Orkney Folk Tales Read online

  The following Sunday the winds dropped and the people could once again go about as normal. Then a stranger arrived at a house near to the Black Craig, much to the surprise of the owners. He said that his name was Charlie and that he was from the ship that had been wrecked four days previously. The people could hardly believe that anyone could have survived that wreck, let along stay alive for days. He then told them of his miraculous escape. At the foot of the Black Craig there is a large sea cave, carved deep into the rock by the pounding of the Atlantic waves. When the ship was smashed by the wave he was washed into this cave. Normally he would have been killed by the force of the waves entering the cave, but luckily part of the broken hull of the ship was driven against the mouth of the cave and this acted as a breakwater. He found that there was a raised beach at the back of the cave where he could get away from the sea. He was also lucky enough to find a barrel of ship’s biscuits and some salted fish that had washed inside the cave as well, so he had some food. He also had a supply of fresh water as it trickled through the fissures in the rock in the roof of the cave. He settled down and waited until the storm finally died down and he could try to escape. Once it had done so he tried to leave the cave, but found that the only way out was to climb up the high cliffs of the Black Craig, which he managed to do and reached the top. He then headed for the first house he saw and safety. To this day the spectacular cave at the foot of the Black Craig is called ‘Charlie’s Hole’.

  THE WRECK OF THE PENNSYLVANIA

  The SS Pennsylvania was wrecked on the island of Swona on Monday, 27 July 1931. The ship was sailing from New York to Copenhagen with a rich cargo, including large quantities of cigarettes, typewriters and even Cadillac cars. It had encountered fog not long after leaving port and remained shrouded by it all the way across the Atlantic. The captain had been on the bridge for ninety-three hours without sleep before his ship struck the rocks. At first he refused the assistance of the Longhope lifeboat, but after a day the crew were forced to take to the ship’s boats and abandon her. At that time it was seen as no crime to take what you could from a wreck before the sea claimed it. Many islanders were skilled at stripping wrecks, but the real professionals were the men of Stroma; the island that lies in the middle of the Pentland Firth and is part of the county of Caithness. It was said that the Stroma men could smell a wreck. The John o’ Groats men also had a reputation for being great ‘wreckers’ too. No one lured ships onto rocks (which is the stuff of fiction), but if a ship struck then they were not slow to help themselves.

  The Pennsylvania remained above the water for a week before its back was broken and it disappeared under the waves forever. The customs officers were keen to get aboard the ship and make an inventory of the cargo, but legend has it that the local boat owners were as keen to prevent them from doing so. Many excuses were found that prevented them from taking the officials to the wreck and they were left on the shore, watching the wreck like hawks.

  One night, under the cover of the summer twilight, a boat from South Ronaldsay set off for the wreck. The men on board couldn’t show a light, as this would alert the customs officers to their illegal salvage expedition. The ship, by this time, was not in good shape and the men knew that she could break up at any moment and so speed was necessary if they wanted to win their prize and escape with their lives. They boarded the ship and headed to the hold where they grabbed the first two boxes that they could get their hands on without stopping to see what they contained. Hurriedly, they got the boxes into their boat and set off back to the shore with them. The boxes were then transferred to a hiding place where they could be opened and the contents shared out between the hopeful men. Imagine their shock and disappointment when they saw what was inside the boxes; the very same boxes that they had risked their lives to obtain. One box contained shrouds for dead bodies and the other contained condoms! One old South Ronaldsay man told me the fate of the condoms, ‘The bairns used them for balloons,’ he said, with a mischievous chuckle.

  FATED TO DROWN

  The following story was written by the Reverend James Wallace, minister of St Magnus Cathedral, and published in 1693 after his death. This gives you an idea of the age of the tale.

  There was a man by the name of John Smith who lived on the island of Stronsay. He and three neighbours used to rise at dawn and take a small boat out fishing around the island waters. After they had been going to the sea for several days on end, and had a good supply of fish, John Smith’s wife asked him not to go out the following day, as he was worn out and needed to rest. He said that he couldn’t let his neighbours down and that he would have to go. She wasn’t happy about this and decided to take matters into her own hands. That night, as her husband slept, she covered up what windows they had in their house and stopped up any holes that let in light until the room was as dark as pitch. He remained asleep, exhausted by the work that he had been doing. Having done this his wife went out to work in the fields, happy in the knowledge that her husband would get a well-deserved rest.

  The neighbours gathered together by the boat and got it ready to go fishing. John Smith didn’t turn up, so they left without him and set sail to go to their fishing grounds. No one knows what happened that day, but their boat capsized and all the men were drowned. News soon reached home that the boat was lost and the men’s lives were ended. Mrs Smith heard the sorry news as she worked in the fields. She was shocked and saddened by the event, but within her heart she was also glad that she had saved her husband’s life by preventing him from going to the fishing that day. She ran home to tell him the news, but on entering their home she made a terrible discovery, for her husband lay dead on the floor. He had got up in the total darkness of the room and had tripped up, falling with his head inside the ‘strang tub’ where they collected urine that was used for shrinking homemade cloth. It was his doom to drown that day and no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape your own fate!

  ARCHIE ANGEL

  One stormy day in the early 1730s a woman of Seaquoy at Aikerness in Westray, whose surname was Rendall, sat by her fire spinning wool as the wind howled around the house like an animal in torment. Suddenly the door opened and her husband came in, saying, ‘There’s a big three-masted ship heading towards the rocks at the Arches of Rammigeo. I’m going next door to get Jock of Wheelingstanes to see if we can help the men on board.’

  ‘Well, take care,’ said his wife, ‘for it’s not a night to be out in that weather.’

  He assured her that he would be all right and left the house as his wife muttered a silent prayer for the lives of those on board the doomed ship.

  When the two men reached the shore there were already many men gathered there, watching the ship as it drew nearer. Its sails were torn and it was utterly helpless at the mercy of the wind and the tide. On board the crew where running around in a panic, trying desperately to save their ship and their own lives. Among them was a woman; no one knows who she was although some thought that she might have been the captain’s wife. The woman had a child, a little boy, no more than a toddler. She wrapped her shawl around him and tied him close to her breast. Just before the ship struck the rocks she leapt overboard, clutching her son tightly as she entered the wild, raging sea. At that moment the ship struck the rocks and the bottom was torn out of it. The ship quickly went to pieces, too far from the shore for anyone to help the unfortunate crew. Seeing that there was nothing that they could do the men returned to their homes for the night.

  The next morning, as soon as it was light, the men returned to the shore to see what they could salvage from the wreck. In a treeless island like Westray wood was a valuable commodity and nothing was wasted. One man’s misfortune was good luck to another and a rich bounty from the sea could be the difference between life and death for an old person or a sickly child during a hard winter. The men gathered up pieces of timber, ropes, sail cloth, barrels and whatever cargo the ship was carrying that had washed ashore. Every now and then they would come across a body lying
on the shore and they would drag it up to the land to receive a decent burial later. As the Rendall man of Seaquoy walked along the beach he came across the body of a woman lying dead. He looked at her with sadness and thought to himself, ‘It’s a terrible thing, the sea.’

  Then he saw that the woman had a small child tied to her and a lump came to his throat at the sight of this tragedy. He then noticed that the child made a slight movement and gave a little cry; it was alive! He untied the child from his dead mother and ran home with him to his wife. She stripped the boy and dried him, wrapping him in blankets by the fire and warmed some milk to give him. If the boy could speak any words at all then it was nothing that the folk of Westray understood. He soon grew in strength and recovered totally from his ordeal. He remained with the Rendall family at Seaquoy and was brought up as one of their own.

  No one knew anything about the ship that was lost; the only clue was a piece of wood with writing on it, which the man of Seaquoy had found. He couldn’t read, so he took it to the minister who looked at it and said, ‘It says “Archangel”. It must be the ship’s port of registration which means that it was a Russian ship.’

  So the child who was saved from the sea was given the name of Archie Angel. He grew up to be a fine, strong man. In time he married and started a family, so there were Angels in Westray for around 150 years, before the name finally died out.

  That is usually where the story ends, but my mother had a bit more of the story to add from her own family. My grandfather, Geordie Drever, was a schoolboy at the Skelwick School in Westray in the 1890s, when this story took place. He was in the same class as a boy called Henry Mason, whose mother was Mary Angel, the last person to bear that surname. My mother described her as, ‘A coorse set buddy.’51

  I always pictured her as looking like Boris Yeltsin in a headscarf and pinny.

  At that time there was a head teacher at the Skelwick School who was a strict disciplinarian. No one got off with anything and if one pupil did something that annoyed him then the whole class were kept back to do extra work. It’s called ‘detention’ these days, I believe. One day the whole class was kept behind for some misdemeanour and were scraping away on their slates, doing sums, when they could hear a ‘mutter, mutter, mutter’, coming up the kloss.52 The door opened and in came Mary Angel, who said, ‘Where’s me boy?’

  The teacher replied, ‘He has been kept back as a punishment.’

  ‘Well, his tea’s ready,’ replied Mary.

  She went to get her son, but the teacher made an awful mistake, for anyone knows that it is a dangerous thing to get between a wild animal and their young. The teacher stepped in front of her, but she raised her fist and punched him and he fell to the floor in a heap. But this wasn’t enough for Mary and she took the teacher by the scruff of the neck and beat his head on the ground until he was unconscious, then took her boy and went home.

  The children were horrified.

  ‘Mary Angel’s killed the teacher! What kind of a detention will we get for that?’

  They had visions of being old men with beards flowing to the ground, still sitting at their desks doing long division. Then one of the braver boys splashed some water on the teacher’s face and his eyes flickered open.

  ‘Get me a glass of water,’ he said, in a faint voice.

  The water was brought to him and he took a sip before saying, ‘Class dismissed.’

  They didn’t need a second telling; they were out like a shot.

  After that Mary Angel became a great hero among the children of the Skelwick School because from that day onward the teacher never again kept them behind in detention.

  And so, dear reader, my book of tales has come to an end and I can say to you, ‘Class dismissed!’

  NOTES AND

  EXPLANATIONS

  1 Boy, you had better watch out that you don’t catch the mother.

  2 New Year’s Eve.

  3 Picts Houses.

  4 Peedie means small in the Orkney dialect.

  5 A cog is a drinking vessel made like half a barrel and is still used in Orkney weddings.

  6 Pronounced Din-gis-how-ee.

  7 Butter churn.

  8 Moving house in attempted secrecy.

  9 Karl Blind (1826–1907) was a German-born revolutionary, journalist and folklorist who took an interest in Shetland.

  10 I am the queen of the sea, and Mermaid’s my name,

  To show my fair body I do not think [a] shame,

  No clothes defile my skin, no dress will I wear,

  But the lovely bunches of my bonnie, bonnie hair.

  11 Idiot.

  12 Great Northern Diver.

  13 Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights.

  14 A small wooden stool.

  15 Boat shelter cut into the shoreline

  16 A shoe made of untanned hide, like a moccasin.

  17 Cry.

  18 Ask.

  19 Witch.

  20 A wooden chest where the ‘meal’ or flour was kept, packed tight to stop it from going mouldy.

  21 A basket of woven straw worn on the back like a backpack, held in place by a band around the chest.

  22 Kelp stems.

  23 A mildly insulting term for a young woman.

  24 Little.

  25 A term of endearment, usually used on a child.

  26 Screaming; screeching.

  27 Chest.

  28 It was a ‘but and ben’ house; the cooking and living area was the ‘but’ end and the bedroom was in the ben end.

  29 Spring tide.

  30 A geo is a ravine, a narrow cut into the coastline.

  31 Reefs; submerged rocks.

  32 The ‘Clay Loan’ in Kirkwall was the site of the gallows, on the high ground to the east of St Magnus Cathedral. In the seventeenth century the only house here on this road leading to the East Mainland was the Gallows Ha’ (Hall), where the hangman lived, so the gallows (when built for an execution) would be clearly visible.

  33 Strangled; garrotted with a piece of rope that was twisted tight by the hangman.

  34 A small wooden vessel with one handle used to scoop water out of a bucket.

  35 A term used to indicate a woman who had broken her oath of fidelity to a man.

  36 A corruption of Vanderdecken, the captain of the phantom ship, the Flying Dutchman.

  37 A number of Bronze Age barrows that lie near the shore.

  38 A ‘tusker’ is an implement for cutting peats, while bister is a corruption of bolstadir, the Old Norse word for a farm. So, ‘peat spade farm’ could be the meaning of this name.

  39 Farm or estate manager.

  40 Free Church minister for Cross and Burness, Sanday, from 1860–1903.

  41 The term ‘bitch’ was commonly used in Orkney as an insult and could be applied to men, women, animals or inanimate objects. Strangely, the name for a female dog was a ‘bikk’, or ‘bikko’ and was not associated with the word ‘bitch’.

  42 St Magnus.

  43 Muckle = big. Whalp = a young dog; whelp.

  44 A number of social-climbing Orcadians adopted a fake English accent to try and sound ‘superior’ – this was known locally as ‘chanting’ (speaking with English pronunciation). However, the veneer would often slip when they lost their temper, as is the case in this story.

  45 A local law enforcer; a cross between a policeman, bailiff and sheriff officer.

  46 ‘You can hold and I’ll draw, until the cock of Grindley does crow.’

  47 Get away with you, bare arse.

  48 Chest.

  49 Forespoken water was made by boiling water that contained stones from the shore, land and kirkyard while incantations are chanted over it.

  50 Norwegian term for earl.

  51 ‘A course set body’, i.e. a large, overbearing person.

  52 A passage between buildings.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Almqvist, Bo, ‘Some Orkney Traditions about Unbaptised Children’, Béaloideas, the Journal of the Folklore of Irela
nd Society, Vol. 66 (Dublin: The Folklore of Ireland Society, 1998).

  Ben, Jo, A Description of the Orchadian Islands (1529), Margaret Hunter (trans., 1987).

  Black, G.F., County Folk-Lore Vol III, Orkney & Shetland Islands (London: Folk-Lore Society, 1903).

  Bremner, John, Hoy, the Dark Enchanted Isle (Kirkwall: Bellavista Publications, 1997).

  Bruford, Alan (ed.), The Green Man of Knowledge and other Scots Traditional Tales (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1982).

  Bruford, A.J. and MacDonald, D.A. (ed.), Scottish Traditional Tales (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1994).

  Crossley-Holland, Kevin, Folk-Tales of the British Isles (London: The Folio Society, 2007).

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  Dennison, Walter Traill, Orkney Folklore & Sea Legends (Kirkwall: The Orkney Press Ltd, 1995).

  Douglas, Sir George (ed.), Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales (London: Walter Scott Ltd, 1893).

  Fergusson, R. Menzies, Rambles in the Far North (London: Alex Gardner, 1884).

  Firth, Howie, Tales of Long Ago (Kirkwall: BBC Radio Orkney, 1986).

  Gorrie, Daniel, Summers and Winters in the Orkneys (Kirkwall: William Peace).

  Gunn, John (ed.), The Orkney Book (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1906).

  Mackintosh, W.R., Around the Orkney Peat-Fires (Kirkwall: The Orcadian, 1957).

  Marwick, Ernest W., An Anthology of Orkney Verse (Kirkwall: W.R. Mackintosh, 1949).

  Marwick, Ernest W., The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1975).

  Marwick, Ernest W., An Orkney Anthology Vol I (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1991).

  Marwick, George, George Marwick, the Collected Works of Yesnaby’s Master Storyteller (Kirkwall: The Orcadian Ltd, forthcoming).