Orkney Folk Tales Page 2

  Teetgong stopped dead in his tracks, but Assipattle pulled out the goose’s thrapple from his pocket and blew through it.

  PAARP!

  As soon as Teetgong heard the sound that it made he pricked up his ears and shot over the horizon, like an arrow from a bow. The old man and his sons gave up and turned their horses towards home. Assipattle clung on to Teetgong, who was well named, as in Orkney a Teetgong is a sudden gust of wind, and this horse could run as fast as any wind.

  Eventually they came to a hill and down below them they saw a wide bay, and in that bay there was a big black island. However, it wasn’t an island; it was the Stoor Worm’s head. Assipattle rode down to the bay where he found a small house and went inside. There he saw an old woman lying asleep in her box bed with her grey cat curled up at her feet. The fire had been ‘rested’ for the night. In those days is was considered to be very bad luck to let your fire go out, as the luck of the house could go with it, so the fire was kept smouldering by putting damp peats on top of it. In the morning you just put some dry peats on top, gave it a puff with the bellows and away it would go. Assipattle took an iron pot from the side of the fire and he picked up a glowing peat with the fire tongs and put it into the pot and then ran outside.

  Down by the shore he saw the king’s boat with a guard standing in it and he was blue with cold.

  ‘Hello,’ said Assipattle, ‘what like?’

  ‘Cold!’ grumbled the guard.

  ‘Well, I’m just going to light a fire to boil some limpets for my breakfast; would you like to have a warm by my fire?’

  ‘Better not,’ said the guard, ‘I can’t leave my post or I’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘Better stay where you are then,’ said Assipattle and he started to dig a hole, like he was making a hearth to shelter his fire in. Suddenly he started to shout, ‘Gold! Gold! There’s gold here!’

  ‘Gold?’ said the guard. ‘Where?’

  The guard jumped out of the boat and ran over to where Assipattle was, pushed him out of the way and started to dig in the ground like a dog. Assipattle picked up the pot with the peat in it, jumped into the king’s boat, cast off the rope, hoisted the sail and was away across the bay before the guard knew what had happened. When he looked around he saw the king and his men arrive, just as the sun appeared over the horizon. As the first rays of the sun kissed the Stoor Worm’s eyes it started to wake up and it gave the first of its seven great yawns. Assipattle positioned the boat alongside the monster’s mouth so that when it yawned again the boat was carried into the Stoor Worm’s mouth with the water that rushed inside and he went right down the Stoor Worm’s throat. Down, down, deeper and deeper inside the Stoor Worm went Assipattle and the boat.

  Now, I don’t suppose that you are familiar with the internal plumbing of a stoor worm, so I had better explain. There was a large tunnel that ran right through the Stoor Worm, but here and there were smaller tunnels running off the big one and some of the water ran this way, some that way, until the water got shallower and shallower and the boat grounded. The inside of the monster glowed with a green, phosphorescent light, so Assipattle could easily see where he was going. He grabbed the pot with the peat in it and jumped out of the boat. Leaving the boat behind he ran and he better ran until he found what he was looking for; the Stoor Worm’s liver! Well, you know how much oil there is in a fish’s liver, so imagine the amount of oil in the Stoor Worm’s liver. It would be enough to solve our energy requirements forever. Assipattle took a knife from his belt with which he cut a hole in the Stoor Worm’s liver. Into the hole he put the burning peat and he blew and he better blew until the oil spluttered into flames and then he ran back to his boat.

  Meanwhile, back on the shore, the king was having a bad day. First he’d had to get up really early in order to fight the Stoor Worm and meet certain death (which would be enough to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day) and then he arrived just in time to see some idiot steal his boat, sail across the bay and get swallowed by the Stoor Worm. Oh great! It just doesn’t get any better than that, does it? As he stood by the shore, fuming with rage, one of his men said, ‘Eh, Your Majesty, I’ve never seen the Stoor Worm do that before.’

  ‘Do what?’ snapped the king, looking the other way.

  ‘Well, he’s kind of – he’s sort of – smoking.’

  ‘Smoking?’ shouted the king.

  ‘Aye, well, look!’

  And sure enough, when the king looked out over the bay he could see black smoke starting to billow out of the Stoor Worm’s nose and out of its mouth. Now, the Stoor Worm started to feel sick and it spewed up all the water that was inside of it, which headed towards the shore as a huge wave. The king and his men, the old woman from the cottage with her cat and all the horses ran up the hillside to safety as the wave drew nearer, with Assipattle in his boat riding the crest of it. The boat was cast up high and dry right by the side of the king.

  The thick, black smoke filled the sky and blocked out the sun, turning day into night. In its dying agony the Stoor Worm shot out its huge forked tongue so high that it caught hold of the moon. It would have pulled it from the sky, but the fork of its tongue slipped over the horn of the moon and it came back down to earth with a thundering crash, leaving a huge hole in the surface of the world. Water poured into the hole and it cut off the land of the Danes from Norway and Sweden. There it remains to this day as the Baltic Sea, and if you look at a map you can still see the great forks of the Stoor Worm’s tongue.

  The Stoor Worm’s days were finally over. It rose its head up out of the sea in dying agony and it came back down to earth with a crash, which knocked out a lot of its teeth. These teeth fell into the sea and there they remain as the Orkney Islands. The head rose again and crash! More teeth were knocked out and these became Shetland. A third time the head rose and fell with a crash and more teeth were knocked out to make the Faroe Islands. Then the Stoor Worm curled up into a great big lump and died, and there it still remains; only now we call it Iceland. The flames that you see shooting out of the mountains there and the boiling water gushing out of the ground is caused by the Stoor Worm’s liver, which is still burning.

  The king took Assipattle in his arms and called him his son. He strapped the sword Sikkersnapper to his side and said, ‘My boy, my kingdom is yours, as is my daughter, if she will have you.’

  The Princess Gem de Lovely came over and as soon as she saw Assipattle she fell in love with him, because he was actually a very handsome young man, under all the ashes. The two of them were soon married and they reigned over the kingdom for many years and if they are not dead, then they are living yet.

  You could well believe that story to be true if you have visited all the places created from the Stoor Worm’s teeth. Orkney must be its incisors, as the islands are fairly flat. Shetland is formed from its premolars, higher and rugged, while the mountainous Faroe Islands are its molars, huge islands rising sheer from the sea to jagged points.

  While Orkney is relatively flat it does have hills and even an island that is almost mountainous. Hoy, the ‘High Island’ of the Vikings, has round-topped hills that can be seen from many parts of Orkney. It lies to the south, like a rampart protecting the islands. There is a story of how the hills came into being.

  THE CAITHNESS GIANT

  There was once a giant who lived in Caithness and there was nothing that he liked better than his garden. Although the earth where he lived was not too bad he looked north to Orkney with envious eyes. There he saw the green and fertile islands lying like emeralds in the sea and he coveted the dark, rich soil that lay there. One day he slung a straw basket on his back, took his staff in his hand, and waded across the Pentland Firth towards Orkney. He was so big that the water hardly came up to his knees. He stopped when he found a likely looking spot and he slung the straw basket onto the ground. With one of his huge hands he took a scoop of earth and dumped it into the basket, then with his other huge hand he took another huge scoop of earth and dumped
it into the basket, filling it to the brim. He had left two great holes where he had taken the earth from and water ran into them, creating the Stenness and Harray Lochs. He slung the basket on his back and started on his journey home. As he went a huge lump of turf fell into the sea with a great splash, and there it remains to this day as the island of Graemsay. He had not got much further when suddenly, disaster struck! The straw rope that held his basket in place broke, spilling all his earth on the ground. The giant was so annoyed that he left it where it was and returned home, and there it remains as the Hills of Hoy.

  In a slightly rude combination of the two stories already related, an old Orkney woman once remembered the story that she had heard as a child in the early twentieth century. A giant went to Norway to cut peats and he filled his basket and set off for home. As he waded through the sea he needed to answer the call of nature, so he dropped his trousers and, in her words, he ‘shet land’, and that was how Shetland was made. He carried on, but the strap of the basket broke and all his peats landed in the sea, and that’s how Orkney was made. My apologies to my friends in Shetland, a place that I love very much, but I felt that this old story was worth recording for posterity, as it has never been written down before.

  Any islander’s life is dominated in one way or another by the sea; whether it’s through ruined travel arrangements due to cancelled ferries or through empty supermarket shelves when lorries of food are stuck in Scotland. The sea rules our lives, but who rules the sea? Well, there is a very ancient story about that too.

  THE MOTHER OF THE SEA

  The old people of Orkney long held the belief in the Mother of the Sea. She was invisible to mortal eye, but everyone knew that she was there, protecting them. She was the spirit who controlled the sea during the summer months; an ancient goddess who calmed the waves and brought life and regeneration to all the creatures that lived in the sea. When the Mother of the Sea ruled, the fishermen’s nets and creels were never empty. The seas were gentle and calm and people were safe to fish off the rocks or from their boats. It was a good time; a happy time of calm and plenty.

  But the Mother of the Sea had an enemy. Teran was the spirit who ruled the sea in the winter time; a cold hearted, spiteful man who caused the storms that cast ships onto the jagged rocks that lie around the islands and made widows out of fishermen’s wives. When he ruled there was nothing to be had in either net or creel, as fish, lobsters and crabs hid in deeper waters to avoid the turmoil of the waves.

  During the summer months Teran was bound in chains at the bottom of the sea; a prisoner of the Mother of the Sea who gives life to all. But as the year waned so her powers diminished; sapped of her strength by giving life and controlling the waves. Then Teran would grow strong, break his fetters and the two spirits would fight. This occurred at the time of the Autumnal Equinox towards the end of September, and the storms that mark this point of the year are caused by their great struggle under the sea. Teran won and drove the Mother of the Sea from her realm; she would have to take up her abode on the earth during winter, passing unseen by human eye. Then was the time for the terrible reign of Teran when the sea boiled with rage. But as the spring started to draw near the Mother of the Sea grew once more in strength until, at the end of March, she returned to the sea and took up the battle once more with Teran at the Vernal Equinox. As they fought the sea was wild with fury and storms raged. Now it was Teran’s turn to be overthrown, as his winter rage that drove the storms had in turn exhausted him. The Mother of the Sea bound him once more at the bottom of the sea and her reign began anew, bringing back life and calm to the sea once more. But as the year passed then Teran would once again break his bonds and regain control of the sea, and so it would be forever more until the end of time.

  In Orkney a bad, wild person or animal was called a ‘teran thing’, but I’m not sure if there is a connection between the two. Quite likely there is. About twenty years ago a friend of mine told me that when he was a boy in Westray in the 1950s he had got himself a bamboo wand to go fishing off the rocks. On his way he passed my grandfather, Geordie Drever, who said to him, with a smile, ‘Beuy, thoo haed better waatch oot that thoo disna catch the mither.’1 He had no idea what Geordie meant by this, until he read the works of the nineteenth-century Sanday folklorist, Walter Traill Dennison, whose essays on Orkney folklore were virtually unknown at that time. My grandfather certainly wouldn’t have had access to a printed version of the story, but maybe he knew it already.

  It was once believed that there was a giant whale, called the ‘Mester Whal’ (the Great Whale), that lay far to the north, off the North Cape of Norway. The ebb and flow of the tide was said to be caused by the whale slowly breathing in and out. Another version of the Assipattle and the Stoor Worm story says that the Stoor Worm caused the tides by his breathing. In that version Assipattle is called Assipattie.

  In the Pentland Firth lies the island of Stroma, to the north-east of which is the great whirlpool called the Swelkie, named ‘the swallower’ by the Vikings. It was believed that the Swelkie was caused by water pouring down through the eye of the giant quern stone, Grotti, turned day and night by the two giant women, Fenia and Menia. Grotti was a magic quern, which could grind whatever the owner wanted, so it grinds out salt at the bottom of the sea, which was its last owner’s orders, and that is why the sea is salty. A little to the north, in the entrance to Scapa Flow, lies the small island of Swona. To the south of the island are whirlpools known as the Wells of Swona; this is how they came about.

  THE WITCH AND THE WELLS OF SWONA

  A long time ago there was a woman who lived on the island of South Ronaldsay who had the reputation of being a witch. She had fallen in love with a young man who lived locally and her heart burned for him. But the young man was not interested in her, for he was already in love with another. One day, as the young man was down by the shore, the witch came over to him and tried to persuade him to get into a boat that was lying there on the beach. He refused, saying that he was there to meet his lover. The witch’s heart filled with jealousy and a furious rage built up inside her, but she remained calm and smiled sweetly, as though nothing was wrong. When the young girl arrived the witch spoke sweet words to them; maybe she used her diabolical arts to bewitch them, but eventually she persuaded them to get into the boat with her and go for a row.

  They left South Ronaldsay and headed west towards Swona. When they were nearing the island the witch suddenly used all her evil power and caused the boat to capsize, throwing them all into the water. The witch had nothing to fear, as her magic gave her the power to breathe underwater. However, the hapless young couple did not possess that skill and so the witch grabbed hold of the young man’s arm, meaning to pull him out of the water and save him. The man held her arm in a vice-like grip, but he also grabbed the girl that he loved and would not let her go. They struggled for a short time before death took them, but still the dead man’s hand held tight to the witch’s arm. She struggled and twisted and turned wildly, trying to get free of them, but the harder she struggled the more entwined she became with their bodies and she could not break free from them. She is still there, under the sea, and she still struggles to be free of the dead, but they will not let go. Her twisting and turning causes the sea to form into whirlpools that are called the Wells of Swona, and that is her doom for all eternity.

  THE SAVILLE STONE

  There was once a witch who lived in Eday whose daughter was being courted by a young man whom the witch didn’t approve of. She was forbidden to see him, but of course she still met him in secret. They decided to run away together so one night she slipped out of the house and ran to meet her lover, who had his boat ready by the shore. They sailed away before the witch woke up and realised what had happened. When she saw the boat away in the distance (for witches can see unusually far) she was so enraged that she picked up a huge boulder and threw it at them. She missed, and the stone landed in a field at Saville in Sanday and that’s how the Saville Stone got t
here.

  The truth behind this folk tale is even stranger than fiction. The Saville Stone is an erratic boulder carried to Orkney from Norway not by giants or witches but by a glacier during the last Ice Age. In 1879 work began to move the 14-ton rock 1 mile from its original position on the orders of the laird, Colonel Harwood, who wanted it as a feature in front of his house at Scar. A huge cart was built and a team of local crofters, including my great-grandfather Muir, managed somehow to lever it up onto the cart. Once there a team of twelve horses had to pull it up the brae. However, the physical exertion was too great and, in the words of my father, ‘they sprang the horses’ (they were ruptured with the effort). The cart remained near the top of the brae until the following summer when new horses were harnessed up to the giant cart and they pulled it the remaining distance. Only, not quite, for the cart broke under the weight of the rock a few hundred yards short of its destination and it has remained there ever since. The remains of the cart can be seen in old photographs and I once saw a wooden beam running under it one winter when the vegetation had died back and a rabbit hole had exposed it.

  THE RAINBOW

  The sky in Orkney is immense. With hardly any trees on the islands you can see from horizon to horizon, and the sheer scale of it is usually commented on by visitors to the islands. The quality of light is something special too, making it an inspirational place for artists and photographers. With a damp climate rainbows are a common sight; both single and double ones. I remember when I was working in North Ronaldsay in 1986 there was a very high tide and it was windy, yet the sun shone brightly. In the distance was Seal Skerry, a reef frequented by seals, which was usually above the water. That particular day the waves were blown over the top of the skerry and the spray that flew from them was caught by the sun and formed rainbows. Two or three moving arcs of colour crossed the top of the skerry; unbelievably beautiful. The Vikings called the rainbow Bifrost, the flaming bridge which linked the realm of the gods to that of mortals. If you saw a rainbow it meant that the gods were paying a visit.