A hawker has two customers, a brother and sister, who turn o...

Original Track ID

SA1979.22.B6

Original Tape ID

SA1979.022

Summary

A hawker has two customers, a brother and sister, who turn out to be the same person.

Stanley Robertson introduces a story that he calls 'The Changeling o Skene'. His father was out hawking and met a man near Skene. The man wanted a watch, so Stanley's father sold him his own, which he had bought from a pawnshop. The man commissioned him to get a suit of plus fours. When Stanley's father went to the lodge, it was the man's sister who answered, wearing a snood on her head.

They both became good customers. One day Stanley's father found the man greetin [crying] because his sister had gone missing. Later the sister told him not to mind what the man said. He went back another time and found them both gone. Asking at a farm, he learned that they were one and the same person, a hermaphrodite, and he or she had been taken away to the madhouse.

Item Notes

Although Stanley Robertson uses the word for a head covering, a 'snood' is a type of hairband, or latterly a decorative hairnet.

Recording Location

Language

English, Scots

Genre

Story Information

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good