Scotland’s Folklore

2020-21

What can Folklore contribute to my interests?

 • Traditions connected to the environment, landscape
and nature
• Plants and their uses
Topics • Stories: folktales legends, ‘dark, horror’ witches,
mythical creatures
highlighted • Music: the story behind the song/tune, why it was
when you made, how it is traditionally passed on; composing
songs, making tunes
introduced • Dance

yourselves. • Costumes, and related crafts

• Filming
• Local traditions (such as festivals related to my town,
village, country)
• Customs (of life and of the calendar)
Fieldwork recordings
and resources
online recordings
www.tobarandualchais.co.uk

The recordings are in Scotland’s main

archive, The School of Scottish Studies,
founded in 1951 by the University of
Edinburgh.

Tobar an Dualchais/
The Kist of Riches
e.g. search ‘cures’
Clothing, tailoring,
The website gives a summary and audio
What we wore… and who made it recording clip
Witches, witchcraft….. 257 items
The rowan will keep away witches…
 Every social group has its own traditions and there are
variations across all areas. There is an especially rich store of
songs and stories handed down through oral tradition among
Scotland’s gypsy-travellers, who, until the mid 20th century
were itinerant tinsmiths, basket-makers, pearl-fishers, farm-
labourers and factory workers.

The Travelling People

 Itinerant tinsmiths and tinkers, now
They kept their stories alive
known as the Travelling People, were
around their campfires
also itinerant storytellers.
One of the greatest ever storytellers was Willie MacPhee. They lived in a caravan
near Perth, and night after night would share stories, songs and tunes.

Willie did not read or write,

but many of his stories have
now been transcribed by
Sheila Douglas and
published in
The Last of the Tinsmiths
Willile MacPhee, Perth
Pearl fishing
Traveller basket-makers.

Camped by a roadside near

Laggan, selling baskets, 1972
The fireside was the setting for storytelling ...
Duncan Williamson: “eye to eye, heart to heart”

• Listen on:
http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/e
n/fullrecord/29180

Duncan Williamson, described by Hamish Henderson as “possibly the most extraordinary tradition-
bearer of the whole Traveller tribe.” ( Introduction to A Thorn in the King's Foot: Folktales of the Scottish
Travelling People by Duncan and Linda Williamson. Penguin, NY, 1987.
Jimmy MacBeath, Aberdeenshire

Jimmy
MacBeath
https://www.
youtube.com
/watch?v=x
U9qfvIfsZs
&list=RDxU
9qfvIfsZs&s
tart_radio=1
&t=0
Way of life behind our
stories, songs, folklore

• The Travelling people

• The Stewarts of
Blairgowrie:
• Belle, Alec, Sheila & Cathy
 With her mother, Belle, and father, Alec
Stewart
Sheila
Stewart sings Folklorists Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
‘The Mill of
Tifty’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiC5sCZg
WjM
Annie’
Betsy Whyte, Elizabeth Stewart, Duncan
Williamson (traveller tradition-bearers)
Elizabeth Stewart
from Aberdeenshire
with students from
the RCS, 2015

A ceilidh in Margaret Bennett’s house, Ochtertyre, Perthshire.

Folklorist Hamish Henderson with the Stewart family in
Sutherland (1950s) Note the tin pails by the tent.
The local minister baptizing
the new baby at a
traveller encampment near
Comrie, Perthshire.
(c. 1930)
Further reading:
NEAT, Timothy (1996) The Summer Walkers: Travelling People and
Pearl-Fishers in the Highlands of Scotland, (Edinburgh)
WILLIAMSON, Duncan (1983) Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children
(Edinburgh)
WHYTE, Betsy (1986). Red Rowans and Wild Honey (Edinburgh)
DOUGLAS, Sheila (. ) The Last of the Tinsmiths: The Life of Willie
MacPhee (Edinburgh)