had many homes, ranging from cottage and tent to caves and shelters where he could rest overnight. He spent quite a lot of time in Minnigaff, where he may have been born, for in the market and district there was good trading. There was a time, it is said, when every second cart and tumbril that rattled along the rough road to the town belonged to the Marshall gang. The location suited him well, for it lay between the smugglers of Wigtown Bay and the mountains where many of his followers lived, and into which he could vanish when he was in trouble. Rarely did he leave his people in Minnigaff with more than a couple of companions, but the following day would find him escorted by a gang of thirty or forty from another settlement.
It was well known that Billy headed ‘a body of lawless banditti’; and many would have agreed with the man who wrote that ‘with the exception of intemperate drinking, treachery, and ingratitude, he practised every crime which is incident to human nature, including those of the deepest dye.’ But he had many generous, humorous, redeeming features also, high among which were his impudence, reckless flaunting of the law, and wonderful sense of style. Although he was notorious, he was regarded with an alarmed admiration by the people of Galloway. Many anecdotes surround him. How far they are true we will never know, but undoubtedly he was of the stuff from which legends are made.
On one occasion a Mr Douglas, of Little Park on the Palnure Bum, was returning home in the evening when he was astonished to be passed on the rough road by seven racing, shrieking women, pursued by Billy, brandishing a large knife and clad in nothing but his shirt. They were his wives. For a moment he paused to speak to Mr Douglas, observing with simple regret: “I wonder that they canna agree; ‘I’m sure there’s no’ that mony o’ them.”