WATER-SPIRITS.
Influence of Scenery--Science and Superstition--Loch-nan-Spoiradan
--Lochan-nan-Deaan--Lochan-Wan and its Sacrifice--Jenny Greenteeth
--Poetry and Superstition--Tweed and Till--Dee and Don--
Folk-practices for Finding a Drowned Body--Deeside Tradition--
Salt used by Tweed Fishers for Good Luck--Guardian-Spirit of
Conan--Peg Powler--Water-kelpies--Nikr--Halliwell Boggle--Robin
Round Cap--Round Hole, near Flamborough--Aberdeenshire Kelpy
Legends--Some Sutherland Kelpies--Story about an Islay Kelpy--
Mermaids in the North.
"One of the great charms of Highland landscape is the gleam of
still water that so often gives the element of repose in a scene of
broken cliff and tumbled crag, of noisy cascade and driving cloud. No
casual tourist can fail to notice what a wonderful variety of lakes
he meets with in the course of any traverse he may take across the
country. Among the higher mountains there is the little tarn nestling
in a dark sunless corry, and half-encircled with grim snow-rifted
crags. In the glen, there is the occasional broadening of the river
into a lake that narrows again to let the stream rush down a rocky
ravine. In the wider strath there is the broad still expanse of water,
with its fringe of wood and its tree-covered islets. In the gneiss
region of the North-West, there is the little lochan lying in its
basin of bare rock and surrounded with scores of others all equally
treeless and desolate." So writes Professor Sir A. Geikie in his
"Scenery of Scotland." His point of view is that of a scientific
observer, keenly alive to all the varied phenomena of nature. But amid
the scenes described lived men and women who looked at the outer world
through the refracting medium of superstition. They saw the landscape,
but they saw also what their own imagination supplied. In Strathspey,
is a sheet of water bearing the Gaelic name of Loch-nan-Spoiradan or
the Lake of Spirits. What shape these spirits assumed we do not know,
but there was no mistake about the form of the spirit who guarded
Lochan-nan-Deaan, close to the old military road between Corgarff
and Tomintoul. The appearance of this spirit may be gathered from the
Rev. Dr. Gregor's remarks in an article on "Guardian Spirits of Wells
and Lochs" in "Folklore" for March, 1892. After describing the loch,
he says, "It was believed to be bottomless, and to be the abode of a
water-spirit that delighted in human sacrifice. Notwithstanding this
blood-thirsty spirit, the men of Strathdon and Corgarff resolved to
try to draw the water from the loch, in hope of finding the remains
of those that had perished in it. On a fixed day a number of them
met with spades and picks to cut a way for the outflow of the water
through the road. When all were ready to begin work, a terrific yell
came from the loch, and there arose from its waters a diminutive
creature in shape of a man with a red cap on his head. The men fled
in terror, leaving their picks and spades behind them. The spirit
seized them and threw them into the loch. Then, with a gesture of
defiance at the fleeing men, and a roar that shook the hills, he
plunged into the loch and disappeared amidst the water that boiled
and heaved as red as blood." Near the boundary, between the shires
of Aberdeen and Banff, is a small sheet of water called Lochan-wan,
i.e., Lamb's Loch. The district around is now a deer forest, but at
one time it was used for grazing sheep. The tenants around had the
privilege of pasturing a certain number of sheep. Dr. Gregor says,
"Each one that sent sheep to this common had to offer in sacrifice,
to the spirit of the loch, the first lamb of his flock dropped on the
common. The omission of this sacrifice brought disaster; for unless
the sacrifice was made, half of his flock would be drowned before
the end of the grazing season." As in the case of Lochan-nan-Deaan,
an attempt was made to break the spell by draining the loch, but this
attempt, though less tragic in its result, was equally unavailing. On
three successive days a channel was made for the outflow of the water,
but each night the work was undone. A watch was set, and at midnight
of the third day hundreds of small black creatures were seen to rise
from the lake, each with a spade in his hand. They set about filling
up the trench and finished their work in a few minutes. Mr. Charles
Hardwick, in "Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore," published
in 1872, tells of a folk-belief, prevalent in the North of England,
particularly in Lancashire. "I remember well," he says, "when very
young, being cautioned against approaching to the side of stagnant
pools of water partially covered with vegetation. At the time, I
firmly believed that if I disobeyed this instruction a certain water
'boggart,' named Jenny Greenteeth, would drag me beneath her verdant
screen and subject me to other tortures besides death by drowning."
Poetry and superstition regard external nature from the same
standpoint, in as much as both think of it as animate. But there is
a difference. The one endows nature with human qualities, and knows
that it does so through the imagination; the other does the same,
and believes that there is no imagination in the matter. The work of
the former is well expressed by Dr. E. B. Tylor, when he observes,
"In all that water does, the poet's fancy can discern its personality
of life. It gives fish to the fisher and crops to the husbandman, it
swells in fury and lays waste the land, it grips the bather with chill
and cramp and holds with inexorable grasp its drowning victim." That
rivers were monsters hungering, or perhaps, one should say, thirsting,
for human victims is a fact borne witness to by poetry as well as
by superstition. An example of this occurs in the following popular
rhyme connected with the Scottish Border:--
"Tweed said to Till,
'What gars ye rin sae still'?
Till said to Tweed,
'Though ye rin wi' speed,
An' I rin slaw,
Yet whare ye droon ae man,
I droon twa.'"
Some Aberdeenshire lines have the same theme:--
"Bloodthirsty Dee
Each year needs three;
But bonny Don,
She needs none."
According to folklore, there is no doubt that rivers are
"uncanny." Beneath their rippling surface dwells a being who keeps
a lookout for the unwary traveller and seeks to draw him into the
dark depths. A belief in such a being is not always explicitly
avowed. But there are certain folk-practices undoubtedly implying
it. When anyone is drowned in a river, the natural way to find the
body is to drag the stream in the neighbourhood of the accident. But
superstition has recourse to another method. A loaf of bread, with or
without quicksilver in it, is placed on the surface of the water and
allowed to drift with the current. The place where the loaf becomes
stationary marks the spot where the body lies concealed. According
to another method, a boat is rowed up and down the stream, and a drum
is beat all the time. When the boat passes over the resting place of
the body the drum will cease to sound. This was done in Derbyshire
no longer ago than 1882, in order to find the corpse of a young woman
who had fallen into the Derwent. In such practices there is a virtual
recognition of a water-spirit who can, by certain rites, be compelled
to give up his prey, or at any rate to disclose the whereabouts of the
victim. A Deeside tradition supplies a good illustration of this. A
man called Farquharson-na-Cat, i.e., Farquharson of the Wand, so
named from his trade of basketmaking, had on one occasion to cross the
river just above the famous linn. It was night. He lost his footing,
was swept down into the linn, and there drowned. Search was made for
his body, but in vain. His wife, taking her husband's plaid, knelt
down on the river's brink, and prayed to the water-spirit to give
her back her dead. She then threw the plaid into the stream. Next
morning her husband's corpse, with the plaid wrapped round it, was
found lying on the edge of the pool. Till quite lately, fishing
on the Tweed was believed to be influenced by the fairies of the
river. Salt was thrown into the water, and sprinkled on the nets to
insure a plentiful catch of fish. This was really the offering of a
sacrifice to the river-spirits.
Frequently the guardian of the flood appeared in distinctly human
shape. An excellent example of this is to be found in Hugh Miller's
"My Schools and Schoolmasters," where a picturesque description is
given of the spirit haunting the Conan. Hugh Miller was an expert
swimmer, and delighted to bathe in the pools of that Ross-shire
stream. "Its goblin or water-wraith," he tells us, "used to appear
as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her
withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I
knew all the various fords, always dangerous ones, where of old she
used to start, it was said, out of the river before the terrified
traveller to point at him as in derision with her skinny finger,
or to beckon him invitingly on; and I was shown the very tree to
which a poor Highlander had clung when, in crossing the river by
night, he was seized by the goblin, and from which, despite of his
utmost exertions, though assisted by a young lad, his companion, he
was dragged into the middle of the current, where he perished. And
when in swimming at sunset over some dark pool, where the eye failed
to mark, or the foot to sound, the distant bottom, the twig of some
sunken bush or tree has struck against me as I passed, I have felt,
with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of
the goblin." At Pierse Bridge, in Durham, the water-spirit of the Tees
went by the name of Peg Powler, and there were stories in the district,
of naughty children having been dragged by her into the river.
In the Highlands and Lowlands alike, the spirit inhabiting rivers
and lakes was commonly known as the water-kelpy. A south country
ballad says:--
"The side was steep, the bottom deep
Frae bank to bank the water pouring;
And the bonnie lass did quake for fear,
She heard the water-kelpie roaring."
Who does not remember Burns's lines in his "Address to the Deil"?--
"When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord,
An' float the jinglin' icy-boord,
Then water-kelpies haunt the foord
By your direction;
An' 'nighted travellers are allur'd
To their destruction.
An' aft your moss-traversin' spunkies
Decoy the wight that late and drunk is:
The bleezin', curst, mischievous monkeys
Delude his eyes.
Till in some miry slough he sunk is,
Ne'er mair to rise."
The kelpy corresponded in attributes with the Icelandic Nikr;
whence has come our term Old Nick, popularly applied to the devil. A
well-known picture by Sir Noel Paton has familiarised the story of
"Nickar, the soulless," who is there represented as a creature with
frog-like feet, but with a certain human look about him, crouching
among sedge by the side of water, and playing his ghittern--an
instrument resembling a guitar. He appears, however, more melancholy
and less mischievous than the other members of his fraternity. A kelpy
that idled away his time with music and made no attempt to drown
anybody, was quite an exceptional being. In Sweden, where Nikr was
regarded with awe, ferry-men at specially dangerous parts of rivers
warned those who were crossing in their boat not even to mention his
name, lest some mishap should follow. In his "Saxons in England,"
Mr. J. M. Kemble thus refers to other manifestations of the same
creature:--"The beautiful Nix or Nixie who allures the young fisher
or hunter to seek her embraces in the wave which brings his death;
the Neck who seizes upon and drowns the maidens who sport upon his
banks; the river-spirit who still yearly, in some parts of Germany,
demands tribute of human life, are all forms of the ancient Nicor." The
same writer continues:--"More pleasing is the Swedish Stromkarl,
who, from the jewelled bed of his river, watches with delight the
children gambol in the adjoining meadows, and singing sweetly to them
in the evening, detaches from his hoary hair the sweet blossoms of
the water-lily, which he wafts over the surface to their hands." In
his "Folklore of East Yorkshire," Mr. J. B. Nicholson alludes to a
haunted pool between Bewholme and Atwick, at the foot of the hill
on which Atwick Church stands. This pool is shaded by willows,
and is believed to be haunted by a spirit known in the district
as the Halliwell Boggle. In connection with Robin Round Cap Well,
in the same district, Mr. Nicholson tells a story--found also in
the south of Scotland--of a certain house-spirit or brownie, who
proved so troublesome to the farmer whom he served that his master
resolved to remove to other quarters. The furniture was accordingly
put in carts and a start was made for the new home. On the way, a
friend accosted the farmer and asked if he was flitting. Before he
could reply, a voice came from the churn--"Ay, we're flitting!" and,
behold, there sat Robin Round Cap. The farmer, seeing that he could
not thus rid himself of the spirit, returned to his old home; but,
afterwards, he succeeded in charming the brownie into a well, where he
still remains. The same writer relates a superstition about a certain
round hole near Flamborough where a girl once committed suicide. "It
is believed," he says, "that anyone bold enough to run nine times
round this place will see Jenny's spirit come out, dressed in white;
but no one has yet been bold enough to venture more than eight times,
for then Jenny's spirit called out:--
'Ah'll tee on my bonnet
An' put on me shoe,
An' if thoo's nut off
Ah'll seean catch thoo!'
A farmer, some years ago, galloped round it on horseback, and Jenny
did come out, to the great terror of the farmer, who put spurs to his
horse and galloped off as fast as he could, the spirit after him. Just
on entering the village, the spirit, for some reason unknown, declined
to proceed further, but bit a piece clean out of the horse's flank,
and the old mare had a white patch there to her dying day."
In the "Folklore Journal" for 1889, Dr. Gregor relates some kelpy
legends collected by him in Aberdeenshire. On one occasion a man had
to cross the Don by the bridge of Luib, Corgarff, to get to his wife
who was then very ill. When he reached the river, he found that the
bridge--a wooden one--had been swept away by a flood. He despaired
of reaching the other bank, when a tall man suddenly appeared and
offered to carry him across. The man was at first doubtful, but ere
long accepted the proffered help. When they reached the middle of
the river, the kelpy, who had hitherto shown himself so obliging,
sought to plunge his burden beneath the water. A struggle ensued. The
man finally found a foothold, and, disengaging himself from the
kelpy, scrambled in all haste up the bank. His would-be destroyer,
disappointed of his victim, hurled a boulder after him. This boulder
came to be known as the Kelpy's Stane. Passers-by threw a stone
beside it till eventually a heap was formed, locally styled the
Kelpy's Cairn. A Braemar kelpy stole a sackful of meal from a mill
to give it to a woman for whom he had taken a fancy. As the thief was
disappearing, the miller caught sight of him and threw a fairy-whorl
at his retreating figure. The whorl broke his leg, and the kelpy fell
into the mill-race and was drowned. Such was the fate of the last kelpy
seen in Braemar. Sutherland, too, abounded in water-spirits. They
used to cross the mouth of the Dornoch Firth in cockle-shells,
but, getting tired of this mode of transit, they resolved to build
a bridge. It was a magnificent structure, the piers being headed
with pure gold. A countryman, happening to pass, saw the bridge,
and invoked a blessing on the workmen and their work. Immediately,
the workmen vanished, and their work sank beneath the waves. Where it
spanned the Firth there is now a sandbar dangerous to mariners. Miss
Dempster, who recounts this legend in the "Folklore Journal" for 1888,
supplies further information about the superstition of the district. A
banshee, adorned with gold ornaments and wearing a silk dress, was
seen hurrying down a hill near the river Shin, and finally plunging
into one of its deep pools. These banshees were commonly web-footed,
and seemed addicted to finery, if we may judge from the instance just
given, and from another mentioned by Mr. Campbell in his "Tales of
the West Highlands." He there speaks of one who frequented a stream
about four miles from Skibo Castle in Dornoch parish. The miller's wife
saw her. "She was sitting on a stone, quiet, and beautifully dressed
in a green silk dress, the sleeves of which were curiously puffed
from the wrists to the shoulder. Her long hair was yellow like ripe
corn, but on nearer view she had no nose." Miss Dempster narrates
the following incident connected with the water-spirit haunting
another Sutherland river:--"One, William Munro, and the grandfather
of the person from whom we have this story, were one night leading
half-a-dozen pack-horses across a ford in the Oikel, on their way to
a mill. When they neared the river bank a horrid scream from the water
struck their ears. 'It is the Vaicgh,' cried the lad, who was leading
the first horse, and, picking up some stones, he sent a shower of them
into the deep pool at his feet. She must have been repeatedly hit,
as she emitted a series of the most piercing shrieks. 'I am afraid,'
said Monro, 'that you have not done that right, and that she will play
us an ugly trick at the ford.' 'Never mind, we will take more stones,'
he answered, arming himself with a few. But the kelpy had had enough
of stones for one night."
Off the Rhinns of Islay is a small island formerly used for grazing
cattle. A strong tide sweeps past the island, making the crossing
of the Sound dangerous. A story, related by Mr. Campbell, tells
that on a certain boisterous night a woman was left in charge of a
large herd of cattle on the island. She was sitting in her cabin,
when all at once she heard strange noises outside, and, looking up,
saw a pair of large eyes gazing in at her through the window. The door
opened, and a strange creature strode in. He was tall and hairy, with
a livid covering on his face instead of skin. He advanced towards the
woman and asked her name. She replied in Gaelic, "Mise mi Fhin"--"Me
myself." He then seized her. In her terror she threw a ladleful of
boiling water on the intruder. Yelling with pain he bounded out of the
hut. These unearthly voices asked what was the matter, and who had hurt
him? "Mise mi Fhin"--"Me myself," replied the creature. The answer was
received with a shout of laughter from his mysterious companions. The
woman rushed out of the hut, and dislodging one of the cows lay down
on the spot, at the same time making a magical circle round her on
the ground. All night she heard terrible sounds mingling with the
roaring of the wind. In the morning the supernatural manifestations
disappeared, and she felt herself safe. It had not fared, however,
so well with the cow, for, when found, it was dead.
In Chapter I. reference was made to mermen and mermaids, and little
requires to be added in the present connection. In the south of
Scotland the very names of these sea-spirits have a far-off sound
about them. No one beside the Firths of Forth and Clyde expects
nowadays to catch sight of such strange forms sitting on rocks,
or playing among the breakers; but among our Northern Isles it is
otherwise. Every now and again (at long intervals, perhaps) the
mysterious mermaid makes her appearance, and gives new life to an
old superstition. About three years since, one was seen at Deerness
in Orkney. She reappeared last year, and was then noticed by some
lobstermen who were working their creels. She had a small black head,
white body, and long arms. Somewhat later, a creature, believed to
be this mermaid, was shot not far from the shore, but the body was
not captured. In June of the present year another mermaid was seen by
the Deerness people. At Birsay, recently, a farmer's wife was down at
the sea-shore, and observed a strange creature among the rocks. She
went back for her husband, and the two returned quite in time to
get a good view of the interesting stranger. The woman spoke of the
mermaid as "a good-looking person"; while her husband described her
as "having a covering of brown hair." Curiosity seems to have been
uppermost in the minds of the couple, for they tried to capture the
creature. In the interests of folklore, if not of science, she managed
to escape, and was quickly lost to sight beneath the waves. Perhaps,
as the gurgling waters closed over her, she may have uttered an au
revoir, or whatever corresponds to that phrase in the language of the
sea. The following story about a mermaid, told by Mr. J. H. Dixon in
his "Gairloch," published in 1886, is fully credited in the district
where the incident occurred:--"Roderick Mackenzie, the elderly and
much respected boat-builder at Port Henderson, when a young man, went
one day to a rocky part of the shore there. Whilst gathering bait he
suddenly spied a mermaid asleep among the rocks. Rorie 'went for'
that mermaid, and succeeded in seizing her by the hair. The poor
creature in great embarrassment cried out that if Rorie would let go
she would grant him whatever boon he might ask. He requested a pledge
that no one should ever be drowned from any boat he might build. On
his releasing her the mermaid promised that this should be so. The
promise has been kept throughout Rorie's long business career--his
boats still defy the stormy winds and waves." Mr. Dixon adds, "I am
the happy possessor of an admirable example of Rorie's craft. The
most ingenious framer of trade advertisements might well take a hint
from this veracious anecdote."