Scottish traveller in front of his wagon

Just passing through—the Scottish Travellers

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Oh, Lady Margaret she sat in her high chambers.
She was sewing her silken seams.
She lookit east and she lookit west
And she saw those woods grow green.

So, picking up her petticoat
Beneath her harlin gown,
It’s when she came to the merry green woods,
There she let them down.

Oh, she had not pulled one nut, one nut,
One nut nor scarcely three,
When the highest lord in all the countryside
Came a-riding through the trees.

–opening of Lady Margaret, a traditional Scottish Traveller song
told by Duncan Williamson; transcribed in ‘Scottish Traveller Tales’

Who are the Scottish Travellers (a small contingent of whom emigrated to Appalachia in the late 19th century)? In the Old Country, this nomadic group has pitched its bow-tents just on the outskirts of villages and earned money there as tinsmiths, hawkers, horse dealers and pearl-fishermen for at least 500 years.

“That was an old familiar thing, gypsies ‘a goin’ through here,” said Pendleton County, WV native Garland Raines.1 “I was death afraid of them; I mean when I met a bunch of them I’d run outta the county almost, because, they were dark complected people, and most of them would steal the coat right off of your back if you didn’t watch ‘em.

“They would take old horses that were dead old—an old horse gets holes above their eyes, there are hollow places— and they would take a car pump and pump up those places in their eyes so you couldn’t tell ‘em from a young horse. And they would file their teeth. Three days later after somebody got the old horse he was dead! 

“So, that was gypsies. If they scared you the way they would me I don’t think you’d want to see ‘em.

“They’d make baskets out of branches and sell ‘em and things, and they’d make knives. They was pretty good in workmanship like that.”

They were called tinkers, from the Irish tincéirí, eg. tincéir or “tinsmith.” “It’s not worth a tinker’s dam” (a little rivet for repairing stuff) is the original saying from whence we get the less polite common saying. Travellers themselves now consider the term derogatory.

Tinsmith at work in drainpipe section in one of the flourishing shops in the Shenandoah Valley.
Caption reads: Tinsmith at work in drainpipe section in one of the flourishing shops in the Shenandoah Valley. Photo John Vachon, 1941.

In Scotland, they developed regular routes and sold goods, repaired carts and pots and pans, and worked the horses or land as they went from one side of that country to the other. In Appalachia the men are still itinerant in the sense that their work takes them away from home for many months at a time, but they have a home base where the women and children stay during the school year.

The Travellers never bank their money but spend it quickly, or keep large amounts of cash on hand, or they turn it over into silver and gold and carry that with them. They don’t trust banks or governments, so they fend for themselves.

Scottish Travellers devised two languages. One was Cant, a combination of Scottish Gaelic, English, Romany and Arabic. The other language is a version of Gaelic unique to the Travellers alone called Beurla Regaird.

These languages are guarded. They are taught only in the community, taught from birth, and those who marry outside the community do not teach their new families the language. In fact, to marry outside the community is to die to your family.

Scottish Travellers in America do intermarry with other groups from time to time. Most frequently, when they marry outside the Travellers, they marry Melungeons, Gypsies, or mixed blood groups such as Redbones, Brass Ankles, the Guineas of WV, or Lumbees.

"Jockey" Street, near the courthouse. Here is where mountaineers and farmers trade horses and mules. Campton, Wolfe County, Kentucky.
Photo caption reads: “Jockey” Street, near the courthouse. Here is where mountaineers and farmers trade horses and mules. Campton, Wolfe County, Kentucky. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, 1940.

Scottish Travellers are and were known as storytellers, entertainers, humorists, and musicians. Scottish Travellers have a word in the Cant language – conyach. Conyach describes the state when who you are, and what you are doing, merge into one. It’s a highly sought after state when one is the singer, dancer, or storyteller at a ceilidh.

In a traditional informal ceilidh, family and friends got together after dinner and the dishes were done, and there was that little bit of time between then and time to go to bed, and they sat and visited with each other. And they talked, and sometimes they got to telling stories or singing together.

Stories were often told that were hours long. They could be drawn out over several days, told in parts every night. Common stories included the Jack Tales that we now associate with Appalachia, but were originally from the British Isles. They exist both in Gaelic and the Scots tongues.

Usually at the ceilidh, songs would be sung about local people. This was a form of social control. You could spread gossip, make fun of someone, express admiration or love for someone, spread bad news about someone, or ruin the reputation of someone, just by singing a song about them, or inserting their name into an already existing song.

Travellers share a love of words in songs & stories. Also — a desire to constantly move on. They tend to travel before a birth so that the children have the right to be in more than one country. They tend to be drawn to thrown away people, or outcasts, the broken, or the hidden. They are known for passing through quietly, not making a noise unless they are wanted, needed. You might move on an hour or so down the road or you might move to another country. That is the way of the Travellers.

sources: Scottish Customs: From the Cradle to the Grave, by Margaret Bennett, Polygon, 1992
Scottish Traveller Tales: Lives Shaped through Stories, by Donald Braid, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/754640/posts?page=1
The Thistle and the Brier, by Richard Blaustein, McFarland, 2003

More articles on outsider groups:

Theirs was a hardy race(Opens in a new browser tab)

The Guineas of West Virginia(Opens in a new browser tab)

Educating the Melungeons(Opens in a new browser tab)

  1. Berea College Special Collections and Archives. (Host). (2004-10-8). Garland Raines interview. [Part 1 KK-DT-002-041]. 27:10. https://berea.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_dbb8632d-9179-4be6-a72f-5bb2a1692bfe/

9 comments

  1. Richard, I remember your fiddling and you so fondly. Charlie and Dorothy Acuff have both passed away now and his father’s fiddles were sold. We miss Charlie dearly. David went to see him at the nursing home in Newport as often as he could. David recorded a tribute CD of tunes he learned from Charlie. We would love to see you if you’re ever in Nashville–still at the same house I’ve lived in since 4th grade. We have two sweet girl grandchildren from our daughter, Holly. our son, Nathan, lives in Cincinnati with his wife. I’m hoping you will get this and stay in touch–Trish Cannon

  2. great article. Explains so much to me about my mum and her family…. I dont think they have ever forgiven her for getting married to a english non traveller and bringing us all here to live in Australia in 1965. We were never told of her Scottish Traveller background. I only found out 5 years ago…. I have been referred to by them as a gorja breed of the scummy kind as we dont always see eye to eye. very sad bunch indeed. And yes, they spread untruths about us…. so proud of my mum, God rest her soul.

  3. I am very interested in Appalachian history. My entire family lived in the mountains of Tennessee, but many settled in SE Kentucky. They seem to be a wild bunch. Coal mining, farming and making shine was their way of living. They are primarily Scots and irish

  4. My research goes back more than 500 years into my culture as a Scottish Traveller. Info about a Tinker Johnson in Perth during the 12th century is held in the local archives. Also there was a time laid aside for the Hammermen to sell their wares, work their anvils in the city but had to be gone before sunset and this also predates the 16th century. The Scottish Travellers were a mixture of clansmen, hawker dealers, border Gypsies and Romanichals. Each to their own areas seemed to sail through history without labels until the introduction of the protestant religion, it was then rules were set and laws put in place to restrict movement of the freemen. There is a great deal to our story but as yet academia hasn’t latched onto it. To do this they would need to sit a long time in University archives especially theologian libraries with cloth gloves meticulously going through the ancient annals of both Irish and Scottish tribal systems.

  5. McFarland’s from Tennessee here 🙂 Thank you for posting this. More needs to be said, but its a bit worth saying 🙂

  6. I lived near a settlement of Irish Travelers in SC for years but had not known of Scottish Travelers before coming across this article today while browsing through Appalachian history archives online. A blog called The Blind Pig and the Acorn led me here after having read half a dozen fascinating articles I could never have found in a local library.

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