Note 209 — Chapter II

It will be interesting, I think, to preserve here one or two instances of the actual practice of telling traditional tales in our own country. Mr. Hartland has referred to the subject in his Science of Fairy Tales, but the following instances are additional to those he has noted, and they refer directly back to the living custom. They are all from Scotland, and refer to the early part of last century. "In former times, when families, owing to distance and other circumstances, held little intercourse with each other through the day, numbers were in the habit of assembling together in the evening in one house, and spending the time in relating the tales of wonder which had been handed down to them by tradition" (Kiltearn in Ross and Cromarty; Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, xiv. 323). "In the last generation every farm and hamlet possessed its oral recorder of tale and song. The pastoral habits of the people led them to seek recreation in listening to, and in rehearsing the tales of other times; and the senachie and the bard were held in high esteem" (Inverness-shire, ibid., xiv. 168). "In the winter months, many of them are in the habit of visiting and spending the evenings in each other's houses in the different hamlets, repeating the songs of their native bard or listening to the legendary tales of some venerable senachie" (Durness in Sutherlandshire, ibid., xv. 95).