Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller

Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller is John D. Niles’ inspiring and revealing tribute to the art and worldview of Scottish Traveller Duncan Williamson (1928–2007), Scotland's best-known storyteller. Williamson's talent, nested in the Traveller culture, caught public attention during the years of the Scottish storytelling revival. By the early 1980s, when Niles began recording him in a variety of informal settings, folklorists from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh had already collected Williamson's tales and reflections on Traveller culture and encouraged Williamson to publish at least part of his astonishing narrative repertoire. Williamson's first collection, Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children, with transcriptions and editing by his second wife, Linda Williamson, a folklorist and PhD graduate of the School of Scottish Studies, appeared in 1983 (Canongate Publishing). Most recent is Silver Unicorns and Golden Birds (Floris, 2022), also edited by Linda Williamson, attesting to the enduring relevance of his narrative legacy.Over the years, scholars and fellow storytellers have given voice to Williamson in a variety of publications, commenting on his extraordinary talent and pivotal role as a tradition bearer. Webspinner complements and adds to them by presenting previously unpublished reflections of Williamson, because Niles took care to “avoid duplicating material that is available elsewhere, whether in print or in audio publications” (p. 4).The first striking feature of Webspinner is its internal organization. Niles limits his own voice to the opening and closing chapters (chapters 1 and 10), the “Commentary” chapter (which provides extra information on key topics in the main text), two useful appendices (on recordings and transcriptions), and the back matter (“List of Transcriptions” and “Glossary of Scots Words and Travellers’ Cant”). Within this important frame lies the core of the book (chapters 2 through 9), which consists entirely of transcriptions from interviews Niles conducted with Williamson between 1984 and 1988. In line with his academic reflections about transferring verbal art to the printed medium, Niles declares that readers “will be in no doubt whose words are whose” (p. 5) because “I have never put words of my own into Williamson's mouth. My chief task while preparing these excerpts for print has been to arrange Williamson's words into a sequence that progresses in a coherent manner through a given topic” (p. 315).In chapter 1, “Williamson and the Travellers,” Niles explains the organization of the book, then shifts to describing Williamson's remarkable art and personality, how Niles came to know him and record him, the “developments . . . that paved the way for Williamson's emergence on the Scottish ‘folk’ scene in the 1960s, 1970s” (p. 13), and the Travelling way of life.Then Niles hands the narrative to Williamson: The subsequent eight chapters take us through Williamson's childhood and his characteristically valuable insight and personal reflections on his stories, his role as tradition bearer, his culture, and the world at large. Through his own transcribed words, Williamson appears as a gifted individual who “thought of his life in the world through the medium of stories” (p. 4; emphasis in the original); a “consummate performer” who could tailor his stories to his audiences (p. 20); and an eager collector of tales both within his culture and among settled folk. In each chapter, thanks to the thematic organization followed by Niles, we find reflections and memories that shed light on, and provide context for, various aspects of Williamson's repertoire of tales: from his own creative ways of telling stories to his choice of words to voice the characters in them. In chapter 3, “A Childhood in Argyll” and chapter 8, “The How and Why of Storytelling,” stories emerge as a constant presence in Williamson's life: They helped him endure hardship—which he describes —and they provided a sort of warmth and nourishment for the soul, which were often unavailable for his people, in the physical world.In chapter 10, Niles takes over again from Williamson and concludes by describing what he rightfully considers the book's three main achievements. Webspinner represents a “mediated self-portrait of a remarkable individual tradition bearer” (p. 254); it provides “an entry point for understanding the traditional lifeways of the travelling people of Scotland” (p. 254); and it certainly gives “expression to a worldview that transcends [Williamson's] individuality” and “stands out in sharp contrast with . . . the individualism and commercialism that are taken for granted among many . . . persons living in technologically advanced societies today” (p. 255). In these reflections on the worldview of a tradition bearer “who not only inherits or safeguards an oral tradition but also carries it forward in new forms into the future” lies a fourth important achievement of this book (p. 254). In Webspinner, Williamson emerges more than ever as a markedly generative individual (“But ma main ambition is tae go around the schools an meet the children” [p. 218]) who strove to hand down the coping strategies contained in the tales (especially the Jack tales) he had been given as a child, and knew that “there is no better means of educations than stories that strike home” (p. 7). Niles affords continuity to Williamson's legacy by making Duncan's own voice the primary source, directly available to those who wish to “investigate . . . the precise qualities of [his] speech” (p. 315), both in print and on tape, by providing clear references to where the digitized versions of his recordings may be found.Webspinner is a wonderful example for fieldworkers looking to study individual tradition bearers and a precious resource for students and researchers in folklore, oral and social history ethnology and education, as well as for anyone with an interest in the topic.If one weakness must be found in this book, it is only that Niles’ insightful reflections could have occupied a little more space, without running the risk of obscuring Williamson's voice in any way.