the fiend sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray':
but one young and wilful man said, 'Fiend! I'll warrant it's nae
fiend, but douce Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse
with some of her Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be
spilt atween them. Dod I would gladly have a toothfu'! I'll warrant
it's nane o' your cauld, sour slae-water, like a bottle of Bailie
Skrinkie's port, but right drap-o'-my-heart's-blood stuff, that
would waken a body out of their last linen. I wonder where the
cummers will anchor their craft?'--'And I'll vow,' said another
rustic, 'the wine they quaff is none of your visionary drink, such
as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips in a dream; nor is
it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they sail in, which
are made out of a cockleshell or a cast-off slipper, or the paring
of a seaman's right thumb-nail. I once got a hansel out of a witch's
quaigh myself,--auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot, whom they tried
to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore, but the cummer raise as
fast as they laid her down, and naewhere else would she lie but
in the bonnie green kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible
fowk. So I'll vow that the wine of a witch's cup is as fell liquor
as ever did a kindly turn to a poor man's heart; and be they fiends,
or be they witches, if they have red wine asteer, I'll risk a drouket
sark for ae glorious tout on't.'--'Silence, ye sinners,' said the
minister's son of a neighboring parish, who united in his own person
his father's lack of devotion with his mother's love of liquor.
'Whisht!--speak as if ye had the fear of something holy before
ye. Let the vessels run their own way to destruction: who can stay
the eastern wind, and the current of the Solway sea? I can find
ye Scripture warrant for that: so let them try their strength on
Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad quicksand. There's a
surf running there would knock the ribs together of a galley built
by the imps of the pit, and commanded by the Prince of Darkness.
Bonnilie and bravely they sail away there; but before the blast
blows by they'll be wrecked: and red wine and strong brandy will
be as rife as dyke-water, and we'll drink the health of bonnie
Bell Blackness out of her left-foot slipper.'
"The speech of the young profligate was applauded by several of
his companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from
whence they never returned. The two vessels were observed all at
once to stop in the bosom of the bay on the spot where their hulls
now appear: the mirth and the minstrelsy waxed louder than ever;
and the forms of maidens, with instruments of music, and wine-cups
in their hands, thronged the decks. A boat was lowered; and the
same shadowy pilot who conducted the ships made it start toward
the shore with the rapidity of lightning, and its head knocked
against the bank where the four young men stood, who longed for
the unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with a laugh
were they welcomed on deck; wine-cups were given to each, and as
they raised them to their lips the vessels melted away beneath
their feet; and one loud shriek, mingled with laughter still louder,
was heard over land and water for many miles. Nothing more was heard
or seen till the morning, when the crowd who came to the beach saw
with fear and wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as they now seem,
masts and tackle gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name,
country, or destination could be known, was left remaining. Such is
the tradition of the mariners; and its truth has been attested by
many families whose sons and whose fathers have been drowned in
the haunted bay of Blawhooly."
"And trow ye," said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by
the drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor
of the mariner's legend,--"and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the
tale of the Haunted Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle
have mine ears heard; but more mine eyes have witnessed since I
came to dwell in this humble home by the side of the deep sea.
I mind the night weel: it was on Hallowmass eve: the nuts were
cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell and charm were tried
at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the dark waves of
futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to the more visible blessings
of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle courtship. Soft words
in a maiden's ear, and a kindly kiss o' her lip, were old-world
matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say that I have
been free of the folly of daunering and daffin with a youth in
my day, and keeping tryste with him in dark and lonely places.
However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were passed and gone
with me; the mair's the pity that pleasure should fly sae fast
away,--and as I could nae make sport I thought I should not mar
any; so out I sauntered into the fresh cold air, and sat down behind
that old oak, and looked abroad on the wide sea. I had my ain sad
thoughts, ye may think, at the time: it was in that very bay my
blythe goodman perished, with seven more in his company, and on
that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming, I saw
seven stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth.
It was a woful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with
nought to support them but these twa hands, and God's blessing,
and a cow's grass. I have never liked to live out of sight of this
bay since that time; and mony's the moonlight night I sit looking
on these watery mountains, and these waste shores; it does my heart
good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see it was Hallowmass
night; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart wandering
to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame.
It might be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making,
and its singing brought strange old-world stories with it; and I
thought on the dangers that sailors endure, the fates they meet
with, and the fearful forms they see. My own blythe goodman had
seen sights that made him grave enough at times, though he aye
tried to laugh them away.
"Aweel, atween that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I
saw, or thought I saw, for the tale is so dream-like, that the
whole might pass for a vision of the night, I saw the form of a
man: his plaid was gray; his face was gray; and his hair, which
hung low down till it nearly came to the middle of his back, was
as white as the white sea-foam. He began to howk and dig under the
bank; an' God be near me, thought I, this maun be the unblessed
spirit of Auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed to dig
for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many millions are hidden
forever from man's enjoyment. The Form found something which in
shape and hue seemed a left-foot slipper of brass; so down to the
tide he marched, and placing it on the water, whirled it thrice
round; and the infernal slipper dilated at every turn, till it
became a bonnie barge with its sails bent, and on board leaped
the form, and scudded swiftly away. He came to one of the Haunted
Ships; and striking it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast, and
canvas, and mariners, started up: he touched the other Haunted
Ship, and produced the like transformation; and away the three
spectre ships bounded, leaving a track of fire behind them on the
billows which was long unextinguished. Now was nae that a bonnie
and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of the Hallowmass
moon? But the tale is far frae finished; for mariners say that
once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borranpoint, ye
will see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway;
ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy,
which our ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and
sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay,
while the shadowy figure lowers down the boat, and augments their
numbers with the four unhappy mortals, to whose memory a stone
stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless sea
cut upon it. Then the spectre ships vanish, and the drowning shriek
of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old
hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has
not departed from the earth. But I maun away, and trim my little
cottage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the
crickets, and my cold and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath
the green sod in the eerie kirkyard." And away the old dame tottered
to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and soon the
hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the key-hole
and window.
"I'll tell ye what," said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and
with a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl,
"it's a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many
mistakes made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where
she lives, knows not mickle more than she is willing to tell of
the Haunted Ships and their unhallowed mariners. She lives cannilie
and quietly; no one knows how she is fed or supported; but her
dress is aye whole, her cottage ever smokes, and her table lacks
neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish, and white
bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Matheson, when he
called old Moll the uncannie carline of Blawhooly: his boat ran
round and round in the centre of the Solway,--everybody said it
was enchanted,--and down it went head foremost: and had nae Jock
been a swimmer equal to a sheldrake, he would have fed the fish;
but I'll warrant it sobered the lad's speech; and he never reckoned
himself safe till he made auld Moll the present of a new kirtle
and a stone of cheese."
"O father," said his grand-daughter Barbara, "ye surely wrong poor
old Mary Moray; what use could it be to an old woman like her, who
has no wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind,
and nothing to seek of enjoyment save a cannie hour and a quiet
grave,--what use could the fellowship of fiends, and the communion
of evil spirits, be to her? I know Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree
above the door-head when she sees old Mary coming; I know the good
wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in the headband of
her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the unsonsie
glance of Mary's right ee; and I know that the auld laird of
Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand
of witch-tree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has all
that to do with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless
boats? I have heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted
Ships and their unworldly crews, as any one would wish to hear
in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one
summer night, sitting on Arbiglandbank: the lad intended a sort
of love meeting; but all that he could talk of was about smearing
sheep and shearing sheep, and of the wife which the Norway elves
of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall
tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it to me.
"Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peatmoss,
two kale gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of
horses, and six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest
women in seven parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided;
and a Nithsdale laird and two Annandale moorland farmers drank
themselves to their last linen, as well as their last shilling,
through sorrow for her loss. But married was the dame; and home
she was carried, to bear rule over her home and her husband, as
an honest woman should. Now ye maun ken that though the flesh and
blood lovers of Alexander's bonnie wife all ceased to love and to
sue her after she became another's, there were certain admirers
who did not consider their claim at all abated, or their hopes
lessened, by the kirk's famous obstacle of matrimony. Ye have heard
how the devout minister of Tinwald had a fair son carried away,
and bedded against his liking to an unchristened bride, whom the
elves and the fairies provided; ye have heard how the bonnie bride
of the drunken laird of Soukitup was stolen by the fairies out at
the back-window of the bridal chamber, the time the bridegroom
was groping his way to the chamber-door; and ye have heard-- But
why need I multiply cases? such things in the ancient days were
as common as candle-light. So ye'll no hinder certain water-elves
and sea-fairies, who sometimes keep festival and summer mirth in
these old haunted hulks, from falling in love with the weel-faured
wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and contrivances they went
how they might accomplish to sunder man and wife; and sundering
such a man and such a wife was like sundering the green leaf from
the summer, or the fragrance from the flower.
"So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his halve-net on his
back, and his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay
gaed he, and into the water he went right between the two haunted
hulks, and placing his net awaited the coming of the tide. The
night, ye maun ken, was mirk, and the wind lowne, and the singing
of the increasing waters among the shells and the pebbles was heard
for sundry miles. All at once lights began to glance and twinkle on
board the two Haunted Ships from every hole and seam, and presently
the sound as of a hatchet employed in squaring timber echoed far
and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly workmen amazed the
Laird, how much more was his amazement increased when a sharp shrill
voice called out, 'Ho! brother, what are you doing now?' A voice
still shriller responded from the other haunted ship, 'I'm making
a wife to Sandie Macharg!' and a loud quavering laugh running from
ship to ship, and from bank to bank, told the joy they expected
from their labor.
"Now the Laird, besides being a devout and a God-fearing man, was
shrewd and bold; and in plot, and contrivance, and skill in conducting
his designs, was fairly an overmatch for any dozen land-elves; but
the water-elves are far more subtle; besides, their haunts and
their dwellings being in the great deep, pursuit and detection is
hopeless if they succeed in carrying their prey to the waves. But
ye shall hear. Home flew the Laird, collected his family around
the hearth, spoke of the signs and the sins of the times, and talked
of mortification and prayer for averting calamity; and finally,
taking his father's Bible, brass clasps, black print, and covered
with calf-skin, from the shelf, he proceeded without let or stint
to perform domestic worship. I should have told ye that he bolted
and locked the door, shut up all inlet to the house, threw salt
into the fire, and proceeded in every way like a man skilful in
guarding against the plots of fairies and fiends. His wife looked
on all this with wonder; but she saw something in her husband's
looks that hindered her from intruding either question or advice,
and a wise woman was she.
"Near the mid-hour of the night the rush of a horse's feet was
heard, and the sound of a rider leaping from its back, and a heavy
knock came to the door, accompanied by a voice saying, 'The cummer
drink's hot, and the knave bairn is expected at Laird Laurie's
to-night; sae mount, goodwife, and come.'
"'Preserve me!' said the wife of Sandie Macharg; 'that's news indeed!
who could have thought it? the Laird has been heirless for seventeen
years! Now, Sandie, my man, fetch me my skirt and hood.'
"But he laid his arm round his wife's neck, and said, 'If all the
lairds in Galloway go heirless, over this door threshold shall you
not stir to-night; and I have said, and I have sworn it: seek not
to know why or wherefore; but, Lord, send us thy blessed mornlight.'
The wife looked for a moment in her husband's eyes, and desisted
from further entreaty.
"'But let us send a civil message to the gossips, Sandie; and hadnae
ye better say I am sair laid with a sudden sickness? though it's
sinful-like to send the poor messenger a mile agate with a lie
in his mouth without a glass of brandy.'
"'To such a messenger, and to those who sent him, no apology is
needed,' said the austere Laird, 'so let him depart.' And the clatter
of a horse's hoofs was heard, and the muttered imprecations of its
rider on the churlish treatment he had experienced.
"'Now, Sandie, my lad,' said his wife, laying an arm particularly
white and round about his neck as she spoke, 'are you not a queer
man and a stern? I have been your wedded wife now these three years;
and, beside my dower, have brought you three as bonnie bairns as
ever smiled aneath a summer sun. O man, you a douce man, and fitter
to be an elder than even Willie Greer himself, I have the minister's
ain word for't, to put on these hard-hearted looks, and gang waving
your arms that way, as if ye said, "I winna take the counsel of
sic a hempie as you"; I'm your ain leal wife, and will and maun
have an explanation.'
"To all this Sandie Macharg replied, 'It is written, "Wives, obey
your husbands"; but we have been stayed in our devotion, so let
us pray.' And down he knelt: his wife knelt also, for she was as
devout as bonnie; and beside them knelt their household, and all
lights were extinguished.
"'Now this beats a',' muttered his wife to herself; 'however, I
shall be obedient for a time; but if I dinna ken what all this
is for before the morn by sunket-time, my tongue is nae langer a
tongue, nor my hands worth wearing.'
"The voice of her husband in prayer interrupted this mental soliloquy;
and ardently did he beseech to be preserved from the wiles of the
fiends, and the snares of Satan; 'from witches, ghosts, goblins,
elves, fairies, spunkies, and water-kelpies; from the spectre shallop
of Solway; from spirits visible and invisible; from the Haunted Ships
and their unearthly tenants; from maritime spirits that plotted
against godly men, and fell in love with their wives--'
"'Nay, but His presence be near us!' said his wife in a low tone of
dismay. 'God guide my gudeman's wits: I never heard such a prayer
from human lips before. But, Sandie, my man, Lord's sake, rise:
what fearful light is this?--barn and byre and stable maun be in a
blaze; and Hawkie and Hurley,--Doddie, and Cherrie, and Damson-plum,
will be smoored with reek and scorched with flame.'
"And a flood of light, but not so gross as a common fire, which
ascended to heaven and filled all the court before the house, amply
justified the good wife's suspicions. But to the terrors of fire,
Sandie was as immovable as he was to the imaginary groans of the
barren wife of Laird Laurie; and he held his wife, and threatened
the weight of his right hand--and it was a heavy one--to all who
ventured abroad, or even unbolted the door. The neighing and prancing
of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the
night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the
whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle perishing in
the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice
to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open the door;
and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence
for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh
wound up the dramatic efforts of the night. In the morning, when
Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of
the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into
something like human form, and which skilful people declared would
have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him
by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants.
A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and
she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the
open air. A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture
was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze
that arose was awful to behold; and hissings, and burstings, and
loud cracklings, and strange noises, were heard in the midst of
the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking-cup of
some precious metal was found; and this cup, fashioned no doubt
by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with
fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink
out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, say I, and obedient
wives!"
A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE.
BY ROBERT T. S. LOWELL.
I am a soldier: but my tale, this time, is not of war.
The man of whom the Muse talked to the blind bard of old had grown
wise in wayfaring. He had seen such men and cities as the sun shines
on, and the great wonders of land and sea; and he had visited the
farther countries, whose indwellers, having been once at home in
the green fields and under the sky and roofs of the cheery earth,
were now gone forth and forward into a dim and shadowed land, from
which they found no backward path to these old haunts, and their
old loves:--
Eeri kai nephele kekalummenoi oude pot autous
Eelios phaethon kataderketai aktinessin.
_Od_. XI.
At the Charter-House I learned the story of the King of Ithaca,
and read it for something better than a task; and since, though
I have never seen so many cities as the much-wandering man, nor
grown so wise, yet have heard and seen and remembered, for myself,
words and things from crowded streets and fairs and shows and
wave-washed quays and murmurous market-places, in many lands; and
for his Kimmerion andron demos,--his people wrapt in cloud and
vapor, whom "no glad sun finds with his beams,"--have been borne
along a perilous path through thick mists, among the crashing ice
of the Upper Atlantic, as well as sweltered upon a Southern sea,
and have learned something of men and something of God.
I was in Newfoundland, a lieutenant of Royal Engineers, in Major
Gore's time, and went about a good deal among the people, in surveying
for Government. One of my old friends there was Skipper Benjie
Westham, of Brigus, a shortish, stout, bald man, with a cheerful,
honest face and a kind voice; and he, mending a caplin-seine one
day, told me this story, which I will try to tell after him.
We were upon the high ground, beyond where the church stands now,
and Prudence, the fisherman's daughter, and Ralph Barrows, her
husband, were with Skipper Benjie when he began; and I had an hour
by the watch to spend. The neighborhood, all about, was still; the
only men who were in sight were so far off that we heard nothing
from them; no wind was stirring near us, and a slow sail could be
seen outside. Everything was right for listening and telling.
"I can tell 'ee what I sid[1] myself, Sir," said Skipper Benjie.
"It is n' like a story that's put down in books: it's on'y like
what we planters[2] tells of a winter's night or sech: but it's
_feelun_, mubbe, an' 'ee won't expect much off a man as could n'
never read,--not so much as Bible or Prayer-Book, even."
[Footnote 1: Saw.]
[Footnote 2: Fishermen.]
Skipper Benjie looked just like what he was thought: a true-hearted,
healthy man, a good fisherman and a good seaman. There was no need
of any one's saying it. So I only waited till he went on speaking.
"'T was one time I goed to th' Ice, Sir. I never goed but once, an'
't was a'most the first v'yage ever was, ef 't was n' the _very_
first; an' 't was the last for me, an' worse agen for the rest-part
o' that crew, that never goed no more! 'T was tarrible sad douns
wi' they!"
This preface was accompanied by some preliminary handling of the
caplin-seine, also, to find out the broken places and get them
about him. Ralph and Prudence deftly helped him. Then, making his
story wait, after this opening, he took one hole to begin at in
mending, chose his seat, and drew the seine up to his knee. At the
same time I got nearer to the fellowship of the family by persuading
the planter (who yielded with a pleasant smile) to let me try my
hand at the netting. Prudence quietly took to herself a share of
the work, and Ralph alone was unbusied.
"They calls th' Ice a wicked place,--Sundays an' weekin days all
alike; an' to my seemun it's a cruel, bloody place, jes' so well,--but
not all thinks alike, surely.--Rafe, lad, mubbe 'ee 'd ruther go
down coveways, an' overhaul the punt a bit."
Ralph, who perhaps had stood waiting for the very dismissal that he
now got, assented and left us three. Prudence, to be sure, looked
after him as if she would a good deal rather go with him than stay;
but she stayed, nevertheless, and worked at the seine. I interpreted
to myself Skipper Benjie's sending away of one of his hearers by
supposing that his son-in-law had often heard his tales; but the
planter explained himself:--