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By Allan Cunningham
“Though my mind’s not
Hoodwink'd with rustic marvels, I do think
There are more things in the grove, the air, the flood.
Yea, and the chamell’d earth, than that wise man,
Who walks so proud as if his form alone
Fill’d the wide temple of the universe,
Will let a frail mind say. I’d write i' the creed
O’ the sagest head alive, that fearful forms,
Holy or reprobate, do page men’s heels;
That shapes, too horrid for our gaze, stand o’er
The murderer’s dust, and for revenge glare up,
Even till the stars weep fire for very pity.”
Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its woodland,
its bays, its cliffs, and headlands,—and interesting on the English side,
with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the water, rich
pastures, safe harbours, and numerous ships,—there still linger many
traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them connected with
superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the curious these tales afford
a rich fund of entertainment, from the many diversities of the same story ;
some dry and barren, and stripped of all the embellishments of poetry;
others dressed out in all the riches of a superstitious belief and haunted
imagination. In this they resemble the inland traditions of the peasants ;
but many of the oral treasures of the Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast have
the stamp of the Dane and the Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or
faint affinity with the legitimate legends of Caledonia. Something like a
rude prosaic outline of several of the most noted of the northern ballads,
the adventures and depredations of the old ocean kings, still lends life to
the evening tale ; and, among others, the story of the Haunted Ships is
still popular among the maritime peasantry.
One fine harvest evening, I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder, of
Allanbay; and, committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a gentle wind
from the east to waft us at its pleasure towards the Scottish coast. We
passed the sharp promontory of Siddick; and skirting the land within a
stone-cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the ruined
Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell ascended beside us; and
the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the
evening horn of the reapers, came softened into something like music over
land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat
silently looking on the serene beauty of the place The moon glimmered in her
rising through the tall shafts of the pines of Caerlaverock; and the sky,
with scarce a cloud, showered down on wood, and headland, and bay, the
twinkling beams of a thousand stars rendering every object visible. The
tide, too, was coming with that swift and silent swell observable when the
wind is gentle; the woody curves along the land were filling with the flood,
till it touched the green branches of the drooping trees; while in the
centre current the roll and the plunge of a thousand pellocks told to the
experienced fisherman that salmon were abundant.
As we looked, we saw an old man emerging from a path that winded to the
shore through a grove of doddered hazel; he carried a half-net on his back,
while behind him came a girl, bearing a small harpoon with which the fishers
are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey. The senior seated himself
on a large gray stone, which overlooked the bay, laid aside his bonnet, and
submitted his bosom and neck to the refreshing sea breeze; and taking his
harpoon from his attendant, sat with the gravity and composure of a spirit
of the flood, with his ministering nymph behind him. We pushed our shallop
to the shore, and soon stood at their side.
“This is old Mark Macmoran, the mariner, with his grand-daughter Barbara,”
said Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear in it; “he
knows every creek, and cavern, and quicksand, in Solway; has seen the
Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark, and at every
bark has seen a ship sink; and he has seen, too, the Haunted Ships in full
sail; and, if all tales be true, he has sailed in them himself; he’s an
awful person.”
Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something of the
superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that common rumour had
made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to maintain her intercourse
with the invisible world. His hair, which seemed to have refused all
intercouse with the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders; a kind of mantle,
or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round his neck, fell mid-leg
down, concealing all his nether garments as far as a pair of hose, darned
with yarn of all conceivable colours, and a pair of shoes, patched and
repaired till nothing of the original structure remained, and clasped on his
feet with two massy silver buckles. If the dress of the old man was rude and
sordid, that of his granddaughter was gay, and even rich. She wore a boddice
of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a
kirtle of the same fabric, which, almost touching her white and delicate
ancle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely
seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament
which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and
encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with marine
productions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Solway was
conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like
air, for young Barbara’s influence over the heart of man ; but had bestowed
a pair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love,
and gentleness, and joy, that all the sailors from Annan Water to far Saint
Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass of Mark
Macmoran. She stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her hand,
and seemed not dissatisfied with the glances I bestowed on her from time to
time, and which I held more than requited by a single glance of those eyes
which retained so many capricious hearts in subjection.
The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our feet.
The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines, and showed
the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops and shallops
came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of white sail
against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the Mariner, who, seated
motionless on his gray, stone, kept his eye fixed on the increasing waters
with a look of seriousness and sorrow in which I saw little of the
calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide,
his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls of two
vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still addressed to every
heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around
them; and creeping inch by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters
over the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the
liquid element received.
The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his
hands together, and said, “Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury
ye for ever ! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the
time been ye have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you
sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song
of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to
the land where the wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye
on the mountains, the hands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first
swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here! Seven times have ye put my life
in peril, three fair sons have ye swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns;
and now, even now, your waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I
venture my infirm limbs in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that
ripple and that foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that
ye yearn for another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine.”
Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young man
appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his half-net in his
hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose, and shouted, and waved him
back from a place which, to a person unacquainted with the dangers of the
bay, real and superstitious, seemed sufficiently perilous: his
grand-daughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her white hands; but
the more they strove, the faster advanced the peasant, till he stood to his
middle in the water, while the tide increased every moment in depth and
strength. “Andrew, Andrew,” cried the young woman, in a voice quavering with
emotion, “turn, turn, I tell you: oh, the Ships, the Haunted Ships!” But the
appearance of a fine run of fish had more influence with the peasant than
the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward he dashed, net in hand. In a moment
he was borne off his feet, and mingled like foam with the water, and hurried
towards the fatal eddies which whirled and roared round the sunken ships.
But he was a powerful young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of
the projecting ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp
of despair, uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the
prodigious rush of the current.
From a shealing of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the spot
where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning on a
crutch. “I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie ; can the chield be
drowning, that he skirls sae uncannilie?” said the old woman, seating
herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water. “Ou ay,” she
continued, ‘‘he’s doomed, he’s doomed; heart and hand can never save him;
boats, ropes, and man’s strength and wit, all vain! vain ! he’s doomed, he’s
doomed!”
By this time I had thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly by
Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart superstition had
great power; and with one push from the shore, and some exertion in
sculling, we came within a quoit-cast of the unfortunate fisherman. He
stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a
piercing shriek of joy, and bounded towards us through the agitated element
the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on the surface of the
water; but the eddying current sucked him down; and all I ever beheld of him
again was his hand held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some
imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on the vacant sea before us: but a
breathing time before, a human being, full of youth, and strength, and hope,
was there; his cries were still ringing in my ears, and echoing in the woods
; and now nothing was seen or heard save the turbulent expanse of water, and
the sound of its chafing on the shores. We pushed back our shallop, and
resumed our station on the cliff beside the old mariner and his descendant.
“Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly?” said Mark, “in
attempting to save the doomed. Whoso touches those infernal ships, never
survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them at midnight
when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former beauty, with
forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud! Then is seen the
streaming of lights along the water from their cabin windows, and then is
heard the sound of mirth and the clamour of tongues, and the infernal whoop
and halloo, and song, ringing far and wide. Woe to the man who comes nigh
them! ”
To all this my Allanbay companion listened with a breathless attention. I
felt something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed I had
seen one victim offered up ; and I inquired of the old mariner, “How and
when came these haunted ships there? To me they seem but the melancholy
relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to warn people to shun
destruction, than entice and delude them to it.”
“And so,” said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in it than
of mirth; “and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks seem to the
eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem; that water, a kind
and convenient servant to the wants of man, which seems so smooth, and so
dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a human soul even now; and the
place which it covers, so fair and so level, is a faithless quicksand, out
of which none escape. Things are otherwise than they seem. Had you lived as
long as I have had the sorrow to live; had you seen the storms, and braved
the perils, and endured the distresses which have befallen me; had you sat
gazing out on the dreary ocean at midnight on a haunted coast; had you seen
comrade after comrade, brother after brother, and son after son, swept away
by the merciless ocean from your very side; had you seen the shapes of
friends, doomed to the wave and the quicksand, appearing to you in the
dreams and visions of the night,—then would your mind have been prepared for
crediting the maritime legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish ships
would have had their terrors for you, as they have for all who sojourn on
this coast.
“Of the time and the cause of their destruction,” continued the old man, “I
know nothing certain : they have stood as you have seen them for uncounted
time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast have gone to
pieces, and rotted, and sunk away in a few years, these two haunted hulks
have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar or board been
displaced. Maritime legend says, that two ships of Denmark having had
permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and colour on the deep,
were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock, and were
wrecked in this bonnie bay, as a sign to seamen to be gentle and devout. The
night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon mildness and
beauty;
the sun had newly set; the moon came brighter and brighter out; and the
reapers, laying their sickles at the root of the standing corn, stood on
rock and bank, looking at the increasing magnitude of the waters, for sea
and land were visible from Saint Bees to Bamhourie. The sails of two vessels
were soon seen bent for the Scottish coast; and with a speed outrunning the
swiftest ship, they approached the dangerous quicksands and headland of
Borran Point. On the deck of the foremost ship not a living soul was seen,
or shape, unless something in darkness and form resembling a human shadow
could be. called a shape, which flitted from extremity to extremity of the
ship, with the appearance of trimming the sails, and directing the vessel’s
course. But the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes; the
captain, and mate, and sailor, and cabin boy, all seemed there; and from
them the sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast
which they skirted along was one of extreme danger ; and the reapers shouted
to warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this friendly counsel no
notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which sat on the
prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and melancholy howl. The deep
sand-bank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career of these desperate
navigators; but they passed, with the celerity of waterfowl, over an
obstruction which had wrecked many pretty ships.
“Old men shook their heads and departed, saying, We have seen the fiend
sailing in a bottomless ship— let us go home and pray ’; but one young and
wilful man said, *Fiend! I’ll warrant it’s nae fiend, but douce Janet
Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her Cumberland
cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod I would gladly
have a toothfu’ ! I’ll warrant it’s nane o’ your cauld sour slae-water like
a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie’s port, but right drap-o’-my-heart’s-blood
stuff, that would waken a body out of their last linen. I wonder where the
cummers will anchor their craft?’ ‘And I’ll vow,’ said another rustic, ‘the
wine they quaff is none of your visionary drink, such as a drouthie body has
dished out to his lips in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like
the vessels they sail in, which are jnade out of a cockle-shell or a
cast-off slipper, or the paring of a seaman’s right thumbnail. I once got a
hansel out of a witch’s quaigh myself,—auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot,
whom they tried to bury in the old kirk-yard of Dun-score ; but the cummer
raise as fast as they laid her down, and nae where else would she lie but in
the bonnie green kirk-yard of Kier, among douce and sponsible fowk. So I’ll
vow that the wine of a witch’s cup is as fell liquor as ever did a kindly
turn to a poor man’s heart; and be they fiends, or be they witches, if they
have red wine asteer, I’ll risk a drouket sark for ae glorious tout on’t.’
‘Silence, ye sinners,’ said the minister’s son of a neighbouring parish, who
united in his own person his father’s lack of devotion with his mother’s
love of liquor. ‘Whisht!—speak as if ye had the fear of something holy
before ye. Let the vessels run their own way to destruction; who can stay
the eastern wind, and the current of the Solway sea? . I can find ye
Scripture warrant for that; so let them try their strength on Blawhooly
rocks, and their might on the broad quicksand. There’s a surf running there
would knock the ribs together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and
commanded by the Prince of Darkness. Bonnilie and bravely they sail away
there ; but before the blast blows by they’ll be wrecked ; and red wine and
strong brandy will be as rife as dyke-water, and we’ll drink the health of
bonnie Bell Blackness out of her left foot slipper.’
“The speech of the young profligate was applauded by several of his
companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from whence they
never returned. The two vessels were observed all at once to stop in the
bosom of the bay, on the spot where their hulls now appear ; the mirth and
the minstrelsy waxed louder than ever; and the forms of maidens, with
instruments of music and wine-cups in their hands, thronged the decks. A
boat was lowered ; and the same shadowy pilot who conducted the ships made
it start towards the shore with the rapidity of lightning, and its head
knocked against the bank where the four young men stood, who longed for the
unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with a laugh were they
welcomed on deck; wine cups were given to each, and as they raised them to
their lips the vessels melted away beneath their feet; and one loud shriek,
mingled with laughter still louder, was heard over land and water for many
miles. Nothing more was heard or seen till the morning, when the crowd who
came to the beach saw with fear and wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as
they now seem, masts and tackle gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their
name, country, or destination could be known, was left remaining. Such is
the tradition of the mariners ; and its truth has been attested by many
families whose sons and whose fathers have been drowned in the haunted bay
of Blawhooly. ’’
“And trow ye,” said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by the
drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor of the
mariner’s legend,—“and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the tale of the Haunted
Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle have mine ears heard; but more
mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble home by the
side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel; it was on Hallowmas-eve ; the
nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell and charm were tried
at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the dark waves of futurity,
the lads and lasses fairly took to the more visible blessings of kind words,
tender clasps, and gentle courtship. Soft words in a maiden’s ear, and a
kindlie kiss o’ her lip, were old-world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though
I mean not to say that I have been free of the folly of daunering and daffin
with a youth in my day, and keeping tryst with him in dark and lonely
places. However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were passed and gone
with me,—the mair’s the pity that pleasure should fly sae fast away; and as
I could nae make sport I thought I should not mar any, so out I sauntered
into the fresh cold air, and sat down behind that old oak, and looked abroad
on the wide sea. I had my ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time : it
was in that very bay my blithe gudeman perished, with seven more in his
company ; and on that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming,
I saw seven stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth. It was
a woeful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nought to support
them but these twa hands, and God’s blessing, and a cow’s grass. I have
never liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and mony’s the
moonlight night I sit looking on these watery mountains, and these waste
shores; it does my heart good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see it
was Hallowmas night; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart
wandering to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame.
It might be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making, and its
singing brought strange old-world stories with it; and I thought on the
dangers that sailors endure, the fates they meet with, and the fearful forms
they see. My own blithe gudeman had seen sights that made him grave enough
at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.
“A weel, at ween that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I saw, or
thought I saw, for the tale is so dream-like, that the whole might pass for
a vision of the night,—I saw the form of a man ; his plaid was gray; his
face was gray; and his hair, which hung low down till it nearly came to the
middle of his back, was as white as the white sea-foam. He began to howk and
dig under the bank; an* God be near me, thought I, this maun be the
unblessed spirit of auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed to dig
for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many millions are hidden for ever
from man’s enjoyment. The Form found something which in shape and hue seemed
a left-foot slipper of brass; so down to the tide he marched, and placing it
on the water, whirled it thrice round ; and the infernal slipper dilated at
every turn, till it became a bonnie barge with its sails bent, and on board
leaped the form, and scudded swiftly away. He came to one of the Haunte^
Ships ; and striking it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast, and canvas,
and mariners, started up; he touched the other Haunted Ship, and produced
the like transformation ; and away the three spectre ships bounded, leaving
a track of fire behind them on the billows which was long unextinguished.
Now was nae that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of
the Hallowmas moon? But the tale is far frae finished; for mariners say that
once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borran Point, ye will
see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway; ye will hear
the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy, which our ancestors
heard ; see them bound over the sand-banks and sunken rocks like sea-gulls,
cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figure lowers down the
boat, and augments their numbers with the four unhappy mortals to whose
memory a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless
sea cut upon it. Then the spectre ships vanish, and the drowning shriek of
mortals, and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard; and the old hulks are
left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has not departed from the
earth. But I maun away, and trim my little cottage fire, and make it burn
and blaze up bonnie, to warm the crickets, and my cold and crazy bones, that
maun soon be laid aneath the green sod in the eerie kirk-yard.” And away the
old dame tottered to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and soon
the hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the key-hole and
window.
“I’ll tell ye what,” said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a
shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, “it’s a word
that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in
evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mickle
more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships, and their unhallowed
mariners. She lives cannilie and quietly; no one knows how she is fed or
supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage ever smokes, and her
table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish, and white
bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Matheson when he called old
Moll the uncannie carline of Blawhooly : his boat ran round and round in the
centre of the Solway,—everybody said it was enchanted,—and down it went head
foremost; and had nae Jock been a swimmer equal to a sheldrake, he would
have fed the fish,—but I’ll warrant it sobered the lad’s speech ; and he
never reckoned himself safe till he made auld Moll the present of a new
kirtle and a stone of cheese.”
“O father,” said his grand-daughter Barbara, “ye surely wrong poor old .Mary
Moray. What use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no wrongs to
redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to seek of
enjoyment save a cannie hour and a quiet grave,—what use could the
fellowship of fiends, and the* communion of evil spirits, be to her? I know
Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the door-head when she sees old Mary
coming; I know the good wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in the
headband of her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the unsonsie
glance of Mary’s right ee ; and I know that the auld laird of Burntroutwater
drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand of witch-tree, to keep
Mary from milking them. But what has all that to do with haunted shallops,
visionary mariners, and bottomless boats? I have heard myself as pleasant a
tale about the Haunted Ships and their unworldly crews, as any one would
wish to hear in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg,
one summer night, sitting on Arbigland Bank. The lad intended a sort of love
meeting; but all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing
sheep, and of the wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for
his uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad
told it to me.
“Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peatmoss, two
kale gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of horses, and
six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest women in seven
parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided; and a Nithsdale laird and
two Annandale moorland farmers drank themselves to their last linen, as well
as their last shilling, through sorrow for her loss. But married was the
dame; and home she was carried, to bear rule over her home and her husband,
as an honest woman should. Now ye maun ken that, though the flesh-and-blood
lovers of Alexander’s bonnie wife all ceased to love and to sue her after
she became another’s, there were certain admirers who did not consider their
claim at all abated, or their hopes lessened by the kirk’s famous obstacle
of matrimony. Ye have heard how the devout minister of Tinwald had a fair
son carried away, and bedded against his liking to an unchristened bride,
whom the elves and the fairies provided ; ye have heard how the bonnie bride
of the drunken laird of Soukitup was stolen by the fairies out at the back
window of the bridal chamber, the time the bridegroom was groping his way to
the chamber door ; and ye have heard—but why need I multiply cases ? such
things in the ancient days were as common as candle-light. So ye’ll no
hinder certain water elves and sea fairies, who sometimes keep festival and
summer mirth in these old haunted hulks, from falling in love with the
weel-faured wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and contrivances they
went how they might accomplish to sunder man and wife; and sundering such a
man and such a wife was like sundering the green leaf from the summer, or
the fragrance from the flower.
"So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his half-net on his back, and
his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay gade he, and into the
Water he went right between the two haunted hulks, and, placing his net,
awaited the coming of the tide. The night, ye maun ken, was mirk, and the
wind lowne, and the singing of the increasing waters among the shells and
the peebles was heard for sundry miles. All at once lights began to glance
and twinkle on board the two Haunted Ships from every hole and seam, and
presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in squaring timber echoed far
and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly workmen amazed the Laird, how
much more was his amazement increased when a sharp shrill voice called out,
'Ho ! brother, what are you doing now?’ A voice still shriller responded
from the other haunted ship, 'I’m making a wife to Sandie Macharg ! ’ and a
loud quavering laugh, running from ship to ship, and from bank to bank, told
the joy they expected from their labour.
"Now the Laird, besides being a devout and a God-fearing man, was shrewd and
bold; and in plot, and contrivance, and skill in conducting his designs, was
fairly an overmatch for any dozen land elves. But the water elves are far
more subtle ; besides, their haunts and their dwellings being in the great
deep, pursuit and detection is hopeless if they succeed in carrying their
prey to the waves. But ye shall hear. Home flew the laird,—collected his
family around the hearth,—spoke of the signs and the sins of the times, and
talked of mortification and prayer for averting calamity; and finally,
taking his father’s Bible, brass clasps, black print, and covered with
calf-skin, from the shelf, he proceeded without let or stint to perform
domestic worship. I should have told ye that he bolted and locked the door,
shut up all inlet to the house, threw salt into the fire, and prQceeded in
every way like a man skilful in guarding against the plots of fairies and
fiends. His wife looked on all this with wonder; but she saw something in
her husband’s looks that hindered her from intruding either question or
advice, and a wise woman was she.
“Near the mid hour of the night the rush of a horse’s feet was heard, and
the sound of a rider leaping from its back, and a heavy knock came to the
door, accompanied by a voice, saying, 'The cummer drink’s hot, and the knave
bairn is expected at Laird Laurie’s to-night; sae mount, gudewife, and
come.’
"'Preserve me!’ said the wife of Sandie Macharg; 'that’s news indeed! who
could have thought it? the Laird has been heirless for seventeen years! Now
Sandie, my man, fetch me my skirt and hood.’
"But he laid his arm round his wife’s neck, and said, 'If all the lairds in
Galloway go heirless, over this door threshold shall you not stir to-night;
and I have said, and I have sworn it: seek not to know why or wherefore—but,
Lord, send us thy blessed mornlight.’ The wife looked for a moment in her
husband’s eyes, and desisted from further entreaty.
"'But let us send a civil message to the gossips, Sandy; and had nae ye
better say I am sair laid with a sudden sickness? though its sinful-like to
send the poor messenger a mile agate with a lie in his mouth without a glass
of brandy.’
“‘To such a messenger and to those who sent him, no apology is needed,’ said
the austere Laird, ‘so let him depart.’ And the clatter of a horse’s hoofs
was heard, and the muttered imprecations of its rider on the churlish
treatment he had experienced.
“‘Now Sandie, my lad,’ said his wife, laying an arm particularly white and
round about his neck as she spoke, ‘ are you not a queer man and a stern? I
have been your wedded wife now these three years ; and, beside my dower,
have brought you three as bonnie bairns as ever smiled aneath a summer sun.
O man, you a douce man, and fitter to be an elder than even Willie Greer
himself,—I have the minister’s ain word for’t,—to put on these hard-hearted
looks, and gang waving your arms that way, as if ye said, “ I winna take the
counsel of sic a hempie as you.” I’m your ain leal wife, and will and maun
have an explanation.’
“To all this Sandie Macharg replied, ‘ It is written —“Wives, obey your
husbands;” but we have been stayed in our devotion, so let us pray; ’ and
down he knelt. His wife knelt also, for she was as devout as bonnie ; and
beside them knelt their household, and all lights were extinguished.
“‘Now this beats a’,’ muttered his wife to herself; ‘however, I shall be
obedient for a time; but if I dinna ken what all this is for before the morn
by sunket-time, my tongue is nae langer a tongue, nor my hands worth
wearing.’
“The voice of her husband in prayer interrupted this mental soliloquy; and
ardently did he beseech to be preserved from the wiles of the fiends, and
the snares of Satan; 4 from witches, ghosts, goblins, elves, fairies,
spunkies, and water-kelpies; from the spectre shallop of Solway; from
spirits visible and invisible; from the Haunted Ships and their unearthly
tenants ; from maritime spirits that plotted against godly men, and fell in
love with their wives*—
"'Nay, but His presence be near us!’ said his wife in a low tone of dismay.
'God guide my gude-man’s wits : I never heard such a prayer from human lips
before. But Sandie, my man, Lord’s sake, rise: what fearful light is
this?—barn, and byre, and stable, maun be in a blaze; and Hawkie and Hurley,
—Doddie, and Cherrie, and Damson Plum, will be smoored with reek, and
scorched with flame.’
"And a flood of light, but not so gross as a common fire, which ascended to
heaven and filled all the court before the house, amply justified the good
wife’s suspicions. But to the terrors of fire, Sandie was as immovable as he
was to the imaginary groans of the barren wife of Laird Laurie; and he held
his wife, and threatened the weight of his right hand— and it was a heavy
one—to all who ventured abroad, or even unbolted the door. The neighing and
prancing of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the
night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the whole
onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle perishing in the flame. All
wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice to entice or force the
honest farmer and his wife to open the door ; and when the like success
attended every new stratagem, silence for a little while ensued, and a long,
loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dramatic efforts of the night. In the
morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one
of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into something
like human form, and which skilful people declared would have been clothed
with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him by elfin adroitness for
his wife, had he admitted his visitants. A synod of wise men and women sat
upon the woman of timber, and she was finally ordered to be devoured by
fire, and that in the open air. A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin
sculpture was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze
that arose was awful to behold; and hissings, and burstings, and loud
cracklings, and strange noises, were heard in the midst of the flame; and
when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking cup of some precious metal was
found ; and this cup, fashioned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered
harmless by the purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie
Macharg and his wife drink out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, say
I, and obedient wives!” |
