Tobar an Dualchais - Kist O Riches

Title - A Traveller woman saw a ghost, and her husband was beaten up...
Contributors - Stanley Robertson
Reporters - Barbara McDermitt

Summary - A Traveller woman saw a ghost, and her husband was beaten up when he went to investigate.

Stanley Robertson describes the Old Road of Lumphanan, where he is telling the story seated outside the cemetery. Mary, a Traveller woman camped with her family near the road, was returning late from Aberdeen. She diddled to herself as she walked along. [Stanley canters part of the pipe march 'Donald Cameron'.] Suddenly a woman dressed for a ball came out of the cemetery and walked in front of Mary. Mary twice asked the woman the time, and was hesitating to ask her a third time, as Travellers are superstitious about this, when the woman turned round, screamed like a banshee and ran back into the cemetery. She was a skeleton. Mary dropped her basket and ran home to the camp.

Her husband went to investigate what had happened. He found her basket, but was then overcome by a supernatural power, and was so badly beaten up that he spent two weeks in the hospital at Torphins. Some time later Mary told her experience to the gravedigger at the cemetery. He told her that a wealthy woman's lover had run off with someone else a few days before they were to be married, and she had committed suicide. She had been buried in the cemetery in the clothes she had been wearing at a ball.

Track Duration (h:m:s) - 00:10:26
Date Recorded - 1981
Language - Scots
Genre - Music, Story, Information
Collection - School of Scottish Studies

Track ID - 42922
Original Tape ID - SA1981.024
Original Track ID - SA1981.25.1
Audio Quality - Good
Audio Format - R2R



Recording Location:
  County - Aberdeenshire


Item Location:
  County - Aberdeenshire
  Parish - Lumphanan

Item Notes - Some Travellers' cant words on track.

Permanent Link - http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/42922/1


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