Perthshire Folk Tales

STARTING IN THE SOUTH

GOLDEN CRADLE OF THE PICTS

Over a thousand years ago the great country we now call Scotland was in the grip of power struggles between the Vikings, the Scots and the Picts. Stories handed down through generations provide a vivid picture of relentless violence. Bloody battles raged, driven by both intelligence and brawn, and the wily strategies to take control of the people and land became the stuff of legend.

One such tale has lasted the test of time and concerns the town of Abernethy in the middle years of the ninth century.

At dawn on a summer morning, King Drust of the Picts set out from his stronghold at the base of Castle Law with the last of his warriors. Years of fighting had reduced them to a motley force but they marched proudly behind their King, standards waving, their loved ones cheering and crying until they were out of sight.

King Drust knew his reign was coming to an end. He was heading north to Scone to face Kenneth Alpin (Cináed mac Ailpín), King of the Scots. There are two versions of the terrible events which occurred that day, and which one you believed depended on whether you were a Pict or a Scot.

Some say the Scots set a deadly trap for King Drust. The two enemies were meeting for an uneasy banquet at Scone where there was much revelry, music and dancing, with Kenneth’s serving girls keeping the goblets well-filled with liquor. While the Picts were in a jovial, numbed state, the Scots made their move. Pulling out pegs from under the long trestle seats, they dropped their enemies into prepared trenches filled with blades and sharpened spikes.

The other version tells us King Drust led the charge against the King of the Scots on the battlefield and was cut down and killed amid the bluster and courage of the fight.

Either way, King Drust was killed.

Fleet-footed runners rushed south over hills and through glens to carry the tragic news back to the Pict’s fort at Abernethy. Before leaving, King Drust had warned his wife and all the members of his household of the inevitable Scots’ victory, so the news was not unexpected. They recalled his passionate words, urging them to make the best of their lives under the Scots rather than be needlessly slaughtered before their time.

Nevertheless, on hearing confirmation of his death, the fort erupted into wailing, cursing, arguing chaos. It would not be long before Kenneth’s soldiers would be at the door to take their gold and quash any revival. The older folk believed they should stand firm: they were Picts until the day they died and would not submit to the Scots. Others felt it was futile and started to unbar the door, preparing to kneel before their victors and keep their heads on their shoulders.

Up in one of the attic rooms, King Drust’s faithful old nursemaid scoured the horizon for any sight of approaching Scots. She was disgusted by the feeble cries of defeat and had a far more important subject on her mind. While the queen wept and wrung her hands downstairs in the main hall, the old nurse moved rapidly to take action.

Ever since he was born, when she cared for him as an infant, King Drust had trusted her implicitly. In recent years, he had made her responsible for the two most valuable things in his life and she knew these two things would be the first to be taken by the King of the Scots: his baby son and the cradle in which he lay.

The golden cradle was an ancient royal heirloom. Wrought from solid gold, nobody knew where it came from nor who created such a wondrous work of art, only that every baby born to a Pictish king was laid in this cradle. Oh, how much the King of the Scots would want to own this potent symbol of the Picts!

She knew what she must do. She knew she couldn’t pick up the cradle. It was very, very, heavy and had remained as if stuck to the floor for many a year. There was no time to lose but she could barely even drag it across the floorboards so she ran down to the kitchens. Within minutes she was back in the attic with the baby’s devoted young nursery maid and a brawny but brainless young man. They clustered around the golden cradle and managed to haul it down the back stairs, baby and all. Leaving the fort by a secret door, they scurried towards the cover of trees overhanging a burn and headed up Castle Law, staggering and slipping beneath their burden. Behind them came the terrifying sound of the approaching spear-wielding Scots, King Kenneth riding at the front.

The nursemaid may have been in advancing years but her heart and lungs were strong. All the way up Castle Law she muttered under her breath. Bullying and encouraging the servants to keep going, she vowed to stop the cradle and the infant king from falling into the Scots’ hands.

When they reached a shoulder on the hill they paused for breath, looking down at the besieged fort. Below them, one of the Scots’ soldiers noticed the sunshine glinting off the radiant gold and a cry went up! Kenneth’s sharp eye recognised the cradle and he set off in pursuit with a group of soldiers.

By the time they came over the brow of the hill, the nursemaid had moved on towards a loch. It was here, at the lochside, that they found her: alone.

She was sitting waiting for them on a rock above the water. The ribbons on her cap neatly tied, her skirts arranged over her knees, bare feet dangling in mid-air and her arms locked around the golden cradle. It seemed to the watching Scots that she took a breath, or perhaps she was speaking, for her mouth gaped open and her eyes focused on them as she pitched forward and plunged into the water.

King Kenneth shouted urgently to his men to dive in and retrieve the precious golden cradle, adding as an afterthought for them to save the royal baby. Shields and armour were unstrapped, heavy boots hastily unlaced with shaking, exhausted fingers but in these few short moments the hot summer day grew dark. Black clouds appeared, swirling overhead to send raindrops pelting down, whipping the loch’s surface into a white froth.

Up from the water rose a colossal wave, its crest falling in an endless waterfall to rise again and again, twisting into the shape of a bony, writhing old crone. Her watery cloak billowed out from around her shoulders and the raging gale swept back her straggling white hair to show jagged features and oversized, staring eyes. Deep, resonating sounds reverberated through the ground like thunder, but it wasn’t thunder. Words spilled from the towering supernatural creature in a voice so low and so loud and so shocking they were hard to decipher; even King Kenneth dropped to his knees.

Her warning given, the old hag disappeared back into the depths, leaving the rain hammering down through an eerie silence. Terrified and defeated in their quest for the golden cradle, King Kenneth and his men made their way off the hill, not daring to look back.

And what of the heir to the Pict throne, King Drust’s baby son? Did that fiercely loyal nursemaid really drown her little charge, as she wished King Kenneth to believe? Or, did she sacrifice herself to divert attention from the little maid slipping away over the hills with a baby in her arms? If so, the bloodline of our ancient Pictish kings is still alive: somewhere.

Tantalisingly, a long time ago, golden keys were found in a local stream:

On the Dryburn Well, beneath a stane

You’ll find the key o’ Cairnavain

That will mak a’ Scotland rich, ane by ane.

These keys are said to release the hoard of Pictish gold which was hastily and secretly buried between Castle Law and Cairnsvain on that fateful day.

The words spoken to King Kenneth and his soldiers by the old hag from the water gave clues of how to claim the cradle from the loch. The exact words have been lost from memory but are loosely recalled as meaning a man (or woman) should go alone to the lochan at dead of night. They must go round the loch nine times, encircling it with green lines and only then will they find the golden cradle.

For anyone thinking of trying to retrieve the golden cradle, a caution should be given. Although many have attempted this feat, none have succeeded and, more worryingly, many have either lost their wits or never been seen again.

AWAY WITH THE FAERIES

It was nearing the Winter Solstice and two young men went off to buy some whisky from a neighbour’s secret still in the next glen. They made their purchase and passed a few words with their friend then set off home, a barrel slung between them. It was a frosty afternoon and with only an hour or so of daylight left they strode along, their breath foaming on the air.

On passing a hillock, one stopped, catching hold of his friend’s arm and urging him to pause and listen. A beautiful melody came tinkling from over the rise in the heather. They laid down the whisky and crept cautiously up to the crest of the hill, the music growing louder with every step.

A crowd of faerie folk were dancing to the wondrous music, whirling each other around and beckoning to the men to join them. The harmonious tune made their hearts sing and their toes begin to tap but the older of the two was wary.

‘Come away, we must be gettin’ hame.’

His friend did not move, delighting in the magical sight of fantastically vibrant colour and merriment beneath the darkening sky. Wee folk were flitting here and there, lighting scores of lanterns and candles, jigging and laughing along with the sweet notes from pipes and fiddles.

Again the other man tried to persuade his friend to leave but without success, so he went home alone, bearing the barrel on his back. The villagers were very suspicious. Where was his friend? What had happened? They searched high and low and did not believe the story of the faerie gathering. Tempers ran high and the man was accused of killing his friend and hiding his body.

‘I tell you the truth!’ the man pleaded. ‘I left him watching the faeries and he was alive and well. Allow me one year and I shall prove I am no murderer.’

Exactly a year since he last saw his friend, the accused man returned to the hillock. There, in the same place as he had left him, stood his friend!

‘Come awa’ hame now,’ he told him.

The friend waved a hand impatiently, ‘Och, man, let me watch. Just a minute or two more.’

‘Ye’ve bin here a full year, come away hame noo!’ He grasped his friend firmly by the jacket and after a struggle, he dragged him home. They argued all the way back along the track, with the rescued man flatly refusing to believe he had spent more than a few minutes watching the faeries. It was only when he reached his village and everyone ran out to see him, and his mother and wife both fell on him with tears of relief, that he began to doubt his own mind.

Then he saw the calf he left in the barn, now a stout beast, but on opening his front door he came fully to his senses. His son, a babe in arms when he left, came running across the parlour with hands outstretched to be picked up. He hugged the child close and declared that yes, he must have been away with the faeries for a full year.

ST SERF AND THE DRAGON

On the southern bank of the River Earn, a few miles south of Perth, lies the pretty village of Dunning. Nestled below the Ochil Hills, its perfect setting has been chosen as a safe, fertile dwelling place for at least the last five thousand years.

There must be many tales from Dunning from early Iron Age settlers and Roman camps but this story has been kept alive from when Scotland was Pictland.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the daily lives of the Dunning villagers revolved around raising families, rearing livestock and making sure there was plenty food for everyone.

One day, this happy existence was brought to a standstill when a dragon came marauding off the hills. It stamped its way towards Dunning’s cluster of wooden houses, snatching up and eating small animals and whole fruit trees; dribbling and chomping as it went.

Mothers grabbed their children and fled indoors, barring the windows and doors. Men pushed their frightened livestock into byres and guarded the doors, armed with sticks and pikes, terrified.

The beast swaggered across carefully tended vegetable patches, its tail swiping from side to side, knocking down haystacks and trampling woodpiles as if they were twigs. After several awful, breath-holding minutes, it stomped on across the floodplains and took a drink from the Earn. Then it returned to the hills and was lost from sight.

Of course, the appearance of a dragon caused a terrible uproar! Nobody felt safe and, worse, few people at the markets in Perth or Auchterarder would even believe it happened.

Unfortunately for the people of Dunning, the dragon kept returning.

There was a very holy man travelling through Strathearn, St Serf. He had held the office of Pope in Rome for seven years before finding it too restrictive and setting out on his own as a missionary. His footsteps took him up through Gaul (what we now call Europe) then across the Channel and northwards until he reached Pictland.

By this time, he had already founded a religious community on an island in Loch Lomond, now called St Serf’s Inch. His restless, evangelical nature kept him moving, earnest in his duty of spreading the word of God and stamping out pagan beliefs. For all that, he was unanimously found to be a kindly, benevolent man by everyone who met him.

When St Serf drew close to Dunning, the villagers ran out to greet him. They invited him in to one of the elder’s houses and told him of the ‘dragon, great and loathsome, whose look no mortal could endure’. He listened, solemnly, while they ogled at this foreign holy man. With his aquiline features, dark eyes and black beard he was a fine sight, being the son of an Arabian Princess and the King of Canaan.

Suddenly a cry went up: ‘Dragon!’

Everyone rushed about shouting, shooing chickens, banging doors shut, slamming bolts home and barricading themselves indoors.

St Serf went out to meet the creature.

The dragon’s huge head swung round, its glistening, bloodshot eyeballs pointing directly at the approaching figure, straight-backed and calm with just his faith