A Traveller girl saw a farm's broonie while spending the nig...

Original Track ID

SA1979.1

Original Tape ID

SA1979.001

Summary

A Traveller girl saw a farm's broonie while spending the night in the hayloft.

Betsy Whyte's mother worked on a farm in the Highlands when she was about fourteen. One Saturday night her folks had all stayed late in town. She was offered a bed in the farmhouse, but Travellers were afraid to stay with country people for fear of being seized by burkers. Instead she joined an old buck woman (a vagrant, but not a Traveller) in the hayloft of the barn. Betsy's mother was smoking her pipe when they heard a door opening and the tramp of feet. The feet tramped right past them, and Betsy's mother went rigid. She saw a huge figure of a man, dressed, but covered in brown hair, going through to the threshing mill. She realised it was the broonie [brownie]. In the morning Betsy's mother told the farmer, who did not seem surprised. He had been finding all his grain threshed when he got up in the mornings.

People should never go looking for a broonie if one is about or it will go away. Although Betsy's mother used to threaten her children with the broonie, the broonie is a helpful character. Betsy's mother's rigidity was not fright but a paralysis caused by the presence of the broonie. The broonie was said to be present at a farm or mill if people were well advanced with their work. It would sometimes turn the mill wheel when there was no water. Broonies are now [1979] only heard of in the Highlands.

Item Notes

The term 'burker' comes from William Burke, of Burke and Hare, who was hanged in 1829 for a series of murders, committed to obtain bodies to sell for dissection.

Recording Location

Language

Scots

Genre

Story Information

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Fair