Tobar an Dualchais - Kist O Riches

Title - After being left with no clothes, a Traveller got a suit by...
Contributors - Alec Stewart
Reporters - Dr Sheila Douglas

Summary - After being left with no clothes, a Traveller got a suit by showing an ugly man an even uglier face.

Alec Stewart was in Edinburgh after being in Kinghorn with the Territorial Army. A girl approached him and claimed to be his cousin. She invited him home for tea, they drank whisky, and she pressed him to stay overnight. He went to bed and a man with a knife appeared, demanding to know what Alec was doing in his wife's bed. Alec ran out of the house naked. He could not show the police where the house was, and ran away from them. Reaching the countryside, he came to a house where there was a wake going on, and the people ran away. Alec took a swallow-tailed coat, a lum hat [top hat] and a pair of baffies [slippers].

He lifted the sheet from the corpse, but he was at the wrong end, and instead of seeing a face he saw a woman's backside. Further along the road he met an old man, who offered to give Alec a new suit and £5 if he could show him an uglier face than his. Alec went back to the house where the corpse was, skinned the 'face' and took it back to the old man. So Alec got his suit and went home.


Track Duration (h:m:s) - 00:15:55
Date Recorded - 1978.11
Language - English, Scots
Genre - Story
Collection - School of Scottish Studies

Track ID - 56167
Original Tape ID - SA1978.162
Original Track ID - SA1978.162
Audio Quality - Good
Audio Format - R2R


Item Notes -

Permanent Link - http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/56167/1


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