More about the Billy Blin'

 

A book called ‘The Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song’ edited by R.H. Cromek and published 1810, contains this “Account of Billy Blin'" with some entertaining stories. 

"This is another name for the Scotch Brownies, a class of solitary beings, living in the hollows of trees, and recesses of old ruinous castles. They are described as being small of stature, covered with short curly hair, with brown matted locks, and a brown mantle which reached to the knee, with a hood of the same colour. They were particularly attached to families eminent for their ancestry and virtue; and have lived, according to tradition’s ‘undoubted mouth’, for several hundreds of years in the same family, doing the drudgery of a menial servant.

"But though very trustworthy servants, they were somewhat coy in their manner of doing their work:– when the threaves of corn [this is 25 sheaves gathered in ‘shocks’] were counted out they remained unthrashen [unthreshed]; at other times, however great the quantity, it was finished by the crowing of the first cock. Mellers of corn [grain ready to be sent to the mill] would be dried, ground and sifted, with such exquisite nicety, that the finest flour of the meal could not be found strewed or lost.

"The Brownie would then come into the farm-hall and stretch itself out by the chimney, sweaty, dusty and fatigued. It would take up the pluff – a piece of bored boar-tree [elder] for blowing up the fire and, stirring out the red embers, turn itself till it was rested and dried. A choice bowl of sweet cream, with combs of honey, was set in an accessible place:– this was given as its hire; and it was willing to be bribed, though none durst avow the intention of the gift. When offered meat or drink, the Brownie instantly departed, bewailing and lamenting itself, as  if unwilling to leave a place so long its habitation, from which nothing but the superior power of fate could sever it.

"A thrifty good wife, having made a web of linsey-woolsey, sewed a well-lined mantle and a comfortable hood for her trusty Brownie. She laid it down in one of his favourite haunts and cried to him to array himself. Being commissioned by the gods to relieve mankind under the drudgery of original sin, he was forbidden to accept of wages or bribes. He instantly departed, bemoaning himself in a rhyme, which tradition has faithfully preserved:

A new mantle and a new hood! –

Poor Brownie! ye’ll ne’er do mair gude.

"The prosperity of the family seemed to depend on them, and was at their disposal. A place called Liethin Hall, in Dumfies-shire, was the herefitary dwelling of a noted Brownie. He had lived there, as he once communicated in confidence to an old woman, for three hundred years. He appeared only once to each new master, and indeeed seldom shewed more than his hand to anyone. On the decease of a beloved master, he was heard to make moan, and would not partake of his wonted delicacies for many days. The heir of the land arrived from foreign parts and took possession of his father’s inheritance. The faithful Brownie shewed himself and proffered homage. The spruce Laird was offended to see such a famine-faced, wrinkled domestic, and ordered him meat and drink, with a new suit of clean livery. The Brownie departed, repeating loud and frequently these ruin-boding lines:

Ca’, cuttie, ca!

A’ the luck of Liethin Ha’

Gangs wi’ me to Bodsbeck Ha’.

"Liethin Ha’ was, in a few years, in ruins, and ‘bonnie Bodsbeck’ flourished under the luck-bringing patronage of the Brownie.

"They possessed all the adventurous and chivalrous gallantry of crusading knighthood, but in devotion to their ladies they left Errantry itself far behind. Their services were really useful. In the accidental encounters of their fair mistresses with noble outlaws in woods, and princes in disguise, – when the kind ladies had nothing to show for their courtsey but a comb of gold or a fillet of hair, – the faithful Brownie restored the noble wooer; laid the lovers on their bridal bed, declared their lineage, and reconciled all parties. He followed his dear mistress through life with the same kindly solicitude; for, when the ‘mother’s trying hour was nigh’, with the most laudable promptitude he environed her with the ‘cannie dames’ ere the wish for their assistance was half-formed in her mind.

"One of them, in the olden times, lived with Maxwell, Laird of Dalswinton, doing ten men’s work and keeping the servants awake at nights with the noisy dirling [clatter] of its elfin flail. The Laird’s daughter, says tradition, was the comeliest dame in all the holms of Nithsdale. To her the Brownie was much attached: he assisted her in love-intrigue, conveying her from her high tower-chamber to the trysting-thorn in the woods, and back again with such light-heeled celerity that neither bird, dog nor servant awoke.

"He undressed her for the matrimonial bed, and served her so handmaiden-like that her female attendant had nothing to do, not daring even to finger her mistress’s apparel, lest she should provoke the Brownie’s resentment. When the pangs of the mother seized his beloved lady, a servant was ordered to fetch the ‘cannie wife’ who lived across the Nith. The night was dark as a December night could be; and the wind was heavy among the groves of oak. The Brownie, enraged at the loitering serving-man, wrapped himself in his lady’s fur cloak and, though the Nith was foaming high-flood, his steed, impelled by supernatural spur and whip, passed it like an arrow. Seating the dame behind him, he took the deep water back again to  the amazement of the worthy woman, who beheld the red waves tumbling around her, yet the steed’s foot-locks were dry.  – ‘Ride nae by the auld pool,’ quo’ she, ‘lest we should meet wi’ Brownie.’ – He replied, ‘Fear nae, dame, ye’ve met a’ the Brownies ye will meet.’ – Placing her down at the hall gate, he hastened to the stable, where the servant lad was just pulling on his boots; he unbuckled the bridle from his steed and gave him a most afflicting drubbing.

"This was about the new-modelling times of the Reformation; and a priest, more zealous than wise, exhorted the Laird to have this Imp of Heathendom baptised; to which he, in an evil hour, consented, and the worthy reforming saint concealed himself in the barn, to surprise the Brownie at his work. He appeared like a little wrinkled, ancient man and began his nightly moil. The priest leapt from his ambush and dashed the baptismal water in his face, solemnly repeating the set form of the Christian rite. The poor Brownie set up a frightful and agonising yell and instantly vanished, never to return.

"The Brownie, though of a docile disposition, was not without its pranks and merriment. The Abbey-lands, in the parish of New Abbey, were the residence of a very sportive one. He loved to be, betimes, somewhat mischievous. – Two lassies, having made a fine bowlful of buttered brose [oatmeal gruel], had taken it into the byre to sup, while it was yet dark. In the haste of concealment they had brought but one spoon, so they placed the bowl between them and took a spoonful by turns. ‘I hae got but three sups,’ cried the one, ‘an’ it’s done!’ ‘It’s a’ done, indeed,’ cried the other. ‘Ha, ha!’ laughed a third voice, ‘Brownie has gotten the maist o’t.’ He had judiciously placed himself between them and got the spoon twice for their once.

"The Brownie does not seem to have loved the gay and gaudy attire in which his twin-brothers, the fairies, arrayed themselves: his chief delight was in the tender delicacies of food. Knuckled [kneaded] cakes made of meal, warm from the mill, haurned [roasted] on the decayed embers of the fire, and smeared with honey, were his favourite hire; and they were carefully laid so that he might accidentally find them.  – It is still a common phrase, when a child gets a little eatable present, ‘there’s a piece wad please a Brownie.’ "

[ Read my previous post on the Billy Blin':  https://steelthistles.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-billy-blin-scottish-brownie.html ]

Picture Credits

Lob Lie By the Fire, by Dorothy P Lathrop: illustration to 'Down-a-down-derry,' Fairy Poems by Walter de la Mare 1922

Nis or Tomten Laughing at a Cat, by Theodor Kittelsen 1892

The Billy Blin': the Scottish Brownie

 

I am extremely fond of house-spirits, two of which appeared in my first  books for children. The three books of my Troll trilogy all feature one of the Scandinavian nisses I first met in Thomas Keightley’s 1828 compendium ‘The Fairy Mythology’. I was charmed by their mischief, vanity, naïvety, essential goodwill and occasional bursts of temper. My Nis has all these characteristics and I love him. The second house spirit arrived in my fourth book ‘Dark Angels’: he’s a hob (a ‘bwbach’ in Welsh) who lives under the hearthstone of a 12^th century motte and bailey castle on the Welsh Marches, loves food and does his gruff best to help the young daughter and heiress of Hugo de la Motte Rouge, the lord of the place. (I wrote a short story involving this hob, which you can read here.) 

There are hobs or brownies in all parts of the British Isles, but some have names of their own, though these names themselves are often generic: if the English have Puck, the Irish have the pooka or phooka and the Welsh have the pwca... In Scotland though, the brownie is often named the Billy Blin’, with variants such as Billy Blynde or Belly Blin – and he is found in a number of ballads in which he usually takes on an advisory role. I should  issue a warning that the ballads 'Gil Brenton' and 'Earl Lithgow', examined in this post, include sexual violence.

But ‘Young Bekie’ (Child Ballad 53c) does not! A Scottish knight named Young Bekie takes service with the King of France. He falls in love with the king’s daughter, Burd Isbel, and is ‘thrown into prison strong’ where the mice and the ‘bold rattons’ gnaw his yellow hair, a scene Arthur Rackham obviously could not resist illustrating. Burd Isbel simply steals the keys and rescues him: this practical young woman then provides a razor for his chin, a comb for his hair, five hundred pounds ‘for his pocket’, a fast horse and (a little oddly) a number of hounds all from one litter, one of which is called Hector. The two young people then part, solemnly promising to marry within three years. Off goes Young Bekie to Scotland and his own lands, but within the year he is ‘forced to marry a duke’s daughter’ or lose all his land. The young man laments his ill fortune, since – he says – 

‘I know not what to dee,

For I canno win to Burd Isbel

And she kens nae [doesn’t know] to come to me.’ 

Enter the Billy Blin’:

O it fell once upon a day

                                    Burd Isbel fell asleep

                                    An up it starts the Belly Blin

                                    An stood at her bed feet.

 

                                    ‘Oh waken, waken, Burd Isbel,

                                    How can ye sleep so soun’

                                    When this is Bekie’s wedding day,

                                    An’ the marriage gaein on?’ 

The Billy Blin’ tells her what to do. She must take two of the ‘Marys’ (serving women) from her mother’s bower, dress them in green and herself in ‘the red scarlet’, with rich girdles about their waists, and go down to the sea strand where a ‘Hollans boat’ will come rowing in for them. Burd Isbel takes his advice and when the boat arrives, ‘the Belly Blin was the steerer o’t/To row her o’er the sea.’ As Burd Isbel and her maids arrive at the castle gate, she hears music playing for the wedding, and gives the porter ‘guineas three’ to call the bridegroom down to her. When the porter describes the ladies’ rich clothing to the company the bride comments sarcastically that if these ladies are ‘braw without’, she herself is ‘braw within’: but Young Bekie jumps up. ‘I’ll lay my life it’s Burd Isbel/Come o’er the sea to me.’ Running downstairs he takes her in his arms: she reminds him of all she’s done for him, the wedding is cancelled and the other bride sent home: ‘For I maun marry my Burd Isbel/That’s come o’er the sea to me.’ 

Isbel is not a bit surprised by the Billy Blin’s warning: he seems a known and respected household inhabitant. I should like to point out that this ballad is another instance of the many ‘fairy’ tales, whether prose or verse, in which the girl does nearly everything: Burd Isbel gets all the action. She rescues Young Bekie in the first place – and with help from the Billy Blin’ she crosses the sea and ejects the bride he doesn’t want. 

In ‘Willie’s Lady’ (Child Ballad 6), a wicked mother – ‘a vile rank witch of vilest kind’ – prevents her son’s wife from giving birth, so ‘in her bower she sits wi’ pain/And Willie mourns o’er her in vain.’ Willie tries bribing his mother to undo the spell she has cast on his wife: 

                                    He says; ‘My ladie has a cup

                                    Wi’ gowd and silver set about.

                                    This goodlie gift shall be your ain

                                    And let her be lighter o’ her young bairn.’

His mother replies:

                                    ‘Of her young bairn she’ll ne’er be lighter

                                    Nor in her bower to shine the brighter:

                                    But she shall die and turn to clay

                                    And you shall wed another may.’ 

While his wife lies in agony wishing she could die, Willie tries again to bribe his mother, offering her a horse shod with gold, with golden bells hanging from every lock of its mane. Again his mother refuses. Trying for the third time, Willie offers her his wife’s girdle of red gold, ringing with golden bells that hang from a silver hem, but this too is refused – and in steps the Billy Blin’.

                                    Then out and spake the Billy Blind;

                                    He spake aye in good time.

                                    ‘Ye doe ye to the market place

                                    And there ye buy a loaf o’ wax. 

He tells Willie to mould the wax into the shape of a new-born baby, place two glass eyes in its head, invite his mother to its christening – and listen carefully to her words. And fooled into believing the baby has been born, she exclaims: 

                                    ‘Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots

                                    That was among that ladie’s locks?

                                    And wha has taen out the kaims of care

                                    That hangs among that ladie’s hair?

                                    And wha’s taen down the bush o’ woodbine

                                    That hangs atween her bower and mine?

                                    And wha has killd the master kid

                                    That ran beneath that ladie’s bed?

                                    And wha has loosed her left-foot shee

                                    And letten that ladie lighter be?’

Hearing this, Willie looses the nine witch knots, removes the ‘combs of care’, pulls down the bush of woodbine, kills the ‘master kid’ – it really is a young goat! – and takes off his wife’s left shoe. The lady then promptly gives birth to ‘a bonny young son’. We don’t find out what, if anything, happens to the wicked mother; it’s simply to be hoped she doesn’t try this again – but the Billy Blin’ has clearly saved the day. 

In ‘Gil Brenton’ (Child Ballad 5c), the young hero – a title he hardly merits given his behaviour – meets a young woman, the seventh of seven sisters, who comes to the wood to pick lilies and roses for her sisters’ bowers. She tells what happened next: 

                                    ‘And was I weel or was I wae

                                    He keepit me a’ the simmer’s day.

                                    ‘And tho I for my hame-gaun sicht [sighed for my home]

                                    He keepit me a’ the simmer nicht.’ 

He gives her tokens –  a gold ring, a short knife and ‘three locks of his yellow hair’ – and then departs. The result of course is that she becomes pregnant, and seeks to find him across the sea. Sending her dowry ahead of her, she arrives at his dwelling, only to be warned that ‘Childe Brenton’ has already ‘wedded’ seven king’s daughters, but never bedded them: they have all proved not to be maidens, so he has ‘cut the breasts frae their breast-bane’ and sent them back to to their fathers. Mysteriously she still wants to marry him, and is warned also not to sit in a particular golden chair until she is bidden to do so. But she does. At this point the Billy Blin’ pops up and defends the girl by suggesting that she only sat in the chair because ‘the bonnie may is tired wi’ riding’ – which sounds reasonable in an otherwise unreasonable milieu. Presumably anxious about the chance of having her breasts carved off by an ‘unco’ lord’ (‘unco’ means strange, uncanny, weird, a description we can agree seems apt) she begs her virginal maid to take her place in the bridal bed. For her lady’s sake the girl agrees, and when they are lying down together Gil Brenton asks the Billy Blin’ to tell him ‘if this fair dame be a leal [true] maiden’. The Billy Blin’ replies: 

                                    I wat [know] she is as leal a wight

                                    As the moon shines on in a simmer night.

                                    I wat she is as leal a may

                                    As the sun shines on in a simmer day.

                                    But your bonnie bride is in her bower

                                    Dreeing the mither’s trying hour.’

[Enduring the birth of her child: becoming a mother] 

Leaping out of bed, Gil Brenton runs to his mother’s bower and tells her that ‘the maiden I took to my bride/Has a bairn atween her sides’ and is currently giving birth. You’d assume this might have been noticed before, but this is a ballad: so no. Rushing to the lady’s chamber, his mother flings the door wide, demanding to know who is the father of the child? The lady tells her story, produces the tokens, and the pair are united. This particular version was taken and slightly abridged, from R.H. Cromek’s ‘Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song’ (1810) in which the introduction states it to have been ‘copied from the recital of a peasant-woman of Galloway, upwards of ninety years of age’, which may well put it back at least to the mid-1700s. Cromek gives the title as ‘We Were Sisters, We Were Seven’, and he comments: 

The singular character of the Billy Blin’ (the Scotch Brownie, and the lubbar fiend of Milton*) gives the whole an air of the marvellous, independently of the mystic chair, on which the principal catastrophe [denouement, reveal] of the story turns. 

Strangely, the ‘Child 5c’ version misses out a long verse passage from Cromek’s. In it, following the rape and ignorant of the victim’s identity, Brenton arrives at the seven sisters’ gate and shouts that he’s a ‘lord o’ lands wide’ and wants one of them to be his bride, preferably the youngest. The youngest, speaking for herself, remarks: ‘Little ken’d he, when aff he rode,/I was his token’d luve in the wood’ – but at least the passage explains how she knows where to find him, and where to send the dowry. Unembarrassed by Brenton’s dubious character, the ballad ends on a tender note as Brenton kneels at his lady’s bedside: 

                                    O tauk [take] ye up my son,’ said he,

                                    And mither, tent [look after] my fair ladie;

                                    O wash him purely in the milk,

                                    And lay him saftly in the silk;

                                    An’ ye maun [you must] bed her very soft,

                                    For I maun kiss her wondrous oft.

                                    It was well written on his breast bane,

                                    Childe Branton was the father’s name;

                                    It was well written on his right hand,

                                    He was the heir o’ his daddie’s land. 

Ballads in which the girl ends up married to the man who raped her seem deeply problematic today. Back in those days though, how likely was it that girls in such circumstances got any redress whatever? I think such ballads offer a fantasy ending: the girl gets married to the rich lord and her child becomes legitimate, and heir to a fine estate. The Billy Blin did his best, I suppose. 

A ballad with a similar theme is ‘Earl Lithgow’, variant F of Child Ballad 110 generally known as ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter’. The Billy Blin’ once more appears in it; this ballad too begins with a rape; but the young woman gets as good a revenge as she can and is more than a match for Earl Lithgow. He tries to hide his identity, but she knows his real name and races after him when he rides away. When they come to the River Dee his horse swims it, but she swims faster, fast as an otter and reaches the ‘queen’s high court’ well ahead of him, where she gains an audience with the queen. Announcing proudly that she can neither ‘card nor spin’, but knows how to ‘sit in a lady’s bower and lay gold on a seam’, she accuses Lithgow, who is the queen’s brother, of stealing her maidenhead. Brought before her, Lithgow attempts to pay her off with one – two – three purses of gold, but the young woman will have none of it: 

                                    ‘I’ll hae nane o’ your purses o’ gold

                                    That ye tell [count] on your knee:

                                    But I will hae yoursell,’ said she,

                                    ‘The queen has granted it me.’ 

The furious Earl is forced to marry her, and she taunts him with her supposed low birth (he wasn’t there when she told the queen about being able to sew with gold thread). As the pair pass by a watermill, she tells him how her ‘auld mither, the carlin’ (a carlin is an old woman) would have pricked and stung him like the nettles that grow by the dyke.                                   

                                    ‘Sae well’s she would you pyke,’ she says,

                                    ‘She would you pyke and pou [prick and pull],

                                      And wi’ the dust lies in the mill

                                    Sae would she mingle you.’ 

If that wasn’t sufficiently crushing, she further informs him that her ‘mither’ would sup till she was full, lay her head on a sod and snore like a sow. This is her heritage: THIS is who he’s married! He can throw his china plates away: she’s happy eating from a ‘humble gockie’ – a wooden dish. She doesn’t want to sleep in ‘holland sheets’, not she: she prefers ‘canvas clouts’. She is wreaking sweet revenge on him by shaming him socially as deeply as he’d shamed her. And it’s working: 

                                    He’s drawn his hat out ower his face,

                                    Muckle shame thought he;

                                    She’s driven her cap out ower her locks,

                                    And a light laugh gae she. 

I love that! At long last he begins to wonder about her. ‘If ye be a carlin’s get,’ he begins slowly, still unsure – ‘As I trust well ye be/Where got ye all the gay claithing/Ye brought to the greenwood with thee?’ The quick-thinking young woman instantly replies that her mother was an old nurse, whose mistress would sometimes give her cast-off clothes which she kept for her daughter. Then comes the sting in the tail: 

                        And I put them on in good greenwood,

                        To beguile fause [false] squires like thee.   

At this point the Billy Blin’ decides that enough is probably enough, and intervenes. 

                        It’s out then spake the billy-blin,

                        Says, I speak nane out of time [not before time]

                        If ye make her lady o’ nine cities,

                        She’ll make you lord o’ ten.

 

                        Out it spake the billy-blin,

                        Says, The one may serve the other;

                        The king of Gosford’s ae daughter,

                        And the queen of Scotland’s brother.

 

Revealed as a princess, the girl is distinctly displeased and turns on him: 

                        Wae but worth you, billy-blin.

                        An ill death may ye die!

                        My bed-fellow he’d been for seven years

                        Or he’d ken’d sae muckle frae me.

[He’d have been my bedfellow for seven years

Before he’d learned so much from me!]

 

She’s clearly enjoyed humiliating her new husband, who equally clearly deserved it. He now at least tries to make peace, saying: 

                        Fair fa’ ye, ye billy-blin

                        And well may ye aye be!

                        In my stable is the ninth horse I’ve kill’d

                        Seeking this fair ladie.

                        Now we’re married and now we’re bedded

                        And in each other’s arms shall lie.

Here’s to the girl who got her own back! More colourful stuff about the Billy Blin’ in my next post.  

* The lubber fiend is described by Milton as a 'drudging goblin' in his 1631 poem L' Allegro. After spending a night threshing a quantity of corn that 'ten day-labourers could not end': "Then lies him down, the lubber fiend/And stretch'd out all the chimney's length/Basks at the fire his hairy strength...' He sounds rather large for a brownie, but who knows? 

Picture credits

Brownie sweeping -  by Alice B Woodward, wikipedia

Young Bekie in prison - by Arthur Rackham - Some British Ballads, 1919

The Billy Blin' wakes Burd Isbel - by Arthur Rackham - Some British Ballads, 1919

Willie's Lady - by Vernon Hill - Ballads Weird and Wonderful, 1911

The Knight and the Shepherdess - by Byam Shaw - Ballads and Lyrics of Love, 1908