Celtic Tales 4 the Scots

By Jill Whalen

Scotia in the old language means scavenger, one who makes the most of the materials at hand. Many people think Scots are tight. Scots think they are thrifty. Read about some of the Scots who made it into Celtic folklore. Travel with them to the foreign wars; join the caravans; sip coffee at Lloyds where the big deals were made. Find out why a warrior loaded with loot would choose to live in a cot and eat oatmeal.

Not all warriors had swords; some of them went to battle with a stick, or a knife, or a quarterstaff. They usually left the battle with an assortment of loot including swords, armor, chain mail, horses, and gold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 22, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595776245

Jill Whalen

I am a Celtic mother of eight who is writing about family stories that have been handed down by word of mouth. I live in the beautiful Missouri Ozarks, am a graduate of Millikin University, and a member of Mensa.

Book preview

TALE I:

THE MCCALL

You can call me The McCall. My mother always said I was a lazy one. I never wanted to be tired or hot and sweaty; I never wanted to be hungry or out in cold and rain, unless there was a good reason, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good reason, even today, to do that. It is stupid! I saw a farmer out in the summer rains. A storm came through moving from the west. It wiped out his grain crop. He was out all through that rain cutting tops, and bringing them to the house. They had secured one bag of immature heads, which they might have been able to eat, or not, I didn’t know. They all got very sick, because they were out in that rain all day and into the night. The next day they couldn’t tend the livestock properly. They lost the milk on their cow half way through summer. Half a year of milk and butter were gone for a wee small sack of immature grain. They showed how fortitudinous they were. I thought it showed how stupid they were. I told them I thought they should have plowed it under and gotten winter wheat started. They just looked at me like I was crazy.

According to the council, I could not be in charge of the clan, because I have a bad limp. Let me tell you how I got that limp, acquired so much money that I couldn’t possibly spend it all, and eventually became the head of my clan.

Early on the council sent me down to Langdon town on the Thames to take a look see what was about. Well I did that. I was coming down through the Berk-shires. Through the weft like area is a place called Oxford shire where they finally built a whole bunch of buildings for schools, and kirks, and this and that. They

built it big, like the fools are wont to do. I always wondered how they kept those places heated. The answer is, they don’t. The fools bundle up and have small rooms for their living. During the day, quite often, they work in rooms big and fancy, but colder than the outside. It can get colder inside than out; the sun doesn’t have a chance to warm it.

About two hundred years ago they cut down the forests to make timbers for most of the buildings off and on, off and on. They planted new trees for when they were going to need new timbers. They put it all in a big preserve. Some say the king’s deer are there, but I bet the cardinal and archbishops eat more of the king’s venison than the king does. They have raw lands with good trees on it. They’ll be bigger some day, but they are good so far. They call it New Forest. You can hear Oxford shire’s bells ringing all around all night. It wasn’t so wild a place.

Suddenly there was a man there who said, Give me all your junk, boy.

He tried to kill me. Things didn’t work out so well for him. His friend hiding in the bushes shot my knee with a ball and knocked me off my pins, so I couldn’t follow him. I patched it up as best I could. A widow woman found me on the road making my way. She got her two children out of the cart she was pushing and put me in. She had taken goods to market and was bringing stuff home. You know what a barrow is? It has two wheels, with pegs in the front when you set it down. She was too poor for a horse. She moved her stuff aside, put the children on the ground, and put me up on there. The oldest child was a girl. She put her back up on there.

To the boy she said, You’re going to have to walk like a man, Jack.

I pulled him up and said, There’s robbers out.

She said, We saw the one. You killed him?

I did. I gave the boy my lesser fighting knife and said, Put that in your sash, until I get it back from you. Defend your mother, and your sister, and yourself. Don’t bother defending me. If someone comes after me; let them come.

He swaggered on. By the time we got to her home my leg was killing me. She made up a pallet for me by the fire, got me laid down, and put up a fire stand. She had one older child, a useless young lady who sat on her butt trying to get out of work. They had more than enough work to be done around there. I told her I’d be a terrible burden on her eating bill, so I gave her two large pennies. She wasn’t used to that kind of wealth. That made her feel better about the food I would be eating.

She asked if I had any more money. I told her I had six more pence and some scraps.

She said, I’d advise getting a healer woman. We’ve got a good one. Don’t know how much she is. We’ve never been able to afford her before.

The healer woman came and looked at me kind of funny. She looked at the knee, then went in and took bits and pieces out. She did this and that, and then she told me it would be stiff forever.

I said, Well, you know, you take what lot you get in life.

The healer came back every day checking that leg. On the seventh day they gave me a bath on the porch. I couldn’t stand myself any more, and it was a warm day. They washed me up. My leg was bothering me so much I got the greasy sweats.

I was there at the widow woman’s place about a year. Her place was back in the forest. I put fields in to grow extra crops in places that had no discernable path, unless you were a real woodsman. There were nut trees to harvest too. Some herbs were medicinal like golden seal, for women who got sick when they were pregnant. It settles out the stomach and does other things to balance out when you are growing a child in your body. It seemed to satisfy their craving. For a regular person, it was just a tonic. There were other things like bloodroot and black wart that were on the king’s prescribed list, because they could be used as poisons. A good healer could use them for good. Being on the king’s prescribed list meant: You couldn’t grow them; you couldn’t collect them, and you couldn’t have them, but healers all over had them. A few years ago feverfew was on there. That’s the best thing for fighting fever. If you were a good healer, you had it. If you were a known healer of good reputation, the king’s men looked the other way, because they never knew when they might need a healer. We stayed away from the dangerous plants, because of the children. I showed her how to gather the others, but more important, I put in small plantations of them here and there. So when I left, what she had for extra income were nuts and herbs, as long as no other came and tried to take over from her. That was her problem. I had my own.

I hid out for three nights in Langdon town before I found the place I needed to see and to watch for the clan council. It was the waterfront. I was supposed to see ships and cargo and find out who actually owned the cargoes.

Once I found the area, I was trying to find out where to stay. I ran across this man that three men were beating up. I stopped them. Later on I found out I shouldn’t have; the guy tried to steal a purse off one of the three. Of course I had a sword on and a pistol and another sword in my backpack, and the knives of those guys who tried to kill me in the forest. To some, the presence of a sword meant I had to be some kind of gentleman. After I saved him, I asked the man about different things, one of which was where I could stay for cheap.

The wife of one of his ex-shipmates ran a boarding house while her husband was gone. She ran it while he was there too. Each wife pretty much had to support herself. If her husband came home with a good cargo, then she was set.

I went to the lady’s place late in the afternoon, just before supper. She explained the rules. Supper was set at a certain time and so was breaky. You could buy the room, room and one meal, or buy the room and two meals. That’s the way she did it. If you bought breaky, it was cheap, but you ate what she set. If you bought supper, you paid a standard rate, which was fairly low and took whatever she fixed, and she ate, and it was good. If you wanted more or extra, you told her the day before, paid up, and she’d get what you wanted like a hock of ham. There was no fancy cooking for her, although I’ve got to tell you, a lot of her cooking was good. Her rooms were tuppence per night. If you got them by the week, they were twelve pence, but I didn’t have twelve pence to my name. Breaky was a ha’penny. Supper was another pence, so for two and ha’penny, you could get a night and breaky, or three and ha’penny you could get breaky and supper with your night.

She said, In before the evening bells, eight p.m. I bar up the door then, because of the shit that’s walking along.

I gave her tuppence, ha’penny for the first night and breaky. If another boarder came, you shared with another man. Ifyou wanted a room to yourself, it was twice as much, four pence. She showed me a room. The man I had met said it was all right to leave my gear there. I didn’t have much anyway, mostly my bedroll and an extra blade, which I was a mind to sell. I took that and wrapped it up in a bit of cloth I had and went out asking where a man might sell a sword.

He looked at it and said, Don’t take less than a pound and a half for it.

When a man needs to sell, he is at a disadvantage.

That man had gone with me to the boarding house. He said, "You look mighty hungry. You can get supper here, all you can eat for the pence. I could either have supper, or else I could have enough pence to sleep another night with no breaky the next day. I was really tempted.

She said, I’ll even throw this rascal’s supper in for extra.

She showed us to the kitchen. What she had was really good, rich beef and mutton stew cooking on the stove. She had small bread she fixed herself. Then she did the worst thing she could do. For desert each person got an apple tart. I coughed up my pence, because I knew I had the sword, and figured I could sell it for somewhat. When she served she gave us all a trencher high. I started eating.

You know how it is when you haven’t eaten much for a long, long time. You really have trouble eating. I had trouble eating. She got irritated, because she thought I didn’t like it. She finally figured out what was up. She went to the kitchen, and came back with a mug of milk. I sat there and ate a bit of bread with milk. The other galoots came in, scarfed, and were gone.

I finally finished that trencher of stew. I was afraid to do anything else. I went out on her back porch, which I was surprised to see overlooked the harbor, the buoy. She came out with a mug of tea, but didn’t offer me any. That was fancy stuff! We sat there while the man named the ships.

I said, If you know so much about the sea, why don’t you go back instead of staying here on shore and getting into trouble?

He said he’d go back with the right man, but he’d not go lightly. The last time he’d gone seafaring he’d been gone fourteen years, and that was an overly long voyage. My gaze turned to that young woman. She didn’t even look at me.

She said, God willing, his voyage will be half that long and we can have children. I love him. I’m waiting here for him, even if he never comes.

I didn’t know what to say. I sat there a little longer, and then I said, He’s a lucky man. Sometime I wish I could find a woman who loves me like that.

It was there that evening that I found my dream of going out and finding Spanish prizes and such was over. That era was long past, long past. It was 1582 by the brown robe’s calendar.

My friend and I took the sword to try to find a buyer. The first man looked at me and said, You need to sell. I’ll give you a quarter pound.

As we left the place he scored foot passes on us. I tossed that man the spare sword. I’d moved the fight into a back alley anyway. I broke free of them, and I took their purses.

He said, That’s stealing.

I had to allow as he was right.

Some of them were still yelling. He had taken his man, and I had taken two of them. I got the two knives they had and the purses from all three. I divvied the purses out as I saw fit. I kept the silver and half the coppers. He gave me back the sword reluctantly. Now he had a knife—he didn’t have that before—seventeen coppers and some pieces. I had eleven silvers, seventeen coppers, and some pieces. I didn’t need to sell the sword anymore.

I asked him if he ever thought he’d come by a pound and a half.

Oh aye.

I told him I’d sell him the sword for a pound and a half. If a month went by it was two pounds. Every month after that it was a half-pound. He took me up on it. Three days later garnered up in good clothes and half a plume, while I was sitting out back on the porch with the woman, he gave me the pound and a half. He’d already bought bed and board for a month. So had I. It was the cheapest way.

We had an arrangement on supper. I would buy supper as I saw fit. If there was somewhat left, I’d buy it. If not, I’d go hungry. It suited her, because it kept her from wasting food.

I learned more, and more, and more about shipping. I bought some used clothing, shoes, a cloak, and a hat in fairly good condition. I didn’t like wearing the cloak, so I looked like a gentleman wearing clothes that weren’t especially new and chic.

Finding out the information I needed for the council turned out to be easy. I just had to have enough money to go to a coffee house called Lloyds. Coffee was expensive. A gentleman’s group gathered there every day. If you stayed there all day, you’d have to buy four cups. It was eight pence per cup. That was more than I left home with, but I found out all that slowly.

I went to Lloyds for my first cup of coffee. I’d seen three ships come in: the LaRhodes, the Heave, and the Before. They liked to come in the afternoon. That gave them the evening and the night to be with their agent and to offload samples of their cargo for the auction floor. They usually got a bit of rest before Lloyds opened, because Lloyds was the place you got the people who bought into ventures.

The silvers I had were half pounds. I was afraid I was out of money. Those footpads weren’t starving. I thought about just taking on footpads, but usually they were out of money. They were dangerous to tackle, and got you afoul of the underground. If the king’s men, or the cardinal’s men caught me, I’d be considered the same trash as the men I was going after.

I was there outside of Lloyds. They had some interesting people there who had little scribner stands. For as little as a penny you could buy into shares or ventures. Somebody would buy a regular company share and supposedly sell out pieces of that. I found out later on you couldn’t count there to actually be stock behind the penny stock. I did a lot of listening. One man kept trying to get me to put a pence in on this very risky thing. It might return as much as ten times. That was a hell of a return, but it was a sail to the Spice Islands and back with a shipload of spices. But with a rogue selling it, I actually believed there was a share behind it. I finally put a penny up. He looked at the penny like it was a bad eyed orphan come home to roost.

He said, Oh young sir, in for a pence, in for a pound.

I told him a pence would be quite a lot of it. The ship, if it came back, would be back in seventeen months at the earliest.

I went in to Lloyds and bought a cup of coffee. There were at least three groups at Lloyds. There were noblemen who sat behind a little funny wall made of a bar a little over knee high with vertical posts every so often. Some of them were rough looking for being lords. I figured that was what they called the new men, Raleigh’s son and people like that. Raleigh’s son especially was said to be with a coarse lot. He had actually lived in the New World and had bizarre ideas. Next, outside of that, were a group of men who really lived quite well off. They were known simply as the investors. It was among those gentlemen that you would find the most knowledge about which ventures to bet on. It was said that that’s where most of the money came from. Outside of that in a nook here or there, or on a bench, I thought at first, were people like me. They’d take a cup of coffee and go into one of those little places, a nice little nook with a bench wide enough for two with the sun streaming in. I saw those places and I picked a nice bench by the window. I had unknowingly done something to set myself up. Number one, I had taken over a space that was owned by another man, but number two and more important, I’d set myself up as one of the men who sat around the outside and listened. Usually what that meant was that I represented a really powerful man who had lots to invest, and I was there to collect information for him. I didn’t mean to do that, it’s just I obviously didn’t belong to the other two groups.

After a bit a man showed up with a silver cane. He stopped and looked at me. He was a bit wide across the ass. He said, Sir, you are in my seat.

I didn’t notice how any of the places had names engraved on them.

He reached out and tapped gently just below my knee. I see we share an affliction, same damn leg too. The sun feels good on it in the early morning, doesn’t it?

Have you come through the straits just?

Aye

I said, It seems this bench is wide enough for two, but why don’t you take this side, so you can get your leg warmed up too. Mine is not cold anymore. It still hurts and aches, but it ain’t cold.

He thanked me, and he sat down. Giving me a dirty look, this boy popped up very quickly with a cup of coffee. The man put lumps of sugar and poured cream in his coffee. He urged me to do the same, so I did. It made a world of difference. He also had a plate of little cinnamon things. He asked me to take some. I took three. They were quite tasty. He had to pay for them, but he didn’t pay right then. I found out later on that this man just came in and got what he wanted, and settled up later. I didn’t have to pay for those; those were his. It turned out the cream and sugar were extra too. I got to where I liked drinking coffee plain.

We did small talk. He knew I was from the Northlands. He said that long ago he’d gone to sea with a man from up there. It was a man named Murchison.

He didn’t talk quite like you, but reminiscent, reminiscent.

Murchisons are on a different island, but sitting down in Langdon town, they seemed like next-door neighbors. I said as much and he laughed too.

Aye. When I was half along the way sailing with that young man, a British ship set into the same port. I felt about them like they were next door neighbors.

I began to learn what the council wanted. In doing so, I found I could take on a venture with as short as a four-month span. I could buy into that venture with ten pounds, which I had now, barely. I could eke it out, and then I’d have to worry about how to eat. I still had the rest of the month’s lodging and one meal a day. It would probably be gruel, but hey, I wouldn’t starve. I thought long and hard about it, and finally bought into that venture, the Muscovite, or Russian, trade. They were going to buy Flanders wool crimmasy cloth and take it to Muscovite, trade it for furs, and bring the furs back again. Even with the danger from storms, pirates, rogue kings, and Muscovites themselves, it was fairly safe. When they returned I would double my money, so I bought in.

Anytime I had the money I’d go back for a cup of coffee. I had eaten all the gruel in the morning that I could hold. Sometimes there was bread too, or fruit slices like apple or pear. Meg tended to favor me at breakfast. Every now and again I’d have a chance to have a bit extra out of somebody else’s spigot, and I unashamedly took it.

At the end of the fifth month the Muscovite venture came back. They didn’t pay me ten pounds back; they paid me almost twelve, plus my original investment. It was winter by then. There was a venture that was overdue. That man I sat with seemed to think well of the captain. I could pick up one hundred pounds worth investment for ten. I thought that this was the time to gamble, so I put ten pounds in and bought a little over a hundred. The next day people were more upset, because people had been buying down the trading stock. That day I was able to buy one hundred fifty pounds for ten. I was sitting there with two hundred seventy-four pounds worth of original shares. This was a venture of medical herbs and other strange things, a high yield cargo without terrible risk. Two days after a really bad winter storm, that ship beat its way into harbor. It was a mess. That storm had ripped up its sails. They came sailing in. That cargo brought various odds and ends that city hadn’t seen in a decade. The auction wasn’t held until the third day, after which time the ship’s goods were inventoried. For every pound ventured, they returned a little over fourteen and a half. Since I had over two hundred seventy pounds, I was a rich man, all for my twenty-pound investment. By this time I hadn’t been quite five months in Langdon.

I went to Meg. She said, "I heard about your winnings, sir. I’ll sadly see you

go."

No. I’m going to be here in Langdon Town for some time to come. I’d like to rent my room permanently for less money, and get in on two meals a day.

She laughed at that and said, I’m cooking stew again.

It sounded good to me. Quite often with her stew she’d put down a bed of mashed natives rich with butter, make big dents, and then put in the stew. Native is a white root crop grown in the new world. They brought it over here as a new food. That stew she serves is a meal!

Everybody at Lloyds knew when you won big. That afternoon after I had collected my purse, I was sitting around Lloyds. I had been watching the ventures. I paid out over six hundred pounds buying into ventures right then. You could buy into newer ones, or you could buy into ones that were already underway. It was all a big gamble. They usually made arrangements to talk to you over dinner, if they thought you were a big investor. So I started getting meals out for free.

Meg said, We’ll go back to the other arrangement.

So we went back to the previous arrangement. She took my pence for my meals and supper on to account.

I tried two more ship ventures that were late coming in, and they never came in. But I only put small amounts down here and there, so I could leverage them like I had before, although something that highly leverageable is very rare. Then one day Lloyd’s put the ship that Meg’s man was on up for betting. They were betting on it, because they had heard rumors that it sank off the highland of Zanzibar. I didn’t want to bet on it.

I finished two years in a series of plunges. In one I invested two thousand pounds and I got back twelve pounds to live off of. Some were in dead certain adventures; some were in medium; some were in high play arts, the high flyers. The second year the Russian thing was a total disaster. They had problems on this side, problems on that side, set backs, and extra expenses. They finally got to the market and found that the round-heads, Germanic people, had gotten there three weeks before with