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Piety saves a youth from his father's pact with a mysterious stranger. An old fisherman and his wife and their neighbours were starving as there were no fish to be had. A gentleman came to the riv...

The heel of a loaf preferable to the farmer's wife. A stallion driver was put up at a farm for the night. He was given a cup of tea, but nothing to eat with it; the baker hadn't come that day. The...

A spirit returns to carry off a tormenting child. Two families of Travellers spent the night in a barn. Next morning, a little girl was tormenting a boy by tickling him. Many years later, when she...

A picaresque story of encounters with burkers. When he was fourteen, instead of going to school in Blairgowrie, Jock Higgins followed his brothers, who were going to Glasgow, playing the pipes fro...

A Traveller drinks from a phantom water-trough and is accompanied by a headless man. A Traveller named MacPhee was walking on a moonlit night from Meikleour to Blair[gowrie] to fetch a doctor for ...

Jack has his revenge on the Big Wind that has blown away his hay and thatch. An old woman and her son Jack had a small farm away in the north of Scotland. One night, the thatch blew off the roof a...

Illicit still; anecdote about tricking the excisemen into paying a reward to the still's owner for information. There was a 'smuggling still' [illicit still] near where the contributor's father li...

The contributor thinks he is probably the only man alive whose father knew the Ettrick Shepherd.

The contributor's family history; sheep sales. The contributor was the youngest of ten. His father died about 70 years ago [said in 1956]. A hirsel (one man's charge) was about 700 sheep. Every d...

The contributor's father and mother and their different languages. The contributor knows more Gaelic songs than English. His father was Lowland born and his mother was from the north. When they ma...