ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1978 I came across to Scotland from America to pursue a doctoral research project that consisted of a comparative study of storytellers and their repertoires from among the Scottish traveling people and the Appalachian mountaineers. Twenty years hence I am still living in this beautiful country and still enjoying the privilege of listening to excellent traditional storytelling. Yet when I first arrived at Edinburgh University's School of Scottish Studies those many years ago, the perception there was that traditional storytelling was thin on the ground and disappearing quickly. So many important master storytellers with rich repertoires had died either before I arrived or soon afterwards. Among them was Alasdair (Ailidh Dall) Stewart from Lairg, Sutherland, one of the greatest of the Gaelic traveler storytellers and whom Hamish Henderson extensively recorded in the mid and late 1950s. Another fine Gaelic storyteller of that period was Donald John Stewart from South Uist. Donald Archie MacDonald and other staff from the school spent many hours gathering his stories. Then there were Bruce Henderson and Tom Tulloch, old Shetlander storytellers whom Alan Bruford and others recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. And sadly, I also missed Jeannie Robertson, a Lowland traveler from Aberdeenshire who was an extraordinary traditional singer and storyteller loved and respected by her own people and nontravelers alike. Hamish's discovery of Jeannie and her relatives and friends in the 1950s opened the doors to a treasure trove of traditional stories that, unbeknown to the settled community, had been handed down and preserved by the Scots-speaking travelers. Remarkably, these stories included a staggering number of international wonder tales that had long been given up as lost to the oral tradition. Without a doubt these traveler stories represent the richest repertoire of international folktales found in the English language today.
