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“When thowes dissolve the
snawy hoord,
An' float the jinglin’ icy-boord,
Then Water-Kelpies haunt the foord,
By your direction,
An' nighted Travelers are allured
To their destruction.
An' aft your moss traversm’ spunkies
Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is;
The bleezin’, curst, mischievous monkies
Delude his eyes,
Till in some miry slough he sunk is,
Ne’er mair to rise.” —Burns.
THE man of mystical lore
was another type of Highland character, that has almost, if not
altogether, disappeared from Deeside; but in the earlier years of the
century there were several representatives. Highlanders have long
obtained a wide notoriety for their knowledge of the supernatural, more
especially for the possession of that awful gift, second sight In remote
times, it would seem that revelations of this nature were made only to a
select few, whom their Lowland neighbours most inappropriately named
wizards. The Lowland wizard was an infamous character, for whom the
stake was accounted too good a fate; the Highland seer, on the other
hand, was a revered and sacred personage, to injure whom was held a
sacrilege of a very deep dye. In those early times, moreover, the gift
was rarely bestowed on any but those of noble birth, and was often found
in highest perfection, not with withered hags, as in the Lowlands, but
with the head of the clan, and added very much to the importance and
veneration in which he was held. It was an attribute also that belonged
exclusively to hoary age.
“Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,”
said the bold seer, who was not afraid to confront the brave Lochiel,
and tell him his fate.
But a time came when the gift was shorn of its venerable and reputable
character. Ambitious and unscrupulous men, seeing the advantages with
which it was attended, did not hesitate to play the hypocrite, and laid
claim to an endowment which they did not possess, and of which they were
altogether unworthy. Thus the profession got overrun with quacks and
charlatans, who finally brought it into great contempt in the eyes of
the aristocrats, who had formerly a monopoly of it; and in consequence
it soon became quite a plebeian attribute. At this period of its history
it experienced a still worse degradation. Instead of being privileged to
take a peep into futurity with his own eyes, the seer, probably as a
slight on his ignoble extraction, was condemned to seek his information
from ghosts, goblins, and all kinds of apparitions, who were themselves
not always well informed; and hence the art descended into the sphere of
demonology. It was now impossible to avoid the conclusion that those
unprincipled spirits played tricks on their human commission agents, in
fact practised upon them the same arts of deception as they with such
success practised on the general public. What, then, with quackery
within and quackery without the line that separates the natural from the
preternatural, sensible people were driven to the belief that the thing
was a delusion throughout, and began to laugh it to scorn. It now
reached the lowest depths of its degradation, and soon after took leave
of the reprobate Highlanders.
But strange to say, having made a clean sweep of the old machinery of
ghosts, goblins, and witches, the spirit of divination next appeared
among the Saxons, with a new ministry of table-tumers, spirit-rappers,
and clairvoyants. These are only our old friends with new faces, the
shoddy of effete Highland superstition. The change can in no respect be
held to be an improvement, so far as the interests of mankind are
concerned, whatever it may be for those of the kingdom of darkness, for
in the olden time—
“When the Devil for
weighty dispatches,
Wanted messengers cunning and bold,
He passed by the beautiful faces,
And picked out the ugly and old;
“Of these he made warlocks and witches,
To run on his errands by night,
Till the over-wrought hag-ridden wretches
Were as fit as the Devil to fright.
“But whoever had been his adviser,
As his kingdom increases in growth,
He now takes his measures much wiser,
And traffics with beauty and youth.”
In the days of George
Brown, Deeside possessed a good representative of the Highland
ghost-seer, of whom a short account is now to be given. It is
unnecessary to refer to his parentage or early life farther than to say
that he rejoiced in the highly aristocratic name of Walter Stewart, and
thus, nominally at least, was entitled to the gift he claimed in all its
primitive excellence.
Walter was a singular character. In his youth he had by industry and
economy got together some little money, on which, deeming it sufficient
for his wants, he in middle life retired from active employment, and
took up his abode in a small cottage1 in a birch wood directly behind
the school of Cr&thie. Here he led not merely a bachelor, but an
anchorite life. He permitted no female to enter his house, which,
nevertheless, as he had a taste for domestic duties, he kept in a
marvellous state of tidiness. To the cottage was attached a little
garden, in which he spent a good deal of his waking hours, and in the
cultivation of which he displayed no small horticultural skill. From the
attention he paid to it, and especially from the quantities of kail and
cabbage plants he reared and sold, he acquired the nickname of “Wattie
Plants,” and was seldom referred to under any other designation.
His fruit, as well as his vegetables, were the best in the country. The
writer well remembers what a temptation the loaded bushes were to the
boys at school Yet, though constantly before our view, for the garden
wall was low, the boldest of us shrank from entering surreptitiously. We
were strongly impressed with the belief that it was enchanted ground,
that, besides material defences, such as concealed man-traps and
spring-guns, it was guarded by supernatural engines that had the power
of stiffening up our limbs and depriving us of the faculty of flight in
the event of a surprise. These ideas, which Wattie no doubt took pains
to impress upon us, more effectually preserved his garden from our
depredations than if it had been surrounded by a wall ten feet high.
Though living in this secluded manner, he was fond of the society of his
own sex, but he preferred seeking it abroad to finding it at home. In
fact, with the exception of George Brown, seldom did any one see the
interior of his dwelling. His own haunts of an evening were the manse,
the school-house, and especially George Brown’s fireside; yet he was
perhaps the only man in the whole country on whose erroneous theological
opinions George could make no impression. But though their religious
notions were wide as the poles asunder, the men themselves were familiar
friends.
Though very illiterate, Wattie was passionately fond of argument,
especially on deep and mysterious subjects; but failing that, he could
enjoy story-telling or even hilarious mirth. Not only did he set at
nought the religious opinions of his friend, but he was not in the least
afraid to dispute the speculative or theological positions of the
schoolmaster and minister, with both of whom he took surprising
liberties. As an illustration—
One Saturday evening, having got around him in the schoolhouse kitchen a
few companions disposed for fun, they all became so hearty as quite to
forget the annoyance they were causing the schoolmaster, who was
preparing a sermon for the following day in an adjoining room. When the
poor man could bear the disturbance no longer, he stepped into the
kitchen to remonstrate. There Wattie, who never made or understood an
apology, found himself called upon to defend the proceedings complained
of, and very coolly replied—
“What! do you think that people must stint themselves o’ their pleasures
for your convenience?”
“But you forget, Walter,” meekly put in the master of the house, “ that
it is a necessity and not a convenience with me to-night, as I have my
preparations to make for tomorrow, and the noise is very distracting.”
Wattie saw in this statement a chance for originating an argument, a
thing dearer to his heart than any fun, and resolved to embrace it,
gravely answering—
“And if you gave them a sermon off-hand, I don’t think the people would
be at much loss. Are we not told in Scripture, (Take no thought
beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate’? How do ye
explain that passage?”
The schoolmaster, perceiving Wattie’s intention, beat a quiet retreat,
and made the best of his circumstances.
Wherever he spent his evenings Wattie was always home about eleven
o’clock, but never retired to bed before two or three the following
morning. How he occupied these three or four hours no one ever knew. He
did no work and read none. Many people therefore thought that he had
com-panions of a supernatural order—a supposition which his evasive
answers to enquiries on this head rather favoured than dispelled; and
there can be little doubt he was deep in converse with himself and the
creatures of his own teeming brain.
But strange as was his social life, his mental constitution was stranger
still His religion was practically a compound of fatalism and fetishism,
but theoretically a belief in revealed religion, though of a very
superstitious type. For him the world swarmed with preternatural beings,
“Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire!’
agents of the great roaring lion, sent abroad among mankind seeking whom
they might devour, to all which he applied the generic name of doolies.
His belief in these rested on no hearsay testimony. Some of them he had
himself seen and conversed with, particularly the water-kelpie, with
whose pranks he was quite familiar. In fact, as he himself used to
affirm, he required to be constantly on the watch against the
machinations of this spirit; for he seldom committed a breach of what he
deemed divine law, but instantly the kelpie would give unmistakeable
indications of his presence.
Nothing could be more sincere than Wattie’s belief in kelpies, ghosts,
bogles, fairies, brownies, and witches; nor is the hallucination under
which he laboured difficult to explain. He was a man of a most lively
and even grotesque imagination, had early imbibed the superstitious
notions of his age and class, had, for want of other companions,
conjured up in his solitude creatures of his own fancy, and conversed
with them till in such moods he had lost the power of distinguishing
between the subjective and the objective—between the subjects of his
imagination and the objects of sense. The kelpie, of course, only
existed in his own conscience; and when the functions it discharged
there are considered, we are not disposed to think the less favourably
of Wattie for having such a tenant in his moral faculty; indeed it would
be a great boon for many a man to have such a kelpie in his conscience.
Regarding women, his notions were very peculiar. He did not look upon
them as human beings at all. They were of an order of spirits very much
akin to the fairies, and had assumed human shapes merely to play off
their sorceries upon mankind In this he suspected they had some deep
design which would come to light in another world; though it might be,
he occasionally admitted, that it was only a malicious pleasure they
took in teasing men. At all events, he deemed it prudent to have nothing
to do with them, feeling no confidence that any of his fair friends
might not lead him into some scrape and then suddenly vanish into thin
air. He believed that intellectually they were considerably man’s
superiors, and saw through him much more thoroughly than he saw through
them—an opinion which he held was sufficiently proved by the proclivity
and capacity of the sex to become witches and fortune tellers. The only
individual in whose favour he made any concession from these notions was
Babby Brown. So winning were her ways, that he was constrained slightly
to modify his views of woman on her account She alone was able to thaw
the severity of his judgment, and wring from him the only doubt that he
was ever known to express regarding its soundness— “Weel, weel, Babby,
to please ye we’ll say that a’ the glamour ye cast ower us is out o’ nae
ill intention, but only to mak’ fun to yerselves.”
He had no belief in physical laws. The whole phenomena of nature were
the direct and immediate acts of spiritual beings. The government of the
world was a disputed sway, and nature the battle-field between the two
belligerent powers. So evenly balanced were they in strength that it
would be difficult to say which might prevail, were there not behind and
above their warfare the decrees of fate or of the Deity to turn the
scales ultimately in favour of the good. As a sample of his natural
philosophy take the following:
On the memorable night of the great flood of August, 1829, the
schoolmaster was roused from sleep by the commotion of the elements and
the rain, which had found its way through the joints of the slates and
by the chimney, and was coursing in torrents through every part of the
house. It was five a.m., and as black as Erebus, except when the
lightning's flash glared across the murky sky. On looking out he was
much surprised to find that his neighbour Wattie was also astir, early
rising not being one of his habits, and not only astir but had his
cottage all aglow with fire and light as if he were illuminating it in
honour of some great event He therefore paid him a visit and found him
in the highest spirits, not in the least alarmed by the thunder and
rain. To an expression of surprise at this, Wattie answered—
“Have I not great cause for rejoicing ? Have you not understood what has
been going on for the last three days ? ”
“No, Walter,” replied the schoolmaster, “what has it been?”
“I'm astonished at that, and you such a learned man,” continued Wattie.
“Why, three days ago Satan began to cast up embankments against this
world, cloud after cloud, and darkness behind darkness. His design,
doubtless, was to bury it in outer darkness to all eternity, and for
three days he prospered. But I had faith that, as our Saviour burst open
the dark abode of death on the third day, so on the third day this dark
design would receive a check. While I was this night musing on my bed by
whose hand this deliverance would be wrought, lo and behold! the
Archangel Michael opened his artillery on the foul fiend; and I said, I
will arise and be a beholder of this great work, and rejoice and be
exceeding glad.” And then, pointing up to the dark clouds where the
thunder was rolling, he exclaimed, “Eh, man! isn’t there carnage up
there? Hear the noise o’ the cannon, and see how the blood o’ the
slauchtered squadrons is coman’ pouran’ down!”
It may seem strange that a person so wild and fantastic in his ideas
should have been admitted into the place of bosom companion to a man so
staid and well informed as George Brown. But there is an attraction in
contrariety no less than in similarity of mind. We are drawn to men who
have what we desiderate almost as strongly as to those with whom we hold
gifts in common. But whether it was this, or the poetry of Wattie’s
conceptions, or their very extravagance and originality, that gave his
company zest in the estimation of George Brown, the men found something
agreeable in each other’s society, though they seldom agreed, or agreed
to differ. In fact, they were in a state of chronic contradiction,
which, however, only gave piquancy to their intercourse, and did not for
any length of time interrupt their friendship.
Wattie’s visits to George were at irregular intervals, usually two or
three a week, and always in the evenings; while he, in return, was
expected to dine with Wattie every Sunday he was at church. Wattie
himself seldom went to church; not because he had any objection on the
score of conscience, or that he was likely to hear unpalatable doctrine,
but simply because it was quite contrary to the rule for him to be out
of bed in time. George, on the other hand, was most regular in his
attendance. By the time the congregation was dismissed, Wattie was ready
to receive his friend, and probably had set about preparing some dinner.
As in other respects, so in this, the men were antipodal; George was a
stoic in the matter of meats and drinks, the bare necessaries of life
were all he cared for. Wattie, on the other hand, was in his own way an
epicurean, and might have vied with a Frenchman in the art of cookery.
While the pot was boiling, the two generally retired to the garden if
the day was fine. Seated there, it was a marvel if they did not get into
controversy, which sometimes ran so high as to terminate unfortunately
for the dinner party. When Wattie’s absurdities were bearing hard on
George’s patience, he was in the habit of seeking relief for his
outraged feelings by continually adjusting the grey plaid which he
always wore slung over his shoulder in Highland fashion. This
peculiarity was so well known, that, when the neighbours at the
schoolhouse observed it, the remark was generally made, “You’ll find
there will be no dinner party to-day, George Brown’s plaid is too
restless.” It however went through several stages of movement
corresponding to the rising choler of the wearer, before the final
catastrophe occurred. From slight adjustments, it passed into being
pulled down, and hitched up with increasing rapidity and violence, till
at last, springing to his feet, George would pluck it down, and with an
indignant toss send the end of it flying over his shoulder, and march
off with an air of great contempt for his companion, leaving him to cook
and discuss his dinner in solitude as he best might. Wattie never
attempted to smoothe matters by offering an apology, nor was he in the
least annoyed by his friend’s ruffled temper. He paid his own visits as
usual; and before next Sunday George had forgot the offence, and
forgiven the offender, who, however, was quite ready to repeat it afresh
should they chance again to fall upon the same subject of discussion.
But after the melancholy death of his favourite daughter, already
noticed, it was observed that, though George paid his visits as usual,
he never allowed himself to be inveigled into keenness of argument by
any provocation on the part of his friend.
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