Walter visited them next day at the time and place appointed, taking
with him a dozen of bannocks and a small cheese. These he was obliged to
steal out of his own pantry, for he durst not by any means trust his
wife and family with the discovery he had made, knowing that he might as
well have confided it with the curate himself, the sworn enemy of his
motley protegees. They gathered around him with protestations of
gratitude and esteem; for the deserted and oppressed generally cling to
the first symptoms of friendship and protection with an ardency that too
often overshoots its aim. Walter naturally felt an honest pride, not so
much in that he had done, as that he intended to do; but before he
produced his repast, he began in a most serious way to question them
relating to some late incidents already mentioned.
They all with one assent declared, and took God to witness, that they
knew nothing at all about the death of the five soldiers; that it was
not perpetrated by them, nor any connected with them; nor could they
comprehend, in the least degree, how it was effected, if not by some
supernatural agency--a judgment sent down from Heaven for their bloody
intent. With regard to the murder of the priest, they were sorry that
they knew so much. It was perpetrated by a few rash men of their number,
but entirely without their concurrent assent, as well as knowledge; that
though his death might have been necessary to the saving of a great
number of valuable lives, they had, nevertheless, unanimously protested
against it; that the perpetrators had retired from their body, they knew
not whither; and that at that very time the Rev. Messrs Alexander
Shiels and James Renwick were engaged in arranging for publication a
general protest against many things alleged against them by their
enemies, and that among others.[A]
There was a candour in this to which Walter's heart assented. He feasted
them with his plentiful and homely cheer--promised to visit them every
day, and so to employ his shepherds that none of them should come into
that quarter to distress them. Walter was as good as his word--He
visited them every day--told them all the news that he could gather of
the troops that beleagured them--of the executions that were weekly and
daily taking place--and of every thing else relating to the state of the
country. He came loaden with food to them daily; and when he found it
impossible to steal his own bread, butter, and cheese, he supplied their
wants from his flock. The numbers of the persecuted increased on his
hands incalculably--The gudewife of Chapelhope's bannocks vanished by
scores, and the unconscionable, insatiable Brownie of Bodsbeck was
blamed for the whole.
Some time previous to this, a young vagrant, of the name of Kennedy,
chanced to be out on these moors shooting grouse, which were extremely
plentiful. He tarried until the twilight, for he had the art of calling
the heath-fowl around him in great numbers, by imitating the cry of the
hen. He took his station for this purpose in one of those moss-hags
formerly described; but he had not well begun to call ere his ears were
saluted by the whistling of so many plovers that he could not hear his
own voice. He was obliged to desist, and lay for some time listening, in
expectation that they would soon cease crying. When lying thus, he heard
distinctly the sound of something like human voices, that spoke in
whispers hard by him; he likewise imagined that he heard the pattering
of feet, which he took for those of horses, and, convinced that it was a
raid of the fairies, he became mortally afraid; he crept closer to the
earth, and in a short time heard a swell of the most mellifluous music
that ever rose on the night. He then got up, and fled with precipitation
away, as he thought, from the place whence the music seemed to arise;
but ere he had proceeded above an hundred paces, he met with one of the
strangest accidents that ever happened to man.
That same night, about, or a little before, the hour of midnight, two of
Laidlaw's men, who happened to be awake, imagined that they heard a
slight noise without; they arose, and looked cautiously out at a small
hole that was in the end of the stable where they slept, and beheld to
their dismay the appearance of four men, who came toward them carrying a
coffin; on their coming close to the corner of the stable, where the two
men stood, the latter heard one of them say distinctly, in a whisper,
"Where shall we lay him?"
"We must leave him in the barn," said another.
"I fear," said a third, "the door of that will be locked;" and they past
on.
The men were petrified; they put on their clothes, but they durst not
move, until, in a short time thereafter, a dreadful bellowing and noise
burst forth about the door of the farm-house. The family was alarmed,
and gathered out to see what was the matter; and behold! there lay poor
Kennedy in a most piteous plight, and, in fact, stark staring mad. He
continued in a high fever all the night, and the next morning; but a
little after noon he became somewhat more calm, and related to them a
most marvellous tale indeed.
He said, that by the time he arose to fly from the sound of the music,
the moor was become extremely dark, and he could not see with any degree
of accuracy where he was running, but that he still continued to hear
the sounds, which, as he thought, came still nigher and nigher behind
him. He was, however, mistaken in this conjecture; for in a short space
he stumbled on a hole in the heath, into which he sunk at once, and fell
into a pit which he described as being at least fifty fathom deep; that
he there found himself immediately beside a multitude of hideous beings,
with green clothes, and blue faces, who sat in a circle round a small
golden lamp, gaping and singing with the most eldrich yells. In one
instant all became dark, and he felt a weight upon his breast that
seemed heavier than a mountain. They then lifted him up, and bore him
away through the air for hundreds of miles, amid regions of utter
darkness; but on his repeating the name of Jesus three times, they
brought him back, and laid him down in an insensible state at the door
of Chapelhope.
The feelings depicted in the features of the auditors were widely
different on the close of this wonderful relation. The beauteous
Katharine appeared full of anxious and woful concern, but no marks of
fear appeared in her lovely face. The servants trembled every limb, and
declared with one voice, that no man about Chapelhope was now sure of
his life for a moment, and that nothing less than double wages should
induce them to remain there another day. The goodwife lifted up her eyes
to Heaven, and cried, "O the vails! the vails!--the vails are poured,
and to pour!"
Walter pretended to laugh at the whole narration; but when he did, it
was with an altered countenance, for he observed, what none of them did,
that Kennedy had indeed been borne through the air by some means or
other; for his shoes were all covered with moss, which, if he had
walked, could not have been there, for the grass would have washed it
off from whatever quarter he had come.
Kennedy remained several days about Chapelhope in a thoughtful, half
delirious frame; but no entreaties could prevail with him at that time
to accompany the men of the place to where he supposed the accident had
happened, nor yet to give them any account where it was situated, for he
averred that he heard a voice say to him in a solemn tone, "If you wish
to live long, never tell what you have seen to-night, nor ever come this
way again." Happy had it been for him had he attended all along to this
injunction. He slipped away from Chapelhope in a few days, and was no
more seen until the time that Copland and his men appeared there. It was
he who came as guide to that soldiers that were slain, and he fell with
them in the strait linn of the South Grain of Chapelhope.
These mysterious and unaccountable incidents by degrees impressed the
minds of the inhabitants with terror that cannot be described; no woman
or boy would go out of doors after sunset, on any account whatever, and
there was scarcely a man who durst venture forth alone after the fall of
evening. If they could have been sure that brownies and fairies had only
power to assume the human shape, they would not have been nearly in such
peril and perplexity; but there was no form of any thing animate or
inanimate, save that of a lamb, that they were sure of; they were of
course waylaid at every turn, and kept in continual agitation. An owl
was a most dangerous and suspicious-looking fellow--a white glede made
them quake, and keep a sharp look-out upon his course in the air--a
hare, with her large intelligent eyes and equivocal way of walking, was
an object of general distrust--and a cat, squalling after dark, was the
devil. Many were the ludicrous scenes that occurred, among which I
cannot help mentioning those which follow, as being particularly
whimsical.
Jasper, son to old John of the Muchrah, was the swiftest runner of his
time; but of all those whose minds were kept in continual agitation on
account of the late inundation of spirits into the country, Jasper was
the chief. He was beset by them morning and evening; and even at high
noon, if the day was dark, he never considered himself as quite safe. He
depended entirely upon his speed in running to avoid their hellish
intercourse; he essayed no other means--and many wonderful escapes he
effected by this species of exertion alone. He was wont to knit
stockings while tending his flock on the mountains; and happening to
drop some yarn one evening, it trailed after him in a long ravelled coil
along the sward. It was a little after the sun had gone down that Jasper
was coming whistling and singing over the shoulder of the Hermon Law,
when, chancing to cast a casual glance behind him, he espied something
in shape of a horrible serpent, with an unequal body, and an enormous
length of tail, coming stealing along the bent after him. His heart
leapt to his mouth, (as he expressed it,) and his hair bristled so that
it thrust the bonnet from his head. He knew that no such monster
inhabited these mountains, and it momently occurred to him that it was
the Brownie of Bodsbeck come to seize him in that most questionable
shape. He betook him to his old means of safety in great haste, never
doubting that he was well qualified to run from any object that crawled
on the ground with its belly; but, after running a considerable way, he
perceived his adversary coming at full stretch along the hill after him.
His speed was redoubled; and, as he noted now and then that his
inveterate pursuer gained no ground on him, his exertion was beyond that
of man. There were two shepherds on an opposite hill who saw Jasper
running without the plaid and the bonnet, and with a swiftness which
they described as quite inconceivable. The cause set conjecture at
defiance; but they remarked, that though he grew more and more spent,
whenever he glanced behind he exerted himself anew, and strained a
little harder. He continued his perseverance to the last, as any man
would do who was running for bare life, until he came to a brook called
the Ker Cleuch, in the crossing of which he fell down exhausted; he
turned on his back to essay a last defence, and, to his joyful
astonishment, perceived that the serpent likewise lay still and did not
move. The truth was then discovered; but many suspected that Jasper
never overcame that heat and that fright as long as he lived.
Jasper, among many encounters with the fairies and brownies, had another
that terminated in a manner not quite so pleasant. The Brownie of
Bodsbeck, or the Queen of the Fairies, (he was not sure which of them
it was,) came to him one night as he was lying alone, and wide awake, as
he conceived, and proffered him many fine things, and wealth and honours
in abundance, if he would go along to a very fine country, which Jasper
conjectured must have been Fairyland. He resisted all these tempting
offers in the most decided manner, until at length the countenance of
his visitant changed from the most placid and bewitching beauty to that
of a fiend. The horrible form grappled with him, laid hold of both his
wrists, and began to drag him off by force; but he struggled with all
the energy of a man in despair, and at length, by a violent exertion, he
disengaged his right hand. The enemy still continuing, however, to haul
him off with the other, he was obliged to have recourse to a desperate
expedient. Although quite naked, he reached his clothes with the one
hand and drew his knife; but, in endeavouring to cut off those fingers
which held his wrist so immovably fast, he fairly severed a piece of
the thumb from his own left hand.
This was the very way that Jasper told the story to his dying day,
denying stoutly that he was in a dream; and, singular as it may appear,
I can vouch for the truth of it. Jasper Hay died at Gattonside at a
right old age, in the year 1739; and they are yet alive who have heard
him tell those stories, and seen him without the thumb of the left hand.
Things went on in this distracted and doubtful manner until the time
when Walter is first introduced. On that day, at the meeting place, he
found no fewer than 130 of the poor wanderers, many of them assembled to
see him for the last time, and take an affectionate leave of him; for
they had previously resolved to part, and scatter themselves again over
the west country, even though certain death awaited them, as they could
not in conscience longer remain to be the utter ruin of one who was so
generous and friendly to them. They saw, that not only would his whole
stock be wasted, but he would himself be subjected to confiscation of
goods, and imprisonment, if to nothing worse. Walter said, the case
seemed hard either way; but he had been thinking, that perhaps, if they
remained quiet and inoffensive in that seclusion, the violence of the
government might in a little relax, and they might then retire to their
respective homes in peace. Walter soon heard with vexation that they
made conscience of _not living in peace_, but of proclaiming aloud to
the world the grievous wrongs and oppression that the church of Christ
in Scotland laboured under. The _doctor chap_, as Walter always called
him, illustrated at great length the sin that would lie to their charge,
should they remain quiet and passive in a time like that, when the
church's all was at stake in these realms. "We are but a remnant," added
he, "a poor despised remnant; but if none stand up for the truth of the
reformed religion, how are ever our liberties, civil or ecclesiastical,
to be obtained? There are many who think with us, and who feel with us,
who yet have not the courage to stand up for the truth; but the time
must ere long come, that the kingdoms of the land will join in
supporting a reformation, for the iniquity of the Amorite is wearing to
the full."
Walter did not much like disputing about these matters; but in this he
felt that his reason acquiesced, and he answered thus: "Ye speak like a
true man, and a clever man, Doctor; and if I had a desperate cause by
the end, and wanted ane to back me in't, the deil a step wad I gang
ayont this moss hag to find him; but, Doctor, there's a time for every
thing. I wadna hae ye to fling away a gude cause, as I wad do a rotten
ewe, that winna haud ony langer. But dinna ye think that a fitter time
may come to mak a push? ye'll maybe sell mae precious lives for nae end,
wi' your declarations; take care that you, and the like o' you, haena
these lives to answer for.--I like nae desperate broostles--od, man,
it's like ane that's just gaun to turn divour, taking on a' the debt he
can."
"Dinna fear, gudeman! dinna fear! There's nae blood shed in sic a cause
that can ever be shed in vain. Na, na! that blood will argue better at
the bar o' Heaven for poor distressed Scotland than all the prayers of
all the living. We hae done muckle, but we'll do mair yet--muckle blood
has been wantonly and diabolically shed, and our's may rin wi' the
rest--we'll no thraw't wantonly and exultingly away; but, when our day
comes, we'll gie it cheerfully--as cheerfully, gudeman, as ever ye paid
your mail to a kind landlord, even though the season had been hard and
stormy. We had aince enough of this warld's wealth, and to spare; but we
hae naething now but our blood, and we'll part wi' that as cheerfully as
the rest. And it will tell some day! and ye may live to see it yet. But
enough, gudeman; we have all resolved, that, whatever the consequence
may be, to live no more on your bounty--therefore, do not urge it--but
give us all your hand--Farewell!--and may God bless you in all your
actings and undertakings!--There is little chance that we shall ever
meet again--We have no reward to give but our blessing and good wishes;
but, whenever a knee here present is bowed at the footstool of grace,
you will be remembered."
Walter could not bear thus to part with them, and to give them up as it
were to certain destruction. He argued as well as he could on the
imprudence of the step they were going to take--of the impossibility of
their finding a retreat so inaccessible in all the bounds of the south
of Scotland, and the prospect that there was of the persecution soon
relaxing. But when he had said all that he could say, a thin spare old
man, with grey dishevelled locks, and looks, Walter said, as stern as
the adders that he had lately been eating, rose up to address him.
There was that in his manner which commanded the most intense attention.
"Dost thou talk of our rulers relaxing?" said he. "Blind and mistaken
man! thou dost not know them. No; they will never relax till their blood
shall be mixed with their sacrifices. That insatiate, gloomy, papistical
tyrant and usurper, the Duke of York, and his commissioner, have issued
laws and regulations more exterminating than ever. But yesterday we
received the woeful intelligence, that, within these eight days, one
hundred and fifty of our brethren have suffered by death or banishment,
and nearly one-half of these have been murdered, even without the sham
formality of trial or impeachment, nor had they intimation of the fate
that awaited them. York hath said in full assembly, 'that neither the
realm nor the mother-church can ever be safe, until the south of
Scotland is again made a hunting forest;' and his commissioner hath
sworn by the living God, 'that never a whig shall again have time or
warning to prepare for Heaven, for that hell is too good for them.' Can
we hope for these men relaxing? No! The detestable and bloody Clavers,
that wizard! that eater of toads! that locust of the infernal pit, hems
us in closer and closer on one side, and that Muscovite beast on the
other! They thirst for our blood; and our death and tortures are to them
matter of great sport and amusement. My name is Mackail! I had two brave
and beautiful sons, and I had but two; one of these had his brains shot
out on the moss of Monyhive without a question, charge, or reply. I
gathered up his brains and shattered skull with these hands, tied them
in my own napkin, and buried him alone, for no one durst assist me. His
murderers stood by and mocked me, cursed me for a dog, and swore if I
howled any more that they would send me after him. My eldest son, my
beloved Hew, was hung like a dog at the Market-cross of Edinburgh. I
conversed with him, I prayed with him in prison, kissed him, and bade
him farewell on the scaffold! My brave, my generous, my beautiful son! I
tell thee, man, thou who preachest up peace and forbearance with
tyrants, should ever the profligate Charles, or his diabolical
brother--should ever the murderer Clavers, or any of his hell-hounds of
the north, dare set foot in Heaven, one look from the calm benignant
face of my martyred son would drive them out howling!"
All this time the old man shed not a tear; his voice was wildly solemn,
but his looks were mixed with madness. He had up his hand to swear, to
pray, or to prophecy, Walter knew not which, but he was restrained by
his associates, and led aside, so that Walter saw no more of him; but he
said he could not get him out of his mind for many a day, for sic
another desperate auld body he had never seen.
These harangues took up much of the time that they had to spare, but ere
they parted Walter persuaded them, probably by his strong homely
reasoning, to remain where they were. He said, since they persisted in
refusing to take more of his flock, there was an extensive common beyond
the height, called Gemsope, which had been a royal forest, where many
gentlemen and wealthy farmers had sheep that fed promiscuously; and
considering their necessitous circumstances, he thought it no evil, and
he advised them to go and take from that glen as many as would serve to
support nature for a time;--that for his part he had many a good wedder
and dinmont there, and was willing to run his risk, which would then
fall equal on a number, and only on such as were rich and could well
bear it. In this plan, after some scruples which were overborne by the
majority, they at length fully and thankfully acquiesced.
That same day, on his way homeward, Walter heard the wonderful relation
of the apparition of his beloved daughter in the Hope at midnight; he
learned that Clavers would be there in a few days, and he had sent away
above 100 men to steal sheep--all these things made him thoughtful and
uneasy after he had reached his home, wet and fatigued.--"It will be a
bloody night in Gemsope this," he said, sighing, not recollecting what
he said or to whom he said it. He could trust his wife with any of his
family concerns, but as long as she continued to be so much influenced
by the curate Clerk, the sworn enemy of his poor persecuted flock, he
durst not give her a hint of their retreat.
Walter became still more and more perplexed from all that he heard from
his wife, as well as from every one else--he found that, in truth, there
was some mysterious thing about his house--the whole family seemed
convinced of it--there were many things seen, heard, and done there that
he could in nowise account for in a rational way, and though he resisted
the general belief for a good while, that the house was haunted,
circumstances at length obliged him to yield to the torrent, and he
believed as faithfully in the Brownie of Bodsbeck as any of them all.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This curious protest is still extant, and shows the true spirit of
the old Covenanters or Cameronians, as they have since been called,
better than any work remaining. It is called in the title page, "_An
informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented Remnant of the
suffering Anti-popish, Anti-prelatic, Anti-erastian, Anti-sectarian,
true Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland_." It is dated at
Leadhills in 1687, and is the conjoint work of Mr James Renwick, and Mr
Alexander Shiels, author of _The Hind let loose_. The following is an
extract from it, p. 107:--
"And in like manner we do hereby disclaim all unwarrantable practices
committed by any few persons reputed to be of us, whereby the Lord hath
been offended, his cause wronged, and we all made to endure the scourge
of tongues; for which things we have desired to make conscience of
mourning before the Lord, both in public and private. As the
unwarrantable manner of killing that curate at the Corsephairn, though
he was a man of death both by the laws of God and man, and the fact not
materially murder; it being gone about contrary to our declaration,
common or competent consent, (the conclusion and deed being known only
to three or four persons) in a rash and not a Christian manner, and also
other offences being committed at the time; which miscarriages have
proven a mean to stop and retard lawful, laudable, and warrantable
proceeding, both as to matter and manner."
These _other offences committed at the time_, unquestionably refer to
the slaughter of the Highland soldiers; about which, there was great
stir and numerous conjectures in the country; although, owing to the
revolution that immediately followed, the perpetrators were never taken,
nor the cause tried in a court of justice, nor indeed was the incident
ever generally known.