Tam Lin

I left the story of Tam Lin to a seperate post so as to not make each post too long. Of all the fairy abduction tales, this is the one closest to Thomas the Rhymer, so much so that some people see it a a variant of the same story. Personally, I wouldn't go that far, but there are a lot of similarities.

For a start, the earliest form of Tam Lin that we have is a Scottish border ballad, like the Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer quoted here (and also set to music by British folk revivalists in the 1970s - in this case, Fairport Convention). It takes place in the same part of Scotland, it also features the Fairy Queen as the abductor, and the name Tam is a variant on Thomas.

In this story, we don't hear how Tam is abducted, aside from a brief reference - the story is focused instead on his rescue. It is told from the point of view of a young Scottish noblewoman named Janet who is warned, along with other women, to avoid the woods of Carterhaugh because Tam Lin lurks there and is after their maidenhood. Janet willfully ignores the warning, goes for a walk in the woods, meets Tam Lin by the well (where else) and duly gives up her maidenhead. Like Thomas, she doesn't appear to be at all reluctant and the ballad appears to imply that she went there for that very purpose.

In the inevitable sequel, she becomes pregnant, and on her father's noticing this and asking her to identify the father, she tells her tale. It seems that the father would perhaps be sceptical about this, thinking she is covering for some man of the household. Be that as it may, she goes back to the well (yes indeed) to find Tam Lin and tell him this latest development.

Up to this point, it is not clear who Tam Lin is - is he human, or fey? His answer is that he is human, but a captive of the Queen of the Fairies and unable to leave. There is a further problem. As mentioned in an earlier post the fairies are required to make a regular sacrifice to the Devil. This is about to fall due, and Tam fears it will be him. In the manner of other rescue stories, he then outlines a magical procedure by which Janet can rescue him. In this case, it involves intercepting the fairy troop as it rides out at Halloween, pulling him from his horse, and holding on tight no matter what happens. As with other rescues, it is perilous. In order to avoid losing her captive, the fairy queen changes his shape repeatedly - a lion, a snake, a burning brand - to try and get her to let go. However, the queen finally admits defeat, although with dire threats, Tam is free, and the pair marry - presumably to live happily ever after.

This story represents an altogether more sinister tale than Thomas's - more in keeping with the general tenor of stories about relations between humans and fairies. Tam can indeed live among fairies and be the lover of the fairy queen, but he is never out of danger - he is at the Queen's mercy, and she is not particularly merciful.

"If I had known, Tam Lin," she says
"That you were up to no good
I'd have taken out your green eyes
And put in eyes of wood."

"If I had known, Tam Lin," she says
"You would have always been alone.
For I'd have taken out your mortal heart
And put in a heart of stone."

The other striking thing about this story is how Tam is changed. It is impossible to tell if he is human or fairy. In many ways he acts like a fairy. When Janet comes to his well and picks the rose, he acts by a mysterious iron law like a fairy would, so that her intercourse with him has a kind of magical inevitability. He rides with the fairies and rivals them for beauty. He provokes fear amongst humans. Yet for all that he is still human and has no lasting place in the fairy realm. He may be the Queen's lover, but she will inevitably cast him aside. As long as he has his eyes of flesh and his mortal heart, he can never be fully hers and will only be fulfilled through love with a human woman.

Abducted by fairies

There are plenty of stories about being abducted by fairies. This is hardly an exhaustive list but let me tell you about a two types.

The first is the idea of the changeling. A human child will be stolen by fairies, and they will leave one of their own in its place. The fairies' motive, as always, is not really clear. Often children abducted in this way (they may be adult children) are introspective dreamers and hence perhaps attractive to the fairies and ripe for abduction. Generally the parents will think that this is their own child but its behaviour will perplex them. In one story I read, the replacement child never spoke, but ate and drank insatiably. The new child was a horrible burden, where the old one was a blessing.

In this type of story a wise outsider - a neighbour, local elder, or some similar figure - will diagnose the problem, and propose a solution. This may involve something drastic, like throwing the imposter in the fire, or something odd, like surrounding the changeling with eggshells full of water. After getting rid of the imposter they need to recover their own child from fairy custody - this might involve finding their home under the hill, and using an iron implement to prevent the fairies from closing the door until the captive is released. The fiaries are likely to give in a make the deal before daybreak to avoid being trapped in the sunlight. (Note the fairy powerlessness against iron which is a repeated motif of fairy tales). Such a rescue is not without risk - the rescuer may be struck dumb, or the fairies may attempt to imprison him too.

There is a obvious mental illness link here, with a slightly "strange" child turning into someone who seems a complete stranger. Magical rituals took the place of treatment. I'm glad we're not expected to throw mentally ill people into the fire these days but the idea that courageous devotion can bring them back still strikes a chord.

The second type of story is that of the revenge abduction. In one instance, a piper claims to surpass the fairies in musical ability and challenges them by entering their cave playing his pipes. He is condemned to wander in their caverns forever playing the same tune. This is of course a moral tale - don't boast! In other tales, the crime is simply being too curious - humans will try to find where fairies live, trace their home under the hillside, and find themselves trapped. Some types of fairies (like nixies, for instance) seem intent on entrapment, dragging unsuspecting young men down to their watery homes where they either drown, or live a life of underwater slavery.

Of these stories, Thomas's is somewhere between the changeling story (he is ripe for abduction but there is no replacement) and the story of the curious person who is trapped (instead of seeking the fairies home, he asks the Queen for a kiss). As in either of these tales, he is not entirely a victim - he contributes to his own fate, and to some extent embraces his visit as an adventure rather than being simply whisked off despite himself. This curiosity and goodwill seems to be what eventually allows him to return - his admiration for the Queen earns her protection, and she guides him through the perils of the land to ensure that he does not become trapped.

The Topography of Elf-land

A quick word about geography, or topography, if these words can really be used about an imaginary place. When Thomas was abducted, where did he go?

When the Queen shows him the three (or five) roads, these are apparently metaphorical - in the same way Jesus used the image in the first place as a metaphor for our life choices. Yet straight after this, they travel on one of them, the one to Elf-land, the Queen's realm.

The geography of elf-land is not entirely consistent in the various folk-tales, but it does have some common elements, and I think these can be traced back to the pre-Christian mythology which seems to be the source or inspiration for many of these tales. In many of these stories, the earth that we live on is known as "middle earth", the term later used (quite differently) by Tolkien for the land in which the Lord of the Rings takes place. This suggests that the earth is between two things - the underworld, and the sky or over-world.

These two places should not be confused with the Christian heaven and hell - the underworld is not a place of torture, nor is the overworld a place of bliss. They are simply different places, with different inhabitants and different laws. In one of the stories in the Mabinogion, the Lord of the Underworld swaps places with the Lord of middle-earth, and rules it so well that the middle-earth lord can only get his kingdom back by trickery.

Other stories suggest that the fairies or elves are inhabitants of the underworld (while the sky is inhabited by various flying creatures and by the stars, which are creatures of another kind). For instance, fairies are often shown to be living in caves, or under hills, and people who stray into their realm are shown as wandering aimlessly through underground passages. (Fairies only grow wings in later literary creations).

This topography explains two things - their fear of light (since they live underground they would be photophobic), and their nearness to humans (they live just beneath us, out of sight but not far away). It also explains the most typical places they emerge - from caves, beside wells, at freshwater springs - places of contact between the underworld and the surface.

This would suggest, then, that Thomas, instead of being taken over the hills to the south (towards England) was taken under them - through a natural or a magical entrance - into the underworld. If the Huntly Stream is the place of meeting, he could in fact have been taken upstream to the source on the hillside and then followed it underground. I'm not sure that the actual Huntly Stream goes underground, but the water has to come from somewhere!!

Fairies

So, since we are entering the domain of the fairy queen, I should write a bit about fairies - and there is a lot to write. Fairy-tales are a staple of folklore and there are literally thousands of stories in the interlocking folklore of the British Isles and Europe. Rather than retell these (go to any library and you'll find things like Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the various coloured Fairy Books of Andrew Lang) I'd like to have a go at telling a few things about fairies. Even this is daunting because there's a lot to tell.

First of all, the idea that fairies are tiny creatures is fairly recent - invented by people like JM Barrie in the late Victorian era for literary effect. Nor are they necessarily cute, although they are often beautiful. Shakespeare's fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream are a bit closer to the mark - mischeivous and magical, amusing themselves at the expense of humans - although their righting everything at the end is a bit dubious in the context of fairy lore.

Leaving aside the possibility that fairies are actual beings (famously advocated in the 17th Century by Robert Kirk) their origin is accounted for in at least three ways

• some say that they are folk tales which have developed independently of any "official" or "high" culture - tales developed and passed on through the oral cultures of working people, designed both for amusement and as spiritual allegories
• some have suggested that they may incorporate a distorted memory of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of Britain, forced by the Celtic invaders into the more remote parts of the country, being similar to the Celts but with a different language, a slightly different appearance, and with a lot of very confusing and perplexing customs
• a third possiblity is that they are the remnants of pre-Christian gods and spirits, "re-badged" in the wake of conversion to Christianity, losing some of their divine attributes but keeping their sense of "otherness" and some of their powers.

I'll go into the spiritual allegory thing another time but here I'd like to give you a brief picture of fairies. The term "fairy" or "fey" is actually a generic term for intelligent creatures which are not human, but resemble humans in various ways. Within this category are various specific creatures:

• the elves, who live in woods or hillsides - the queen who abducted Thomas would be an elf. Elves are great singers and musicians, have a huge stock of tree and animal lore, are often able to change shape
• nixies live in streams and lakes (a kind of freshwater equivalent to mermaids) - they will entice or entrap humans, particularly men, to visit their watery home, from which they will be unable to return
• brownies are household spirits or fairies. If you have a brownie in your house it is unlikely to appear to you, but will carry out various household tasks. Beware of getting too friendly or trying to reward your helpful brownie, because if it takes offence there will be household mayhem!
• as well as these there are various "fey" creatures. Some of these are terrifying, like the waterhorse which will attempt to lure you into the sea or lake and drown you. Others are more likely to be helpful - magical horses, birds and fish which will speak and offer help to a hero who treats them with the right kind of courtesy.

Some of these are closer to human beings than others. Water-horses, for instance, are pretty much equivalent to demons. Nixies, likewise, are never friendly, solely bent on using their beauty and charm to trap or drown unwary humans. Brownies and elves, on the other hand, often befriend humans. Beware their friendship, though, it is very dangerious!

Humans and fairies live in separate realms. There is often genuine friendship and even love between the two. For example, the mythical King Malcolm of Scotland (as opposed to one of the real ones) is said to have married a fairy princess and had children by her. However, even marriage could not permanently bind her to him and eventually she returned to the fairy realm, in this case with ongoing friendship and aid in times of need. The reverse is also often the case - children raised by fairies will ultimately yearn for human life and return to human society.

However, these are the mildest sort of problems. One of the key dangers for humans befriending fairies is that they are so easy to offend. As I mentioned, a brownie will be offended by its human co-habitants offering it food and will turn against them, damaging their home and even harming or killing them. Likewise, one of the stories collected by Lang recounts the friendship between a human and a fairy woman. The fairy woman would borrow the human woman's kettle each day, and when she had finished using it would return it full of juicy bones. However, when one day the woman was away, her husband was too afraid to allow the fairy woman into the house, and the result was unbreakable enmity between the two women, and a danger of death only averted by the woman's quick thinking.

Another type of seperation is that between day and night. In many stories, fairies hide during the day and conduct their business at night, particularly by moonlight. The two realms are to a certain degree mutually exclusive - fairies are terrified of sunlight which may result in their death or disenchantment, while humans who attempt to join or even view fairies at night run the risk of permanent entrapment.

These risks are made worse by the fairies' love of practical jokes. These jokes may be only harmless pranks, but they can also be seriously dangerous. Humans can be tricked into giving up their children, long periods of service, or simply endless disruption of their farms or households.

To make matters worse, fairies are not forgiving. A slight, however accidental, will be punished without mercy, and punishments will be ended not out of a sense of justice from the fairies (ie, "you have been punished enough now") but by an act of magic which averts the mischief. Even other fairies cannot wholly deflect this kind of revenge - in some of the world's best-known fairy tales the "good" or "friendly" fairy is at best only able to mitigate the punishment, moderating its effect (100 years sleep instead of death) or providing a convoluted and difficult way out.

Of course it goes without saying that fairies can work magic, and usually they do so simply by speaking or willing. However, they are not all-powerful beasts and their magic can be undone or defeated by rival magic. There are certain repeated motifs - rowan branches can ward them off, they are unable to overcome iron tools or weapons, they cannot bear sunlight and they can be tricked in their turn.

A final source of seperation - fairies cannot be baptised. They are outside the pale of the church and cannot enter heaven. Indeed, in some stories they are required to pay regular homage to the Devil (via an annual sacrifice, most often - humans can be stolen for this purpose to spare the fairies from sacrificing one of their own) to retain their independence.

More in future posts about the symbolism of fairy tales, and about fairy abductions.

Three roads

The idea of the three roads was the idea that first drew me to this story. For the those who just came in...Thomas is pulled up behind the Queen on her horse and they ride off over the hills. I walked up these same hills from Melrose and you come up into a saddle between the two highest hills, from which you look out towards the borderlands and into Northumberland.

While the walk I took was a fairly easy hour's climb, their journey lasts forty days and forty nights (like Jesus in the wilderness) during which they see neither sun nor moon and pass through blood "up to the knee". We are clearly in a symbolic landscape here. Then instead of the view towards England he sees three roads. Actually the longer version of the poem, the "Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune", a 14th or 15th century poem, has five roads - to heaven, paradise (ie the Garden of Eden), purgatory, hell and to her castle. In the shorter ballad as collected by Child and Scott and possibly of later date, there are only three - the narrow road to heaven, the broad road to hell, and the "bonny, bonny road" to elfland. Perhaps this is a sign of the reformation coming between the two versions, eliminating purgatory and downgrading paradise, leaving only the three posible locations. On the other hand, perhaps the greater succinctness of the ballad form just made the version more focused.

Either way, the striking thing, particularly in the ballad version, is that there is an option here that falls outside the Christian framework. You can go to heaven, or you can go to hell - the dualistic options offered by Christianity. But here is a third way, the way to elf-land, which is neither one nor the other.

We have already seen a sideling reference to Christian piety in Thomas' mistaking the Queen for Mary, Queen of Heaven. This is no accident. Many have felt that Mary, a goddess in all but name in Medieval Catholicism, was promoted as a result of the human impulse to worship the feminine as well as the masculine aspects of divinity. The reference to the horse wading "through blood up to the knee" could even be a further Christian reference, to sanctification by the blood of Christ. On the other side, elves have been seen as remnants of pre-Christian religions, "demoted" in the wake of Christianity's spread. So a goddess demoted to a queen of a twilight realm is mistaken for a human woman promoted to virtual divinity. You can interpret the Queen's refusal of the title "Queen of Heaven" as humility in the face of one greater than herself, or as jealousy of a rival for her affections. But you could also see the two as one and the same, despite her denial.

The three roads provide a clearer message - they are not one and the same. But the road to elfland provides a way which will take you neither to heaven nor hell. It provides a different source of wisdom, a different spritual path, a different set of traditions. Thomas can only travel one of those roads and he has no choice because he has been captured by the Queen, although as we saw he was not entirely a passive victim. Nor is the road to elfland an idyll - it is fraught with peril as we shall see. But it is the beginning of injecting into the Scottish story a new element, a wild-card, a source of wisdom and insight outside the Christian framework.

Getting abducted

So to the pivotal moment in the story, Thomas's abduction by the Queen of the Elves, the Queen of the Fairies, whatever. In all versions this event takes place somewhere on the Eildon Hills, which overlook the beautiful town of Melrose, a few miles to the South-West of Earlston. The Eildon Hills are a prominent landmark, a trio of hills that stand out over the surrounding plain and can be seen from miles around in every direction. The story goes that Thomas is sitting, or perhaps sleeping, under a tree when he sees a woman of extra-ordinary beauty approaching, perhaps on a horse. His immediate assumption is that she is the Queen of Heaven - that is Mary, the mother of Jesus - and so he bows to worship her. She hastily rejects this assumption and announces her true identity.

In some versions he then asks her for a kiss, and receiving it is told he is now bound to her service for a period - seven years, one year, or an unspecified time. In other versions she simply announces that he is to come with her. In neither option does he have any choice but there is no real suggestion of resistance. Don't all men dream of being whisked away by a beautiful woman? Yet in some versions, after the kiss her appearance changes to that of an old woman.

To add to the confusion, there are two possible locations for the abduction. The first, and most popular locally, is the site marked by the "Thomas the Rhymer Stone", erected in 1929 by the Melrose Literary Society (relocated in 1970 although it doesn't mention how far it was moved) on the easternmost of the hills, and additionaly marked by a tourist plaque explaining the story. This was originally the site of the "Thomas the Rhymer Tree", a large oak tree under which he is supposed to have sat, although this tree is hardly likely to have survived from the mid 13th century! In any case, the tree is also now dead and the stone sits at the roadside under a newly planted sapling. Nonetheless you can tell why this site appeals, with its sweeping views of the surrounding country.

The other location is the one mentioned in the song - "Huntly Bank". The Huntly Stream runs down the western side of the westernmost of the hills, behind what is now the local hospital. This site also carries a local tradition, named "Rhymers Glen", although it obviously didn't appeal to the Literary Society and has neither stone nor plaque. There's not much of a view from here but its a great place for a tryst - a little tinkling stream, surrounded by trees, running through a secluded glen down the side of the lowest of the three hills.

James Murray claims that these two sites are within sight of each other, but he must have visited a different place to me. Perhaps the stone has been moved a long way from its original site, because as the two locations currently appear they are on opposite sides of the hills, seperated by the highest of the three. But this is beside the point. Both oak trees and stream banks are magical places in folklore - the oaks places of worhsip and magical rites for the druids in pre-Christian times, streams places of safety and refuge for various spirits. Thomas, in lingering in either place, was inviting (whether knowingly or not) a visit of some kind. Maybe he got more than he bargained for.

Growing up in Earlston

So I guess I should start at the beginning. Thomas is said to come from Ercildoune, known now as Earlston, a town on the banks of the Leader in the Scottish border region. There is even a ruined tower in Earlston which is known as "Rhymers Tower" - pictured here. Sadly Scotland's Places suggests that this building actually dates from the 16th century, but this doesn't stop the various guidebooks and tourism websites from listing it as his home or even his place of birth.

So how might Thomas's childhood really have been? In 13th Century Scotland there were basically two types of buildings. The wealthy and powerful lived in stone castles or towers, had servants, and owned more or less substatial land holdings. The majority of the population lived in small mud and thatch cottages, either farming small plots of land on which they may have been tenants or had some form of ownership, or if they were poorer still selling their labour to anyone who would buy. They would have had a meagre diet - mostly oats and mutton with whatever fruit was in season and growing readily (blackberries, perhaps, or apples) maybe some fish if they lived near a productive stream, and maybe some game if they could catch it. In a good year they would eat well, in a bad year they would go hungry.

If you were living this kind of life, Earlston would be a good place to do it. It has a nice clear river as well as a small stream. It has rich soil, rolling hills, a reasonably benign climate, plenty of rainfall. It would be a good place to raise sheep or cattle, grow grain, fish in the stream and hunt in the woods.

The question is, what kind of life did Thomas have? Was it the life of luxury in the stone tower, or the life of toil in the mud hut? Clearly at the end of his life he had a modest amount of property, as you would expect from a seer and bard patronised by the Earls of Dunbar. Did he always have this, or did he acquire it in later life?

I would suggest that he must have had enough wealth at least for his parents to have him taught to read and write (hence his later reputation as a poet) and his family would have been well enough off to own a musical instrument of some sort, for him to learn on. Unless, of course, he learnt all this in elf-land! Thus I imagine him growing up as the child of a small holder - definitely a mud-hut dweller, but a mud hut surrounded by some land on which sheep grazed and perhaps a little grain grew, a mud hut that at least was in good repair, and kept out the rain and the cold. He would have eaten simply, but rarely gone hungry. But he would have had to work - minding sheep, cutting wood for the fire, planting and harvesting, collecting wild fruit. When he finally spent time among the rich and powerful, he would be shocked at their laziness and their extravagance - or perhaps intrigued and attracted.

Thomas in History

One of the first things I found out about Thomas is that he was an actual person, not just a folkloric figure. He was probably born sometime between 1210 and 1220, and died sometime between 1290 and 1300.

In the manner of modern history, there's not much to say definitively about him from sources in his lifetime. A 1294 document has him (or possibly his son if he had one) making his lands in Earlston over to a religious establishment called Trinity House of Soltra. Apart from this, nix - but that's not unusual for Scottish history of that period. One story goes that after Edward I's invasion of Scotland in 1296, like a good Norman bureaucrat he packaged up the records of the nation and put them on a ship for London. The ship sank on the way, taking the records of the Scottish kingdom to the bottom of the ocean. True, or another piece of Scottish folklore?

Anyway there's a few things we can know about Thomas with more or less certainty.

1. He lived in a town called Erceldoune (modern day Earlston) in the Scottish border region. This town apparently included a castle owned by the Earls of Dunbar and the residents would have owed some kind of allegiance to that nobleman, probably being mostly his tenants. The fact that Thomas made his land over to someone indicates that he owned it, rather than leasing it, but he still would have had some obligation to the local lord.
2. He is known as Thomas Rhymour. There is some speculation that this is a family name, but his reputation as a poet makes it more likely that this was a title or nickname. Later sources call him Thomas Learmont, but this name does not appear before the 16th century. He has been identified (with varying degrees of certainty) as the author of a version of Tristan and Isolde, of the original version of the ballad which bears his name, and of various prophecies and sayings. All or none of these may be his own work, but it is hardly likely that he would have had works attributed to him if he were not a poet - the reputation must have come from somewhere.
3. More dubiously he is associated in later chronicles with various significant events. One story recounted by Blind Harry, author of the voluminous life of William Wallace, has him uttering a favourable prophecy about Wallace after rumours of his death cirulate. Another has him cryptically foreshadowing the death of King Alexander III in 1286, which precipitated two decades of dynastic crisis and war with England.

That's about it for certain or uncertain historical references, but it's enough. I'll come back to some of those stories and references in more detail in later posts. For now its enough to place him in a golden age of medieval Scotland. His life spans the reigns of three kings who went under the name Alexander. For most of that time Scotland was at peace, dynastic succession was relatively smooth even when the kings were still minors on the ascension. Occasional bad years aside, agricultural production increased, people had enough to eat, and Scotland did a lively trade in wool and fish with England and France. The Crusades continued through most of his lifetime, but although Scottish soldiers would have fought, these battles were far away and made slight impact.
The Scottish kings were even confident enough to try to expand their territory although with limited success. In 1232 Alexander I laid claim to the north of England, although he ended up settling for a border that ran along the Tweed and Solway. Alexander II launched a campaign to end Norwegian rule in the Western Isles, finally completed in 1263 when the Scottish under Alexander III won the rather farcical Battle of Largs.
This peace and confidence, however, collapsed rapidly after Alexander III's sudden death in 1286. Both his sons had died already and his infant grandaughter died on the way from Norway to be crowned queen. In the absence of any clear heir, the Scottish nobles invited Edward I of England to adjudicate on the succession, and he arrived with a large troop of soldiers who somehow never went home after John Balliol was named king. There followed over 20 years of war, with Edward's invasion of 1296, Wallace's revolt and ongoing guerilla campaign up to his death in 1305, and finally the war of independence that led to Robert Bruce's ascension in 1314.
Thomas certainly lived long enough to see the beginnings of this trouble, and may have died (or returned to elf-land if your prefer) sometime between 1297 and 1300, while Edward was establishing his dominance over Scotland with more or less brutality, depending on which sources you believe. He did not live to see Robert Bruce's triumph - but perhaps he predicted it?