From Glasgow to Colorado: Kathleen Pelley's Journey Preserving Scottish Stories for the Next Generation

There's something unmistakable about the way Kathleen Pelley speaks. Even over a simple interview, her voice carries that lilting, rhythmic quality; the cadence of someone who doesn't just tell stories, but lives inside them. Born in Glasgow and educated at Edinburgh University, Kathleen has spent decades ensuring that Scottish culture isn't just preserved, but actively shared with the next generation through her award-winning podcast, Journey with Story.

For those who attended our recent Burns Supper, you'll remember Kathleen's moving delivery of the Immortal Memory, one of the most important speeches in Scottish cultural tradition. But that formal address represents just one facet of how this member of our Society keeps Scottish heritage alive thousands of miles from the Highlands.

Listening to Stories Before She Could Read Them

Kathleen remembers her childhood in Glasgow, listening to the grownups tell stories with camaraderie, anecdotes, the kind of talk that creates the texture of a culture. But it was the BBC Children's Story Hour that truly shaped her understanding of how words create images in the mind.

Every week, she'd make the pilgrimage to the library. Later, babysitting a three-year-old gave her an early audience. When she went to Edinburgh University to study history, she admits she "was never very good at remembering all the dates, because that involved numbers." But the people, the events, the stories? Those she could hold onto. Those made sense.

It's this foundation that informs everything she does now, from her work as a former elementary school teacher to her two decades of storytelling at low-income schools in Denver, her twelve years narrating books for the Colorado Talking Book Library, and now her podcast, which has reached over three million downloads across 180 countries.

Finding Home in Stories

When Kathleen moved to Colorado with her American husband, she was "extremely homesick." But children loved her accent, loved the different stories she brought with her. What started as personal comfort became a mission: bringing the stories that were "a part of her" to a new generation of listeners.

Her podcast, Journey with Story, now features a dedicated Scottish Stories section, drawing from public domain tales and her own deep knowledge of Scottish folklore. But how does she choose which stories to share? How does she balance authenticity with accessibility for American children who may never have set foot in Scotland?

"I read aloud and introduce Scottish words," she explains simply. There's no dumbing down, no sanitizing the culture. If a story uses "bannock" or "kirk" or "bairn," she trusts her young listeners to understand through context, through the rhythm of the language itself.

Gateway Stories for Young Scots

For SASC members trying to pass Scottish heritage to grandchildren, Kathleen has specific recommendations. She points first to The Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Fairy Tales as an essential resource for families. For podcast episodes, she recommends starting with these four:

The Ballad of Tam Lin: This ancient Halloween tale from the Scottish Borders tells the story of brave Janet, who dares to enter the forbidden woods of Carterhaugh where wicked fairies dwell. When she encounters the elfin knight Tam Lin, trapped by the spell of the Queen of the Fairies, she must find the courage to face the fairy band on Halloween night to save his life. It's a story of goodness conquering evil, of female courage, and of the power of love to break enchantments. (Suitable for ages 7 and up)

The Wee Bannock: This delightful Scottish cousin to "The Gingerbread Man" follows a wee oatmeal bannock that jumps from the griddle and rolls away from everyone who tries to catch it—tailors, weavers, smiths, and farmers. It's full of repetition and rhythm that makes it perfect for younger listeners, while teaching them the cadence of Scots dialect and giving them a taste of everyday Scottish life in cottages and smithies.

The Giant King:  Actually one of Kathleen's own published picture books, this original Scottish fable tells of Rabbie, a carpenter's son who suggests that if a destructive giant terrorizing a town was treated like a king, he might behave like one. The message "that which is loved will reveal its loveliness" resonates across generations. The book won a NAPPA storytelling award when narrated by Kathleen on CD.

Greyfriars Bobby:  This famous Edinburgh tale, the story of the Skye Terrier who guarded his master's grave for fourteen years remains one of Scotland's most beloved stories of loyalty and devotion. (Note: Check the Journey with Story website for this and other Scottish tales as new episodes are regularly added)

These aren't just entertaining stories, Kathleen emphasizes. They're windows into Scottish values, Scottish landscape, Scottish ways of seeing the world.

Writing from the Heart

When asked about creating original Scottish-themed content like Inventor McGregor and The Giant King, Kathleen doesn't see it as a calculated effort to respect tradition. "It naturally fused with her Scottishness," she explains. When children ask her how long it takes to write a book, her answer is simple: "A lifetime." Every story contains pieces of herself, her upbringing, her understanding of what it means to be Scottish.

This deep authenticity is exactly what makes her qualified to deliver something as culturally significant as the Immortal Memory at our Burns Supper. How did preparing for that speech compare to her usual storytelling work?

She loves giving speeches, she says, not just the presentation itself, but the writing, the learning from original documents. Robert Burns understood the power of stories, of making culture accessible "to the common people." Kathleen sees direct parallels between Burns's contributions and her own: making Scottish heritage comprehensible and compelling to people who might be thousands of miles and multiple generations removed from Scotland.

The Cultural Keeper in Diaspora

There's a unique weight to being Scottish in Colorado. You're not just carrying your own memories; you're carrying the memories for children and grandchildren who may never see the heather-dappled mountains or hear the bagpipes echo across a glen.

When asked how she thinks about her role in keeping Scottish stories alive thousands of miles from home, Kathleen's answer circles back to her beginning: stories have the ability to change how people view the world. That's where it started. But it's grown into something larger, a recognition that cultural preservation isn't about amber-trapped perfection. It's about active, living, sharing or the stories that define who we are and who we want to be.

Her advice to parents and grandparents who want to preserve the heritage? "Join societies like SASC." Don't do it alone. Don't let the stories live only in your head. Share them, celebrate them, pass them on through community.

Stories That Make Hearts Bigger and Better

But why does any of this matter? In an age of smartphones and streaming services, why should children, Scottish or otherwise, listen to old folk tales about bannocks and fairies and loyal dogs?

Kathleen has a clear answer: "Stories help the heart be bigger and better." They teach hope. She quotes John Shea, master storyteller, “One tells a story not to educate or indoctrinate, but to illuminate, to enchant the reader or the listener into the world of the story in the hope that when they emerge from the story, they do so with an enhanced view of the possibilities of their lives….”

 Scottish folktales, she believes, carry lessons particularly relevant for kids growing up in modern America: the value of loyalty, of cleverness over brute force, and of seeing the potential in others rather than just what's visible on the surface.

Take Tam Lin: it's a story where the female protagonist is the hero, where courage and love triumph over dark magic. Take The Giant King: it's about recognizing the inherent worth in every being, about how kindness can transform someone everyone else has written off. Take Greyfriars Bobby: it's about devotion that transcends death, about community caring for the vulnerable.

These aren't just "Scottish" values, they're human values, expressed through a Scottish lens, preserved in Scottish voices and settings.

The Value of Reading

Above all, Kathleen returns again and again to one fundamental conviction: the value of reading, of listening, of engaging with stories. When children develop a love of stories, whether reading them, writing them, telling them, or listening to them "we are teaching them to love the world."

This is perhaps the true gift of what Kathleen Pelley brings to our Society and to the broader mission of cultural preservation. She doesn't treat Scottish heritage as a museum exhibit to be protected under glass. She treats it as a living tradition that can speak to children in Denver, in Bangkok, in Cape Town, anywhere her podcast reaches.

And in doing so, she's not diluting Scottish culture. She's ensuring it survives.

Finding Journey with Story

For SASC members who want to explore Kathleen's podcast with their families:

• Podcast: Journey with Story is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at journeywithstory.com

• Scottish Stories Collection: Visit journeywithstory.com/scottish-stories for all Scottish-themed episodes

• Tam Lin episode: https://journeywithstory.com/listen_podcast/tam-line160/

• The Wee Bannock and more: https://journeywithstory.com/listen_podcast/three-scottish-stories/

• Books: Kathleen's published picture books, including The Giant King and Inventor McGregor, are available through her website at kathleenpelley.com

  
  

The podcast is designed for children ages 3-10, but as any grandparent knows, good stories have no age limit.

Do you have a story about how you're preserving Scottish culture in your family? The Highland Herald would love to hear from you. Send your ideas to editor@coloradoscots.org