Tales from the Tent Read Free Page A

peel and a
kettle to boil.
    The night settled itself around the campfire, which began to be crowded with lads and lassies whirling up a ceilidh. Some sang the old ballads, while others played an instrument. We were graced
with a blaw from Mammy on her mouthie before she gave everyone a toe-tapper on her Jew’s harp. She could fair make that wee piece of metal curl and twang between her lips, could my Mam! I
told a ghost story or two, which saw old biddies pull collars tighter round their necks. Such were the horrors that fell wordily from my mouth, even I found it hard to believe they were ‘made
up tales’ out of my head of many characters. At last Mammy scolded me for frightening the bairns, who’d scurried away to their beds. A tall lad from up north sang several Jacobite
songs, which went down very well with his captive audience. But, strange to say, this particular choice of song didn’t stir a single clap from my pal Mac. Later, when everyone had bedded down
for the night, I asked him if he had had a ‘whine’ with the singer.
    ‘Not at all, lass, it was those Bonnie Prince Charlie stories that I canna feel much for,’ he answered.
    ‘I love to hear them’, I told him. ‘It makes me feel all fuzzy inside to think he might have been our last king.’ I then proudly added, ‘what about our ancestors
who gave their lives and their lands for freedom’s sword?’
    ‘Huh, what rubbish, that word freedom is as Scottish as haggis!’
    I looked on in bewilderment while he ranted on about how, after Culloden, all our hardy beef was scoured out of the land and we were forced to live off mutton because that was all there was. If
our English neighbours hadn’t felt pity on our starving bairns and showed us how to survive the winters by eating sheep offal in its stomach, then a hell of a lot of us would have perished.
‘Why do you think Robert Burns wrote a poem to the haggis? Because it fed the poor, that’s why!’
    Those words left my imagination in overdrive, but I hadn’t enough insight to understand what they meant, so I prodded Mac to say some more. But he would go no further and told me to find
out for myself.
    He fell silent for a while before going into Portsoy’s caravan (who, by the way, hadn’t arrived back from Perth). When inside he called to me through the open door, ‘Jessie, do
you want to hear another side to that historical episode of yon Stuart?’
    Now, anyone who knows me would swear to walk forever backwards if I didn’t want to hear stories about my Scotland, fictitious or otherwise. So in no time I was sitting with knees under my
chin, watching and waiting as Mac opened an old tattered suitcase he’d earlier slipped under Portsoy’s bed, and carefully removed a single jacket, a pair of trousers and three or four
odd socks, and put them on the caravan floor. Concealed at the bottom of the case he lifted out an old bulky journal that had seen better days, and laid it gently down. ‘This, lassie, is
tales told to me over the years by many, many traveller folks. You see, because of my beginnings I always felt drawn to the tent folks. You could say I was magnetically pulled into their midst by
an invisible force outwith my control. The ancient stories fascinated me, and thanks to my adopted parents I was schooled in reading and writing. Now, I dare say many of the tellers were reluctant
to see the spoken word go on paper, but it’s amazing what a wee dram and a few fags could do. However there were a damn sight more that would not be bought for love nor money. I had a fierce
arm chuck me into a grimy puddle many a time by those who believed in staying loyal and forbidding the writing down of the sacred tales. So a lot of the time I had to rely on memory. This story,
though, I did have the blessing of the teller to put through the pen. Do you want to hear it?’
    ‘Without a doubt.’
    ‘Then, Jess, listen and do it well, for there’s many who would spit in your eye