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An Ancient Legend of
Galloway
“Ah, frantic Fear !
I see, I see thee near ;
I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye !
Like thee I start, like thee disordered fly !”
Collins
In a remote district of
country belonging to Lord Cassilis, between Ayrshire and Galloway, about
three hundred years ago, a moor of apparently boundless extent stretched
several miles along the road, and wearied the eye of the traveller by
the sameness and desolation of its appearance: not a tree varied the
prospect-not a shrub enlivened the eye by its freshness—not a native
flower bloomed to adorn this ungenial soil. One "lonesome desert”
reached the horizon on every side, with nothing to mark that any mortal
had ever visited the scene before, except a few rude huts that were
scattered near its centre; and a road, or rather pathway, for those whom
business or necessity obliged to pass in that direction. At length,
deserted as this wild region had always been, it became still more
gloomy. Strange rumours arose that the path of unweary travellers had
been beset on this "blasted heath,” and that treachery and murder had
intercepted the solitary stranger as he traversed its dreary extent.
When several persons, who were known to have passed that way,
mysteriously disappeared, the inquiries of their relatives led to a
strict and anxious investigation ; but though the officers of justice
were sent to scour the country, and examine the inhabitants, not a trace
could be obtained of the persons in question, nor of any place of
concealment which could be a refuge for the lawless or desperate to
horde in. Yet as inquiry became stricter, and the disappearance of
individuals more frequent, the simple inhabitants of the neighbouring
hamlet were agitated by the most fearful apprehensions. Some declared
that the death-like stillness of the night was often interrupted by
sudden and preternatural cries of more than mortal anguish, which seemed
to arise in the distance; and a shepherd one evening, who had lost his
way on the moor, declared he had approached three mysterious figures,
who seemed struggling against each other with supernatural energy, till
at length one of them, with a frightful scream, suddenly sunk into the
earth.
Gradually the inhabitants deserted their dwellings on the heath, and
settled in distant quarters, till at length but one of the cottages
continued to be inhabited by an old woman and her two sons, who loudly
lamented that poverty chained them to this solitary and mysterious spot.
Travellers who frequented this road now generally did so in groups to
protect each other; and if night overtook them, they usually stopped at
the humble cottage of the old woman and her sons, where cleanliness
compensated for the want of luxury, and where, over a blazing fire of
peat, the bolder spirits smiled at the imaginary dangers of the road,
and the more timid trembled as they listened to the tales of terror and
affright with which their hosts entertained them.
One gloomy and
tempestuous night in November, a pedlar-boy hastily traversed the moor.
Terrified to find himself involved in darkness amidst its boundless
wastes, a thousand frightful traditions, connected with this dreary
scene, darted across his mind: every blast, as it swept in hollow gusts
over the heath, seemed to teem with the sighs of departed spirits ; and
the birds, as they winged their way above his head, appeared, with loud
and shrill cries, to warn him of approaching danger. The whistle, with
which he usually beguiled his weary pilgrimage, died away into silence,
and he groped along with trembling and uncertain steps, which sounded
too loudly in his ears. The promise of Scripture occurred to his memory,
and revived his courage: "I will be unto thee as a rock in the desert,
and as an hiding-place in the storm." "Surely," thought he, "though
alone, I am not forsaken;" and a prayer for assistance hovered, on his
lips.
A light now glimmered in the distance which would lead him, he
conjectured, to the cottage of the old woman; and towards that he
eagerly bent his way, remembering, as he hastened along, that when he
had visited it the year before, it was in company of a large party of
travellers, who had beguiled the evening with those tales of mystery
which had so lately filled his brain with images of terror. He
recollected, too, how anxiously the old woman and her sons had
endeavoured to detain him when the other travellers were departing ; and
now, therefore, he confidently anticipated a cordial and cheering
reception. His first call for admission obtained no visible marks of
attention, but instantly the greatest noise and confusion prevailed
within the cottage. "They think it is one of the supernatural visitants
of whom the old lady talks so much," thought the boy, approaching a
window, where the light within showed him all the inhabitants at their
several occupations; the old woman was hastily scrubbing the stone
floor, and strewing it thickly with sand, while her two sons seemed,
with equal haste, to be thrusting something large and heavy into an
immense chest, which they carefully locked.
The boy, in a frolicsome
mood, thoughtlessly tapped at the window, when they all instantly
started up with consternation so strongly depicted on their
countenances, that he shrank back involuntarily with an undefined
feeling of apprehension; but before he had time to reflect a moment
longer, one of the men suddenly darted out at the door, and seizing the
boy roughly by the shoulder, dragged him violently into the cottage.
"I am not what you take
me for," said the boy, attempting to laugh; "but only the poor pedlar
who visited you last year."
"Are you alone?" inquired
the old woman, in a harsh, deep tone, which made his heart thrill with
apprehension.
"Yes," said the boy, "I
am alone here; and alas! ” he added with a burst of uncontrollable
feeling, "I am alone in the wide world also ! Not a person exists who
would assist me in distress, or shed a single tear if I died this very
night."
"Then you are welcome!"
said one of the men with a sneer, while he cast a glance of peculiar
expression at the other inhabitants of the cottage.
It was with a shiver of
apprehension, rather than of cold, that the boy drew towards the fire,
and the looks which the old woman and her sons exchanged made him wish
that he had preferred the shelter of any one of the roofless cottages
which were scattered near, rather than thrust himself among persons of
such dubious aspect. Dreadful surmises flitted across his brain; and
terrors which he could neither combat nor examine imperceptibly stole
into his mind; but alone, and beyond the reach of assistance, he
resolved to smother his suspicions, or at least not increase the danger
by revealing them. The room to which he retired for the night had a
confused and desolate aspect: the curtains seemed to have been violently
torn clown from the bed, and still hung in tatters around it; the table
seemed to have been broken by some violent concussion, and the fragments
of various pieces of furniture lay scattered upon the floor. The boy
begged that a light might burn in his apartment till he was asleep, and
anxiously examined the fastenings of the door; but they seemed to have
been wrenched asunder on a former occasion, and were still left rusty
and broken.
It was long ere the
pedlar attempted to compose his agitated nerves to rest, but at length
his senses began to "steep themselves in forgetfulness," though his
imagination remained painfully active, and presented new scenes of
terror to his mind, with all the vividness of reality. He fancied
himself again wandering on the heath, which appeared to be peopled with
spectres, who all beckoned to him not to enter the cottage, and as he
approached it, they vanished with a hollow and despairing cry. The scene
then changed, and he found himself again seated by the fire, where the
countenances of the men scowled upon him with the most terrifying
malignity, and he thought the old woman suddenly seized him by the arms,
and pinioned them to his side.
Suddenly the boy was
startled from these agitated slumbers, by what sounded to him like a cry
of distress; he was broad awake in a moment, and sat up in bed; but the
noise was not repeated, and he endeavoured to persuade himself it had
only been a continuation of the fearful images which had disturbed his
rest, when, on glancing at the door, he observed underneath it a broad
red stream of blood silently stealing its course along the floor.
Frantic with alarm, it was but the work of a moment to spring from his
bed, and rush to the door, through a chink of which, his eye nearly
dimmed with affright, he could watch unsuspected whatever might be done
in the adjoining room.
His fear vanished
instantly when he perceived that it was only a goat that they had been
slaughtering; and he was about to steal into his bed again, ashamed of
his groundless apprehensions, when his ear was arrested by a
conversation which transfixed him aghast with terror to the spot.
"This is an easier job
than you had yesterday," said the man who held the goat. "I wish all the
throats we’ve cut were as easily and quietly done. Did you ever hear
such a noise as the old gentleman made last night? It was well we had no
neighbours within a dozen miles, or they must have heard his cries for
help and mercy.”
"Don’t speak of it,"
replied the other; "I was never fond of bloodshed.”
"Ha! ha! " said the
other, with a sneer, "you say so, do you?”
"I do," answered the
first, gloomily; "the Murder Hole is the thing for me - that tells no
tales; a single scuffle,— a single plunge,—and the fellow's dead and
buried to your hand in a moment. I would defy all the officers in
Christendom to discover any mischief there.
"Ay, Nature did us a good
turn when she contrived such a place as that. Who that saw a hole in the
heath, filled with clear water, and so small that the long grass meets
over the top of it, would suppose that the depth is unfathomable, and
that it conceals more than forty people, who have met their deaths
there? It sucks them in like a leech!”
"How do you mean to
despatch the lad in the next room?" asked the old woman in an undertone.
The elder son made her a sign to be silent, and pointed towards the door
where their trembling auditor was concealed; while the other, with an
expression of brutal ferocity, passed his bloody knife across his
throat.
The pedlar boy possessed
a bold and daring spirit, which was now roused to desperation; but in
any open resistance the odds were so completely against him that flight
seemed his best resource. He gently stole to the window, and having
forced back the rusty bolt by which the casement had been fastened, he
let himself down without noise or difficulty. "This betokens good,"
thought he, pausing an I instant, in dreadful hesitation what direction
to take. This momentary deliberation was fearfully interrupted by the
hoarse voice of the men calling aloud, "The boy has fled—Let loose the
bloodhound!" These words sunk like a death-knell on his heart, for
escape appeared now impossible, and his nerves seemed to melt away like
wax in a furnace. "Shall I perish without a struggle?" thought he,
rousing himself to exertion, and, helpless and terrified as a hare,
pursued by its ruthless hunters, he fled across the heath. Soon the
baying of the bloodhound broke the stillness of the night, and the voice
of its masters sounded through the moor, as they endeavoured to
accelerate its speed. Panting and breathless, the boy pursued his
hopeless career, but every moment his pursuers seemed to gain upon his
failing steps. The hound was unimpeded by the darkness which was to him
so impenetrable, and its noise rung louder and deeper on his ear, while
the lanterns which were carried by the men gleamed near and distinct
upon his vision.
At his fullest speed the
terrified boy fell with violence over a heap of stones, and having
nothing on but his shirt, he was severely cut in every limb. With one
wild cry to Heaven for assistance, he continued prostrate on the earth,
bleeding and nearly insensible. The hoarse voices of the men, and the
still louder baying of the dog, were now so near, that instant
destruction seemed inevitable; already be felt himself in their fangs,
and the bloody knife of the assassin appeared to gleam before his eyes.
Despair renewed his energy, and once more, in an agony of affright that
seemed verging towards madness, he rushed forward so rapidly that terror
seemed to have given wings to his feet. A loud cry near the spot he had
left arose in his ears without suspending his flight. The hound had
stopped at the place where the pedlar’s wounds bled so profusely, and
deeming the chase now over, it lay down there, and could not be induced
to proceed. In vain the men beat it with frantic violence, and cried
again to put the hound on the scent,— the sight of blood satisfied the
animal that its work was done, and it obstinately resisted every
inducement to pursue the same scent a second time.
The pedlar boy in the
meantime paused not in his flight till morning dawned; and still as he
fled, the noise of steps seemed to pursue him, and the cry of his
would-be assassins sounded in the distance. He at length reached a
village, and spread instant alarm throughout the neighbourhood; the
inhabitants were aroused with one accord into a tumult of indignation -
several of them had lost sons, brothers, or friends on the heath, and
all united in proceeding immediately to seize the old woman and her
sons, who were nearly torn to pieces in their furious wrath. Three
gibbets were at once raised on the moor, and the wretched culprits
confessed before their execution to the destruction of nearly fifty
victims in the Murder Hole, which they pointed out, and near which they
suffered the penalty of their crimes. The bones of several murdered
persons were with difficulty brought up from the abyss into which they
had been thrust; but so narrow is the aperture, and so extraordinary the
depth, that all who see it are inclined to coincide in the tradition of
the country people, that it is unfathomable.
The scene of these events
still continues nearly as it was three hundred years ago : the remains
of the old cottage, with its blackened walls (haunted, of course, by a
thousand evil spirits), and the extensive moor, on which a more modern
inn (if it can be dignified with such an epithet) resembles its
predecessor in everything but the character of its inhabitants. The
landlord is deformed, but possesses extraordinary genius; he has himself
manufactured a violin, on which he plays with untaught skill,— and if
any discord be heard in the house, or any murder committed in it, this
is his only instrument. His daughter (who has never travelled beyond the
heath); has inherited her father’s talent, and learned all his tales of
terror and superstition, which she relates with infinite spirit; but
when you are led by her across the heath to drop a stone into that deep
and narrow gulf to which our story relates,--when you stand on its
slippery edge, and, parting the long grass with which it is covered,
gaze into its mysterious depths, - when she describes, with all the
animation of an eye-witness, the struggle of the victims clutching the
grass as a last hope of preservation, and trying to drag in their
assassin as an expiring effort of vengeance,—when you are told that for
three hundred years the clear waters in this diamond of the desert have
remained untasted by mortal lips, and that the solitary traveller is
still pursued at night by the howling of the bloodhound,—it is then only
that it is possible fully to appreciate the terrors of "The Murder
Hole.”
[Blackwood’s Magazine ,1829.] |
