Celtic Lore & Legend (27 page)

“Ay, weel I wat, Bessie, that’s nae lee. And now, when ye bring me amind, o’t the L—forgie me gin, I didna hear a creature up in the Brock-holes [
Editor’s Note
: badger-holes] this morning, skirling [
Editor’s Note
: screaming] as if something war cutting its throat. It gars a’ the hairs stand on my head when I think it may hae been our leddy, an’ the droich [
Editor’s Note
: wretch] of a creature murdering her. I took it for a battle of wulcats [
Editor’s Note
: wildcats] an’ wished they might pu’ out one another’s thrapples [
Editor’s Note
: throats], but when I think on it again they were unco’ like some o’ our leddy’s unearthly screams.”

“His presence be about us Wattie! Haste ye. Pit on your bonnet—take your staff in your hand, and gang an’ see what it is.”

“Shame fa’ me, if I daur gang Bessie.”

“Hout, Wattie, trust in the Lord.”

“Aweel sae I do. But ane’s no to throw himself ower a linn, an’ trust that the Lord’s to keep him in a blanket, nor hing himsell up in a raip, an’ expect the Lord to come and cut him down. And it’s nae muckle safer for an auld stiff man to gang away out to a remote wild place, where there is ae body murdering another—What is that I hear Bessie? Haud the long tongue o’ you and rin to the door, an’ see what noise that is.”

Bessie ran to the door, but soon returned an altered creature, with her mouth wide open, and her eyes set in her head.

“It is them, Wattie! it is them! His presence be about us! What will we do!”

“Them? Whaten them?”

“Why, that blackguard creature, coming here, leading our leddy be the hair o’ her head, an’ yerking her wi’ a stick. I am terrified out o’ my wits. What will we do?”

“We’ll see what they say” said Wattie, manifestly in as great a terror as his wife, and by a natural impulse or a last resource, he opened the Bible, not knowing what he did, and then hurried on his spectacles; but before he got two leaves turned over, the two entered, a frightful-looking couple indeed. Merodach, with his old, withered face, and ferret eyes, leading the Lady of Wheelhope by the long hair which was mixed with grey, and whose face was all bloated with wounds and bruises and having stripes of blood on her garments.

“How’s this!—How’s this, sirs,” said Wattie Blythe.

“Close the book and I will tell you goodman,” said Merodach.

“I can hear what you hae to say wi’ the book open sir,” said Wattie, turning over the leaves as if looking for some particular passage, but apparently not knowing what he was doing. “It is a shamefu’ business this, but some will hae to answer for’t. My leddy I am unco grieved to see you in sic a plight. Ye hae surely been dooms sair left to yoursell.”

The lady shook her head, uttered a feeble, hollow laugh, and fixed her eyes on Merodach. But such a look! It almost frightened the simple, aged couple out of their senses. It was not a look of love, nor of hatred exclusively, neither was it desire or disgust, but it was a combination of them all. It was such a look as one fiend would cast on another, in whose everlasting destruction he rejoiced. Wattie was glad to take his eyes from such countenances and look into the Bible, that firm foundation of all his hopes, and all his joy.

“I request that you will shut that book sir,” said the horrible creature, “or if you do not, I will shut it for you with a vengeance” and with that he seized it, and flung it against the wall. Bessie uttered a scream and Wattiie was quite paralysed; and although he seemed disposed to run after his best friend, as he called it, the hellish looks of the Brownie interposed and glued him to his seat.

“Hear what I have to say first”, said the creature, “and then pore your fill on that precious book of yours. One concern at a time is enough. I came to do you a service. Here, take this cursed, wretched woman, whom you style your lady, and deliver her up to the lawful authorities, to be restored to her husband and her place in society. She is come upon one that hates her, and never said one kind word to her in her life, and though I have beat her like a dog, still she clings to me, and will not depart, so enchanted is she with the laudable purpose of cutting my throat. Tell your master, and her brother, that I am not to be burdened with their maniac. I have scourged, I have spurned and kicked her, afflicting her night and day, and yet from my side she will not depart. Take her. Claim the reward in full, and your fortune is made, and so farewell.”

The creature bowed and went away, but the moment his back was turned, the lady fell a-screaming and struggling like one in an agony, and, in spite of all the old couple’s exertions, she forced herself out of their hands and ran after the retreating Merodach. When he saw better would not be, he turned
upon her, and. By one blow with his stick, struck her down, and, not content with that, he continued to kick and baste her in such a manner as to all appearances would have killed twenty ordinary persons. The poor devoted dame could do nothing, but now and then utter a squeak like a half-worried cat, and writhe and grovel on the sward until Wattie and his wife came up and withheld her tormentor from further violence. He then bound her hands behind her back with a strong cord, and delivered her once more into the charge of the old couple, who contrived to hold her by that means and take her home.

Wattie had not the face to take her into the hall, but into one of the outhouses, where he brought her brother to receive her. The man of law was manifestly vexed at her reappearance, and scrupled not to testify his dissatisfaction, for when Wattie told him how the wretch had abused his sister and that, had it not been for Bessie’s interference and his own, the lady would have been killed outright.

“Why, Walter, it is a great pity that he did not kill her outright”, said he, “What good can her life now do to her, or of what value is her life to any creature living? After one has lived to disgrace all connected with them, the sooner they are taken off, the better.”

The man, however, paid old Walter down his two thousand merks, a great fortune for one like him in those days, and not to dwell longer on this unnatural story, I shall only add, very shortly, that the Lady of Wheelhope soon made her escape once more and flew, as by an irresistible charm to her tormentor. Her friends looked no more after her, and the last time that she was seen alive, it was following the uncouth creature up the water of Daur, weary, wounded and lame, while he was all the way beating he, as a piece of excellent amusement. A few days after that, her body was found among some wild haggs, in a place called Crook-burn, by a party of persecuted Covenanters that were in hiding there, some of the very men whom she had exerted herself to destroy, and who had
been driven, like David of old, to pray for a curse and earthly punishment upon her. They buried her like a dog at the Yetts of Keppel, and rolled three huge stone upon the grave, which are lying there to this day. When they found her corpse, it was mangled and wounded in a most shocking manner, the fiendish creature having manifestly tormented her to death. He was never more seen or heard of, in this kingdom, though all the countryside was kept in terror for him many years afterwards; and to this day they will tell you of
The Brownie of the Black Haggs
, which title he seems to have acquired after his disappearance.

This story was told to me by an old man, named Adam Halliday, whose great grandfather, Thomas Halliday, was one of those that found the corpse and buried it. It is many years since I heard it; but, however ridiculous it might appear, I remember it made a dreadful impression on my young mind. I never heard any story like it, save one of an old foxhound that pursued a fox through the Grampians for a fortnight, and when at last discovered by the Duke of Athole’s people, neither of them could run, but the hound was still continuing to walk after the fox, and when the latter lay down beside him, and looked at him steadfastly all the while, though unable to do him the least harm. The passion of inveterate malice seems to have influenced these two exactly alike. But, upon the whole, I scarcely believe the tale can be true.

For the Celts, the dead were never far away. They watched the affairs of the living from their place in the Otherworld, always ready to intervene in the lives of their descendants or in the communities that they’d left. Nowadays, when we speak of ghosts we imagine ethereal creatures, phantom knights and monks who are almost transparent in form, walking about with their heads tucked under their arms or drifting through some forgotten graveyard as mist does. This was certainly not the Celtic idea of the dead. If they returned to the world of the living, the dead were extremely substantial, just as they had been in life. They could eat and drink and even carry on a conversation if need be. And they were the phantoms of friends and neighbors, those who were well known to those who saw them. They were, in Ireland and in some parts of Scotland, the “marbh bheo,” the nightwalking dead, substantial and solid “ghosts” who could sometimes do harm.

In the matter of the marbh bheo, the Church found itself in a strange position: it couldn’t condone a widespread belief in such phantoms, but it couldn’t deny them either, because they were proof of the Afterlife that was to come. So it taught that these ghosts were malignant and evil, only wishing to do Mankind ill. They were the agents of the Devil. Nowhere was this belief more firmly held than in Scotland.

Celebrated Edinburgh writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), author of such literary classics as
Treasure Island
,
Kidnapped
, and
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
, well knew many of these traditions. He may have learned of them at the knee of his beloved nurse, Alison Cunningham, or “Cummy,” who told him terrible tales of the Covenanters (strict Scottish Presbyterians) and of the Devil raising the dead to walk about at night in the fashion of the marbh bheo. This rather obscure tale of ghosts and witchcraft, “Thrawn Janet” (“thrawn” meaning “twisted”) is thought to have been written around the same time as
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
and reflects the tangible and malignant Celtic ghostly presence, lurking in the shadows just beyond the wan glow of the lamp.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long the minister in the moorland parish of Balweary in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company; in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonition on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as though his eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves
against the season of Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1
^st
Peter v and 8th: “The devil as a roaring lion” on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits ands the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of the Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis’s ministry to be avoided in the dark hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence and guidmen sitting at the clachan (small village) alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water of the Dule, with a gable to each, its back towards the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden hedges with thorn, occupied between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on one hand and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the younger parishioners of Balweary, so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the insistency of his unspoken prayers, and when he was from the house, and the manse door was locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured with beating hearts, to “follow my leader” across that legendary spot.

The atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause
of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis’s ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler and recount the cause of the minister’s strange looks and solitary life.

Fifty years sine [
Editor’s Note
: since], when Mr. Soulis cam’ first into Ba’weary, he was still a young man—a callant, the folk said—fu’ o’ the book learnin’ an’ grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi’ nae leevin’ experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi’ his gifts and his gab, but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o’ the moderates—weary fa’ them but ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle [
Editor’s Note
: a little] at a time, and there were folk even then that said that the Lord had left the college professors to their ain devices, an’ the lads that went to study wi’ them was hae done mair an’ better sittin’ in a peatbog, like their forebears of the persecution, wi’ a Bible under their oxter [
Editor’s Note
: armpit] an’ a speerit o’ prayer in their hearts. There was nae doubt onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower long at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o’ books wi’ him—mair than had ever been seen in a’ that presbytery and said worked the carrier had wi’ them, for they were a’ like to have smoored in the De’il’s Hag between this and Kilmackorlie. They were books o’ divinity to be sure, or so they ca’ed them, but the serious were o’ opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o’ God’s Word would gang in the neuk o’ a plaid. There he wad sit half the day an’ half the nicht forbye,
which was scant decent—writin’ nae less an’ first they were feared he wad read his sermons an’ syne it proved, he was writin’ a book himsel’, which was surely no fittin’ for ane o’ his years an’ sma’ experience.