A man disappeared for a hundred years after inviting a spiri...
Track Information
Original Track ID
SA1974.196.A4
Original Tape ID
Summary
A man disappeared for a hundred years after inviting a spirit to his wedding.
A young man who was about to marry passed an open grave in the churchyard and kicked a skull, telling it to come to his wedding that night. The skull replied with a verse that Tom Robertson does not remember. On the wedding night, the party was in full swing when one of the guests told the bridegroom that a man was at the door wanting to speak to him. The bridegroom went outside with the stranger and never came back.
About a hundred years later, the house where the bridegroom had lived was in ruins. One day a man appeared at the neighbouring house, where an old woman lived, and asked what had happened to the folk in the next house. She told him it was about twenty years since the last one of them had died. There was a queer yarn about them that one of them had disappeared on his wedding night and was never seen again. She gave the man a glass of whisky. He drank it and crumbled away into dust.
That was Tom's grandmother's story, but she never said what happened to the man while he was away.
Recording Location
County - Shetland
Parish - Delting
Island - Shetland Mainland
Village/Place - Collafirth, Quam
Item Location
County - Shetland
Language
English, Scots
Genre
Collection
Classification
Source Type
Reel to reel
Audio Quality
Good