Tales of the North.

There’s a new blog now attached to this it’s purpose being to house some tales I discovered recently in a bundle of newspaper cuttings tucked into a stapled book of poetry. In the 1960’s a poet and storyteller of Brora, by the name of Frank Maclellan, contributed short stories to a local newspaper, the Northern Time. Someone lovingly cut them out and kept them till their books were sold to me and arrived in my garage. Respectfully I’m retelling them here alongside other tales whose heroes and heroines lived closer to home in the countryside of Moray.

I’ve always been hopelessly jealous of the Scottish heritage born as I was in an Essex county town, raised in an Essex village, brought up by two incomers to Essex so always detached from it and never bonding. My mother from Cambridgeshire - not a million miles away but far enough in accent and identity to separate her, and my father was born in Wales though he denied his heritage there too because he was so often teased for his obvious Welshness of stature, short, stocky and dark. His mother once told him their family came from the ‘foot hills of Wales’ by which I guess she meant Monmouthshire, (not always part of Wales) or the borderlands of Breckonshire or Herefordshire, and so she also disowned the Welshness in their breeding.

They were god-fearing parents, my mother Chapel, my father Salvation Army, and would have had no interest in the witches and dragons that once stalked the Essex countryside. Indeed my aunt, my father’s sister, a slightly mad but very gentle spinster who could quote the scriptures extensively, would have disapproved, (or been afraid maybe) of the stories from pagan times. The Devil lay in them.

There is a book published now by Sylvia Kent ‘The Folklore of Essex’ and from the blurb it promises:

“Essex - the witch hunting county - is especially rich in traditions, legends, dialect and stories that have been handed down through the ages. ....... dragons and warriors, literary folk and legendary folk, .... traditional beliefs, stories, events and customs of the common people. .... music, dance and song.”

I saw none of this. Perhaps we were living in different times, so soon after the war when just to be alive and scratching a living was enough to keep most people occupied without worrying about the past. Certainly I have the impression that the local history even here in the North of Scotland was not so well appreciated as it is today and books have been carelessly lost and destroyed that customers mourn for now when they see the prices I have to ask for a replacement!

I hope to persuade a friend to make line drawings to illustrate the tales.

Some time ago I started to put together a history of this town and the neighbourhood. It was interesting work but I came to the conclusion in the end that I would only be re-hashing the old books and records that already exist. I have nothing to add because I am an incomer. A friend has taken over, acting as amanuensis to a local who has many stories and can bring the old history up to date. This amassing of folk tales and legends is more up my street and allows me mre freedom for my own imagination - for after all a folk tale is not an accurate historical account it is a tale told round a log fire at night to entertain and thrill and any embroidering that the teller can put on it is to be welcomed by the listeners. .