“Give us, for our abstractions, solid facts--
For our disputes, plain pictures.”--WORDSWORTH.
[Sidenote: IMPORTANT EVENTS WHICH AFFECT THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.]
Religion never operates on the human mind without stamping upon it the
more prominent traits of its own character, and very rarely without
being impressed in turn (if I may so speak) with some of the peculiar
traits of every individual mind on which it acts. Like a chemical
test applied to a heterogeneous mixture, it meets much that it must
necessarily repel, and much also with which it combines. And we find
it not only accommodating itself in this way to the peculiarities of
character, but, in many instances, even adding a new force to these. In
the mind of the deep thinker it is moulded into a sublime and living
philosophy, and he cannot subsist under its influence without thinking
more deeply, and becoming more truly a philosopher than before. And
what does it prove to the ignorant and credulous man?--no superstition
certainly, and yet so exceedingly akin in some of its effects to
superstition, that we find it lending, as if it were really such, an
indirect sanction to at least the less heterodox of his superstitious
beliefs--the wonders of Revelation moulding themselves into a kind
of corroborate evidences of whatever else of the supernatural he
had previously credited. It imparts a higher tone of ecstasy to the
raptures of the enthusiast--furnishes the visionary with his brightest
dreams--gives a more intense gaiety to the joyous--a deeper gravity to
the serious--and not unfrequently a darker gloom to the melancholy.
Like the most fervent of its apostles, and in much the same degree,
it becomes all things to all men. And if this hold true in individual
character, its truth is not less strikingly apparent in the character
of an age or country. The schoolmaster of Cromarty and the elder of
Nigg belonged each to a numerous class; and the brief notices of
these men which I have introduced into the foregoing chapter, may
properly enough be regarded rather as national than individual in their
character. No one who has perused the more popular writings of the
Covenanters--Naphtali, the Hind let Loose, the Tracts of Peter Walker,
and the older editions of the Scots Worthies--will fail of recognising,
in my quotation from Morrison, the self-same spirit which animated the
writers of these volumes, or be disposed to question the propriety of
classing Donald Roy with our Cargills, Pedens, and Rutherfords.
The aspect of religion, when thus amalgamated with the enthusiasm
or the superstitions of a country, is always in accordance with the
direction which that enthusiasm has taken, or with the peculiar cast of
these superstitions, or with the nature of the circumstances and events
by which they were modified or produced. These last (circumstances
and events) must be regarded as primary agents in this process of
amalgamation; and they may be divided into three distinct classes. In
the first are great political convulsions, which agitate and unsettle
the minds of whole communities. In every period of the history of
every country, there exists a certain quantum of superstition and
enthusiasm--a certain proportion of the men who see visions and dream
dreams; but in times of quiet, when every visionary has his own
distinct province assigned to him by some little chance peculiar to
himself, the quantum is variously directed; and thus, flowing in a
thousand obscure channels, it can have no marked effect on the body of
a people. But it is not thus in times of convulsion, when all men look
one way, are interested in the same events, and direct their energies
on the same objects. The quantum, swollen in bulk by the workings of
these storms of the people, flows also in one channel; and thus, to
a force increased in all its details, there is added a collective
impetus. Hence its overmastering power. No one acquainted with English
history need be reminded of those times of the Commonwealth, in which,
through an atmosphere of lightning and tempest, whole hordes of
visionaries gazed on what they deemed a still brighter, but more placid
future, and called each one on his own little sect to rejoice in the
prospect. And the first French Revolution was productive of similar
effects. I need not refer to the singular interest elicited in our own
country among the humbler people by the wild predictions of Brothers,
or to the many soberer dreamers who were led, by the general excitement
and portentous events of the period, to interpret amiss a surer word
of prophecy. No one intimate enough with human nature to recognise its
impulses and passions in their various disguises of belief and opinion,
can be ignorant that there is a superstition of scepticism as surely as
of credulity, or fail of identifying the wild infidelity of the French
Commonwealth with the almost equally wild fanaticism of the English one.
The second class of circumstances includes famine, pestilence, and
persecution; and, in particular, the effects of the last are strikingly
singular. In the others, the mind, unsettled by suffering and terror,
ceases to deduce the evils which are overwhelming it from the old
fixed causes which govern the universe, and sends out imagination in
quest of the new. Demons are abroad--death itself becomes a living
spirit, voices of lamentation are heard in the air--spectres seen on
the earth. In such circumstances, however, the very prostration of the
mind sets limits to its delusions; the inventive powers are rather
passive than active; but it is not so in seasons of persecution, when
our fellow-creature--man--is the visible cause of the evils to which
we are subjected, and the combative principle, maddened by oppression,
is roused into an almost preternatural activity. Hence, and from the
energy of excitement and the melancholy of suffering, the persecuted
enthusiast becomes more enthusiastical, and the superstitions of
the credulous assume a darker aspect. Even the true religion seems
impressed with a new character. As Solomon has well expressed it--“wise
men become mad;” and, seen through the medium of their disturbed
imaginations, the common traits of character and of circumstance are
exaggerated into the supernatural. The oppression which is grinding
them to the earth, assumes for their destruction a visible form, and
a miraculous control over the laws of nature. The evil spirit is no
longer formidable merely from his power of biassing the will, and
obliterating the better feelings of the heart; for, assuming a still
more terrible character, and a real and tangible shape, he assails them
in their hiding-places--the cavern and the desert. Even their human
enemies, charmed against the stroke of sword and bullet, are rendered
invulnerable by the same power. And there are miracles wrought also in
their behalf. Their places of hiding are discovered by the persecutor;
but a sudden blindness falls on him, and he cannot avail himself of
the discovery. They are pursued on the hill-side by a troop of horse;
but, when exhausted in the flight, a thick cloud is dropped over
them, and they escape. The enemy is removed by judgments sudden and
fearful. Their curse becomes terribly potent. There is a power given
them of reading the inmost thoughts of the heart; they have visions of
the distant--revelations of the future. These, however, are but the
traits of a comparatively sober enthusiasm, which persecution cannot
altogether goad into madness. In some of the wilder instances we see
even the moral principle unsettled. The Huguenots of Languedoc, when
driven to their mountains by the intolerance of Louis XIV., were headed
by two leaders, a young man whom they named David, and a prophetess
whom they termed the Great Mary. These leaders exercised over them a
despotic authority; and, when any of them proved refractory, they were
condemned by the prophetess without form of trial, and put to death by
their infatuated companions. A few years after the battle of Bothwell
Bridge, a small party of Covenanters, of whom the greater part, says
Walker, “were serious and very gracious souls, though they then
stumbled and fell,” assembled in a moor near Stirling, and burned their
Bibles. Is it not probable that the terrible feuds which convulsed
Jerusalem during the siege of Titus, aggravating in a tenfold degree
the horrors of war and famine, were in part the effects of a similar
frenzy?
The third class of circumstances is of a quieter, but not less
influential character. When a false religion gives place in any country
to the true, there is commonly a mass of what may be termed neutral
superstitions which survive the change. Thor and Woden are dethroned
and forgotten, but the witch, the fairy, and the seer, the ghost of the
departed, and the wraith of the dying, the spirits of the moor and the
forest, of the sea and the river, remain as potent as before. The great
national colossuses of heathenism are prostrated before the genius of
Christianity; but the little idols of the household can be vanquished
by only philosophy and the arts. For religion, as has been already
remarked, instead of militating against the minor superstitions,
lends them, in at least the darker ages, the support of what seems a
corroborative evidence. And as, from natural causes, they must still be
receiving fresh accessions of strength in every country in which they
have taken root, and which remains unvisited by the arts, the testimony
of the heathen fathers regarding them is confirmed by what is deemed
the experience of the Christian children. The visions of the seer are
as distinct as ever, the witch as malignant, the spectre as terrible.
Enthusiasm and superstition go hand in hand together as before, and
under the supposed sanction of a surer creed. The one works miracles,
the other inspires a belief in them; the one predicts, the other traces
the prediction to its fulfilment; the one calls up the spirits of the
dead, the other sees them appear, even when uncalled.
From a peculiar circumstance in the past state of this country, its
traditional history presents us both with the appearance assumed by
superstition when thus connected with religion, and the very similar
aspect which it bears when left to itself. The country had its two
distinct tribes of people, believers in nearly the same superstitions,
but as unlike as can well be imagined in their degree of religious
feeling. No pagan of the past ages differed more in this respect from
the Christians of the present, than the clansmen of the Highland host
did from the poor Covenanters, on whom they were turned loose by the
Archbishop of St. Andrews. And yet neither Peden nor Cargill, nor any
of the other prophets of the Covenant, were favoured with clearer
revelations of the future than some of the Highland seers. What was
deemed prophecy in the one class, was reckoned indeed merely the
second-sight in the other; but there seems to be little danger of error
in referring what are so evidently the same effects to the same causes.
Donald Roy’s vision of the foundering boat, and of the woman perishing
in the snow, is quite in character with the visions of the seers. Peden
was forty miles from Bothwell Bridge on the day of the battle; but he
saw his friends “fleeing and falling before the enemy, with the hanging
and hashing, and the blood running like water.” “Oh the monzies! the
monzies!” he exclaimed on another occasion, when foretelling a bloody
invasion of the French which was to depopulate the country, “See how
they run! see how they run! they are at our firesides, slaying men,
women, and children.” “Be not afraid,” said Bruce of Anwoth, in a
sermon preached on the day the battle of Killiecrankie was stricken;
“be not afraid, I see the enemy scattered, and Claverhouse no longer a
terror to God’s people. This day I see him killed--lying a corpse!” But
there is no lack of such instances, nor of the stories of second-sight
with which they may be so clearly identified. The Tracts of Peter
Walker, and the Lives of the Scots Worthies, abound with the former;
some very striking specimens of the latter may be found in Pepys’
Correspondence with Lord Rea.
[Sidenote: KENNETH ORE.]
Kenneth Ore, a Highlander of Ross-shire, who lived some time in the
seventeenth century, may be regarded as the Peden of the class whom
I have described as superstitious without religion. It is said, that
when serving as a field labourer with a wealthy clansman, who resided
somewhere near Brahan Castle, he made himself so formidable to the
clansman’s wife by his shrewd sarcastic humour, that she resolved on
destroying him by poison. With this design, she mixed a preparation of
noxious herbs with his food, when he was one day employed in digging
turf in a solitary morass, and brought it to him in a pitcher. She
found him lying asleep on one of those conical fairy hillocks which
abound in some parts of the Highlands; and her courage failing her,
instead of awakening him, she set down the pitcher by his side, and
returned home. He awoke shortly after, and, seeing the food, would
have begun his repast, but feeling something press coldly against his
heart, he opened his waistcoat, and found a beautiful smooth stone,
resembling a pearl, but much larger, which had apparently been dropped
into his breast while he slept. He gazed at it in admiration, and
became conscious as he gazed that a strange faculty of seeing the
future as distinctly as the present, and men’s real designs and motives
as clearly as their actions, was miraculously imparted to him. And
it was well for him that he should have become so knowing at such a
crisis; for the first secret he became acquainted with was that of
the treachery practised against him by his mistress. But he derived
little advantage from the faculty ever after, for he led, it is said
till extreme old age, an unsettled, unhappy kind of life--wandering
from place to place, a prophet only of evil, or of little trifling
events, fitted to attract notice when they occurred, merely from the
circumstance of their having been foretold.
There was a time of evil, he said, coming over the Highlands, when
all things would appear fair and promising, and yet be both bad in
themselves, and the beginnings of what would prove worse. A road would
be opened among the hills from sea to sea, and a bridge built over
every stream; but the people would be degenerating as their country was
growing better; there would be ministers among them without grace, and
maidens without shame; and the clans would have become so heartless,
that they would flee out of their country before an army of sheep. Moss
and muir would be converted into corn-land, and yet hunger press as
sorely on the poor as ever. Darker days would follow, for there would
arise a terrible persecution, during which a ford in the river Oickel,
at the head of the Dornoch Firth, would render a passage over the dead
bodies of men, attired in the plaid and bonnet; and on the hill of
_Finnbheim_, in Sutherlandshire, a raven would drink her full of human
blood three times a day for three successive days. The greater part
of this prophecy belongs to the future; but almost all his minor ones
are said to have met their fulfilment. He predicted, it is affirmed,
that there would be dram-shops at the end of almost every furrow; that
a cow would calve on the top of the old tower of Fairburn; that a fox
would rear a litter of cubs on the hearth-stone of Castle Downie; that
another animal of the same species, but white as snow, would be killed
on the western coast of Sutherlandshire; that a wild deer would be
taken alive at Fortrose Point; that a rivulet in Western Ross would
be dried up in winter; and that there would be a deaf Seaforth. But
it would be much easier to prove that these events have really taken
place than that they have been foretold. Some of his other prophecies
are nearly as equivocal, it has been remarked, as the responses of the
old oracles, and true merely in the letter, or in some hidden meaning
capable of being elicited by only the events which they anticipated.
He predicted, it is said, that the ancient Chanonry of Ross, which is
still standing, would fall “full of Mackenzies;” and as the floor of
the building has been used, for time immemorial, as a burying-place
by several powerful families of this name, it is supposed that the
prophecy cannot fail, in this way, of meeting its accomplishment. He
predicted, too, that a huge natural arch near the Storhead of Assynt
would be thrown down, and with so terrible a crash that the cattle
of Led-more, a proprietor who lived twenty miles inland, would break
from their fastenings at the noise. It so happened, however, says the
story, that some of Led-more’s cattle, which were grazing on the lands
of another proprietor, were housed within a few hundred yards of the
arch when it fell. The prophet, shortly before his death, is said to
have flung the white stone into a lake near Brahan, uttering as his
last prediction, that it would be found many years after, when all his
prophecies would be fulfilled, by a lame humpbacked mendicant.
There is a superstitious belief which, in the extent to which it has
been received, ranks next in place to that enthusiasm which inspired
the visionary and the prophet; and it was alike common in the past age
to the Highlander and the Presbyterian. I allude to the belief that
evil spirits have a power of assuming visible forms, in which to tempt
and affright the good, and sometimes destroy the bad--a belief as old,
at least, as the days of St. Dunstan, perhaps much older. For it seems
probable that Satan is merely a successor in the class of stories which
illustrates this belief to the infernal deities; indeed, in some of
our more ancient Scottish traditions, nearly the old designation of
one of these is retained. The victims of Flowden were summoned at the
Cross of Edinburgh in the name of Platcock, _i.e._, Pluto. There is but
one story of this class which I at present remember in the writings of
Walker--that of Peden in the cave of Galloway; the author of Waverley,
however, in referring to the story, attests the prevalence of the
belief. The autobiographies of Methodists of the last century abound
with such; they form, too, in this part of the country (for the story
of Donald Roy and the dog is but one of a thousand) the most numerous
class of our traditions. Out of this multitudinous class I shall
select, by way of specimen, two stories which belong to the low country
party, and two others peculiar to the Highlands.
[Sidenote: THOMAS HOGG AND THE MAN-HORSE.]
Not much more than thirty years ago, a Cromarty fisherman of staid,
serious character, who had been visiting a friend in the upper part of
the parish, was returning home after nightfall by the Inverness road.
The night was still and calm, and a thick mantle of dull yellowish
clouds, which descended on every side from the centre to the horizon,
so obscured the light of the moon, though at full, that beyond the
hedges which bounded the road all objects seemed blended together
without colour or outline. The fisherman was pacing along in one of his
happiest moods; his mind occupied by serious thoughts, tempered by the
feelings of a genial devotion, when the stillness was suddenly broken
by a combination of the most discordant sounds he had ever heard. At
first he supposed that a pack of hounds had opened in full cry in the
field beside him; and then, for the sounds sunk as suddenly as they had
risen, that they were ranging the moors on the opposite side of the
hill. Anon there was a fresh burst, as if the whole pack were baying
at him through the hedge. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew
out a handful of crumbs, the residue of his last sea stock; but as he
held them out to the supposed dogs, instead of open throats and glaring
eyes, he saw only the appearance of a man, and the sounds ceased. “Ah!”
thought he, “here is the keeper of the pack;--I am safe.” He resumed
his walk homewards, the figure keeping pace with him as he went, until,
reaching a gap in the hedge, he saw it turning towards the road. He
paused to await its coming up; but what was his astonishment and horror
to see it growing taller and taller as it neared the gap, and then,
dropping on all fours, assume the form of a horse. He hurried onwards;
the horse hurried too. He stood still; the horse likewise stood. He
walked at his ordinary pace; the horse walked also, taking step for
step with him, without either outstripping him or falling behind. It
seemed an ugly misshapen animal, bristling all over with black shaggy
hair, and lame of a foot. It accompanied him until he reached the gate
of a burying-ground, which lies about two hundred yards outside the
town; where he was blinded for a moment by what seemed an intensely
bright flash of lightning; and, on recovering his sight, he found that
he was alone. There is a much older but very similar story told of
a man of Ferindonald, who, when on a night journey, is said to have
encountered the evil one in five different shapes, and to have lost his
senses through fright a few hours _after_; but this story, unlike the
one related, could be rationally enough accounted for, by supposing the
man to have lost his senses a few hours _before_.
[Sidenote: THE WATCHMEN OF CULLICUDEN.]
The parishes of Cullicuden and Kiltearn are situated on opposite sides
of the bay of Cromarty; and their respective manses, at the beginning
of the last century, nearly fronted each other; the waters of the bay
flowing between. Their clergymen, at that period, were much famed for
the sanctity of their lives, and their diligence in the duties of their
profession; and, from the similarity of their characters, they became
strongly attached. They were both hard students; and, for at least two
hours after midnight, the lights in their closet windows would be seen
as if twinkling at each other across the Firth. When the light of the
one was extinguished, the other regarded it as a signal to retire to
rest. “But, how now,” thought the minister of Kiltearn, as one night,
in answer to the accustomed sign, he dropped the extinguisher on his
candle, “how now are the sleeping watchmen to fulfil their duties?
Would it not be better that, like sentinels, we should relieve each
other by turns? There would then be at all times within the bounds
appointed us, open eyes and a praying heart.” He imparted the thought
to his friend; and ever after, as long as they lived, the one minister
never retired to bed until the casement of the other had given evidence
that he had risen to relieve him. A few years after this arrangement
had taken place, a parishioner of Cullicuden, who had been detained
by business till a late hour in some of the neighbouring parishes,
was walking homeward over the solitary Maolbuoy, when he was joined
by a stranger gentleman, who seemed journeying in the same direction,
and entered with him into conversation. He found him to be one of the
most intelligent, amusing men he had ever met with. He seemed to know
everything; and though he was evidently no friend to the Church, he did
nothing worse than laugh at it. The man of Cullicuden felt more than
half inclined to laugh at it too, and more than half convinced by the
ludicrous stories of the stranger, that its observances were merely
good jokes. In this mood they reached the extreme edge of the Maolbuoy,
where it borders on Cullicuden, when the stranger made a full stop.
“Our road runs this way,” said the man. “Ah!” replied the stranger,
“but I cannot accompany you: see you that?” pointing, as he spoke, to a
faint twinkling light on the opposite side of the bay--“The watchman is
stationed there, and I dare not come a step further.” It was only from
this confession that the Cullicuden man learned the true character of
his companion.
[Sidenote: THE LADY OF ARDVROCK.]
The merely superstitious stories of this class are generally of a
wilder and more imaginative cast than those which have sprung up within
the pale of the Church; and the chief actor in them is presented to
us in a more imposing attitude, and in some instances bears rather a
better character. Somewhat less than a century ago (I am wretchedly
uncertain in my dates), the ancient castle of Ardvrock in Assynt was
tenanted by a dowager lady--a wicked old woman, who had a singular
knack of setting the people in her neighbourhood together by the ears.
A gentleman who lived with his wife at a little distance from the
castle, was lucky enough to escape for the first few years; but on
the birth of a child his jealousy was awakened by some insinuations
dropped by the old lady, and he taxed his wife with infidelity, and
even threatened to destroy the infant. The poor woman in her distress
wrote to two of her brothers, who resided in a distant part of the
country; and in a few days after they both alighted at her gate. They
remonstrated with her husband, but to no effect. “We have but one
resource,” said the younger brother, who had been a traveller, and had
spent some years in Italy; “let us pass this evening in the manner we
have passed so many happy ones before, and visit to-morrow the old
lady of Ardvrock. I will confront her with perhaps as clever a person
as herself; and whatever else may come of our visit, we shall at least
arrive at the truth.” On the morrow they accordingly set out for the
castle--a grey, whinstone building, standing partly on a low moory
promontory, and partly out of a narrow strip of lake which occupies
a deep hollow between two hills. The lady received them with much
seeming kindness, and replied to their inquiries on the point which
mainly interested them with much apparent candour. “You can have no
objection,” said the younger brother to her, “that we put the matter
to the proof, by calling in a mutual acquaintance?” She replied in the
negative. The party were seated in the low-browed hall of the castle,
a large, rude chamber, roofed and floored with stone, and furnished
with a row of narrow, unglazed windows, which opened to the lake. The
day was calm, and the sun riding overhead in a deep blue sky, unspecked
by a cloud. The younger brother rose from his seat on the reply of
the lady, and bending towards the floor, began to write upon it with
his finger, and to mutter in a strange language; and as he wrote and
muttered, the waters of the lake began to heave and swell, and a deep
fleece of vapour, that rose from the surface like an exhalation, to
spread over the face of the heavens. At length a tall black figure,
as indistinct as the shadow of a man by moonlight, was seen standing
beside the wall. “Now,” said the brother to the husband, “put your
questions to _that_, but make haste;” and the latter, as bidden,
inquired of the spectre, in a brief tremulous whisper, whether his wife
had been faithful to him. The figure replied in the affirmative: as it
spoke, a huge wave from the lake came dashing against the wall of the
castle, breaking in at the hall windows; a tremendous storm of wind
and hail burst upon the roof and the turrets, and the floor seemed to
sink and rise beneath their feet like the deck of a ship in a tempest.
“He will not away from us without his _bountith_,” said the brother
to the lady, “whom can you best spare?” She tottered to the door, and
as she opened it, a little orphan girl, one of the household, came
rushing into the hall, as if scared by the tempest. The lady pointed
to the girl: “No, not the orphan!” exclaimed the appearance; “I dare
not take her.” Another immense wave from the lake came rushing in at
the windows, half filling the apartment, and the whole building seemed
toppling over. “Then take the old witch herself!” shouted out the elder
brother, pointing to the lady--“take her.”--“She is mine already,” said
the shadow, “but her term is hardly out yet; I take with me, however,
one whom your sister will miss more.” It disappeared as it spoke,
without, as it seemed, accomplishing its threat; but the party, on
their return home, found that the infant, whose birth had been rendered
the occasion of so much disquiet, had died at the very time the spectre
vanished. It is said, too, that for five years after the grain produced
in Assynt was black and shrivelled, and that the herrings forsook the
lochs. At the end of that period the castle of Ardvrock was consumed by
fire, kindled no one knew how; and luckily, as it would seem, for the
country, the wicked lady perished in the flames; for after her death
things went on in their natural course--the corn ripened as before, and
the herrings returned to the lochs.
The other Highland story of this class is, if possible, of a still
wilder character.
The river Auldgrande, after pursuing a winding course through the
mountainous parish of Kiltearn for about six miles, falls into the
upper part of the Firth of Cromarty. For a considerable distance it
runs through a precipitous gulf of great depth, and so near do the
sides approach each other, that herd-boys have been known to climb
across on the trees, which, jutting out on either edge, interweave
their branches over the centre. In many places the river is wholly
invisible: its voice, however, is ever lifted up in a wild, sepulchral
wailing, that seems the lament of an imprisoned spirit. In one part
there is a bridge of undressed logs thrown over the chasm. “And here,”
says the late Dr. Robertson in his statistical account of the parish,
“the observer, if he can look down on the gulf below without any uneasy
sensation, will be gratified by a view equally awful and astonishing.
The wildness of the steep and rugged rocks--the gloomy horror of the
cliffs and caverns, inaccessible to mortal tread, and where the genial
rays of the sun never yet penetrated--the waterfalls, which are heard
pouring down in different places of the precipice, with sounds various
in proportion to their distances--the hoarse and hollow murmuring of
the river, which runs at the depth of one hundred and thirty feet below
the surface of the earth--the fine groves of pines, which majestically
climb the sides of a beautiful eminence that rises immediately from
the brink of the chasm--all these objects cannot be contemplated
without exciting emotions of wonder and admiration in the mind of every
beholder.”
[Sidenote: THE LADY OF BALCONIE.]
The house and lands of Balconie, a beautiful Highland property, lie
within a few miles of the chasm. There is a tradition that, about
two centuries ago, the proprietor was married to a lady of very
retired habits; who, though little known beyond her narrow circle
of acquaintance, was regarded within that circle with a feeling of
mingled fear and respect. She was singularly reserved, and it was said
spent more of her waking hours in solitary rambles on the banks of
the Auldgrande, in places where no one else would choose to be alone,
than in the house of Balconie. Of a sudden, however, she became more
social, and seemed desirous to attach to herself, by acts of kindness
and confidence, one of her own maids, a simple Highland girl; but there
hung a mysterious wildness about her--a sort of atmosphere of dread
and suspicion--which the change had not removed; and her new companion
always felt oppressed, when left alone with her, by a strange sinking
of the vital powers--a shrinking apparently of the very heart--as if
she were in the presence of a creature of another world. And after
spending with her, on one occasion, a whole day, in which she had been
more than usually agitated by this feeling, and her ill-mated companion
more than ordinarily silent and melancholy, she accompanied her at her
bidding, as the evening was coming on, to the banks of the Auldgrande.
They reached the chasm just as the sun was sinking beneath the hill,
and flinging his last gleam on the topmost boughs of the birches and
hazels which then, as now, formed a screen over the opening. All
beneath was dark as midnight. “Let us approach nearer the edge,” said
the lady, speaking for the first time since she had quitted the house.
“Not nearer, ma’am,” said the terrified girl; “the sun is almost set,
and strange sights have been seen in the _gully_ after nightfall.”
“Pshaw,” said the lady, “how can you believe such stories? Come, I
will show you a path which leads to the water: it is one of the finest
places in the world; I have seen it a thousand times, and must see
it again to-night. Come,” she continued, grasping her by the arm, “I
desire it much, and so down we must go.” “No, lady!” exclaimed the
terrified girl, struggling to extricate herself, and not more startled
by the proposal than by the almost fiendish expression of mingled
anger and fear which now shaded the features of her mistress, “I shall
swoon with terror and fall over.” “Nay, wretch, there is no escape!”
replied the lady, in a voice heightened almost to a scream, as, with
a strength that contrasted portentously with her delicate form, she
dragged her, despite of her exertions, towards the chasm. “Suffer me,
ma’am, to accompany you,” said a strong masculine voice from behind;
“your surety, you may remember, must be a willing one.” A dark-looking
man, in green, stood beside them; and the lady, quitting her grasp with
an expression of passive despair, suffered the stranger to lead her
towards the chasm. She turned round on reaching the precipice, and,
untying from her belt a bunch of household keys, flung them up the bank
towards the girl; and then, taking what seemed to be a farewell look of
the setting sun, for the whole had happened in so brief a space that
the sun’s upper disk still peeped over the hill, she disappeared with
her companion behind the nearer edge of the gulf. The keys struck, in
falling, against a huge granitic boulder, and sinking into it as if it
were a mass of melted wax, left an impression which is still pointed
out to the curious visitor. The girl stood rooted to the spot in utter
amazement.
On returning home, and communicating her strange story, the husband of
the lady, accompanied by all the males of his household, rushed out
towards the chasm; and its perilous edge became a scene of shouts,
and cries, and the gleaming of torches. But, though the search was
prolonged for whole days by an eager and still increasing party, it
proved fruitless. _There_ lay the ponderous boulder impressed by the
keys; immediately beside it yawned the sheer descent of the chasm;
a shrub, half uprooted, hung dangling from the brink; there was a
faint line drawn along the green mould of the precipice a few yards
lower down; and that was just all. The river at this point is hidden
by a projecting crag, but the Highlanders could hear it fretting and
growling over the pointed rocks, like a wild beast in its den; and
as they listened and thought of the lady, the blood curdled at their
hearts. At length the search was relinquished, and they returned to
their homes to wonder, and surmise, and tax their memories, though
in vain, for a parallel instance. Months and years glided away, and
the mystery was at length assigned its own little niche among the
multitudinous events of the past.
About ten years after, a middle-aged Highlander, the servant of a
maiden lady who resided near the Auldgrande, was engaged one day in
fishing in the river, a little below where it issues from the chasm.
He was a shrewd fellow, brave as a lion and kindly-natured withal,
but not more than sufficiently honest; and his mistress, a stingy old
woman, trusted him only when she could not help it. He was more than
usually successful this day in his fishing; and picking out some of the
best of the fish for his aged mother, who lived in the neighbourhood,
he hid them under a bush, and then set out for his mistress with the
rest. “Are you quite sure, Donald,” inquired the old lady as she turned
over the contents of his basket, “that this is the whole of your
fishing?--where have you hid the rest?” “Not one more, lady, could I
find in the burn.” “O Donald!” said the lady. “No, lady,” reiterated
Donald, “devil a one!” And then, when the lady’s back was turned, off
he went to the bush to bring away the fish appropriated to his mother.
But the whole had disappeared; and a faintly marked track, spangled
with scales, remained to show that they had been dragged apparently by
some animal along the grass in the direction of the chasm.
The track went winding over grass and stone along the edge of the
stream, and struck off, as the banks contracted and became more steep
and precipitous, by a beaten path which ran along the edge of the crags
at nearly the level of the water, and which, strangely enough, Donald
had never seen before. He pursued it, however, with the resolution of
tracing the animal to its den. The channel narrowed as he proceeded;
the stream which, as he entered the chasm, was eddying beneath him in
rings of a mossy brown, became one milky strip of white, and, in the
language of the poet, “boiled, and wheeled, and foamed, and thundered
through;” the precipices on either hand, beetled in some places so
high over his head as to shut out the sky, while in others, where they
receded, he could barely catch a glimpse of it through a thick screen
of leaves and bushes, whose boughs meeting midway, seemed twisted
together like pieces of basket work. From the more than twilight gloom
of the place, the track he pursued seemed almost lost, and he was quite
on the eve of giving up the pursuit, when, turning an abrupt angle
of the rock, he found the path terminate in an immense cavern. As he
entered, two gigantic dogs, which had been sleeping one on each side of
the opening, rose lazily from their beds, and yawning as they turned up
their slow heavy eyes to his face, they laid themselves down again. A
little further on there was a chair and table of iron apparently much
corroded by the damps of the cavern. Donald’s fish, and a large mass of
leaven prepared for baking, lay on the table; in the chair sat the lady
of Balconie.
Their astonishment was mutual. “O Donald!” exclaimed the lady, “what
brings you here?” “I come in quest of my fish,” said Donald, “but, O
lady! what _keeps_ you here? Come away with me, and I will bring you
home; and you will be lady of Balconie yet.” “No, no!” she replied,
“that day is past; I am fixed to this seat, and all the Highlands
could not raise me from it.” Donald looked hard at the iron chair;
its ponderous legs rose direct out of the solid rock as if growing
out of it, and a thick iron chain red with rust, that lay under it,
communicated at the one end to a strong ring, and was fastened round
the other to one of the lady’s ankles. “Besides,” continued the lady,
“look at these dogs.--Oh! why have you come here? The fish you have
denied to your mistress in the name of my jailer, and his they have
become; but how are you yourself to escape!” Donald looked at the
dogs. They had again risen from their beds, and were now eyeing him
with a keen vigilant expression, very unlike that with which they
had regarded him on his entrance. He scratched his head. “’Deed,
mem,” he said, “I dinna weel ken;--I maun first durk the twa tykes,
I’m thinking.” “No,” said the lady, “there is but one way; be on the
alert.” She laid hold of the mass of leaven which lay on the table,
flung a piece to each of the dogs, and waved her hand for Donald to
quit the cave. Away he sprang; stood for a moment as he reached the
path to bid farewell to the lady; and after a long and dangerous
scramble among the precipices, for the way seemed narrower, and
steeper, and more slippery than when he had passed by it to the cave,
he emerged from the chasm just as the evening was beginning to darken
into night. And no one, since the adventure of Donald, has seen aught
of the lady of Balconie.