If you are truly interested in Scotland’s vast trove of Folklore, you have a very long path of learning stretching before you. It goes without saying that a kingdom so ancient, gathered out of many peoples , all inhabiting a land which varies in topography in sudden ,unexpected changes, would naturally have such an abundance of lore that a lifetime would be required to just scratch the surface of such a body of information. What, after all, is meant by the very term "folklore’? Is it the view that the folk have of their history…or their everyday games, gossip, ways of approaching ordinary tasks ? Does it have anything to do with their fears, or their religious outlooks,….or the mountains around them, the lochs and the sea, and all of the beasts of the forest and the creatures of the deep ? It is, of course all of these things…and more. There is probably more "folklore" in one Scottish glen than in an entire shire or county of England. It differs in Scotland, from the Highlands where much of the old beliefs come out of the more Gaelic culture, to the Borders where the lives of people have been hammered out on the anvil of constant interference from England. Some of the greatest stories come out of the North east too, but then again, we cannot forget the land of Robert Burns…or the Lothians whose people were always in the thick of it all through constant change, noble plots and Royal disasters.Yet, Scotland has some lore which is common to all Scots, in every corner of the land. It might be a good idea to start with some of the stories and customs unite all of the people.
Let’s start with New Year’s Eve, since it is the beginning of the year. It is called Hogmannay in Scotland and is really the end of several days of celebration. Were you fortunate enough as to have a dark man to be the first person to step foot in your house after the beginning of the New Year? Custom has it that to ensure a good, trouble-free year, the " first footer" should be a dark man who comes to your door with fuel for your fire. He has the right to a "New Year’s gift", which is most often a dram of good whisky. Among Highland families it is also very often customary to take a piece of burning peat or wood from the fire on the tongs and circle the heads of the married or pregnant women in the house. The circling must be done clockwise or " a deisail" , for to go in the reverse direction would serve as a malediction rather than a blessing. In fact, just to be on the safe side, you would be well advised to do everything in the ‘sunwise’ direction when among Gaels who still hold to old beliefs, for this direction is thought to be in harmony with the earth. As we move into January, we must not forget that the 25th is the Birthday of Scotland’s beloved poet and Bard," Rabbie" Burns. Throughout the world, Scots foregather to have a "Burns Supper, try to have a Haggis on hand, which is usually led into the room by a bagpiper, then "saluted" by the recitation of Burns’ Salute to the Haggis. Haggis is the most joked about food in the world, the initiation of such jokes having come from the English. Actually, it is really quite good. The ingredients may sound to be a bit suspect, but there again, the Saxon has not much room for criticism when one takes a close look at English fare. Haggis consists of chopped sheep liver and lights, onion, oats, salt and pepper. There is also a "Haggis Royal", wherein sheep liver has been substituted by deer liver or heart.
February begins with the feastday of St. Bridget …or " Bride" (pron. "BREEjja") among the Folk of the Highlands and the Western Isles, beginning after sundown on the 31st of January, which is to say the beginning of February. The old Celts saw the going down of the sun as the end of one day and the beginning of the next, To them it would have seemed ludicrous to begin a new day in the midst of darkness,…’midnight’. Now, this is a day which signals the first turning of earthly things towards springtime : the ewes begin to lactate towards the lambing season, the seeds and roots deep below the snow or frost begin to waken just a bit, and the king of the serpents is thought to come out of hibernation long enough to take a look at the day . This day will foretell whether or not spring will be early or late, and what the weather will be like for the following six weeks. Bride is the patroness of cattle and milkmaids, of women in labor ,and also of poets and travelers. Even among transplanted Scots in North America, it is regarded as a terrible mistake to shoot a white deer, for these are "Bride’s cattle" and she protects them. People used to put a twig of Rowan( mountain ash) in the bottom of a bucket prior to milking the cows as a means of keeping the faeries from the milk, and also they would invoke at that time Bride’s blessing. A poet should walk with a hazel staff , also in memory of Bride, for hazel is the wood of poets, bards and holy people. The stories of Bride are enough to fill several books. The period from the feastday of Bride to the 1st of May is called the spring season by ancient reckoning. It is the season of the element of air and has as its symbol the parting sword.
Throughout the Celtic world, May 1st or May Day is regarded as a great day of summer’s beginning. Starting on the eve of April 31st. the rites would begin. Many is the minister or priest who would lock himself in his study against the "pagan" rites of his nominally "Christian" congregation ! It was celebrated in different ways. In some parts of the country young girls would find a secret place where they could roll their nude bodies in the morning dew at first light…for luck, for beauty, fertility or whatever. The young males would, naturally try to discover this secret location. The young men would leap over bon-fires, and cattle would be driven between fires which had been lit, for this was also a fire festival, …the ancient " Belteine ". It is interesting to note that in the Celtic lands, many aspects of a pre-Christian religion have remained, for in these lands, the old religions were not replaced by the new, but rather we find that Christianity was simply grafted onto the pagan tree already flourishing in such places. Belteine marks the beginning of the summer season, the element of which is fire, and the symbol of which is the spear emanating from a mouth in a face of brass…or so it was said to have been. The summer season was from Belteine to Lughnassa, or the first of August. Of course, throughout the summer season there were blessings of seed, of land and as the sheep were shorn , the wool would be washed and carded ,spun and dyed by the women. The weaving often waited until after the harvest season. In the Lowlands young men would sign on with farmers to act as ploughmen or field workers and there would be "feeing" , something of a way in which farmers recruited workers and where deals were struck for the season’s employment. There would often be contests and in the days of this writer’s great-grandparents, when men were still cutting or "cradling" cereal crops by hand, the owner of the field might put a small cask of whisky at the end of the field, which would go to that worker whose swathes were neatest and who got to the end of his field the first. Many of the games which we see at the Scottish Gatherings are derived from such competition. The "sheaf toss" or the throwing of the heavy stone obviously were the products of men making a game of hard, tiring work…just as the Caber Toss probably had its beginning in the timber industry. The summer season was filled with both work and play. In the Highlands the young folk would take the cattle and sheep up to the high summer pastures, called "shielings" and would see to the duties of milking the cattle, making butter and cheese while there. Some of the most beautiful love songs in the Gaelic language have come out of this time when young people felt the stirrings of love within themselves while attending to the cold reality of birthing among their stock and attending to the needs of the animals. Churning butter can be a long process and so much depends upon the temperature of the cream, the freshness of it and all, yet there is something magical about the process too. Songs were used for churning, for milking the cows and for just about everything. The girls usually did the milking. Anyone who has ever kept dairy cows will tell you that a woman can coax more milk from a cow than any man could ever do. There may be a bit more to this than "superstition"!
September 29th is St. Michael’s Day, or ‘ Michaelmas’. The Highlander has mixed feelings about Michael,’ ArchAngel, God’s "over-seer and representative. Michael is the angel who meets the soul of the man or woman who has crossed over and into the "light of another time" The Highland folk would make a circuit around the land (sun-wise, to be sure!). Often the procession would be led by someone riding on a white horse. There are severalof the hymns or invocations regarding Michael( as there are for Bride) to be found in the Carmina Gadellica, a compilation of hymns, chants, prayers and invocations, which were gathered from the ordinary folk of the Highlands and Islands by Alexander Carmichael in the late 19th century. A special Bannock, or bread, was made on the eve of Michaelmas which was broken the next day and a silver coin hidden in it for the lucky child to find. In his portion. Above everything else, St. Michael’s Day was a harvest festival, rather like our Thanksgiving in the U.S. The Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving on the 14th of October, about two weeks after Michaelmas, which is really much closer to the time of harvest than is our late November date. Anyway, Lughnassa, around the 1st of August, marks the beginning of the Autumn season by the old reckoning. This was as well as a time of Harvest the time of the year for competitions and for that reason, most of the Highland Games and gatherings took place in August in the old days. Lugh the Long Handed had been an ancient Celtic warrior figure and it was fitting to have feats of war a nd competitions at that time. There was always a great amount of horse-racing on Michaelmas( both the Roman Catholic Church and the successor Kirk of Scotland did a great deal in the way of preaching from the pulpit in regard to the wanton behavior, the drinking and gambling which attended the races!) But Lughnassa signaled the time for the Piping competitions, the Dancing , Singing and Wrestling Competitions, The other games of individual strength and endurance, and the group efforts such as team sports and" tug o’war" between groups. Lughnassa up to Samhuinn [SAH veen] (Hallowe’en) was reckoned to be the Autumnal season. Its element is water, and its symbol is the cauldon. It has reference time and again to the mythical "Land Under Waves" in Celtic lore.
Hallowe’en has always been that "spookiest" of all times of the year….and for good reason ! Anciently, this was the day that marked the going down of the sun of the "light half" of the year. It was the beginning of the winter season, the "dark half. More importantly, it was a short period of a few days when it would be possible for someone to "drop through " the crack in time and find himself in the "inner" world, the realm of faeries, the ancestors and other-worldly folk….and..it was a time when beings of the inner world could enter into the realm of the "outer" world, our world. Just to be on the ‘safe’ side, there are several precautions which might be taken. It might be prudent to assume a disguise, change your appearance in some way. It would be very wise indeed to leave a saucer of milk outside the house for the ‘little people’, ‘the gentry’, ‘themselves’. It would be a good idea to give something to anyone who comes to the door, not knowing for sure who or what it might be! Any fruit on trees which have not been gathered must be left, for there will be a ‘puca’ on any such fruit. The light half of the year is left to the work of men and women, but the ‘dark’ half of the year belongs to the deer, the beasts of the field; to ravens and owls and such .Nothing should be swept out or thrown out of a human habitation, for to do so is to show a lack of respect for the creatures of the out-of-doors, and especially the "wee folk". It goes without saying however , that if you are to throw water as from a pan or tea-pot out onto the ground, at any time of year , it is wise to give warning by saying "Look out !", or "air ais ! ", for the wee folk do not like to be doused with water and may find a way to get back at you in some way. A bit more will be said about the "people" later on in this writing.We will first finish with the flow of the year. Returning to "Samhuinn" or Hallow e’en , there are acouple more things which might be mentioned. Just as there is a fire at Belteine to mark the beginning of the "light" half of the year, so is Samhuinn also a Fire festival. Bonfires were and often still are lighted and there is an old custom among folk in some parts of Scotland wherein each person places a stone in the place where the fire will be , prior to lighting it. After the fire has cooled down to smoldering embers, the stones are raked out and are then examined carefully for the shapes and lines which have been left due to scorching. These are "read" for suggestions of what the coming year may hold for the individual who placed that particular stone. Many a teen-ager has given him/her self a good fright by taking a candle into an upper room in the house, and with nothing but the candle to give light, he or she stares into the eyes of the reflected face until the face seems to momentarily vanish, and is replaced(for only a fraction of a second) by another face , this one being the face of a future wife or husband. This is not recommended, but if it is to be done, it must be accomplished as close to midnight as possible, and not a minute after midnight !
November 11th…and sometimes now celebrated on the 15th, is the Feastday of St. Martin of Tours. Often called " Martinmas" there is often mention made of this time of year by that name in many of the old Scots ballads. It is the time when the wives would begin to make the cakes for the season of joy which is just weeks away. November 30th is St. Andrew’s Day , and because St. Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland, the occasion is often marked by a tartan ball or a "ceilidh" (KAY’lee), which is the name given to a gathering of people for the purpose of singing, dancing, telling stories and just having a good time together. It is interesting to note that more attention seems to be given to St. Andrew’s Day by ‘transplanted Scots’ in North America than in Scotland itself. We then move on to December 6th..St Nicolas Day, which is the beginning of the season of the Christmas and Hogmannay season. The 21st is of course, the time of the winter solstice, the longest night and the shortest day of the year. Remember that in Scotland ,positioned as she is so close to the Arctic Circle, this is a very long night indeed, and a very short day ! This was traditionally called "Midwinter".; a very good time to have plenty of fuel and to enjoy the company of others.
Throughout the year, from day to day there is so much else in Scottish lore. There are the great legends about the Wallace, Scotland’s great national hero, and possibly the first man in the western world to conceive of a nation of free men and women, and who fought ‘hammer and tong’ to drive the English back, insisting always on Scotland’s right to be a sovereign nation in her own right. We have King Robert the Bruce, who having been inspired by Wallace, defeated the English at Bannockburn and sent them homeward, "to think again"! There are the legends of such really colorful individuals such as Johnnie Armstrong, the Black Douglas, "Bonnie Dundee", RobRoy MacGregor( whose wife Mairi [also called Helen] was as proficient with firearms as was the great hero and scoundrel himself). The tragedy of the Stewarts, whether MaryQueen of Scots or "Bonnie Prince Charlie", Alexander V , or James II,...all have fueled Scottish legend and song. There are the great events too, which in most countries would have been consigned to the dry and brittle pages of chronicles and histories, that so often form the basis for the stories told and the ballads sung….not by the great bards alone, but by folk from all walks of life. And what stories they are! Even Scotland’s proud banner, the blue flag with the white saltire is the story of a miracle as it waves, for in the skies above Fife, a Pictish king saw a great white "cross of St. Andrew shortly after the saint’s relics had been brought to Scotland for safe keeping. The king was preparing to drive back invaders and his chances of success looked very slim indeed. Yet, he prayed and promised to give a home to the new religion and the saint’s relics in exchange for victory. He won his battle and Scotland won her flag,quite possibly the Western world’s most ancient national banner. Scotland’s national flower, the thistle, is honored because it saved the nation when, as invaders sought to sneak up and surprise the exhausted Scottish army, one of them plunged into a pit which had been filled with thistles. His loud cry of pain and surprise saved that night for Scotland. So much of Scotland’s history has hinged upon the unexpected, last minute occurrence….such as the mysterious knights who suddenly appeared to help the Bruce at Bannockburn. Were they the Templars who had recently been driven out of France and England? There is plenty of reason to believe that they were indeed those warrior monks. And what of the legends that surround Rosslyn Chapel and the Sinclairs ?
North of the Highland line there are many stories about truly ancient heroes such as Finn MacCumhail, for although he was a Gael of Eireann (Ireland), he hunted on that Isle known as "Arran of the Stags" and it is said that there is more told about him in the Highlands of Scotland than in all of Ireland. The Book of the Dean of Lismore has many great stories abot him. Remember that the great hero Cuchulainn was give his battle training on the Isle of Skye, and Deirdre of the Sorrows ,while swiftly moving from place to place with her husband Naoise and his two brothers, has left beautiful descriptions of Glen Etive and many other of Scotland’s beautiful places. There are the stories of the great clan feuds, cattle raids and the clan heroes: "Great Duncan of the Axe", Donald Ghorm of Sleat, Rory Mor MacLeod, and every clan has a vast store of such tales.
Scotland abounds with standing stones, High Crosses, Stone Circles, Holy wells, ancient Castles…all with their stories and local superstitions. Many of the Holy Wells were made or found by the early Celtic saints , and the stories and legends connected with these very earnest, yet not totally unworldly, likeable religious folk are often as heart-warming as they are amusing. It was St. Colmcille (Columba) who first encountered the Loch Ness monster, after all…and who faced the beast down with a sign of the cross. The great Sennachie(story teller) of the West Highlands, Duncan Matheson of Camas Luine in Kintail, still tells the story of two Celtic Saints: Fillan and Cowan ,who had a dispute over their cows. After one cow ended a stand-off between the two beasts over which was to procede on a narrow trail after they had come head to head…by throwing the other over sideways into the loch, the two holy men cursed each other’s establishments….and the curses seem to have held to this day. Kintail is the place for stories and legends through and through. There was a very special holy well at Kilillan, founded by St. Fillan ,which was a place of much visitation. The well dried up several years ago because, the locals say, a Tinker woman washed out a baby napkin in its holy water.
There are always the stories of ghosts and of Faeries who walk the earth in human form, ; of "shape-shifting"(such as the Lowland ballad of Tam Linn, which gives excellent instruction in a step-by-step description of how a woman may win back a man from the Faery Queen) or the Highland equivalents of such tales. There are stories of "kelpies" or their highland cousin the Each Uisge (a beautiful horse grazing in a field near a body of water, which once an unlucky person has climbed onto its back, will head for the water and drown the rider). There are stories of "changelings"( Faerie children who have been left in the place of mortal children), who can be driven out if forced to finger the chanter of a bagpipe or by tying a red cord around their chests. We are told to beware of the "washer of the ford’, the woman seen washing cloth in a stream, for if a warrior comes upon her, he must realize that it is his shroud that she is washing, a portent of disaster. Among Highlanders there is the Glastaig, a sorrowful solitary Faery who can, after all, be won over, and even the Gean Cainnach (the "love talker" who takes the shape of a very handsome young man ,who will approach a girl who is alone at some task. He will win her absolute adoration, and will end by having her look into another world (often through the hole in a stone) that is beyond anything that she could ever have imagined in its beauty and perfection, and after a few such visits, the girl will be left to simply pine away for the loss of that wonderful world that she will never know in this life. Mind you, a very wise old woman said that not all girls were so silly as to pine away, and that as a result of the "Love-talker", a canny lassie would go on to make something of herself , having vowed never to settle for a dreary life….and that it sometimes took a young man, mortal or other-worldly, to shake a girl to her senses! In this, that very wonderful old lady reveals something about the Celtic mind-set, for in no other folk-lore do we see, again and again, the inter-dependence between the two sexes. In "Tam Linn" the young man is incapable of freeing himself from the Faery Queen. Only "Fair Janet" can do that…but her love must be strong enough and he has to supply the information; the correct procedure. In countless Gaelic stories, a young woman is imprisoned in some way and only the young man who loves her can save her, but there again: she gives him the details that he will need to accomplish the emancipation. Unlike the Teutonic myths and legends wherein some golden hero is the rescuer of some completely helpless damsel in distress, Celtic stories seem always to reflect this idea that the two sexes are not "opposite" at all, but totally "complementary" to one another; that each fills the voids in the other( a pretty great philosophy of life, when you really stop to think about it!).
Before ending this writing and going on to the suggested reading, URL’s and such, something should be said about the "Selkies", or "Seal People". The folk of the Shetland and the Orkney Islands have many tales of these beings who are seals in the sea, but who can sometimes shed their seal-skins and become as other men and women. There are tales of the Selkies in the Western Isles as well, and even on the Scottish mainland. There were three brothers in the clan country of the Macraes who lived at Carr on Loch Duich, and they were said to have married selkie women. Two of the brothers hid their wives’ sealskins when they discovered that their wives were selkies, having found skins which the wives had tucked away. But the wives found the hiding places and disappeared into the sea waves , never to be seen again. The third brother found a wet seal-skin which his wife had failed to hide after one of her afternoon disappearances, and picking it up, he folded it and left it on a chest, saying to his wife that "someone" might have need of that skin from time to time. She stayed with him through the years and finally, in old age ,disappeared into the sea. She had given him a son, who would often swim out to the rocks and stay there through the night, and many of the fishermen would speak of the beautiful young male seal on the rocks on a moon-lit night. As the man came to his old age and could fish no more, his son always kept him in fish, and finally when the man died, the son was seen stripping down and plunging into the waves. There is a lesson in this. The Scottish mind respects sovereignty. A man must give his wife her freedom as she must allow him his own……and Scotland, having found her own ’skin’, will not long stand by those who tried to deprive her of her own identity .
www.grian.demon.co.uk (Books)
www.magicdragon.com/Wallace/lore.html
www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/folklore/scottishfolkapp.html
www.orchardsandvines.com/selkie.html
www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/selkiefolk/index.html
www.mindspring.com/~elixia/bizarre/tamlinn.html
Books:
Beyond the Highland Line………………Caroline Bingham
Sea-Road of the Saints………...John Marsden
People of the Sea……………David Thompson
Popular Tales of the West Highlands .J.F.Campbell
Tales of a Grandfather……………………Walter Scott
Legends of North East Scotland…………..Fenton Wyness
Along a Highland Road…………………...I.F.Grant
Heroic Poetry, Book of the Dean of Lismore…..Neil Ross
The Carmina Gadelica…………Alexander Carmichael
County Folklore,Orkney & Shetland………G.F.Black
The Winged Destiny.……………………Fionna MacLeod
FolkTales & Fairylore(English& Gaelic.…James MacDougall
Burt’s Letters from the North of Scotland,..
J. Donald Publishers, Edinburgh
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