Books: Birlinn

Extract

Sookin’ Berries

By Jess Smith

From the introduction

In every corner of the earth we find lovers of stories; every one of them has the desire to listen to or to read tales. Each one of them loves to be captivated by a story, one that holds your imagination from the first paragraph to the last. Many of us thrive on unsolved mysteries and dark, fearsome ghost stories. In fact if a story makes our hair rise on our necks and the skin crawl, then that’s brilliant – the more impact the better. Nothing beats curling under a duvet, head and shoulders propped up on feathery pillows, with that favourite book in hand.

Outside the bedroom window a howling gale rips into the darkness of the night; rain-lashed windows add reality to the imaginary beings flitting feverishly from page to page, and fear of the unknown lurking in the shadows adds to the mystery of the book. Your eyelids grow heavy, they feel lead-lined, yet you are still kept awake by the burning desire to know ‘who done it’, or ‘what if the demons get out of the sack?’ Was the corn-stacker really a natural human being or something dark and demonic?

I have been a gatherer of tales for most of my life, and I suppose it all began when I was a wee girl. I shared a home with parents, seven sisters and a shaggy dog. It could be said that I lived a different sort of life from other children, because ‘home’ was an old blue bus. We were known as travelling people, and our people, it is believed, had lived in Scotland for two thousand years.

About a generation before I came along, my people lived mainly in the country, weaving baskets, carving horn spoons, making wooden flowers, clothes pegs, brooms and pot scourers created from heather stems bunched together.

As is the way with all ancient skills, progress and technology have brought modern materials and methods, so out went the old ways. With them, the culture of a people and all their customs, language and lifestyle had to go too, to make room for the new. My generation worked in
harvesting, potato-gathering, berry-picking and hay-stacking. Heavy-duty tractors and diggers with multi-pronged teeth made sure a farmer’s fields yielded his desired tonnage of tatties, and as we gathered them up, we suffered from sore backs and wearied legs.

Evening was our favourite time, when Mum, after tidying up the camp, would whistle to us wherever we were playing and give orders for bed. Hurriedly dressed in jimmy-jams, I’d get a quick wash in a nearby stream and then position myself in a circle of eager faces at the feet of the family storyteller. Before bed we nearly always had stories. With chin resting on scraped knees, elbows tucked in to allow room for another listener, and with a soft breeze whispering round, we were ready to be transported to another world.

The same gentle breeze would stir the finger points of thin branches reaching from a nearby giant oak. They’d touch the top of my head of tousled hair and add extra excitement to what lay ahead. Eyes popping like bubbles I’d listen intently to our storyteller. Tales of darkness, creepiness and disaster with added gore swirled like the smoke of the fire around my straining ears. Tales eddied in my head like whirlpools in a torrent, I’d leave the crackling sticks of our campfire behind and enter into a world of never-ending stories. Fantastic!