Tears for a Tinker (20 page)

Now, as the devil would have it, on the night of that wedding a great many beasts had been spirited away from pastures green. ‘The gypsies have stolen near on fifty cattle,’ came the
accusation from a young man running breathless into the crowd of good folk who were enjoying the festivities at the Buckie Inn.

All eyes turned to the fiddler. ‘Is this your doing?’ demanded Grant.

‘I heard him telling his cousin Gordon he’d keep us all busy.’ Merrill screamed, seeing her chance for revenge, adding, ‘He’s the leader, and I tell you it’s
his men out there stealing our guid beasts.’ Merrill had her platform, inciting the crowd of wedding guests who were filled and fired by the whisky. ‘Black-faced vagabonds, they would
rather steal from decent honest folk than pay for a morsel of meat!’

James knew these people were not going to allow him to leave the inn, so he made no attempt to escape as eager men ran forward with ropes to tie him.

‘I am innocent o’ this crime, and all ye ken it. But God and a fair judge will set me free.’

Grant leaned forward and whispered to the heavily ensnared prisoner, ‘You’ll swing like a pendulum, McPherson, for I’ll be your judge. You and that witch o’ a mother will
leave nae mark on the land o’ Moray.’

Mary Ann begged Grant not to condemn her innocent son, but no amount of pleading would change his mind. ‘Have ye ever heard o’ a braggart that plays a fiddle like an angel?’
she cried. ‘Ye must ken his father and grandfather, Sire, there was nae bad in them neither. Please let him go away with me, I promise ye never a sound o’ us will ye hear again.’
But all the pleading in the world failed to move the stone that was Grant’s heart: James McPherson had to die. This was a travesty of justice. Mary Ann knew that if she got word to the High
Court, her son would be fairly treated. Her determination led her to pay a rider to take news of this unlawful case to the High Court in Aberdeen, and she prayed some form of justice might
prevail.

On the sixth of November, the eve of the execution of James and his cousin Gordon, he asked for his fiddle. The wish of a condemned man was granted, and as the wild and desolate cliffs screamed
with an early winter storm he wrote a final piece. His Rant was filled with hatred for all who would do him harm. His innocence and the injustice he suffered ran through his fingers into his bow to
yield a masterpiece.

It was not known either by him or his mother that the High Sheriff of Aberdeen had taken an interest in the trial. He saw a miscarriage of justice and so sent a pardon. It should have arrived at
noon, but during the night the town clock in Banff was put forward an hour. This was because news of the imminent pardon had been leaked to Grant, and he had the clock interfered with.

A crowd gathered on the ring of twelve. The hooded hangman waited, fingers running over the knotted rope. Mary Ann lay at her son’s feet, sobbing, and Grant sneered from his official
window overlooking the Mercat Cross.

‘Give tae me yer fiddle, McPherson,’ shouted a lone woman: it was Michtie Jean.

‘I’d rather burst it ower ma knee as gi’e you, ye auld witch, ma precious fiddle.’ As he brought it up and down heavily against his leg, the pull on the rope around his
neck tightened; the fiddle splintered; a jagged piece tore into his thigh and blood oozed freely.

‘McPherson blood shall spill upon the Merket Cross,’ whispered the old hag into Mary Ann’s ear, ‘your son’s blood!’

Gordon’s body followed James’s with an instant break upon his neck. No sooner had the noose squeezed away their last breath, when a shout rent the air. Hooves tore hard into the
cobbled street, an exhausted horse snorted with hot sharp pants as its rider ran in haste, waving a paper above his head. ‘Hold the execution, I have a pardon frae Eberdeen!’ Too late:
both men were at that moment being pronounced dead.

Grant never had much status from that day, and it is thought he spent many an hour looking over his shoulder. His sleepless nights sent him into a mad state and Merrill ended in a
whorehouse.

The good people of Macduff were able to substantiate the falsification of the clock in neighbouring Banff, because the timepiece there kept the right time. According to my storyteller, relations
between the two towns were strained from then on.

Aye, this was a great story: fact and fiction mingling together, one gently easing the other along. I was fourteen when I heard it told. There was a man in the campsite that night listening
around our fire who told another version, but needless to say his was just as entertaining. Before we upped sticks and left there, I can honestly say I felt as close to Jamie McPherson as a
long-devoted sister might.

20

BAGREL

I
t had been my pleasure, while growing up as one of Perthshire’s agricultural travellers, to enjoy the rich vein of diversity among them that
even as a youngster I was keenly aware of. To the outsider it was easy to imagine all of us were the same, but that was simply a myth. ‘We’re all Jock Thamson’s bairns,’ is
a true saying, but who’s to say Jock didn’t put it around a bit?

Let me share some characters with you now, and a cup of tea might be a good idea at this point.

Now you’ve poured that tea or coffee, what better place to start than by the campfire, kettle boiling away. Auld Tam Troot had just brought home a great big bunch of kindling. Nancy, his
spouse of forty years, was in the process of ladling his broth into a cracked bowl, when without warning a great muckle cow galloped right into their midst. We won’t linger on the spot as
soup, bowl, ladle and burning water went heavenward, then showered back down to cover auld Tam, Nancy and their visitor.

Lurid oaths rent the sky, and that’s why we won’t tarry there. Instead it’s to a worried farmer trudging through fields of mushy gutters that we’ll go.

‘Last time I let yon ba’ heid o’ a man near ma coo. Every time she sees him, her backsprent rises intae the air, she shak’s her ba-hookie an’ awa she goes. Lord
A’mighty, whit will ah dae without ma Sally? When I git ma hands on that wee bagrel, I’ll squash him like a worm.’

The ba’ heid he referred to was a tiny wee man, almost dwarflike, who tramped the country. He wasn’t a traveller, tinker, gypsy or vagrant, in fact nobody knew what group laid claim
to him, because he couldn’t speak—as dumb as a mountain bawd [hare] was the wee man.

In glen areas he might have been looked upon as a ‘Broonie’, that mystical wee creature who, for a scone and a drink of milk, would do jobs around farmyards that no other hands would
do. For instance, cleaning the hen pen and spreading the chicken dung onto fields. This foul-smelling stuff made even stones grow, such was its richness of compost. He’d clean the sties of
dirty ‘roll-in-gutter’ pigs until they were spotless. In fact he’d undertake any job unfit for human nostrils without a word; just a wee bite and drink and then he’d be
gone. The difference between our little lad and the Broonie was that the latter was expected to turn anyone who saw him to stone. This superstition forced him to live in caves or under trees,
creeping out only under a night sky.

Well, that very morning, while our wee bagrel was simply minding his own business, not bothering a soul, his appearance at her field entrance had obviously stirred Sally into a panic. Her
one-cow stampede, however, didn’t half make a mush of Tam and Nancy’s tent—flattened to a pancake, it was.

Tam caught the tired cow and was tying her to a tree, when our little man came whistling up the road, totally unaware of the havoc in his wake.

Nancy, like everyone else who laid an eye upon him, smiled, but didn’t leave her stare too long upon his face which, and God forgive me for saying this, was not very bonny! Well, for
starters, he’d a wart on his chin like a river stone, and a huge hump on his back. His windswept black and grey hair, thick and wiry with white streaks, danced down around his waist. His
eyeballs rolled in their sockets as if they had a life of their own. But the beauty of him was in his strength. Some say he could lift a raging bull with one kick. Maybe that’s why very few
approached the bagrel, who stood four feet tall on a Sunday.

When he saw the devastation and debris scattered throughout the usually tidy campsite, he lifted his shoulders, throwing his hands out and palms up, asking with his gesture, ‘what happened
here?’

Still not making full eye-contact, Nancy used her hands to imitate horns, and slapped her bum to indicate a large back end such as a cow might sport.

The wee man smiled, making his acknowledgement with a thumbs-up.

Auld Tam came back from securing the cow and said his hellos. ‘Gi’e the bagrel a drink o’ tea, Nancy,’ he said.

His able spouse had already built the fire and refilled the kettle, which was just beginning to boil, as a very irate farmer rushed into their midst. On seeing the reason for the disappearance
of his only cow he lifted his cromach to bring it down upon the bagrel’s back. ‘You bloody half a man, I’ll tan ye for spurring ma coo, the devil’s in ye!’

‘No in ma company, fairmer,’ hissed Tam, wrenching the stick from his hand.

‘I own this land ye’re campit on, Tam, an I swear if ye so much as lift a finger tae stop me whipping this curse frae a witch’s womb, I’ll mak sure ye niver set a fit
here agin!’

Tam knew full well there wasn’t a place for miles where he and Nancy could winter-settle, yet he was a godly man; and what kind of sleep would his conscience allow him, if he let a poor
defenceless creature take a whipping for simply being ugly? And he had never believed stories of the wee man’s brute strength; how could someone so small hurt anyone?

‘Sorry, fairmer, about yon cow o’ yours, but I canna stand back and see a six-fitter like yersel take a rochet temper oot on a wee bagrel.’ He turned and threw the stick into a
now blazing fire.

‘Ye kin pack whit ye have and be off my land within the hour; an’ thank that lump o’ useless flesh fer yer ruin,’ the farmer said, pointing at the dumb dwarf who seemed
rigid with fear. Red-faced and spitting with temper, he turned about and was soon gone to console himself at the loss of Sally.

‘Well, handy man you are, eh Tam? Now where dae we go with the first snows roaring down frae the north? You’ve left us hameless, and all because o’ him.’

Tam shook his head at Nancy’s lack of tact towards a helpless dwarf who never bothered a soul, and began gathering what little hadn’t been crushed by the cow. Then something dawned
on him: where was the wee lad? In all the commotion they had failed to see him slip away after the farmer left.

‘Now look what’s happened, the wee leprechaun has gone aff in the huff. I bet he’ll pit a curse on us for you being sae hostile.’

‘Don’t talk rot. Anyway, he’s no’ a pokey man and I blame your Irish mother for teaching you rubbish like that.’

‘Rubbish is it? What about you, feart tae look at the wee man in case ye turned tae stone.’ As the pair argued back and forth among the ruins of their canvas home, they realised that
something else had slipped their mind—the cow. Tam had forgotten to show the farmer she was safe.

‘Go, take her back to the field. Then tell him what happened. He’ll let us stay if he thinks you found the cow. Tell him you fought wi’ the dwarf and saved it. Go on,
Tam.’

Tam listened to his wife and thought long and hard. ‘Aye, I’d best get up tae yon farm, cap in hand,’ he said eventually. ‘Yet what kind of rat would I be if I lied like
that? No, I’ll just say the cow ran through us. Mind you, if thon wee dwarf hadn’t frightened her, then she wouldn’t have bolted oor tent. Bloody wee pest, thon leprechaun, he
disnae even deserve a drap tea. Pitting fear intae a puir chowing-cud cow. Ah think he might be in cahoots wi’ a “Green Man.” I’ve niver telt ye this, Nancy, but once ma
mither saw one crawling along the grun, cracking tae an adder.’

Totally convinced now that the cause of their predicament lay at the small feet of a dumb dwarf, he led the cow into her field before walking gingerly to face the farmer. He must have seen him
coming, because the door near-on lifted its hinges as he swung it open.

‘I telt you tae get aff my land, Tam Troot, I wisnae joking. Noo, is it the back o’ ma hand or will ye go quietly?’