The Coming of the Unicorn (10 page)

Away in the West Coast there is a ruins of a great house, and today it is known as the House of the Seven Boulders. But in bygone times it was not known by this name… because in this great house there lived an old woman who was said to have magical powers. And she had seven great warrior sons. They raided far across the land, stole and robbed, and everyone was powerless against these sons of hers. The king soon got tired of them raiding across the land. He sent armies to try and capture them, but they were great warrior swordsmen – no less than giants these men! His army would return bloody and battered from having a battle because they had to pass through a narrow gorge that led to the great house where they lived. And when these seven brothers held that pass no one could ever get through, and there was no way to the house except through this narrow pass.

There they lived with their mother, and from there they raided far and wide. The king had tried many, many times to capture these great brothers, but without success! He offered a large reward to anyone who could rid him of the warriors who raided across his lands, but no one could do anything to beat these brothers.

Now, the king had one daughter who was a young maiden of only eighteen years old. And she saw that her daddy was upset when word came again to his palace, the warriors had been out once more raiding. She saw that there was no way her daddy was going to get help of any description from anyone.

So, one evening she turned to him and said, “Father, why
don’t you let me help you against these great warriors?”

He says, “You, my dear? And what could you do against these warriors? I’ve sent my armies, I’ve sent troops and they’ve returned beaten and bloody and battered. I’ve offered a large ransom to anyone who could help me. And no one seems to help me. What could you do?”

“Please, Father,” she said, “let me go! There must be something I can do.”

He said, “My dear, I love you! You’re my only daughter. There’s no way in the world I’m going to let you out of my sight – never mind let you go up where there live these great warriors!”

She says, “Please, Father, I can help, I know I can help!”

Well, the king finally considered this for a long time. He’d do anything to get rid of these warrior swordsmen. He said, “How would you go about it?”

“Well,” she says, “I would need help.”

“Well” he says, “there’s no help I can give you!”

She says, “Father, I don’t want any help from you. I’ll go and see my friend, the old henwife. She will help me.”

Now, not far from the palace there lived an old woman who was a henwife. And she, too, was known to have magical powers. She was a great friend of the princess, ever since she was a child. And the princess had visited her many times. So, this day she took off to visit the old henwife, and she explained to her what she wanted to do. And the old henwife was very sad to hear her mention that she would even try and go and do something about these warriors.

She said, “My dear, what can you do? There’s nothing really you can do.”

She says, “Please, Mother,” as she called the old henwife, “help me! You’re the only one… my father is upset and he just can’t go on like this. He’s so unhappy when he hears word of these men raiding across his land, across his kingdom.”

“Well,” says the old woman, “there’s only one thing I could do. I can’t really help you to get rid of the warriors, but I can tell you what to do.” She said, “Look, you know what a goose girl is?”

And the princess said, “Yes, I’ve heard of goose girls.”

“Well,” she says, “Look, I’ll dress you as a goose girl and I’ll give ye some geese. Then you make your way to the home of the warriors, and there you’ll be on your own. Because they tell me their mother is a very kindly soul, even though they say she has magical powers. And maybe she will help you.”

So, it was arranged that the next day the princess would dress herself as a goose girl, with her bare feet and a ragged dress and her staff. She would drive some geese across the land till she came to the gorge that led to the home of the great warriors. The young princess told her father the plan she had in mind. And he was very upset. He thought in his mind he would never see his little daughter again – if she was captured by the great warriors.

But she said, “Father, have no fear. I’ll be able to take care of myself.”

So, the very next day the young princess said goodbye to her father. She dressed herself as a goose girl in a ragged dress and plaited her hair in two plaits down her back. With her stick and her twelve geese she set off across the land. She travelled for many days doing her best, as the old henwife had told her, to sell some geese and swap some geese, to give away a female and receive a male goose from people along the roadway. Till finally she made her way to the narrow pass that led to the home of the great warriors, to the great house. And there she walked through the pass driving her geese, and no one stopped her. Till she came to the great house, and her geese began to eat round the front of the house. And she went up to the great house and she knocked on the door.

Lo and behold, it was opened by a tall old woman. She had never seen a woman so tall in her lifetime. The old woman
herself was nearly seven feet tall!

And she bent down and she said, “Little one, what are ye doing here?”

And the princess said, “Ma’m, I’m just a goose girl, and I was wondering if ye’re needing any geese?”

“Oh,” she said, “needing any geese, my dear? I don’t need any geese. My sons bring me everything I need. But if they find you here, your life is in danger.”

She says, “Please, help me, I’m hungry and tired.”

So, the old woman said, “The first thing we have to do…” The old woman was glad to have female company because she’d spent her life by herself and had never seen a human being like her, a woman like herself or a girl for many, many years. She only lived her life with these great sons of hers. And she was happy to see the young girl.

She says, “First we must shut up your geese where my sons won’t find them. They’ll be home shortly.” So, she locked the geese up in a little shed and she said, “Come with me!”

She led the young girl into the great house. There she sat her down and gave her something to eat.

“Now,” she said, “my dear, if my sons return and find you here you’ll be in terrible trouble.” And then she heard the clashing of swords and the tramping of feet. The mother said, “They’re coming home!” And she shut her in a small cupboard in the great hall. There the young princess sat in terror in the great hall in the cupboard.

Then, in walked these great seven sons of the old woman and arranged themselves along the great dining hall, and demanded their mother to feed them, bring them wine! So, the old mother fed them and brought them great flagons of wine. And then, they sat and drank and talked, boasted about their escapades across the land.

Then… the young girl sneezed with the dust in the cupboard!

And the oldest brother rose and said, “Mother, you’ve
been deceiving us! There’s someone here!” And he ran to the cupboard. He opened it and there stood the young goose girl, the princess. He put his hand in and pulled her out. He said, “Brothers, look what I have found!” And he brought her forth. He said to his mother, “Where did she come from?”

And the mother said, “It’s only a goose girl. Leave her alone!”

He said, “A goose girl here or a goose girl there – she’s a young handsome woman! And one of us must have her.”

The seven brothers started passing the young princess from each to the other, all demanding that
he
wanted her! And the old woman could not take this.

She ran from the great dining hall out to the front door of the house. Then she clapped her hands and cried, “Bring your swords, we’re getting invaded!”

And the seven brothers grabbed their swords and ran out the front door to see who was invading them. And the young princess sat in terror.

Then, there was quietness…

And the old woman walked in and she said, “My little dear, you can come up now.” The young princess was sitting on the floor. “You can come up now, my dear, everything’s all right. They’ll never bother you again.”

The young girl said, “Where have they gone, Mother?”

She says, “Come with me and I’ll show you. They’ll never trouble you or anyone again.” And she led the princess to the great front door. There before the door stood seven great boulders, each one weighing over three ton, right beside the door of the house. She turned to the little goose girl.

“I know why you came here, my dear. You are not a goose girl. You are the daughter of the king, you are a princess! And you have come to rid the land of my sons. Well,” she says, “it was time the world was rid of them, not just the land. Because they’ve been causing too much trouble, and I would never let
them harm you.”

And the young princess said to the old woman, “Yes, I am the princess, Mother. I came to try and help my father the king to rid the land of these great warriors of yours.”

The old woman said, “Well, my dear, you can go home to your father now and tell your father they will never bother him again, because they are gone.”

And the princess said, “The only way I’ll go back, Mother – if you will come with me and be my companion for the rest of my life.” Because she wasn’t really a very old woman.

So, the next day the little princess and the old woman said goodbye to the great house and walked away to her father’s kingdom. And the king was happy to hear that the great warriors were gone for ever. And the princess had a great companion.

But, as years passed by the house became derelict. The roof fell in and the walls began to fall down. The House of the Seven Boulders became overgrown with grass and trees and thorns and branches. And it came to pass that people could no more explain why anyone would have seven large boulders at the very door of their house… But these were the seven great warrior sons who were transformed to stones by their own mother.

That is a legend that is true.

This story was told to me a long time ago by an old cousin of my father’s called Willie Williamson. God rest his soul, he died when he was ninety years old in the old people’s home in Campbeltown, Argyll. And this was one of his favourite stories. It happened a long, long time ago. 

Down near Campbeltown in Argyll there’s a wee island called Cara; Carrie is what the local folk say. And the local villagers believe that that is the home of the Broonie – he stays on Cara. The island is small and there’s only one house on it. There’s water on Cara – you can walk down the steps cut out of stone to the Broonie’s Well, where he’s supposed to drink his wee drop water. But otherwise Cara is uninhabited.

Now many years ago a minister, who was a great believer in the Broonie, bought the wee house on Cara and he and his wife moved out to the island. They lived very happily on Cara and they took a cow across with them to supply them with milk. The minister loved the island, he set lobster pots and fished, he was quite happy and contented. He had no family, just him and his wife.

So the minister had a boat and he used to travel across to Bellochantuy when he needed to go to Campbeltown for his messages. In these days it was only a track to Campbeltown, just a horse track; it was all done by pony and trap. Once a week he had to go across to the mainland to give a service in Campbeltown. He drove by pony and trap and always took his wife with him when he went. They would row their boat across from Cara, tie it up, borrow a pony and trap from a local farmer and drive to Campbeltown, do his service in the church and drive back, leave the pony and trap at the farm and row across to Cara to his house. But one morning it was a beautiful Sunday morning, his cow was about to calf.

So he said to his wife, “I think we’ll take the cow out.” Now next to his house was a wee shed where he kept a wee byre for holding the cow. He took the cow out and said, “Poor soul, you’re better walking about, it’ll help ye when ye’re going to have a calf, ye can walk about, for you seem very sick.” He let the cow go.

He and his wife went down, took the boat, rowed it across, tied the boat up, took the pony and trap from the farmer and drove to Campbeltown, about fifteen miles. It’s not far for a horse, a horse will do it in an hour and a half. He did his service in the church, came out of the church, talked to his friends, yoked the horse and left Campbeltown. But there came a storm, a terrible time of rain and wind.

He said to his wife, “Come storm or hail or rain, we’ll have to get home tonight to Carrie.”

But the weather got worse. He drove back the fifteen miles to Bellochantuy, then on to Muasdale. When he came to Muasdale the weather was still worse. You could hardly see – the rain was battering, the waves were lashing.

And his wife turned round to him, “Husband, we’ll never get home tonight to Carrie, there’s no way in the world that we’re going to get across, take our own boat across to Carrie tonight!”

He says, “Wife, we’ll have to. What about our cow, what’s about the wee cow? It’s out there itself wandering on the island the night among this rain and sleet!”

They drove the horse back to the farm, drove up to the house. The old farmer came out and met them. After the horse had been tied up and its harness taken off, the minister came in and had a cup of tea or a dram. The waves were lashing and the boom was coming across from Cara.

So the old farmer said to the minister, “Look, there’s no way in the world you’re going to cross that sea tonight, for the peril of your wife’s life.”

But the minister says, “What about my wee cow?”

He said, “Does the cow mean more to ye than your wife, or your own life?”

The minister said, “Look, the cow’s wandering the night – I let her loose before I left.”

The farmer finally persuaded the minister that there’s no way in the world he was going to take a boat across that night to Cara. It was impossible!

Now the cow was on its own. The island is desolate, it’s not very big, only about three acres, practically all rock. Not a soul is on the island, just the house, the byre and the cow – no dogs, no cats, nothing.

The minister was very unhappy but he stayed in the farm, the old farmer put him and his wife up for the night. He passed a terrible, sleepless night because he was thinking on his wee cow in the island on its own, wandering alone with the cold and the wind, and it was going to calf.

But anyway, morning came which it always does. And the minister was up bright and early. It was a beautiful day, the sea calm, the wind was gone, the rain gone, and there was hardly a wave to be seen. And he called his wife; he couldn’t hurry quickly enough. They had a wee bit breakfast from the farmer and bade him goodbye, left the pony and trap for the farmer to take care of and hurried down across the road about four hundred yards from the farm, through a wee field down to the boat. The minister got in the boat and his wife got in the back. They were just a young couple in their thirties, no children. He got into the oars and pulled the boat across as fast as he could. And, och, the sea was as calm as the palm of your hand, not a wave, nothing. The sun was shining. He rowed across to Cara.

And right where you land the boat is a wee place in the rocks, there’s a few steps which go down to the Broonie’s Well, and water comes out of this rock face. The minister pulls in the boat and there’s a bolt in the wall and a ring to tie up your boat. He
tied the boat to the ring, couldn’t hurry fast enough, helped his wife out of the boat. And the two of them hurried up the wee shingle path to the house. But before the minister went near the house he searched all around as far as he could see looking for the cow. Cow was gone.

He said to his wife, “She’s probably been blown over the rocks and carried away in the tide.”

Into the house the minister went. The wife made a cup of tea and he was sitting down in his chair completely sad and brokenhearted because he loved this wee cow dearly. It was the only thing gave them milk on the wee island. They loved the solitude and peace and quietness of this island, that’s why they went there in the first place, because he could think about God and his sermons. He was a good man, a really good man.

He said to his wife, “I’m really sorry, look what happened. Well, I’ll take a wee walk and walk around the shoreside, see if I can find the carcass of her. She was probably carried away with the tide.”

But as he went outside he thought he’d have a last look in the byre where he used to tie the wee cow up at night-time. He said, “If I only had left her tied in the byre, she’d be safe.” Now, he used to always fill a pail of water for the cow and carry it in, for there was no running water inside the wee byre. But before he had gone away Sunday morning, when he’d left the cow out on the grass – he had carried the pail outside. When he walked out the door of the house now, he looked at the door of the byre… the pail was gone. He said, “I remember, I took the pail out and left it at the door when I let the cow out.”

There was nothing to do. He walked to the byre, opened the door and walked into the byre. There was the wee cow standing, a pail of water at her head, a beautiful heap of hay in the wee heck at her nose and the bonniest wee calf you ever saw standing at her feet. And the chain was round her neck; she was tied up, tied
up to the stall where he had always tied her before. The minister stood and looked. He was aghast. He ran into the house, called his wife.

“Come out,” he said, “I want to show you something!”

“What is it?” she said.

“Come here, come here. I want to show you something! Look!” he said to his wife. He opened the door of the byre and showed her – there was the cow and there was the bonnie wee calf standing at her feet. There was the pail of water and the hay in her wee heck at her nose, and the cow as healthy as could be and so was the calf! He turned round and told his wife, “Look, there’s only one explanation,” he said, “and you know as well as me… there was nobody on this island when me and you left.”

“I know,” she said to him, “Angus, there was nobody here when we left.”

He said, “There’s only one person responsible for this.”

She says, “I know.”

He says, “That was the Broonie.”

And that man spent all his days on that island, till he became an old man when he retired to Campbeltown. He believed, and he was a man of the cloth, nobody in the world could convince him otherwise. It could not have been anybody but the Broonie who tied up his wee cow that night on the island of Cara.

And that’s the last of my wee story.

The Broonie is a spirit that never dies. He can take any form if he wants to, but he comes in the form of the lonely old tramp with a ragged coat. A wee old tramp man, about five feet tall, with the wee white beard and the two blue eyes, the kindly old creature of a man who never insults, never hurts, is always looking for work and he’s always hungry. His famous meal, he loves a bowl of porridge and milk, or a bowl of soup. It’s
something that goes back many, many years, long before your time and mine, about the supernatural being who was cast down to take care of us, the humble folk.