When I started out as a blogger, my friend and fellow teller, Pauline Cordiner already had a blog called 'A Scottish Storyteller', so I had to be the 'other' one! My blog began as a place to tell folktales, but now it's just where I yap about things.

But I've decided that Folklore - my research area - is equally important, and now has a blog too! It specifically contains items of folklore other than stories, like material cutlure, superstitions, foodlore etc. You can find it at StudentFolk. 

Here's me dressed as a Victorian fisher girl when I was telling at the Retreat in Glenesk, summer 2005, the former Angus Folk Museum.

My First Blog Story!!

This is the first story that appears on the storytelling blog I have at Blogger.com, and also the story of how I realised I was definitely a storyteller!

A Tale of Pies!!

You know you're a storyteller when...

…you walk into the local bakers and start telling the girl behind the counter why there are holes in Scotch Pies!!

Yes, that was it, I knew I had been well and truly bitten by the bug, which is why, in response to my fellow Scottish Storyteller (link in sidebar), I have decided to do my own storyteller's blog.

The story goes that in the days of the Industrial Revolution when folk all worked in factories and lived their lives to the dictates of the factory hooter, some enterprising purveyors of pastries got into the "fast food" market, about two centuries before Ronald MacDonald was ever seen on our shores. The "Scotch Pie" was one of these "fast food" items. Pie sellers would take their wee trolleys or whatever, usually a stove on wheels, and wait until lunchtime for the workers to come out. As they didn't have time to go home and cook, it was ideal, and they could also give their bairns pocket money for a lunchtime pie.

The pie was made of salty, soft, lardy dough and filled with mince or chopped steak, or kidneys or whatever the baker had from the butcher. The pie was filled 3/4 the way up, and the pastry lid with a hole put on the top and baked. Then, the pie seller could fill it up with hot gravy via the hole depending on their customers' needs!

And I told this to the girl in baker cos I asked for a Scotch pie and she said "Nae mony folk ask for a "scotch" pie, they usually say mince." I proceeded to say, "Div ye ken why there's a hole in the lid?" She was delighted, and said her mother was a cook and would be interested to hear the tale.

My source was a wee book from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have loads of different themes, and this one was on food.

Back to FrontPage