The Tinker And The Enchanted Pool

The Doctor's Foreword

Many years ago, I worked as a young doctor at a practice in Loanhead, a mining town outside Edinburgh. Most of my male patients were employed at the Bilston Glen Colliery. Occasionally, itinerant labourers showed up the surgery. In those days people called them 'tinkers'.

The tinkers arrived each year to harvest the potato crop. They set up camp in the waste from the coal mines, the red shale slag heaps. The women knocked on doors around the town and sold 'lucky' white heather.

I remember that autumn evening when three of the women brought a lad in his teens to the surgery. They had found him wandering close to their encampment, babbling in a strange language. It was brave of them to bring him because I knew the tinker women distrusted doctors and hospitals. They feared that their children would be abducted.

I examined the lad. He was confused, but physically, he was fine. Even before he spoke, I was struck by his unusual attire. His cloak was pinned near the neck with a decorative brooch. He wore a long tunic and leggings. It was quite a mystery. Later I was glad to learn that the tinkers had unofficially adopted him. They named him Hamish.

These many years later, I began to set down the extraordinary events around Hamish's departure from this world. But I had not written two pages before I realised that no one would believe the account.

I was determined to proceed, but reluctantly concluded that I would have to tell his tale as a work of fiction. However, to counter-balance this, I would also write a foreword and afterword and let the reader be the judge of the truth.

I myself played a modest part in the events and I also spoke to Old Mother McCallum, the tinker matriarch, and to Hamish himself.

Where there were gaps in the narrative, I filled them as best I could from my knowledge of the places and people involved.

Dr Robert Menzies

January 2023