Mr. Donald Gunn, the worthy Dominie of Wick, who had agreed to act as a
guide to Girnigo, was, soon after sunrise, at the door, summoning the
party to make ready for the journey; for, although the morning was fair
and bright, he had seen signs in the preceding evening, which made him
apprehensive of another storm. ‘The wind,’ said he to Walkinshaw, who
was the first that obeyed the call, ‘often, at this time of the year,
rises about noon, when the waves jump with such agility against the
rocks, that the most periculous points of view cannot be seen in their
proper elegance, without the risk of breaking your neck, or at least
being washed away, and drowned for ever.’
Walkinshaw, accordingly, upon Gunn’s report, as he called it, roused
the whole party, and they set out for Staxigo, preceded by the Dominie,
who, at every turn of the road, ‘indexed,’ as he said, ‘the most
interesting places.’
During the walk to the village, the weather still continued propitious;
but the schoolmaster observed that a slight occasional breeze from
the north-east, the wildest wind that blows on that coast, rippled
the glassy sea, as it undulated among the rocks below their path; a
sure indication, so early in the morning, of a tempestuous afternoon.
His companions, however, unacquainted with the omens of that ravenous
shore, heard his remark without anxiety.
After breakfasting at Elspeth Heddle’s public in Staxigo on milk,
and ham and eggs, a partan, and haddocks, they went on to the ruins
of Girnigo. The occasional fetching of the wind’s breath, which the
Dominie had noticed in their morning walk, was now become a steady
gale, and the waves began to break against the rugged cliffs and
headlands to the southward, insomuch, that, when the party reached the
peninsula on which the princely ruins of the united castles of Girnigo
and Sinclair are situated, they found several fishermen, belonging to
Wick, who had gone out to sea at daybreak, busily drawing their boats
on shore, in the little port on the south side of the cliffs, under the
walls. The visitors inquired why they were so careful in such bright
and summer weather; but they directed the attention of the Dominie to
long flakes of goat’s beard in the skies, and to the sea-birds flying
towards the upland.
By this time the billows were breaking white and high on the
extremities of Noss-head, and the long grass on the bartisans and
window-sills of the ruins streamed and hissed in the wind. The sun was
bright; but the streaks of hoary vapour that veined the pure azure of
the heavens retained their position and menacing appearance. There
was, however, nothing in the phenomena of the skies to occasion any
apprehension; and the party, without thinking of the immediate horrors
of a storm, sympathised with their guide, as he related to them the
mournful legends of those solitary towers. But, although he dwelt, with
particular emphasis, on the story of the Bishop, whom one of the Earls
of Caithness had ordered his vassals to boil in a cauldron, on account
of his extortions, their sympathy was more sorrowfully awakened by the
woeful fate of the young Master of Caithness, who, in 1572, fell a
victim to the jealousy of his father.
‘George, the Earl at that time,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘with his son
the Master of Caithness, was on the leet of the lovers of Euphemia,
the only daughter of an ancestor of Lord Reay. The lady was young
and beautiful, and naturally preferred the son to the father; but
the Earl was a haughty baron, and, in revenge for his son proving a
more thriving wooer, was desirous of putting him for a season out
of the way--but not by the dirk, as the use and wont of that epoch
of unrule might have justified. Accordingly, one afternoon, as they
were sitting together in the hall at yonder architraved window in the
second story, the wrathful Earl clapped his hands thrice, and in came
three black-aviced kerns in rusted armour, who, by a signal harmonized
between them and Earl George, seized the lawful heir, and dragged him
to a dampish captivity in yon vault, of which you may see the yawning
hungry throat in the chasm between the two principal lumps of the
buildings.’
The learned Dominie then proceeded to relate the sequel of this strange
story--by which it appeared, that, soon after the imprisonment of his
son, the Earl being obliged to render his attendance at the court of
Stirling, left his son in the custody of Murdow Mackean Roy, who,
soon after the departure of his master, was persuaded by the prisoner
to connive at a plan for his escape. But the plot was discovered by
William, the Earl’s second son, who apprehended Murdow, and executed
him in the instant. Immediately after, he went down into the dungeon,
and threatened his brother also with immediate punishment, if he again
attempted to corrupt his keepers. The indignant young nobleman, though
well ironed, sprang upon Lord William, and bruised him with such
violence, that he soon after died. David and Inghrame Sinclair were
then appointed custodiers of the prisoner; but, availing themselves
of the absence of the Earl, and the confusion occasioned by the death
of William, they embezzled the money in the castle, and fled, leaving
their young lord in the dungeon, a prey to the horrors of hunger, of
which he died.
About seven years after, the Earl, while he lamented the fatal
consequences of his own rash rivalry, concealed his thirst for revenge.
Having heard that Inghrame Sinclair, who had retired with his booty to
a distant part of the country, intended to celebrate the marriage of
his daughter by a great feast, he resolved to make the festival the
scene of punishment. Accordingly, with a numerous retinue, he proceeded
to hunt in the neighbourhood of Inghrame Sinclair’s residence; and,
availing himself of the hospitable courtesies of the time, he entered
the banquet-hall, and slew the traitor in the midst of his guests.--
While the visitors in the lee of the ruins were listening to the
Dominie’s legend, the wind had continued to increase and the sea
to rise, and the spray of the waves was springing in stupendous
water-spouts and spires of foam over all the headlands in view to the
south.
‘Aye,’ said the Dominie, pointing out to them the ruins of Clyth
Castle, over which the sea was breaking white in the distance, ‘we
may expect a dry storm, for Clyth has got on its shroud. Look where
it stands like a ghost on the shore. It is a haunted and unhallowed
monument.
‘In olden and ancient times the Laird of Clyth went over to Denmark,
and, being at the court of Elsineur, counterfeited, by the help of a
handsome person, and a fine elocution, the style and renown of the
most prosperous gentleman in all Caithness, by which he beguiled a
Prince of Copenhagen to give him his daughter in marriage, a lady of
rare and surpassing beauty. After his marriage he returned to Scotland
to prepare for the reception of his gorgeous bride; but, when he beheld
his own rude turret amidst the spray of the ocean’s sea, and thought
of the golden palaces and sycamore gardens of Denmark, he was shocked
at the idea of a magnificent princess inhabiting such a bleak abode,
and overwhelmed with the dread of the indignation that his guilt would
excite among her friends. So when the Danish man-of-war, with the lady
on board, was approaching the coast, he ordered lights and fires along
the cliffs of Ulbster, by which the pilots were bewildered, and the
ship was dashed in pieces. The princess and her maids of honour, with
many of the sailors, were drowned; but her body was found, beautiful
in death, with rings on her fingers, and gems in her ears; and she
was interred, as became a high-born lady of her breeding, in the
vault where she now lies, among the ancestors of Sir John Sinclair
of Ulbster; and ever since that time, the Castle of Clyth has been
untenanted, and as often as the wind blows from the north-east, it is
covered with a shroud as if doing penance for the maiden of Denmark.’
Notwithstanding the pedantry in the Dominie’s language in relating
this tradition, the unaffected earnestness with which he expressed
himself, moved the compassion of his auditors, and some of the ladies
shed tears; which the gentlemen observing, Walkinshaw, to raise their
spirits, proposed they should go forward towards Noss-head to view the
dreadful turbulency of the breakers. But, before they had approached
within half a mile of the promontory, the violence of the gale had
increased to such a degree, that they found themselves several times
obliged to take refuge in the hollows of the rocks, unable to withstand
the fury of the wind, and the lavish showers of spray, that rose in
sheets from the waves, and came heavier than rain on the blast.