"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 my 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 Hallow-e’en, 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 kindly 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 daundering
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 past and gone with me; the
mair’s the pity that pleasure should flee sae fest
away,—and as I couldna make sport I thought I would 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 blythe 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 ot 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 Hallow-e’en ; 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.
"Aweel,
between 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) 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 houk and dig under the bank ; and
God be near me ! thought I, this maun be the unblessed
spirit of auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed
to dig for ship-wrecked 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 haunted 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 hre behind
them on the billows, which was long unextinguished.
"Now wasna
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 Borranpoint, 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 figures lower down the boat, and augment 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 iiends are heard, and the old hulls
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 cauld and crazy
bones, that mann soon be laid aneath the green sod in
the eerie kirkyard.”
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 the 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 cannily 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 hadna Jock
been a swimmer equal to a sheldrake, he would have fed
the fish; but I 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 granddaughter 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 the fiends, and the communion of
evil spirits, be to her? I know Jenny Primrose puts
rowan-tree above the doorhead when she sees old Mary
coming ; I know the goodwife of Kittlenacket wears
rowan-berry leaves in the head-band 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 witchtree, 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 Arbiglandbank ; 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
peat-moss, two kail 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 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 candlelight. 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 halve-net on his
back, and his steel spear in his hand, and down to
Blawhooly Bay gaed 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 lown, and the singing of the
increasing waters among the shells and the pebbles 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 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 are 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 from the shelf his father’s Bible, brass
clasps, black print, and covered with calf-skin, 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 proceeded 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 his back,
and a heavy knock carne to the door, accompanied by a
voice, saying, ‘The cummer’s drink’s hot, and the knave
bairn is expected at Laird Laurie’s tonight ; 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 it, and I
have sworn it : seek not to know why and wherefore,—but,
Lord, send us Thy blessed moonlight ! ’
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, Sandie; and hadna
ye better say I’m sair laid wi’ a sudden sickness?
—though it’s 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 litter to be an
elder than even Willie Greer himsel,—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 tak’ the counsel o’ sic a hempie as you."
I’m your ain leal wife, and will and maun hae an
explanation.’
"To all this
Sandy 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 ; ‘ 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 gudeman’s wits ! I never heard
such a prayer from human lips before. But, Sandie, my
man, for 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 their 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 a 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 pitch-forks. The blaze that rose 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 day.”
