Ep 60: Unveiling Scotland's Folklore: Magic, Myths, and History with Graeme Johncock

What secrets lie within Scotland's ancient folklore? Graeme Johncock, author of Scotland Stories: Historic Tales for Incredible Places  joins us on episode 60 as we discover the magic, myths, and legends of Scotland. Graeme delves into the unique aspects of Scotland's storytelling traditions, from the influence of historical events like the Highland Clearances to the intriguing lore surrounding witches, stone circles, kelpies and mysterious lochs. We explore Celtic mythology, and the connection with Scottish and Irish folklore. We discuss King James VI's book Demonology and influence on witch hunts in Scotland and around the world. This is an episode you won't want to miss!

Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scotlands_stories/
Website: https://scotlands-stories.com/
Book: https://a.co/d/dwUf1rv
Youtube:  @scotlandsstories626  

Notes:

• Graeme's background: Started sharing stories on social media during lockdown
• Scottish folklore: Less known to Scottish children compared to international stories
• 🏴 Scottish Folklore and Storytelling (11:23 - 21:20)
• Oral storytelling tradition in Scotland tied to specific places
• Highland Clearances impacted storytelling traditions
• Story collectors in the 18th-19th centuries preserved tales
• Kelpies: Shape-shifting water spirits in Scottish folklore
• Different versions of Kelpie stories: benevolent vs. malevolent
• 🧙‍♀️ Scottish Witches and History (21:20 - 31:24)
• Scotland's unique relationship with witchcraft
• King James VI's influence on witch hunts
• Demonology book by King James VI
• Witch trials in Scotland: larger scale than Salem
• True story of Lilias Adie, accused of witchcraft
• 🧚 Celtic Mythology and Gaelic Stories (31:26 - 41:13)
• Napoleon's interest in Celtic mythology
• Ossian's tales and James MacPherson's influence
• Connection between Scottish and Irish folklore
• Influence of the Presbyterian Church on storytelling
• Story of Fingal (Finn McCool) and the Giant's Causeway
• 📚 Scottish Folklore and Literature (41:13 - 49:24)
• Graeme's book: 'Scotland Stories: Historic Tales for Incredible Places'
• Travel companion aspect of the book
• Private tours offered by Graeme
• Edinburgh's rich folklore and hidden stories
• Glasgow's limited folklore compared to Edinburgh
• 🗿 Stone Circles and Ancient Monuments (49:24 - 57:41)
• Stone circles found throughout Scotland, not just Highlands
• Theories about stone circles' purposes
• Callanish Standing Stones used in Outlander
• Maeshowe on Orkney: impressive chambered cairn
• Winter solstice phenomenon at Maeshowe
• 🐉 Loch Ness and Other Mysterious Lochs (57:41 - 01:07:19)
• Loch Ness: Impressive size and depth
• Loch Morar: Deeper than Loch Ness with its own monster legend
• Theories about underground passages connecting lochs
• 🧚‍♀️ Scottish Fairy Tales and Folklore (01:07:19 - 01:16:06)
• Scottish version of Cinderella: 'Rashin Coatie'
• Importance of cows in Scottish folklore
• Fairy godmother replaced by fairy god-cow in Rashin Coatie
• Similarities and differences between Rashin Coatie and t

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Transcript

Vanessa Rogers: 0:09

Welcome, folksy folks. Welcome to Fabrica Folklore. My name is Vanessa Y. Rogers, and this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. This podcast is about exploring our stories, our fairy tales, our folk tales, and our traditions to better understand their significance in our lives. Today, as summer break comes to a close, at least here in the states, kids are getting ready to return to school, including my own. And that kind of got me thinking about why we associate apples with teachers. And the tradition of giving apples to teachers began as a humble gesture of gratitude and has evolved into a symbolic representation of the importance of education. It can be traced back to the early 19th century in the United States, particularly in the rural communities where cash was scarce and many of the families were farm families. And so instead of giving their teachers cash as a show of appreciation, they would choose apples because they were abundant and they were easy to transport. For these rural communities, education was also, at this time, becoming increasingly important, and teachers were seen as role models and mentors. And this apple was meant to be a gesture of respect and appreciation. And I love these types of tidbits about our history because I feel like it gives us clarity on those traditions and those stories and helps us to understand our community and ourselves better. Our history isn't just in our past, it follows. It follows us into our present today. So if that sounds like a podcast you want to continue to follow, make sure you hit that subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform like Apple or Spotify. So you get our notifications every week when our podcast drops. We have a fantastic show for you today. You're going to love it. Graeme Juncock is a storyteller and author of the book Scotland stories historic tales for incredible places. He also has a website and a YouTube channel, scotlandstories.com. He has a passion for Scotland's history and folklore. His goal is to share stories from the past in an engaging way and help travelers to Scotland develop a deeper appreciation of his beautiful country. We'll be discussing all things scottish stories and folklore today. Obviously, we won't be able to cover all scottish folklore because that would require days upon days because Scotland's folklore is rich and deep. But were going to be touching on some topics such as fairies and Picts, giants and stone circles, as well as traveling in Scotland. So hopefully we get to all of those topics because there's so much to cover. So thanks so much for joining us.

Graeme Johncock: 3:06

Graham, thank you very much for having me.

Vanessa Rogers: 3:10

Well, so let's get started. And I like to ask, usually, how you get, how you got started on this journey. When did you really become interested in stories and storytelling and specifically stories from Scotland?

Graeme Johncock: 3:28

I think as a kid, I've always loved. I've always thought I was very interested in history, put it that way. And after going to university and studying history, you soon realized that is actually, it's the stories that you enjoy because you go to university and study history, you lose all the fun stuff. You don't look at that anymore. It's all down to really nitty gritty, the boring bits. So it turned out it was all, like, the big stories that I liked. And my sort of journey with Scotland stories, anyway, started as a pure accident in 2020 when we're locked down, stuck at home, couldn't go anywhere, and had a lot of extra spare time. And I started putting out some stories on social media, just things that I had always enjoyed and things I was always that annoying person when you're out with friends, who you'd go anywhere and be like, oh, did you. Did you know this? And did you hear about this? And then people were sick of hearing it, so I started putting it on social media, and it turns out some people were interested in hearing it, and it really sort of showed me how little, actually, people in Scotland and, well, and myself included, actually knew about stories here. You know, as a kid, as a scottish kid, you don't grow up hearing scottish stories, really. You grow up with things like Disney, which is all just, you know, the Grimm's fairy tales, but sanitized, and you grow up with. When it comes to myths, I used to love, like the greek myths, greek mythology, the viking gods, all that kind of stuff. Loved it. Had no idea, really, that we had a sort of things, our own things. So I think that's changing now. You know, apart from, you know, everybody grows up knowing about the Loch Ness monster. That's. That's about it. But apart from that, yeah, we've got lots and lots of. Of older stories and sort of fairy tales, though, those style of stories. People just don't really know about them, I think.

Vanessa Rogers: 5:30

So I always imagined, and maybe I have this completely wrong, but I always imagine that, you know, families in Scotland would be more of the storytelling type, where they would sit around and tell more stories as opposed to what we do in the US. Is that. Is that not the case? Do you not feel like scottish people are more prone to storytelling?

Graeme Johncock: 5:54

They are. I think a lot of it depends on where you're from. A lot of scottish stories are tied to places. I like that. There's some of my favorite stories, the ones that are behind it, you know, a literal rock that you can look at on a hill you can climb or, you know, a lock you can go swimming. They all have stories tied to them. And so as a kid, I mean, you grow up hearing stories about your local place, but that can be, you know, they can be pretty mundane things. It's one of the reasons we're quite lucky that we have lots of really old storybooks, which I didn't know about until I started doing this. From the 18 hundreds, early, mid, late 18 hundreds. People like, there's a guy, John Francis Campbell, who's quite a famous story collector, and people like that noticed that oral storytelling was kind of going. Not going out of fashion, but were losing it. Scotland went through a pretty horrendous period known as the Highland Clearances, which went from kind of the 16 hundreds all the way through to the 18 hundreds.

Vanessa Rogers: 6:57

Sorry.

Graeme Johncock: 7:01

Yes, went through this thing called the Highland clearances, which kind of went from the 16 hundreds through the 18 hundreds, where lots of people in the highlands. Not just the highlands, the lowlands as well, but lots of people were moved away from where their ancestors had lived, you know, generations of people. And when lots of your stories are ties to a specific place, you tell that story because you can see that place. It's right there. When you move, even just to the coast or end up emigrating to America, Canada, Australia, places like that. The stories were being forgotten. People had no reason to tell them anymore. So certain people went around and realized this and started to collect them and write them down. So we got some old collections of stories. But again, lots of them are. Lots of them are kind of stuck in storybooks, if that makes sense. You know, they're written in the 18 hundreds. Quite old fashioned language and way of telling things. That's one of the reasons I like doing what I do, because it's taking what might be quite a really long story that people just don't have the attention for anymore and attention span and sort of making it a bit more concise and trying to bring it to a modern audience.

Vanessa Rogers: 8:12

I guess that's where the engaging part comes in.

Graeme Johncock: 8:16

Yeah, I think a lot of time, people. And people hear the term, you know, a fairy story, or you're a fairy tale, or people just hear the term stories often and think that it's something for kids, and it's, you know, you can make it for kids. But, yeah, I think people kind of fallen out of that idea of sitting and telling stories as much. I feel like it's coming back in a fashion which I like.

Vanessa Rogers: 8:42

Do you? I know that Ireland, they have fairy rings that are respected. Is that a thing in Scotland as well?

Graeme Johncock: 8:50

There are, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I feel like, I mean, I don't know as much about irish fairies and irish stories, obviously, but as far as I know, they're pretty well linked. They're very similar in a thing. So we do. We do have that. And there are certain, you know, there are fairy knolls, there are fairy hills. In fact, my partner's farm, one of the fields, is. There's absolutely a fairy knoll in that field. I know it.

Vanessa Rogers: 9:15

Well. We'll have to get a picture of that. I would love to see what a fairyland. Did you say no. Or hill?

Graeme Johncock: 9:23

No. It's like a little rocky, but. Yeah. But there are. There are lots of things like that are. That get, you know, respected.

Vanessa Rogers: 9:32

Mm. Yeah. Did you have a favorite story as a child or growing up or maybe when you got to college that really drew you into history?

Graeme Johncock: 9:44

When it comes to folk stories, let me think. There's a story, in fact, the first sort of Kelpie story I ever told on Scotland, stories on social media. And it's the first one I ever heard. And it's interesting because it's not a very. It's not typical of Kelpie stories. If people haven't heard of kelpies, then a kelpie is a water spirit. It's a shape shifting water horse. So often it appears by the side of lochs or rivers in the shape of this big, beautiful stallion. But it's a trap. It lures people onto its back. And once you're on the kit back of a kelpie, it gallops into the water to drown you and eat you, and you're never seen again. Often a liver or a kidney or something will just wash up on the show, and that's a sign the kelpie's got somebody. So they're often quite horrid creatures or seen as that. But the first ever story I heard of them is the kelpie of Loch Garve, where the kelpie has married a human woman, and she's very happy with him. There's nothing malicious about it. But down in the depths of loch garve, up in the North Islands, it's very cold, and she's not very happy, you know, just eating raw fish and all that kind of stuff. So the kelpie traps a builder and lures a builder onto his back, gallops into the water. The builder obviously realizes what's happening and thinks this is his time. It's up. And when eventually, he can't take it anymore, takes a big, deep breath and finds out that for some reason, he can breathe. And the kelpie says to him, you know, it's fine. Don't worry, I'm not here to hurt you. But I need your help to build this giant chimney because I want to make a fire to keep my wife warm and happy. So, you know, without really much choice in the matter, the builder goes ahead and does what he's told. The kelpie uses his immense strength to carry the big rocks. And the builder builds this chimney. And before you know, it is stretching right up to just. Just below the surface of the loch. A little bit of Kelpie magic. The fire is going. Kelpie's wife is warm and happy. It's great. But Kelpie takes the builder back to his home. And anytime he needs, any time he needs any food, he just leaves a basket by the lock. The kelpie mixture is full of fish. And this story is proved because to this day, even when it's really cold, it's really snowy, it's icy. Up in the North Highlands, Loch guard will freeze over, apart from one spot, which always stays thawed out. And that's supposed to be just above the Kelpies chimney.

Vanessa Rogers: 12:18

Oh, how cool.

Graeme Johncock: 12:20

I like stories that, you know, explain, like, a natural phenomenon. And I always liked it and I told that one and then I realized that, like, that's not what kelpies are usually like at all. It's a terrible story to tell us your first Kelpie story because people get wrong impression of them.

Vanessa Rogers: 12:35

Right? Because normally they're, like, stealing children is often, like, it's told to children to keep them away from water. Is that.

Graeme Johncock: 12:42

Yeah, exactly. Like, there's one from up in, again, in the far north, up in Sutherland, where it's. No, it's like seven children and it's six girls and a boy. And you should really have been in church on a Sunday. But they were playing down by the lock instead. And a Kelpie wanders up. I'm not thinking what they're doing. When the wee girl jumps on its back, then the next one jumps on its back and the Kelpie gets longer and longer to accommodate all the kids. And it's only the wee boy that is nervous and goes and puts his finger on the flank and realizes it's stuck, knows it's a kelpie. So the wee boy whips out his knife, because every wee boy's got a knife, apparently, chops his own finger off to save himself. And all the other kids are drowned in the water and disappear. And the wee boy, missing his finger, survives to tell the tale. Like, that's a more typical kelpie story.

Vanessa Rogers: 13:29

Well, there has to be some blood involved. Right?

Graeme Johncock: 13:31

Exactly. This is the thing about when people say stories are for kids. Most of these stories are def. Well, they are for kids, or, you know, it should be for kids. But they're not all happy and smiley and things. They're more real.

Vanessa Rogers: 13:47

They're not the sanitized versions of stories that we tell our children today, usually.

Graeme Johncock: 13:52

Exactly. Yeah. The good thing about, you know, we saying that lots of kids don't grow up, or my generation, we didn't grow up learning scottish stories. There is now, on the sort of side, the main motorway. I don't know if you've seen these before, these giant horse statues called the kelpies, sort of not far away from Stirling. Between Edinburgh and Stirling.

Vanessa Rogers: 14:13

Yes. They're giant.

Graeme Johncock: 14:15

Yeah. They're 30 meters tall. They're the largest equine sculptures in the world. Yes. And partly they're there to commemorate the sort of local history because they're beside a canal and these big horses used to pull the canal, the boats along the canal, but also the calls, the kelpies. And, you know, horses and water together, that's, you know, those are the elements of a kelpie. And the good thing is, you know, kids can go and ask, why are these giant horses called kelpies? And hopefully somebody will tell them the story. So it's good. It draws attention to these things.

Vanessa Rogers: 14:53

You know, I saw. Have you seen the movie frozen two?

Graeme Johncock: 14:58

I haven't, no.

Vanessa Rogers: 15:00

There's a water horse spirit in that movie. And I wondered, when I saw it, if it was intended to be like a very nice version of a kelpie or where that. Where that imagery or idea came from when they were creating the story of frozen two. So I'll have to. I'll have to find someone, because there's quite a bit of folklore in, you know, both of those stories. And so I'm interested, and I think. I think it's supposed to be in the norwegian area or, like the. So not necessarily Scottish, but they also have kelpies and Selkies, I believe, in Norway and Sweden. In those areas, I believe.

Graeme Johncock: 15:45

I don't know if they have. They definitely have selkies. I don't know if they do have kelpies, but they might have what. So, in Scotland, we've got what we call the northern Isles, which are Orkney and Shetland. And they up until the mid 15 hundreds. Oh, no, sorry. Mid 14 hundreds. They were part of Scandinavia, like they'd been conquered by the Vikings for 600 years, and they only got them back because the danish king didn't pay his bill, something like that. So anyway, so they've got this really unique mixture of folklore. You get folk creatures up there you don't get in the rest of Scotland. So they don't have fairies, but they have things called trows. And trows are kind of like the scandinavian troll, but with all the characteristics of a fairy. So they live underground. They go out and cause mischief. The time isn't. You can go into a trow hill just like you go into a fairy hill, and time doesn't pass the same way there. So there are stories of, like, a fiddler who gets lured in to play the fiddle for the fairies. And he has one night, and it's a wild night, and it's like the best night of his life. He's never played music quite so well. And he comes back out and he carries on walking home. He eventually gets to his house when nothing looks the same. And he goes inside and there's this strange family in there. And obviously he's quite confused and irate that there's this random people in his house, and he's shouting and screaming and they're getting scared that some random man has entered their house, and there's just one really old guy in the corner. He says, oh, I remember there was a story about a guy who disappeared in that hill 100 years ago. And the fiddler realizes the trouser played this trick in him, and he goes outside and he plays a tune on his fiddle, and when he plays a final note, he crumbles into dust as 100 years catch up with him all in one. But anyway, so that's one example. Troweys and fairies, but they also have something called a. It's called a nyuggle. I never know if I'm pronouncing it right, but it's njuggle, and it is very similar to a kelpie, but it's not a kelpie, but it kind of is. And I'm really sure it's like the Scottish Kelpie mixed again with, like, a scandinavian version of that type of thing.

Vanessa Rogers: 17:55

Interesting. Yeah, it's so interesting. To see how the stories change per location, because each location has its own unique qualities. And so the people, they have different experiences, and so they create new, original stories and they have some ties, but they end up becoming their own individual ones. I always love to see how that works. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about. I was perusing on your blog, and I just picked a few of the characters that I thought we could talk about. Scottish witches was one of the first things that came up as slightly different than a lot of other places see witches. Can you talk to us a little bit about how scottish witches are slightly different?

Graeme Johncock: 18:55

Yeah. Scotland has a very strange relationship with witches and witchcraft in our history. We've got lots of stories about witches, and there's a real spectrum of, you know, difference from these evil, you know, the evil witches you think of sometimes when you think of things all the way up to, you know, sort of, don't know what you've called them. Often called them spay wives or, you know, people, wise women or people have a gift and. But are not necessarily evil and kind of everything in between. I think when you look at really old witch stories, you have this idea that witches are like people. You know, they're not uniformly good or bad, just like people are, you know, but the difference, the thing that really comes in is King James VI of Scotland. So in the second half of the 15 hundreds became obsessed with witchcraft and terrified of it and was convinced that witches were trying to kill him and his wife, Queen Anne. So he really ramped up this sort of negative press, if you like, wrote a book called demonology, all about, well, it was all about demons and things, because witches were considered to get a power from the devil. So it was all about the devil and demons and things like that. But it was a large part about how to hunt witches, how to find witches, and things took off. So being a witch was technically already illegal, but nobody really bothered about it. It was only after that it suddenly, over the next hundred years or so, there's around somewhere around 4000 plus people were accused and tried for witchcraft. And it's something like about 80% were women. So it wasn't uniformly women, but it was vast majority of it. It was a pretty horrible time. A lot of people. A lot of people died. I always think it's interesting when people hear witch trials, they instantly think of Salem in America, but that was really quite a small. When you know, when you go into some of the witch trials we had here were far larger and far more brutal, shall we say.

Vanessa Rogers: 21:07

Was it happening around the same time, do you know, as what was happening in America?

Graeme Johncock: 21:12

Yeah, they were around about the same time. I think Salem was quite late on Scotland. Witch trials went up all through the 16 hundreds.

Vanessa Rogers: 21:19

Okay.

Graeme Johncock: 21:21

Anyway, it was kind of, there were little pockets, and then it would, things would die down for a while, and then there would be this idea. There was like a frenzy going around and it would flare up again.

Vanessa Rogers: 21:29

Is that the same King James who's attributed to writing the King James version of the Bible?

Graeme Johncock: 21:34

Yes, exactly. So James was a very intelligent man, actually. He gets called the wisest fool is one of the sort of nicknames attributed to him. And he wrote a lot of things. He was very. So he was a very learned man. But you also had this idea of the divine right of kings, that he had been chosen by Goddesse, which is probably why he thought of himself as such a natural enemy to witchcraft and all things evil.

Vanessa Rogers: 22:03

What's in the demonology? Demonology or demonology?

Graeme Johncock: 22:08

Demonology.

Vanessa Rogers: 22:10

What's in that book?

Graeme Johncock: 22:12

And I'll be honest, I have not read it cover to cover. It's a very hard book to read. I do have it. I own it. It's sitting on my shelf right over there. And I've tried and it's tough. And there are things about how to find witches. You know, things like witch spots. So, you know, there are things called witch prickers that went around with needles and they would try and find a spot that you could prick and that didn't bleed and things like that. It was all. And he would go looking for moles on bodies, a sign that somebody made her pact with the devil. So things like that.

Vanessa Rogers: 22:50

Yeah. When I read that on your website, I was like, I have a birthmark. I wonder. I wonder if that would have marked me. I have a pretty prominent birthmark on my leg. So, that message has been such a scary time to be. You know, if you stand out at all, you can be accused of witchcraft.

Graeme Johncock: 23:11

I think the biggest thing was if you were accused, they could, they would always find something that, you know, to find your guilty. To be fair, not everybody was found guilty, but there's this idea these days that it's, you know, all. It was just, it was healers or it was spay wives, it was wise women, you know, it's things. But actually it was far worse than that because it was just anybody. It was anybody who had a grudge against anybody, you know, they could try and find a reason to get them. In fact, there's a. One of the true stories, in factual, very historic stories, there's a woman called Lilius Adey and who's become quite famous recently in Fife. And she was accused. First time she was accused, it was kind of thrown out because the woman, the neighbor, this woman had accused her of casting a spell on her and making her sick and giving her a terrible headache and making her unable to walk properly. And everybody had seen her drinking the day before heavily. They're like, you're just hungover. Like, this is normal. This is not witchcraft. And then very soon after, she was accused again by somebody else. And that's when the local. Often it was the local minister said, oh, well, you know, there's no smoke without fire, so we'll better investigate. And she was then taken into the toll booth and tortured. And most of the time, torture isn't, you know, all these sort of thumb screws and things like that. It was just sleep deprivation. They just wouldn't let them sleep for days. And when you don't sleep, you hallucinate and you see things. And she gave some really detailed accounts of fraternizing with the devil and all this kind of stuff, but then she died before they could actually put her on trial. So there was this big, well, what do we do with this woman that we're now convinced is a witch, but hasn't been found guilty of witchcraft? So they wouldn't. What they would normally do with witches is strangle them and then burn them so that the devil. And the reason they were burnt is so that the devil can't reincarnate them and, you know, cause mischief again. So they couldn't do that. So what they did is bury her on the beach between the high tide and the low tide mark, so that she's neither on land nor on sea. And just to be sure, they dumped a giant rock, this huge slab of stone, on top of her, just in case she did get brought back. She couldn't claw her way out. And that's red Rock is still there, that big stone. And that was only just found. This is a good example of old stories that have a grain of truth in them. There was always a story that this had happened, and everybody knew in the local area, but probably only in the local area, that Lilia Sadie the witch was buried on the beach, but nobody knew where. And then it was during lockdown. One of the archaeologists for the council decided, as a little mini project, he was going to find it. And him and his friends walked up and down the beach until they found his giant clump of seaweeds. And when they pulled it all back, there was this big stone. So it's just been sort of refound.

Vanessa Rogers: 26:11

Have they tried to excavate the tomb at all?

Graeme Johncock: 26:15

I don't know if they have. The problem is that she was already excavated, sadly, by antiquarians. So, you know, 100 years or so after this all happened, when people aren't really afraid of witches anymore, she was dug up and they made, people made, like, walking sticks from her coffin as sort of things to hand out to people. And her skull went around. So her skull is still missing. I know that much. Anyway, her skull got taken out and given to, like, a professor at St. Andrews University. And then it went from person to person and it just disappeared. But it's weird, this. It's awful.

Vanessa Rogers: 26:55

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that's not happening today.

Graeme Johncock: 27:00

No, it always makes me quite nervous to tell stories about witches because we have some really good witch stories where the witch, sometimes there's a story called the Witch of lagging that is very much along the lines of, you know, an evil witch. And there's a hunter who's, who is a witch hunter. But in this story, it's a good thing to be a witch hunter, not one of the ones that goes around trying to murder innocent women. Anyway. And he's in a bothy, one night, a little cottage out in the woods somewhere, and hears this pawing at the door. And he goes, and there's this cat that goes to walk in, and he instantly realizes this is not a normal cat. This is often witches were said to shape shift into cats, which is one of the reasons we have this idea that witches have black cats. But it's actually, in the older stories, it's witches turn into black cats. So anyway, this cat comes in and says, oh, you know, don't worry, I'm not here to harm you. I just, you know, it's cold and it's wet outside. Just want to warm up. And he says, okay, as long as you, he thinks about it. He says, okay, fine. And I'm trying to remember how the story goes now. And the cat asks him to take one of its hairs and tie it around, you know, tie it around his dogs. He's got his dogs there, hunting dogs. He's scared of the dogs. So tie up the dogs and he goes to pretend to tie up the dog, and he actually ties the chair leg instead of the dog. So that when the witch, when the cat suddenly gets bigger and bigger and so big that he then says, you know, your fellow witch hunters are dead, and I'm here for you, and this is your final hour, the dog jumps on it, and between the two of them managed to kill the witch of flagon, or they managed to chop off an arm, actually. And the cat disappears off into the night. And then when the hunter gets home to tell his wife this story, before he can even get the story out, she says, oh, you'll never guess. The spay wife of lagan. She's in her bed, she's horribly ill. She's, something's happened to her. She's going to die. And he realizes this is the witch. He goes off and he whips back the bedsheet and she's, there's the spearwife lying there with her missing one of the, her limbs because it's the one that he chopped off when she was in the form of. And, anyway, the stories like that, where witches are evil and bad things to hunt down, but there's also stories like, there's a story from the borders, wherever there's a, it's a farmer's wife. And quite often witches are just farmers wives, you know, they're into disguise. And her only thing that she does is basically make milk out of a little special tab in a wall. And this, some guy tries to spies on her and sees her pouring out a jugs full of milk from this little tap in the wall. And then she goes off and he decides he's going to do it himself to get some of this lovely fresh milk. And he goes and turns the tab and it pours up this jug, but then it just keeps pouring because while he managed to turn it on, he can't turn it back off again. And he's like, flooding the farmhouse full of milk. And the farmer's wife runs in, slaps him around the hedge, then turns the thing off and shouts, you know, you've made every cow milked, every cow dry between here and the border. And it's this idea that witches, often, their biggest crime is like stealing milk from cows. That's the big bad. But it's kind of a, you know, like a jovial story rather than a horrible story. Yeah. But the problem is, nowadays, there's quite a witches, it's in Scotland. Witches are quite a hot topic at the moment. Quite a hot topic is probably the wrong way to put it. The quite a. There's a lot of conversation going about this thing. There's a lot of campaign work going in to try and get, which is all the people who were convicted and executed for witchcraft getting them an official pardon.

Vanessa Rogers: 31:00

Oh, really? Yeah.

Graeme Johncock: 31:01

So it's quite a big thing because it's such a large part of our history for, you know, for a long time. It really changed the landscape in Scotland, but it means that people are quite sensitive about it. So I get nervous sometimes when I tell a story about a witch that someone's going to shout at me.

Vanessa Rogers: 31:22

That's understandable. You mentioned earlier when you were talking about growing up with greek mythology and the last podcast fairy tale Flip episode that I did, which is a monthly episode that I do with Donnelly Fields, and we just kind of flip a fairy tale on its head and kind of dissect it and try and figure out its origins and its significance. And we did. Finn McCool and I, towards the end, I had researched that Napoleon actually slept with the book, a book of celtic mythology under his pillow. And I was kind of astounded by that because I, as well, have not heard very much celtic mythology, and yet, obviously, there is quite a bit out there, but we are inundated with greek mythology. We hear it all over the place. There's, you know, a kid podcast that we listen to with my kids. It's all about greek mythology, and then there's all sorts of takes on greek mythology, you know, revamps on books and. But you don't hear much about celtic mythology. And I just was so curious as to why. Where did that, those stories go and why is it not more widespread, do you think?

Graeme Johncock: 32:42

It's. It's interesting. So that book that Napoleon slept with, it was ossianic tales by James McPherson, who's a scottish author, and the. And yes, he wrote, he claims to have uncovered all these old manuscripts and then went around the highlands and islands and taken down lots of oral stories of Finn McCool. Finn McCool in the Fianna, written by Ossian, his son, the ossianic tales, the blind bard Ossian, who's got lots of great stories. And what's interesting is lots of people in Ireland got very annoyed at this because they said that those were their stories that he had stolen. These are, what I would say is these are. It's not so much celtic. It's very gaelic. Gaelic stories. And, you know, Gaelic is something that crosses the Irish Sea between, you know, Ireland, Scotland, only certain parts of it. But the stories are older than Scotland and Ireland if, you know, I mean, they come from a time, you know, the west coast of Scotland. There was the. What we call the kingdom of Dalriada, which is what eventually became kind of merged and made Scotland. And. But that kingdom stretched from the west coast of Scotland and took in the north of Ireland. And so stories passed backwards and forwards. So lots of stories of Finn McCool in Scotland. They often gets just called Fingal, but Finn McCool or Fingal, those stories, almost all of them have some of its set in Ireland, some of it set in Scotland. And there's no idea. There's no. This. Not this idea that he's changing countries. Just, you know, it was there to move around. So what I do know is, in Ireland, they do generally tell those stories more than we do in Scotland. And a lot of it comes down to the church, actually, and the presbyterian church we have in Scotland, it was very strong, very strict. They were very into education and learning and reading and writing and reading the Bible, really. And lots of that was to try and get people to stop telling these old stories of, you know, celtic, gaelic myths and heroes and things and get them telling the stories of. From the Bible, of Jesus and the disciples and, you know, all that kind of stuff instead. So they are still told just not quite as. As much it is. But I would say, you know, Finn McCool and the giants causeway is probably the one story people have heard of or I've heard a version of, or know something of. I mean, I remember going there when I was a. I actually went to the Northern Ireland, to the giants causeway when I was. I don't know, must maybe like 1011, something like that. On a trip, like a day trip. And hearing the story, on Scotland, we tell the other end of the story from the Isle of Staffer, which is where the giants causeway was supposed to have stretched to. But, yeah, that. That's one story I think people. People have heard, but people don't know lots of other galaxies. I mean, Fingold, Fianna Ossian, the guy who wrote the books, is supposed to have been born in Glencoe. And it's one of the things that Glencoe, the three sisters of Glencoe, is one of, like, an iconic view in Scotland. Just about every tourist of Scotland goes to see the three sisters, and there's a historical story there. A massacre. It's a really sad, tragic story that everybody generally gets told when they go. But what they don't do is, if you just look slightly to the right, there's this enormous cave up in the mountain, it kind of blends in quite well. So if you don't know it's there, you don't see it. But that's supposed to be where Ossian was born with his mother, because Ossian's mother was. Had been transformed into a deer while she was pregnant, and he went off and was getting born there. And Oisian means the young deer, I think. Yeah. People don't know that. And it's right there. Literally thousands of people go past that every single day.

Vanessa Rogers: 36:34

How interesting. And so I was curious, you know, the story is, of Finn McCool is on the northern irish side, and he's wanting to fight the giant benadonir on the scottish side. And then when he realizes that Benadonir is so much bigger than he is, he, like, hightails it back to Ireland, and then, you know, he's tricked. Benadonna is tricked by Finn McCool's wife to think that Finn McCool is actually Finn McCool's baby. And so Benadonir gets scared that Finn McCool is actually much bigger than he is himself, and so Benadonna runs back. Right, but are there more stories on the scottish side about Benadonir, or is that just basically the only one?

Graeme Johncock: 37:20

As far as I know, that's it. I have looked, and I've never found another one, which is strange. I mean, there may have been at one point, you know, he may have been a famous giant, and we just don't have any. Any stories of him that, you know, they've all been lost. You know, the people that knew those stories didn't tell. It's one of the reasons I think it's important to write stories down. Now, I know that some people think, you know, oral stories, they lose something when you're not just telling. They don't get passed down that way, but, you know, they will lose themselves in entirety, I think, if we don't. As far as I know, Donna doesn't. And it's one of. It's usually the way I like to end that story is the fact that, you know, Finn didn't just win his sort of fight with Ben and Donna. He won. You know, he. He won everything. He won his cave. You know, that the cave that Ben and Donna lived in on staffers on staff of the island is now called Fingal's cave, even though there's no part of the story has fingal in that cave ever. So it's. That's what he really. He won everything he wanted. Naming rights. He won the stories pure Ben and Donna lost his. His whole identity.

Vanessa Rogers: 38:24

The winner writes the history. Right.

Graeme Johncock: 38:27

Exactly.

Vanessa Rogers: 38:29

That's so interesting. Yeah. And so I know, you know, the people prior to St Patrick, the people who lived in Scotland and Ireland, the Celts and the Picts, were said not to have any writing systems. But I have heard that there are conspiracy theories that they actually did have writing systems, but the Catholic Church have stolen them away so that people don't actually have access to those stories. Do you hear those conspiracy theories as well?

Graeme Johncock: 39:01

Never heard that, no.

Vanessa Rogers: 39:03

No.

Graeme Johncock: 39:04

Wouldn't say. I'd be very surprised if that's right, because there was. I mean, there was. There was writing. We have what we've got. The thing is, so the Picts themselves, who are people that lived on, basically, for the vast majority of Scotland, or what has become Scotland, was lived in by the Picts. And the Picts are just the sort of pictish period starts when the Romans leave Britain. And the Romans, basically, they set up base in the south of Scotland. They never really managed to do much in the north, but they fought the tribes that lived in the rest of Scotland pretty regularly. And those, when the Romans were here were all individual tribes, the Caledonians, and people like that. By the time that they left, they'd kind of merged into this single identity. Because, you know, when you have an enormous enemy, you know, it's natural to sort of merge together to try and fight that. So that's when the Picts start. And the Picts didn't have a written language. There's never any evidence they had any written language. But what they did do is carve these amazing symbols and shapes and things on the stones. So we have pictish stones, and I love pictish stones. They are missed like an absolute mystery because we don't know what any of the symbols mean. Some of them really seem obvious because it's, you know, it's a horse, a man on a horse, or it's a cow. But there's always. There's always going to be a meaning behind that. Why is that on that stone? Other ones, it's weird. Crescents or there's what they call the pictish beast, which often looks like a horse's head and a fish's tail, which to me, sounds a lot like a kelpie. So we don't have. We know nothing about pictish culture. We know nothing about because they didn't write anything down. And it was like you said, everything was written down by churchmen. So it was, you know, the abbots and things that lived in the things. And he wrote in Gaelic because. Or they wrote in Latin or occasionally in Gaelic. And we do have some of the stones have what you call Oghamouse. Ogham is like an old. I'm sure Ogham is. Came from Ireland. It's like an old Alphabet, very like the sort of scandinavian ruins. You know, it's lines with marks for letters, but we don't know what. They know what. They often know what the letters are, but they don't know what the words are. But, yeah. So the pictish culture gets essentially erased when they merge and become Scotland, but that's just because they didn't write anything down. And I think there's lots of things that we don't know what the origins are, which probably came from pictish culture. They just got taken in.

Vanessa Rogers: 41:42

That's so interesting. And the Picts are called Picts because of how they paint themselves. Is that right?

Graeme Johncock: 41:48

Well, so it comes from a roman word. So the Romans called the people they met in Britain, not just specifically in Scotland, but lots of Brent Picti, which means painted people. But it was kind of a derogatory term. It was their way of saying to people back in Rome, like, look how barbaric these people are. We need to bring them civilization. But that slur essentially just gets adopted at some point to become the name for these people and they start calling themselves the Picts. But, yeah, so. And it was because allegedly they had these sort of tattoos or he painted themselves before battle or thing. It's hard to know. It's very hard often to take the Roman. The roman propaganda and find the truth amongst that.

Vanessa Rogers: 42:35

Right, right. And it's sad and interesting that there was no translation. I mean, there were people who were writing at the time about these people, but they didn't try and translate. There's no Rosetta stone.

Graeme Johncock: 42:51

Basically, that's what we're waiting for, somebody to uncover that. And that would answer an awful lot of questions. There's lots of theories, there's lots of ideas about what things mean and nobody. Nobody knows. But, yeah, it is amazing that we know that they were writing things down. You know, the Picts existed from around about the 300s up to the. When Scotland was formed. So the 800s, mid 800s was when the kingdom of Scotland starts. And, you know, we have things written. Although, to be fair, we actually lost an awful lot of writing, a lot of awful lot of scottish histories and records and things were destroyed in the late twelve hundreds, early 13 hundreds. So maybe the answers were in there and we lost them.

Vanessa Rogers: 43:34

Yeah. Was it there was like a fire, or was it, were they purposely destroyed?

Graeme Johncock: 43:39

It's around about the time, if you've ever seen the film Braveheart, it's around about that time which, you know, Braveheart, not historically accurate, but gives an idea of what was going on. Where we had the king of England, Edwards, came up and tried to essentially subjugate Scotland. And at that time, lots of, you know, if you destroy a country's culture and identity, it's a lot easier to then consume it and make it part of your own. So that was what happened is they all miraculously disappeared but were essentially destroyed.

Vanessa Rogers: 44:12

So one of the way I actually discovered you existed was I was researching for one of the fairy tale flip episodes when we talked about Rumpelstiltskin. And I really wanted to try and find different Rumpelstiltskin stories around the world because it's one of the oldest stories. They think it's around 4000 years old. And they can tell that because main threads of it are so widespread. And the scottish version. Whoopity story, is that how you say it?

Graeme Johncock: 44:48

Yeah, whoopity story.

Vanessa Rogers: 44:51

And that's the scottish version, but it's quite different than the Grimm's fairy tale, for instance. Do you mind just giving us a little rendition of it and how it is slightly different?

Graeme Johncock: 45:04

Yeah, no problem. So the story of Wapiti Sturie comes from a village which isn't a. Well, not saying it's not a real village, but it's a village that doesn't exist anymore, called kittle Rumpet. And there lived a very unfortunate woman whose husband had gone off to market one day. All the money never came back. And she still had a life, though she wasn't going to complain about it. She had a roof over her head. She had a young son. She had a prized pig. They always made her lots of money. And her pig was pregnant and she was, you know, that was her pinned all her hopes on that. And then one day the pig gets sick and she doesn't know what to do. She's looking after it. If this pig dies along with all the piglets, that's it. That would be the final thing to push her over the edge. And she's sitting there starting to cry. And when this odd figure appears all dressed in greenhouse and says, you know, basically, look, I can help you, but what are you going to give me in return? And we say, I'll give you anything at all. Give you the clothes off my back, whatever. And the thing says, okay, you know, gets a little thing, and gets a bit of water or something, rubs it around. A pig says, pitter patter, holy water. And they love rhyming things in stories like this. They said, by magic, the pig, that's it, cured, wanders off like nothing's ever happened. And the good wife of Kittle Rumpett and is saying, hang on, I'll wait. I've got my dog next to me. She's just making herself comfortable. Just. Molly's an important part of my situation. Yeah. So who was saying, you know, I'll give you anything of using. And the stranger says, well, look, the only thing I want is that baron, if you're that child of yours, I'm going to take that as payment. And obviously, you know, the good wife kilt rumpet is going to cry all over again. This is even worse than losing her pig. But the stranger says, look, you've got three days with your child before I come back for him. And then you'll get three chances to guess my name. If you can guess my name, then you can keep him. But I can warn you now, you're never going to guess it. And then disappears. So obviously, you know, she's wondering, how the hell am I going to figure out what this woman's. What this stranger's name is? What am I going to do? And she's wandering around the woods, thinking on her plight for the next few days. Then she hears over the sound of water, a strange noise, a strange singing. And she has a wee looks through the trees, looks through the branches, and as she sees that wee woman sitting at a spinning wheel, singing to herself, you know, little Ken's are good. Dam at him. That wapiti sturie is my name. And then that's it. She's, you know, she's. She's found out the secret. Then the next day, that's it, the woman comes along and. And she's saying, okay, time for me to take my payment. And of kettle, Rumpet says, no, no, you said I get a chance to guess your name first. I says, well, it's a pointless exercise, but fine, give it a. Give it a chance. And then she says, oh, how about is it. Is it tatty Bogle? And she says, not even close. Says, all right. Is it, I don't know. Is it Barbara? And says, no, it's not Barbara. Of course not. You've got one last chance. And then that's it. I'm taking your kid. I says, oh, I don't know. It's not, It's not whoppity sturie, is it? And then that's it. She goes, you're pale. And then she goes red with rage, and she just doesn't say a word. She just storms off down the path. And that was the last time the good wife killed him. But ever saw Wapiti's story.

Vanessa Rogers: 48:41

Now, is. Is Wapiti story supposed to be a fairy, a witch? What is. What is she supposed to be?

Graeme Johncock: 48:49

I get the fact that the story always says she's wearing green. Makes me think she must be a fairy. And fairies often likes to do mischievous things, so that would sound about right to me.

Vanessa Rogers: 49:04

And are fairies generally human size? They can make themselves human size.

Graeme Johncock: 49:09

So it's interesting, we get. Fairy stories are kind of different around Scotland. Often in the highlands, fairies are we folk and get called the wee folk. I want to say we folk. I don't mean like tinker bell size, I mean like hobbit sized. You know, they're like the we folk in the borders, which is kind of where this story seems to come from. They're often bigger than. They're often reasonably normal size. There's stories about the queen of the fairies, and the queen of the fairies sort of, you know, seduces men. Every so often, a guy called Thomas the rhymer is seduced by the fairy queen and goes off. And so they always seem. They never really any mention of their size, which makes me think they're closer to human size anyway.

Vanessa Rogers: 49:54

And is this a well known story? Do people. Is this a storybook story that you tell to children?

Graeme Johncock: 50:02

It's. If you pick up a collection of scottish children's fairy tales, then it would be in there, but I wouldn't say most scottish children would have heard of it, which is. Which, again, is quite sad, because just about everybody's heard of Rumpelstiltskin. Even if they don't know the story, they know the name Rumpelstiltskin, which is.

Vanessa Rogers: 50:20

A german tale, but you have your own scottish version. Exactly, yeah. So I find that really interesting. One of the things that I. When I was researching Rumpelstiltskin is a lot of times in the different versions, the woman is a lot of times at a spinning wheel, and this is one of the only versions where she's. She's trying to get her sow revived. Do pigs have a special significance? The reason I ask is because the spinning wheel was evidently incredibly important. It was an incredibly important skill for women to have, and so women who weren't able to spin were seen as you know, kind of not wife material. So I was just curious if there was that element for the pig as well, or if that it just happened to.

Graeme Johncock: 51:20

I don't think so. I mean, I don't think anybody ever thinks if you can't raise a pig, you're not. You're not a good wife. I don't know. But, you know, it's. It's weird that the story is. That's. That is how the story goes. But you're right, it's not. Pig reading doesn't often show up in scottish stories. Cows show up an awful lot more. We've got far more history with cows, but even then, not in the same way. Not in our, you know, the ladies have to be able to look after the cow to show that they're good. Good waves.

Vanessa Rogers: 51:48

Interesting. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. Oh, let's talk about your. Your book. Tell us about your book and how you decided to write it.

Graeme Johncock: 52:02

So it's. Yeah, so the book. It's a collection of scottish stories. So short stories, behind real places. So this is idea of. What I like to say is they're not. They're not fictional stories because they're a mixture of historical tales in that, you know, there are things that, you know, some of them are battles or adventures or things that happen in real places, and some of them are what you might call sort of stories, like folk stories, but doesn't mean it's not a real story. I'd say they're all real stories because these are stories that people told about that place for hundreds of years, and that's what makes it real. But that's it. The whole point is kind of half a travel book, half a storybook, in that it's all split up into chapters. Every single region in Scotland is covered and you can go, if, you know, say you're going to Shetland, the islands of Shetland. You can take the book, you open up the Shetland chapter and you can find all these places that have great stories behind them and you can go and stand in that place and see where the story took place. Which is the thing that I always like doing when I'm going anywhere is trying to find places with stories behind them. So they are kind of condensed. Some are longer than others, but they're kind of condensed to a point where, you know, they're easy to read and to understand without getting lost in the minute details.

Vanessa Rogers: 53:23

But the travel companion, it is.

Graeme Johncock: 53:26

But it also is a travel companion in it. If you're traveling, you know, you can use it to help you find places. And on the other hand, it's also a book that can help you travel from your home. You know, you can sit and you can go through it, and there are pictures in there, and you can travel around certain regions without ever leaving the comfort of your own chair, because not everybody will be able to come over and see these places for themselves. It was great. I saw somebody, actually, when I was on sky last week. Yeah, I was on sky, and somebody in a bookshop. I just happened to be there chatting to the guy, and I signed a book, and somebody came up and asked me about it, and they bought the books. I just signed in the bookshop, and I was like, oh, great. Hope you enjoy it. And then later on in the day, I was at a castle in skye. Dun tomb castle, and I saw the same couple there, and they had to book, and they were like, we just found this place because of your book. I was like, that's exactly what it's for. This is great.

Vanessa Rogers: 54:20

Awesome. And you also do tours as well for tourists who want a specialized tour guide?

Graeme Johncock: 54:26

That's right, yes. It's a private, small, private tour. So just. Just a normal sized car, so not like a big minibus group with 15 other people. It's, you know, usually it's families or groups of friends, and it's. And we go anywhere. Anywhere you want to go, really. Anywhere that interests you. If it's. You know, if you have a special interest in folklore, we can go around lots of places that have these folk stories in them, or, you know, it could be a special family interest in a certain area that is. You know, I've gone everywhere and anywhere around Scotland on these tours.

Vanessa Rogers: 55:02

Do you have a favorite place?

Graeme Johncock: 55:05

Oh, see, that's tough. That's a very difficult question. Scotland has a lot of places. Yeah, there's. I do. I mean, I like getting out to the islands. There's a little bit argyle in the sort of west, south of the west, and it's just lots of little things there, lots of stories, lots of little chapels, lots of evidence of, you know, like, abandoned villages, sort of. I don't know why, but I just always feel drawn to that little corner.

Vanessa Rogers: 55:37

So is there. Is there as much folklore in, like, the bigger cities? I mean, I think the only big city I know in Scotland is Edinburgh. Did I say it right? Edinburgh. Edinburgh. Edinburgh, yeah. Is there as much folklore in the bigger cities as well, or mostly in the rural areas?

Graeme Johncock: 55:58

There is more folklore in Edinburgh than you would believe. I think if you go there, you wouldn't know it. There is. I mean, there's obviously sort of usual ghost stories and stuff like that, but Edinburgh has lost Edinburgh. I mean, there's. There's a hill in Edinburgh called Calton Hill, and most people who've gone to Edinburgh have stood at Calton Hill. There's a beautiful view up there. It's a small hill, lots of monuments on it. Great view. There's an old story about the fairy boy of Calton Hill, and it's just this boy that used to go and play his drum for the fairies, and there was an old. There's a record of an old sea captain. I can't remember exactly when it is. And this sea captain was visiting Leith, which is the port area of Edinburgh, and somebody said to him, you know, this wee boy was marching past and, like. And he's asking, who's that? He says, oh, that's wee boy. He goes and plays his drum for the fairies every Friday night or whatever it is. And the guy said, we've got to. We've got to think. He says, you can't stop him. He will always go, no matter what's happening, he always. He has to make his appointment. And they essentially kidnap this wee boy and try and hold on to him and to stop him going off to see the fairies. And it's a really weird story. It's a really strange tale. It's. One of those tales is so strange, it makes you think it's true, if you know what I mean. There's a point to it or why this guy, but it's just a factual. This is. I met this wee boy, please jump for the fairies. And he wrote this down in a letter that this happened, and the boy disappears off and disappears into the hill. They don't see him again. So anyway, there are. There are tales like that. There are folk stories in Edinburgh. They're far more out in rural areas, I would say, and. And places like Glasgow. So Glasgow is the other big city most people have heard of in Scotland. Doesn't really have a lot of folklore at all. And it wasn't a particularly big place up until the sort of 17 hundreds, really. It really exploded in size. The only big story, the only big folk story off the top of my head, I can think of in Glasgow island story from its. Its founder, who is Saint Mungo. So this one of the early christian saints who the story is actually on the coat of arms for Glasgow. On the coat of arms, Glasgow. You'll see a fish with a ring in its mouth and a robin and a tree. And I'm sure something else. I forgot what it is. All miracles that St. Mungo did, but one of them took place at the river clies, where the city is. And it's all to do with a king and his queen. And the queen was cheating on the king with the king's right hand man, which is an awful thing to do. But she had given this, her lover, a ring that the king had given to her. And basically the king discovers it's ridiculous, stupid thing to do. And the king then went around when he's away with his mental sees this guy's wearing the ring that he gave his wife. So while he's sleeping, he sneaks and steals the ring back and he throws it in the river. And then when he get back, he says to his wife, because he doesn't want to just accuse him, he wants to prove what's happened. So he says to his wife, why don't you wear that ring that I gave you that time, you know, at dinner tonight? And she says, oh, yeah, of course, no problem. I'll do that. So she has to run to her lover and say, I need that ring back quick because I need to wear it to dinner tonight. He's asked for it and the guy doesn't have it, doesn't know where it is. And she realizes that what's happened, and she goes to St. Mungo to ask him to help. And he sends one of his followers to the river to go for fish. Bring back the first fish he catches, cuts it open and there's a ring inside and he gives it to the women and it saves her life. And it's also a really strange. It's a very odd story, considering that essentially a christian saint helping somebody get away with infidelity.

Vanessa Rogers: 59:51

That is very strange. Usually there's a punishment for sinning.

Graeme Johncock: 59:56

Yeah. But lots of people in Glasgow will know that story because it's on the coat of arms that you see all over the place.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:00:05

That's fascinating. Well, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about Outlander, because I feel like Outlander has really brought a lot of attention to Scotland and specifically the stone circles. So can you tell us a little bit about the stone circles and did the book get it right or the show?

Graeme Johncock: 1:00:28

Well, the stone circles are found all over Scotland, so it's not just in the Highlands. You get lots of them. I mean, there's standing stones in the middle of Edinburgh and people don't know about them mostly, but there are standing stones just in the middle of housing estates. But so most of them, they're from around about five and a half thousand to around 4000 years ago. They were raised, they were erected, and we don't know why. Lots of theories behind them are kind of either solar or lunar observatories. But there's some areas where there are, you know, there's not just 1 st circle. There's half a dozen stone circles. And in fact the Isle of Lewis where the callanish standing stones are. And the kalanish stones are actually the ones they used in the show outlander. They made copies of them and then put them on a little hill that doesn't have any standing stones on it. But there's about, at least half a dozen, if not about ten standing stones around in this one small area, little stone circles. So lots of them. We don't know why they would have so many in one area. There are some of them that do have stories behind them. None of them have any time traveling stories, I'm sorry to say. There is, there's a group in Kilmartin Glen which is a glen has lots of ancient monuments in it, which is actually in that area I was talking about. I really liked a little bit in the south side of the west and lots of people because there's quite one specific, quite big stone. It's quite impressive. And lots of people like to go up and get an outlander moment where they touch the stone and get picture taken. Like they're going to travel through time and then they read the sign next to it that says that the traveler folk who Scotland often get called tinkers, the travelers used to use these stones as a place to camp because he felt protected by the stones. But he considered it incredibly unlucky to ever touch the stones. And if you ever touched one, you would be cursed. And all these people touched them and then realized they're cursed. But no, I'm sorry that there's no time travel stories behind them. And vast majority of them are just, they're just there. They're just stones. They're just, people have grown up and they've been there for thousands of years. And it's one of the things I like in Scotland is that we often just have these ancient monuments just there. You just grow up and they're just a part of your life. Yeah.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:02:57

Are there any like festivals or traditions around the stone circles that still happen today? I mean, I assume back when they were built there probably were some sort of traditions around them. But do people still do summer solstice or winter solstice around the stones.

Graeme Johncock: 1:03:19

Do sometimes go to them for certain solstices. And there's not so much a tradition of a festival or a thing like that. I mean, it was for. They were built so long ago that by the time people wrote anything down, it was, you know, it was already far into the distant past. And so, I mean, there are some people who like to say that there's the stones. These are the things that used to happen there. And we used to do stuff and druids did this and that. And there's no. There's not actually any evidence for any of that. People go and they feel special at these places. They feel a special energy or they feel a special. Like they should be doing a certain thing at certain times a year. And that's absolutely fine. I have no problem with that at all if it makes them happy. There are certain things like what you more often find is that certain burial cairns. So. But a cairn is just a big pile of stones, really. But old burial cairns again, are about 5000 years old. We don't know exactly what they. How they were used. We know that people were laid to rest in there, but often not forever or often it was a communal thing rather than just, you know, people think of them like the pyramids, one great giant thing for one person. And it seems like they maybe became that. But about a thousand years after it was built, somebody repurposed it as. This is going to be my grand too. But anyway, lots of them, like one of. Some of the most famous ones are the clavicairns, which are just outside of Inverness. And those have a passageway. They don't have a roof anymore, but they have a passageway that points directly to where the winter solstice, I think, where the sun sets and the riser sets. Actually, I can't quite remember until people will go there to see the sun come down this and light up. The best one is called Maze Howe on Orkney. And Orkney is where all standing stones, all chambered cairns, all this. This whole culture seems to have originated in Orkney. All of the oldest examples take place there, these little islands to the north. And they've got this enormous chamber cairn which has still got its roof. It's covered in turf. It's got a really long passageway. And, I mean, it must be. I don't. Must be about 10 meters long. I've been inside it. And at the mid winter solstice, all you know, as the day goes, the sun shines right down this passageway and lights up the inside as if, you know, you're holding a torch. It's. It's supposed to be incredible. I went but two days after the solstice, when it was supposed to be happening, and there was a violent snowstorm, so it was so dark, I didn't get any of the stuff. So I need to go back again this year.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:06:07

That does sound really incredible. Oh, man, you're making me want to go to Scotland. I have been once, and I did go see Loch Ness. I did not see the Loch Ness monster, unfortunately. Is that one of the stops on your tours often, or do people. Are people with Loch Ness monster?

Graeme Johncock: 1:06:28

No, lots of people want to see Loch Ness itself. You've seen it. It's pretty impressive. It's enormous. It's like the favorite fact of every tour guide in Scotland is that there's more water in Loch Ness than every lake and river in England and Wales combined. If you took all the water from England and Wales and poured it into Loch Ness, it would only come up just over halfway. That's how enormous it is. So lots of space for the monster to hide? I would say so. Lots of people do like to see Loch Ness, but never stopped the monster yet.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:07:00

Well, and I think a lot of the mystery around it is that it's murky and it's so deep that you can't really even see in the water. Right. So, like, even when they put cameras in there, it's. They can only see so far. And so it would. There's so much room for, you know, ancient dinosaur to have continuously lived, I guess.

Graeme Johncock: 1:07:26

Yeah. So that's it. It's really peaty water like this, so it's quite dark. It picks up all the peat that runs through all the rivers. And it's about 220 meters around about that deep. So pretty deep, and it's quite narrow. That's the thing. What you don't realize is it goes right down. I've been one of the boats that has a little sort of sonar thing. So the depth sensor. So as you go out, you see it just get deeper and deeper really quickly. But it's not the deepest lock in Scotland. So on the west coast, kind almost in a direct line with Loch ness, but not quite. There's a lock called Loch Morar. And if you look at the depth of all the scottish lochs, they kind of go out pretty gradually. You know, they get in the hundreds, and then they get out and then Loch Ness is there at 220. And it kind of goes gradually and then suddenly Loch Ness is the second deepest. Loch Mora is about 90 meters deeper. So that's what, around about 300ft, say. So quite a lot deeper in comparison to all the other locks. Don't really know why that is, but they also supposedly has a monster living in it. And obviously the Loch Ness monster is called Nessie. The Loch monarch is called Modag. And Monag was. Nessie's always been this kind of quite easy going. You know, this. This thing that just people see but never really interacts with people. Morag apparently was always an omen of doom. You know, some sort of. Something bad was coming. If you saw Morag and she had attacked boats in the past and things. And some people think that Morag and Nessie are one in the same and that there's underwater pastures that link the lochs and you know, when. This is why you never find her. Because when the Nessie hunters are in Loch Ness, she just goes on her holiday along to Loch Morar and hides out there until they're gone. Which is probably why she's annoyed. That's why she's also there, because she's had to leave her normal home.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:09:19

Yeah. Well, I don't know if you read the Outlander books, but I think theory in that one was that she. There's some sort of time travel circle in the lock. And sometimes she time travels to different time periods. And so that's why sometimes she's there and sometimes she's nothing.

Graeme Johncock: 1:09:39

Look, we can't prove that's not true, so.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:09:46

Well, it's very. They're very long. There's. There's nine out. There's a 10th one coming, but each one is like the length of a Bible. So you have to be committed. Okay, so what have we missed? We've covered quite a lot. What is something that you feel like? Have we covered everything? Obviously we haven't covered everything, but there's something that you feel like we. We need to cover.

Graeme Johncock: 1:10:11

Oh, one thing I was going to ask when you were talking about doing your sort of deep dive into certain folk stories, have you done one on Cinderella, a different version of Cinderella?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:10:26

We did donkey skin recently. Are you familiar with donkey skin?

Graeme Johncock: 1:10:31

No, I don't think so.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:10:32

It's. It's considered in the Cinderella cycle, it's very different. But it has the element of a ring that only fits her finger at the end. But it's. And she's. So it's. But it's not the original Cinderella story. It's a very different Cinderella, but that is one that I would like. What interests you about the Cinderella story?

Graeme Johncock: 1:10:59

Well, so we've got one here called ration Cotyde, which is very similar in that it's, you know, a girl who. It's not step, but it's a girl who just. Her parents don't like her. You know, she's got a sister and, you know, she's. She's the golden haired one, but everybody likes her sister, who's got the dark hair and, you know, and she's poor ration Coty, who isn't called ration coat at the start, but she is the one sent to go and do all the sort of horrible jobs and the dirty things and go out and look after the animals, stuff nobody wants to do. But he never realized that every time. Well, start to realize every time she comes back from looking after the animals, she's very happy. So her sister goes to spy on her, and it turns out that Rashinkoti Cinderella has a fairy godmother, rashin coat. Excuse me. Rashin Koti has a fairy God cow, and this wee red calf looks after her and, you know, gives her food and does all this stuff, helps her out. And so her parents are furious. So they, you know, burst in on her one day when she's there with the wee red calf, and they hand her an ax and they tell her that, you know, she has to kill her favorite cow, the one that helps her. And she turns around and she's looking deep into the cow's eyes, and she's thinking, I don't know what to do. If I don't do this, they're going to make my life even worse, and they're going to kill the cow anyway, so what do I do? And then suddenly it dawns on her. She picks up the axe and she raises it above her head, and she turns around, she chops her sister's head off, and then she jumps on the back of the cow, and they race off into the woods. And because they're racing through all the, you know, the bushes and the thorns, it tears her clothes to shreds. So the cow makes her a dress made of rushes, which is why she gets the name ration Coty. And then the rest of the story is quite similar to Cinderella, you see, working in a castle in the kitchen, she gets a job, and then everybody, instead of going off to a ball, everybody goes off to the Christmas sermon in church, and she's stuck making dinner. When she really. She wants to go to church and listen to the sermon. So the cow gets her, like, a nice dress and some nice shoes and says, you go off and go to the service, and I'll make the dinner for everybody by the time they come back. And obviously she comes in late. So everybody turns around and looks at her in church, and she sits at the back, but the prince sees her and is smitten, just like Cinderella. And she rushes away and just leaves behind a shoe. And it's a similar sort of thing. The prince goes around to try and find whose foot fits his shoe, and some evil old lady chops her daughter's toes off so it fits inside the shoe. And then, yeah, the wee red calf manages to send a little bird to go and tell the prince that actually the person he's marrying is not the person he saw in the church. Who he really wants is down in the kitchen and they find him and they all live happily ever after. That's a shortened version, but.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:13:42

Oh, I love it. I love that. And so the cow talks.

Graeme Johncock: 1:13:47

Yeah, yeah, it's a feeding.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:13:51

Yeah. That's awesome. And you. You did say that there are a lot of cows in scottish stories, so that. That is. That is very fitting.

Graeme Johncock: 1:14:02

Exactly.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:03

And I have heard that cows. I had a friend in college, and she was from a rural community in. In Texas, where I'm from, and. And she said she loved cows, and if she could have brought them into the house, she would have, because she thought that they made the best pets. Do you. Do you have that experience?

Graeme Johncock: 1:14:26

Yeah, I love cows. Cows are great.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:29

Yeah. She said if it could crawl into her lap, she thinks she would have let it crawl into her lap. She just loved them.

Graeme Johncock: 1:14:36

I do. I used to work with cows, so, yeah, I'm a big fan of cows. They are very nice, gentle creatures, I would say most of them.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:46

Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

Graeme Johncock: 1:14:50

That's right. Thanks again. Thanks for having me.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:53

And thank you, folksy folks, for joining us on this scottish folklore journey. We'll put up all of Graham's links on my website, www.fabricofolklore.com. We'll put a link up for his book, his website, his YouTube Instagram as well, so that you can follow him. And if you go to Scotland, you can take one of his private tours and learn all of the bits of history and folklore that you wouldn't have if you didn't have an amazing tour guide like Graham John Cook. So let me see. I lost my. My outro. So if you enjoyed this episode, make sure, like I said at the beginning, you hit subscribe. If you're listening on your podcasting platform, if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button so you get notifications. And we're an independent podcast, so it really is helpful when you share the podcast, and that way we are able to grow and produce this information, this wonderful podcast to you, and thanks so much for joining us and keep the folks alive.