Aiken Drum, ‘The Brownie of Blednoch’ and the Pictish Brown Boy

For my friend Gordon. 

Well, this happened a long time ago in Scotland, but if you listen closely you will probably still hear the children singing of the little man named Aiken Drum. He came one night out of the blue. It was dusk, just when the milking was done and before the children had gone to bed. People were standing outside on their doorsteps talking about the fine springtime weather when suddenly they heard the strangest humming sound coming from down by the river.


The sound came nearer and nearer. Everyone stopped talking and looked down the long road. They stared and rubbed their eyes when they glimpsed this bewildering sight. The most frightful creature anyone had ever seen was walking right into their village.


He was a wee man, covered from head to toe with hair, and wore only a little kilt woven of green rushes. His hair hung forward, nearly covering his face. His beard was so long it almost touched the ground -- and it was blue! His little legs were twisted and his arms were long enough to touch the ground. He was humming, sure enough, and as he came closer, people heard the words he sang. "Hae ye any work for Aiken Drum?"


Well, you can imagine how afraid everyone was. The children screamed and hid their faces in their mother's skirts. Little boys threw down their pails of milk. Dogs sneaked behind their masters. Women shrieked. Grown men laughed and hooted, but they were shaking, too.




But Old Granny Duncan, the kindest and wisest woman in that little village, stepped right off her porch and said to everyone: "Hold on! He may be a ghost or a demon, or he may be a harmless Brownie. There's one way to find out." She marched right into the middle of that road and held the holy Bible out in front of the strange little man. He simply went on walking past, singing out his song, begging for work. 
"He's a Brownie," Granny Duncan said, "and if we treat him well, he'll treat us just as well." So everyone gathered round the little man, and they could see when he was close that his hairy face was kind and gentle.





The Brownie looked around, and then said: "I come from a nameless land, and it's a different place than this. There we learn to serve. So I've come to see if there is any work here to be done. There's but one thing ye must promise. I want no wages or thanks. All I ask for is a corner of a barn to sleep in and a little wee drink at bedtime, and if no one meddles with me, I'll do any kind of work you need done." 
No one knew quite what to say, for no one had ever heard of someone offering services for nothing. But Old Granny Duncan spoke again. "You heard the man!" Well, that settled things. The miller offered Aiken Drum, for that was his name, a corner of his barn to sleep in, and Granny Duncan promised to bring him a wee drink every night. Then everyone said goodnight.


By the end of that week, people were singing a different tune about old Aiken Drum. Whatever he was, wherever he had come from, he was a wonderful worker. He did much of his work at night when everyone else was asleep. Wherever there was a sickly child in need of nursing, or a flock of sheep to be gathered on a stormy night, or a bundle to be carried home, Aiken Drum always learned of it and appeared just in time. 
Pretty soon people came from all over the countryside to catch a glimpse of Aiken Drum, but a Brownie will never be seen if you're looking for him. The little children adored Aiken Drum, and he loved them. Whenever they could, they met him in the fields, and there the older folks could hear the sound of sweet singing.


Everything might have been well if one young woman hadn't thought she knew better than everyone else. She decided Aiken Drum must be paid, and one night she took a pair of her husband's worn-out breeches and put them down in the barn beside Aiken Drum's drink. Well, the long and short of it was this: Aiken Drum was gone in the morning, and no one ever saw him again. 
Now some say he disappeared because his new finery made him too proud for work. Some say he had been rewarded and so was free of a curse. Some say it was just that he asked people to promise, and when they broke their promise, he went away. Granny Duncan said that they should have kept their promise to him, but when they broke it, they broke his heart.


Still, in that little Scottish village some say they can hear him singing down by the mill when they pass. The children still sing about him. Everyone knows there are Brownies in the world, and fairy kingdoms, and if anyone says there are none, the villagers laugh and tell the tale of Aiken Drum.





The legend is so well ground within the UK that there is a song we sing for children named Aiken Drum, In the nursery rhyme Aiken Drum wears entirely edible clothes and Brownies are usually associated with food. They often make themselves responsible for the farm or house in which they live by doing chores that have been left undone by servants or by herding sheep (see painting) or collecting eggs. A brownie will often become personally attached to a member of the household and in return he has a right to a bowl of cream or best milk or to an especially good cake or cheese! Brownie’s are often given clothing in exchange for their work but money or reward is thought to drive them away. William Henderson’s Folklore of the Northern Counties describes the little treats left for brownies as ‘knuckled cakes made of meal warm from the mill, toasted over the embers and spread with honey’ (cited in Katherine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies p. 45).  This association with food and clothing does seem to link the Aiken Drum of the song with the Scottish Brownie and there are some descriptions in Briggs of the Brownie as looking monstrous, having no nose or an enormous mouth and webbed fingers or claws.


I have to admit when researching the Brownie of Beldonch I was struck by the resemblance in appearance and habit to the old legend of the Pictish Brown Boys. and indeed one witness to such a small unusual mud covered folk claims as a boy to not only seeing one, but loosing his coat to it in the process, he states "I wanted to point out that during my childhood at a picnic on Cairnpapple hill with my mother and brother that my brother who had gone off to play had given his new coat to a ‘brown boy’ on the hill who subsequently disappeared with it. One researcher who visited this witness had a very strange experience when he revisited the area, he said the hill began to shake underneath his feet as if the ground itself was ready to open. There are some very strange reports from the Mountain at Cairnpapple. You can access all of them here 


Cairnpapple Scotland Footprints, Bluff Charges? and a Figure Sighted 2003 2006 2009


Early in the winter of 2003 I had recently passed my driving test and was going for a run in my car with my friend ? and his girlfriend. I am from the Falkirk area so we came up through Torphichen and were not really heading in any particular direction.  I was just happy to be driving and the view from the car was perfect.  I saw a sign for Cairnpapple and recognised it so i started heading up that way and I passed the lay by at Cairnpapple.


We drove past it, and down and up the valley and as we were headed towards the Knock Hill my mate pointed out what looked like a man standing at the top looking down the hill at us? I slowed the car down to look and saw he was right "I said oh yeah so it does" By this point we were slowly passing the Knock Hill and the dark figure came down the hill at great speed, he was really moving at some pace. We got a big fright and I drove away as fast as I could.  It didn't look like your average person and was all dark in colour. And it moved at a pace miles faster than I could

That incident remained pretty much unexplained and yes it gave us a scare but I didn’t think too much of it and had forgotten all about it.  Until a few years later in spring 2006.  I was out for a drive with my mate. We were bored and it was a nice night so I decided to head to the Bathgate hills. If it was clear we could wander up to Cairnpapple and get a good view of central Scotland.  It had been snowing about a week before and the snow had melted back home but there was still a little bit by the side of the road. 

This didn’t put us off as there hadn’t been very much.  We parked up at the Cairnpapple lay by and headed up the stairs. The field before Cairnpapple was snow covered and although we were not dressed for it we kept heading in anyway. We had a laugh falling in the snow repeatedly and I fell waist deep into a cairn at the Cairnpapple site.  We were there for a few minutes before getting cold and started to head back. The wind was picking up and visibility was a bit poor by this time. We left the gate of Cairnpapple and walked back into the field and within 15 seconds we both heard a noise from behind us as if something was coming towards us, from the direction we had just been. I turned around but could not see anything, neither of us could.  All we knew is that it was coming fast or at least it sounded as if it was moving really quickly at speed heading in our direction.  We ran as fast as we could and we ended up losing the way back to the stairs, after a panicked hunt for the steps we found them and we rushed down them, got in the car and drove away.




We couldn’t explain what had happened to us and were shaken up and very confused. We kept talking about it and deciding whether to go back or not. I couldn't stop thinking about it and what had happened.


You would think that after two scary experiences I would avoid the place but in winter 2009 I returned from Australia and it had snowed, I was hunting for a good place to sledge with my friend.  I suggested the Bathgate hills would be a good place due to height and that there would be no shortage of snow. It was pretty late we arrived at about 00:15 am and headed up Cairnpapple first. Once we were up we realised quickly that the snow was to deep and no good for fun,so walked to the Cairnpapple site to have look. After a while it started to snow so we headed back to the car. Once again after leaving the fence and into the field something started to chase us. My friend was really frightened and started to run.  At this point I remembered the previous encounter and calmed her down and explaining it would stop in a second if we left the area of the steps, we moved as fast as we could without losing the way to the staircase and got back in the car. The snow was really heavy now but she pointed out footprints leading into the field we had just came out of.




These were fresh footprints and caused us to become very scared. Whilst trying to leave the car got stuck approaching the Knock Hill and it took us a while to manage to get up the hill. I had to drive carefully due to the conditions and as we approached the Knock Hill again there were fresh footprints in the snow coming from the field and going into the car park at the Knock Hill. These footprints looked like they had been made by someone running.  After that we were really shaken up and I shared my previous experiences with her. The next day we returned with a friend and retraced our steps. There were no animals in the field at this time and it was very peaceful. We have returned in safer numbers during the night a few times but with nothing other than some creepy noises happening. I hope you enjoy reading about my experiences the last one was particularly terrifying. There is something about that place that makes you want to go back. My friend that was speechless for the car journey back to Falkirk and never that slept that night, but still we returned over and over and continue to do so, to try to understand.


If you look in historical records, the Pict's were descended from Caledonian tribes (some of which dyed their hair a red color.  Pict's appearance varied from region to region and also time period. Originally, many were said to have black hair, with long slender faces, and were sometimes considered somewhat short in stature. They were known as great fighters, 
They fought nude because it made them appear more frightening and allowed them to move freely. 


Those living in the south (in the kingdom of Fibb) were sometimes described as having fair blonde hair though handed down as they would have been married in with Britons and then Saxons, and in the north, as the Gaels in fluxed from Ireland, a lot of the Pict's took on traits like brown or ginger red hair, and they were no longer called short, but sometimes described as being very tall. They were said to be masters at extracting all manner of hallucinogenic plants, and were known to keep entire clans under their power, so much so many of the legends speak of the picts as the stealer of people, they often sold entire communities under the influence of drugs which made them easier to handle.  The original Zombie makers you could say. Their slaves were prised for their agility and almost zombie like control. 
They're like zombies except they're very limber, incredibly fast, and very strong. However, they're depicted as dead warriors who never speak but in nonsensical jabbering, or they're totally mute (though they can understand when being spoken to).





Thank you for visiting our site and if you have experienced something strange in the UK or anywhere else worldwide please let us know.


Join BBR Today and help us to investigate these cases, or join our online community for online chat, podcasts and live feeds. debbiehatswell:gmail.com

Until Next Time, Deborah





#BBR #BBRUK


Comments