The Lore of Scotland, by Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill, is a collection which I am reading in bits and pieces for the
Once Upon a Time Challenge, for fairy tales and folk tales sections of the challenge. This book is so interesting - it has all kinds of Scottish legends, myths, fairy tales, and folk tales, collected from all over Scotland.
For your folk tale and fairy reading pleasure on this late Sunday night, here is a folk tale about a brownie:
Boghall Farm, Near Dollar, Clackmannanshire
The Brownie was very like a man in shape. His entire body was covered with brown hairs, hence his name. He slept all day and worked all night, when the whole farmhhouse was hushed in slumber. Although possessed of great strength he was harmless, and had more of a forgiving than a revengeful turn of mind. His food was sowans (oats steeped in water) and sweet milk, while his bed consisted of straw made up in some cosy corner of the barn. To the farm of Boghall, near Dollar, Brownie rendered essential services; but it happened one very severe winter, when the snow lay deep upon the ground, and the frost was so intense as to freeze every running stream and well,that the woman of the house, afraid that her friendly Brownie would die, laid down some warm blankets on his heap of straw. Seeing this, he immediately left the place saying:
To leave my old haunts, oh! my heart is
sair,
But the wife gave me blankets - she'll see
me nae mair;
I've worked in her barn, frae evening till
day,
My curse on the blankets that drove me
away.
All the boon that I asked were my
sowans and strae,
But success to Bhoga' although
Brownie's away.
Although he wished well to his former home, Boghall was never the same again. 'At the present day, it is little better than a wilderness', ends this account of the Boghall Brownie printed in The Scottish Journal of Topography in 1848.
p56-57
