'Who are you?' The question was spat from the soldier's thin mouth. He continued, 'Tinkers are giving Highlanders sanctuary. Has this band of vagabonds protected you? Again I demand ,what is your name?' (This passage is from “The Proud Highlander,” from Sookin' Berries, by Jess Smith.)
“A tale is a song, a truth and an invention” (an old Russian saying).
How the Gypsies in Scotland have helped preserve a rich inheritance of storytelling through telling their stories and assisted abandoned children and the homeless.
'Once upon a time there lived a tramp who had got lost in the Highlands of Scotland. He did not nowhere he was nor had he any idea what the day or date was. He was utterly lost. He was groping his way through the mountains in freezing cold weather. He understood that unless he found a warm shed or house to stay he might freeze to death. But no matter how far he went, no place materialized. In the end, he finally came across what looked like a pen for keeping animals which he might crash out in. So he leapt over the fence, found some straw, and began to make some bed. Then in the full moonlight he noticed the awesome shadow of a bull had loomed up. A bull was watching him, snorting and digging the earth before him. It was ready to attack him. The tramp understood it was impossible to escape so prepared for death. He made a prayer, crossed himself and told God "I thank you for giving me such a wonderful life." Then something strange happened. The bull suddenly knelt down and became calm. Other animals approached the bull and knelt down and slept. Then the tramp understood what day it was. It was Christmas Eve because this is the very time when all the animals stop preying on each other and lie down together in peace. A miracle had happened! The tramp slowly crept past the animals and went over the fence and carried on with his journey.'
This story, titled 'Tramp and Bull' was told by the great Traveler Storyteller Duncan Williamson. Williamson claimed that a tramp who had visited their campsite had told them the story which later became part of his vast repertoire. But the story is instructive in two ways: firstly it offers an example of how the homeless and travelers would interact through storytelling and how the travelers also generously hosted and helped the homeless from time to time.
Secondly, the story indicates how the travelers kept the dying flame of Scotland's oral poetic tradition of storytelling alive. Indeed the repertoire of such storytellers is so deep, diverse and alluring that it is awesome. When Duncan Williamson once heard such an old storyteller and how much wisdom and art there was in such stories he stated. "He told us so many things that stood us in good stead through our entire days. I would give all the money in the world to go back right now to that night : the only difference was , I would sit longer, until the day that I would die and leave this world I will remember him.”
And he knew in his own mind that he was telling us something that would be remembered years after he was gone." In the traveling community people told stories not simply for amusement but to bring people up, to teach them how to be kind to others and animals and also as part of a profound performance art which would fortify families and friendship.
Despite long being a persecuted minority in Scotland and all over the World, {in 1609 , King James the 1st of England and Scotland ordered them to be put to death should they be found trespassing anywhere. Travelers have long been demonized as being 'thieves', 'lazy', 'dirty' and 'useless vagabonds' whose nomadic lifestyle threatened civil order.} travelers managed to preserve many of their stories and customs. Very few people have a good word to say about travelers. Travelers are practically never allowed to camp in public spaces and constantly told to move on from one place to another. Their children are constantly bullied and not given adequate homework at school. David Donaldson who fights for the rights of the travelers stated that his father advised him that he should keep his traveler background a secret to avoid discrimination. "That was really hard for me at schools. Travelers are really proud people and trying to keep that hidden is horrendous."
In Moscow, one of my students who had a gypsy background asked me advice on whether she should keep her background a secret lest it harm her career prospects. You can readily understand all this anxiety.
As recently as 2017, a Scottish social “attitude survey” found that 34% of Scots polled didn't think a traveler should be allowed to work as a primary school teacher, and 31% claimed they would be very unhappy if a close relative married a traveler.
A new draconian law 'The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021,' should it be passed, will effectively make an innocuous act of trespassing a criminal, rather than civil offence. This means that as in past centuries, a return to outlawing the nomadic lifestyle of the travelers is once again on the cards again.
It is unfortunate that those who condemn the travelers have never taken the trouble to see many of the positive aspects about the travelers. The travelers are among the warmest ,the most generous, and the most hospitable people you can encounter in Scotland. They would bend over backwards to help someone in trouble. This has been my personal experience in not only Scotland but Moscow. So when I met a gypsy family who were providing free accommodation to refugees fleeing from a horrendous war in Ukraine {2014-15} it did not surprise me. For centuries in Scotland a woman who had given birth to a child and could not look after it would often put the baby out of the road for gypsies to take him. The gypsies would pick him up and look after the baby as if he was one of their own. They would not ask for any favors or thanks.
There is even a suggestion that some Highlanders who were evicted and made homeless were taken in by the gypsies who looked after them. In one story recorded by the traveler storyteller Jess Smith 'Sookin'Berries', {Birlinn Press, 2008,Edinburgh} titled 'The Proud Highlander', two young gypsy girls find a badly wounded Jacobite on a battlefield. They drag him back to their camp and slowly nurse him back to health. They not only save his life but let him become part of their family. So the compassionate and caring attitude of the travelers to the abandoned is often mirrored in their songs, stories and ballads.
That is why Duncan Williamson was right to claim the story as his own. He feels, "It is not just a story. It is something to last a person for his entire life, something that's been passed down from tradition: that's what stories mean to traveling people, they know their children are going out in the World and some day they will be gone. The children need something to remember their forebears by and not monuments in graveyards or marble stone."