me there were lots of Anklebones in Norman times about Fifeshire, I had
to pull him back with a jerk to his ghost at the Castle.
“Very well, sir, I was in the Castle one evening, and I was sitting
on the parapet of the old wall when I saw a head appearing up the old
broken steps on the east side of the Castle that once led down to the
great dining hall. I knew no one could _now_ come up that way without a
ladder from the sea beach, and when the figure got to the level ground
it came right through the iron railing just as if no obstruction were
there. I stared hard and watched the advancing figure. It looked like a
woman. I had heard of the Cardinal’s ghost, and wondered if it could be
his Eminence himself. Nearer and nearer it came, and although it was a
gusty evening, I noticed the flowing garments of the approaching figure
were quite still and unruffled by the wind. It was like a moving statue.
As it passed me slowly a few yards away, I saw they were not the robes of
a Cardinal, but those of an Archbishop. I am a Churchman, and know the
garments quite well. I saw all his vestments clearly, and I shall never
forget the pale, ashen set face, and the thin determined mouth. Then I
noticed one _very very_ strange thing—the statuesque tall figure had a
thick rope round the neck, and the end of the rope was trailing along the
grass behind it, but there was no sound whatever. On it went and began to
climb the stairs to the upper apartments. I tried to follow, but could
not move for a bit. I felt as if I was mesmerised or paralysed. I was all
in a cold sweat, too, and I was glad to get away from the Castle at last
and hurry home. I haven’t gone so fast for many years. When I went next
day to Lausdree I made a clean breast of the whole affair to Master.
“‘Would you know him again?’ he asked me.
“‘Aye,’ I replied, ‘I would know that face and figure among a thousand.’
“‘Come to the study,’ said the master, ‘and I will show you some
pictures.’
“We went, and I looked over a number of them. At last I came to one that
fairly transfixed me. There was no mistaking the face. Before me was the
picture of the spectre I had seen the previous night in the ruined Castle
of Saint Andrews.
“‘Well, Anklebone,’ said the master, ‘this is _really wonderful_, and you
actually saw the rope round the neck?’
“‘I did,’ I said, ‘as I am a living man, but who is it? It is not the
Cardinal?’
“‘No,’ said the master very gravely, ‘_this man_ was publicly hanged by
his enemies on a gibbet at the Market Cross of Stirling on April 1st,
1571.’
“‘But who was he?’ I asked, imploringly.
“‘The man, or ghost, you saw,’ said master, ‘was Archbishop John Hamilton
of St Andrews—in his own Castle grounds where he once reigned supreme.’”
I said farewell to Mr Anklebone, and as I thought over his extraordinary
story journeying home in the train, I could not help repeating over and
over again to myself that very curious name that seemed to rhyme with the
motion of the train—Concrikketty Anklebone.
[Illustration]
The Smothered Piper of the West Cliffs.
“_Hush! hush! hush! Here comes the Bogie Man._”
This was shouted out to me very loudly by a cheery golfing “Johnny,” as I
entered the merry smoking-room of the old ’Varsity Golf Club at Coldham
Common, Cambridge, some years ago. “Draw in your armchair, light a cigar
or a pipe, and tell us all [many celebrated actors were present] some
of those wonderful bogie stories about dear St Andrews. It is the bogie
time of the year, and you must remember I played the ‘Bogie Man’ for you
in one of your big burlesques at St Andrews and Cupar some years ago, so
fire away with the bogies, please, and be quick.”
Then I reeled off a big lot of yarns: of the ghost, Thomas Plater, who
murdered Prior Robert of Montrose on the dormitory staircase before
vespers; of the nigger in a Fifeshire house, who is invisible himself,
but maps out his bare footmarks on the floor of the painted gallery; of
Sharpe’s coach, which, being heard, betokens a death; of haunted old
Balcomie ruined castle; of the murdered pedlar in our own South Street,
who sweeps down with a chilly hand the cheeks of invaders to his haunted
cellar; of the ghost that appeared in the house of Archbishop Ross,
mentioned in Lyon’s History; and of the terrible ghost in the Novum
Hospitium, which so alarmed people that its dwelling had to be pulled
down, and only a fragment of the building now remains. But they wanted to
hear the tale of the “Ghostly Piper of the West Cliffs”; so I told them
the legend as I had heard it years ago.
It seems that in the old days no houses existed on the Cliffs from the
old Castle of Hamilton to the modern monument near the Witch Hill. It was
all meadow land, much used for the grazing of cattle and sheep, and also
much frequented as a playground for bygone children. On and over the face
of the cliffs, slightly to the westward of Butts Wynd, existed then the
entrance to a fearsome cave, or old ecclesiastical passage, which was a
terror to many, and most people shunned it. It had many names, among them
the “Jingling Cove,” “The Jingling Man’s Hole,” “John’s Coal Hole,” and
later “The Piper’s Cave, or Grave.” A few of the oldest inhabitants still
remember it. A few knew a portion of it; none dared venture beyond this
well-known portion. Like the interior of an old ice-house, it was dark,
chilly, and clammy; its walls ran with cold sweat. It was partly natural,
but mostly artificial—a most dark, creepy, and fearsome place.
In a description which I got of it many years ago, and which appeared
in the _St Andrews Citizen_, I learn that “the opening of this cliff
passage was small and triangular; it was situated on a projecting ledge
of rock, and it was high enough, after entering, to enable a full-sized
man to stand upright. From the opening it was a steep incline down for
a distance of 49 feet, thereafter it proceeded in a level direction
for over 70 feet, when it descended into a chamber. At the further end
of this chamber were two, if not more, passages branching off from it.
Between the passages was cut out in the rock a Latin cross.” This would
seem to point to an ecclesiastical connection, and had nothing whatever
to do with the more modern smugglers’ cave near the ladies’ bathing place.
But enough of description. In bygone days, in a small cottage, little
better than a hovel, situated in Argyle, lived an old dame named Goodman.
She occupied one room, and her son and his young wife tenanted the other
little chamber. He was a merry, dare-devil, happy-go-lucky lad, and he
was famed as one of the best players on the bagpipes in all Fife; he
would have pleased even Maggie Lauder. Of nights at all hours he would
make the old grass-grown streets lively with his music. “Jock the Piper,”
was a favourite among both young and old. He was much interested in the
tale of the old West Cliff cave, and took a bet on with some cronies
that on a New Year’s night he would investigate the mysteries of the
place, and play his pipes up it as far as he could go. His old mother,
his wife, and many of his friends tried hard to dissuade him from doing
so foolish and so foolhardy a thing; but he remained obdurate, and firmly
stuck to his bet. On a dark New Year’s night he started up the mysterious
cavern with his pipes playing merrily; and they were heard, it is said,
passing beneath Market Street, then they died away. They suddenly ceased,
and were never more heard. He and his well-known pipes were never seen
again.
Somewhere beneath St Andrews lies the whitened bones of that bygone piper
lad, with his famous pipes beside him. Attempts were made to find him,
but without avail; no one, not even the bravest, dared to venture into
that passage full of damp foul air. His mother and wife were distracted,
and the young wife used to sit for hours at the mouth of that death-trap
cave. Finally, her mind gave way, and she used to wander at all hours
down to the mouth of the cave where her husband had vanished. The
following New Year’s night she left the little cottage in Argyle, and
putting a shawl over her wasted shoulders, turned to the old woman and
said, “I’m going to my Jock.” Morning came, but she never returned home.
She had, indeed, gone to her lost “Jock.” For years after, the small
crouching figure of a woman could be seen on moonlight nights perched on
the rock balcony of the fatal cave, dim, shadowy, and transparent. Wild
shrieks and sounds of weird pipe music were constantly heard coming from
out of that entrance.
In after years, when the houses were built, the mouth of this place was
either built or covered up, and its memory only remains to us.
But what of “Piper Jock?” He, it is said, still walks the edge of the old
cliffs; and his presence is heralded by an icy breath of cold air, and
ill be it for anyone who meets or sees his phantom form or hears his pipe
music. He seems to have the same effect as the ghost of “Nell Cook” in
the dark entry at Canterbury, mentioned in the “Ingoldsby Legends,” from
which I must quote a few verses—
“And tho’ two hundred years have flown,
Nell Cook doth still pursue
Her weary walk, and they who cross her path
The deed may rue.
Her fatal breath is fell as death!
The simoon’s blast is not
More dire (a wind in Africa
That blows uncommon hot).
But all unlike the simoon’s blast,
Her breath is deadly cold,
Delivering quivering, shivering shocks
Upon both young and old.
And whoso in the entry dark
Doth feel that fatal breath,
He ever dies within the year
Some dire untimely death.”
So it is with him who meets “Piper Jock.”
“By Jove,” interrupted the golfing “Johnny,” “has anyone seen him lately?”
“I only know of one man,” I said, “who told me that one awful night in a
heavy thunderstorm he had heard wild pipe music, and seen the figure of
a curiously dressed piper walking along the cliff edge, _where no mortal
could walk_, at a furious speed.”
“What do you think of it all?” asked my golfing friend.
“I don’t know, I’m sure; I am not receptive and don’t see ghosts, but if
I could only find _now_ the mouth of that place, I bet another ‘Jock’ and
I would get along it and find out the whereabouts of ‘Jock the Piper’ and
his poor little wife. Here is my hansom. Good night, don’t forget the
Piper.”
And they haven’t.
The Beautiful White Lady of the Haunted Tower.
“How very, very lovely she was to be sure!”
“Of whom are you speaking?” I asked. “Of some of the Orchid or Veronique
people, or of some of your own company? I did not know you were hard
hit old chap.” I was sitting in the smoking-room of the Great Northern
Hotel, King’s Cross, talking to an old friend, an Oxford man, but now
the manager of a big theatrical company, when he suddenly made the above
remark.
“No, no! Of none of those people,” he replied; “but our talking of St
Andrews reminded me of a ghost, a phantom, or a spectre—call it what you
choose—I saw in that ancient city several years ago—no horrid bogie, but
a very lovely girl, indeed.”
“By Jove,” I said, “tell me about it; I want a new ghost tale very badly
indeed. I know a lot of them, but perhaps this is something new and
spicy.”
“I am sure I do not know if it be new,” he replied. “I have never seen
anything spectral before or since, but I saw that lovely woman three
different times. It must be fully ten years ago. I saw her twice on the
Scores and once in an old house.”
“Well, I must really hear all about it,” I said. “Please fire away.”
“All right, all right!” he said. “Now for her _first_ appearance. I was
living in St Andrews at the time. It must have been the end of January
or beginning of February, and I was strolling along to the Kirkhill
after dinner and enjoying the fine evening and the keen sea breeze, and
thinking about the old, old days of the Castle and Cathedral, of Beaton’s
ghost, and many other queer tales, when a female figure glided past me.
She was in a long, flowing white dress, and had her beautiful dark hair
hanging down past her waist. I was very much astonished to see a girl
dressed in such a manner wandering about alone at such an hour, and I
followed her along for several yards, when lo! just after she had passed
the turret light she completely vanished near the square tower, which I
was afterwards informed was known as the ‘Haunted Tower.’ I hunted all
round the place carefully, but saw nothing more that night. Queer, wasn’t
it?”
“Certainly it was,” I remarked; “but I know dozens of weird stories
connected with that old tower. But what more have you to tell me?”
“Well,” he continued, “as you may imagine, the whole affair worried and
puzzled me considerably, but it was gradually vanishing from my mind
when near the same place I saw her again. I had my sister with me this
time, and we both can swear to it. It was a lovely night with a faint
moon, and as the white lady swept past quite silently we saw the soft
trailing dress and the long, black wavy hair. There was something like a
rosary hanging from her waist, and a cross or a locket hanging round her
throat. As she passed she turned her head towards us, and we both noticed
her beautiful features, especially her brilliant eyes. She vanished, as
before, near that old tower. My sister was so awfully frightened that I
had to hurry her off home. We were both absolutely convinced we had seen
a being not of this world—a face never to be forgotten.”
“How strange,” I said. “You know, several people saw a girl in that
built-up old turret lying in her coffin. A former priest of the Episcopal
Church here saw some masons repairing the wall of that tower, and their
chisel fell into the turret through a chink. On removing a stone, they
came upon a chamber within, and they saw a girl dressed in white, with
long hair, lying in a coffin, wanting the lid. The hole was built up
again at once. I know, and have often talked to persons who saw her
there. One of them was a mason employed at the work. The doorway of the
tower is opened up now, and a grill put in, but there is no sign of the
girl. Queer stories arose. Some said it was the remains of Princess
Muren, daughter of Constantine. Others said it was the embalmed body of
some sweet girl Saint concealed there in times of trouble, and so on; but
finish your story.”
“I have little more to tell,” he answered. “Some months afterwards I was
a guest in an old house in Fifeshire, and was given the turret room. On
the second night I went to bed early, as I had been at golf all day and
felt awfully dead beat. I must have fallen asleep suddenly, as I left
my candle burning on the table. All of a sudden I woke up with a start
to find the now familiar figure of the ‘White Lady’ at the foot of my
bed. She was gazing at me intently. When I sat up she glided away behind
the screen at the door. I jumped up, put on my dressing-gown, seized
the candle, and made for the door. The lady was gone, and the door was
as I left it when I went to bed—_locked_. I unlocked it, flung it open,
and looked into the passage. There she was, I saw the white dress, the
splendid hair, the rosary, and the gold locket quite plainly. She turned
her lovely face to me and smiled a sweet, pathetic smile; gently raised
her hand, and floated away towards the picture gallery. Now for the end.
Next day my kind hostess took me through the old gallery. I saw pictures
of all ages, sorts, and sizes; but imagine my amazement when I saw ‘_The
White Lady_’—the same white dress, the lovely sweet face and splendid
eyes, the rosary, and a locket, which I now saw had on it the arms of
Queen Mary and Lord Darnley. ‘Who on earth is that?’ I asked.
“‘You seem interested in that painting,’ said Mrs ⸺. ‘Well, that is a
portrait of one of the lovely Mary Stuart’s Maries. She was madly in
love with Castelar, the French minstrel, and after he was beheaded at St
Andrews she became a nun, and it is said died of grief in her nunnery.’
“That is all, old boy,” he said, “and it is late. I think it seems right;
_that_ girl I and my sister saw _must_ have been the spirit of Marie ⸺;
and perhaps it was she who was the occupant of that haunted tower—who
knows? but I shall never, never see such a divinely beautiful face on
this earth again.”
Concerning More Appearances of the White Lady.
I had been invited, and was sitting at tea with a very dear old lady
friend of mine not long ago. It may seem strange, but tea is, I consider,
an extra and an unnecessary meal. It does not appeal to me in the least,
and only spoils one’s dinner and digestion. The reason I went to tea was
because in her note to me the lady mentioned that she had read my book
of ghost tales, and that she was interested in ghosts in general and St
Andrews ghosts in particular, and that she knew lots of such stories in
the days of her girlhood in St Andrews, now about 85 years ago. That is
why I went to eat cakes with sugar, hot buttered toast, and drink tea as
black as senna or a black draught. She had also informed me in the note
that she could tell me a lot about the Haunted Tower and the Beautiful
White Lady.
It took some time to get her to that point. She would talk about
Archbishop Sharpe and his haunted house in the Pends Road, of the ghost
seen by Archbishop Ross, of my friend the Veiled Nun, of the Cathedral
and Mr John Knox, of Hungus, King of the Picts, of Constantine, Thomas
Plater, and various others. She told me a long tale of the Rainham Ghost
in Norfolk, known as “The Brown Lady of Rainham,” whom her father and
Captain Marryat both saw, and so on.
At last we got near the subject I wished information on.
“In my young days,” she said, “St Andrews was quite a wee bit place with
grass-grown streets, red-tiled houses, outside stairs, queer narrow
wynds, not over clean, only a few lights at night—here and there, an
old bowet or oil lamp hanging at street corners. Every one believed in
Sharpe’s Phantom Coach in those good old days.”
“Did you ever see it?” I queried.
“No,” she said, “but I have heard it rumble past, and I know those who
have seen it, and many other things too.”
“But tell me about the White Lady, please,” I said.
“I will. Few people in those days cared to pass that haunted tower after
nightfall. If they did they ran past it and also the Castle. Those
new-fangled incandescent gas lamps have spoiled it all now. The White
Lady was one of the _Maries_, one of the maids of honour to poor martyred
Mary of Scotland, they said then. She was madly in love with the French
poet and minstrel, ‘Castelar,’ and he was hopelessly in love, like many
others, with Marie’s lovely mistress, ‘the Queen of Scots.’”
“Was she supposed to be the girl seen in the built-up haunted tower?” I
asked.
“That I really can’t say,” she said. “There was a story often told in
the old days that a beautiful embalmed girl in white lay in that tower,
and it was there and near the Castle that she used to appear to the
people. You know poor Castelar, the handsome minstrel, said and did some
stupid things, and was beheaded at the Castle, and was probably buried
near there. Get me from that shelf Whyte Melville’s novel, ‘The Queen’s
Maries.’”
I did as she bade me.
“Well, you will see there that the night before Castelar was to be
beheaded kind Queen Mary sent one of her Maries, the one who loved
Castelar, at her own special request to the Castle with her ring to
offer him a pardon if he left this country for ever. This Marie did see
Castelar, showed him the Queen’s ring, and pleaded with him to comply,
but he refused—he preferred death to banishment from his beloved Queen’s
Court, and the fair messenger left him _obstinate_ in his dungeon. This
faithful Marie paced up and down all that night before the Castle; then
at dawn came the sound of a gun or culverin, a wreath of smoke floated
out to sea, and Castelar was gone. Whyte Melville says she did not
start, she did not shriek, nor faint, nor quiver, but she threw her hood
back and looked wildly upward, gasping for air. Then as the rising sun
shone on her bare head, Marie’s raven hair was all streaked and patched
with grey. When Mary Stuart fled to England, this faithful Marie, now
no more needed, became a nun in St Andrews. Look at page 371 of Whyte
Melville’s book,” she said. So I read—“It was an early harvest that year
in Scotland, but e’er the barley was white, Marie had done with nuns and
nunneries, vows and ceremonies, withered hopes and mortal sorrows, and
had gone to that place where the weary heart can alone find the rest it
had so longed for at last.”
The pathetic and the comic often go together. Just at this interesting
point a cat sprang suddenly up and upset a cup of tea in the lap of my
genial hostess. This created a diversion. Old ladies are apt to wander,
which is annoying. She got clean away from her subject for a bit. She
asked me if I knew Captain Robert Marshall, who wrote plays and “The
Haunted Mayor.” I said I knew Bob well, and that he was an old Madras
College boy.
She then wanted to know if I knew how to pronounce the name of Mr
Travis’s American putter, and if Mr Low or I had ever tried it. She also
wanted to know if I knew anything of the new patent clock worked on
gramophone principles which shouted the hours instead of striking them.
Having answered all these queries to her satisfaction, and taken another
cup of senna—I mean tea—I got her back to the White Lady.
“Oh, yes, my dear,” she said, “I saw her, I and some friends. _A lot of
us_ had been out at Kinkell Braes one afternoon and stayed there long
past the time allowed us. It was almost dark, and we scuttled up the brae
from the Harbour rather frightened. Just near the turret light we saw
the lady gliding along the top of the old Abbey wall. She was robed in
a grey white dress with a veil over her head. She had raven black hair,
and a string of beads hanging from her waist. We all huddled together,
with our eyes and mouths wide open, and watched the figure. ‘It’s a
girl sleep-walking,’ I murmured. ‘It’s a bride,’ whispered another.
‘Oh! she’ll fall,’ said a little boy, grasping my arm. But she did not.
She went inside the parapet wall at the Haunted Tower and vanished
completely. ‘It’s a ghost; it’s the White Lady,’ we all shrieked, and
ran off trembling home. My sister also saw her on one of the turrets in
the Abbey wall, where she was seen by several people. Some months after,
as I was doing my hair before my looking-glass, the same face looked over
my shoulder, and I fainted. I have always felt an _eerie_ feeling about
a looking-glass ever since, even now, old woman as I am. Her lovely face
is one never, never to be forgotten, having once seen it, but your new
fashioned lamps have altered everything.”
“And what do you think about it now?” I asked her.
“I have told you all I know. The Lady used to be seen oftenest between
the Castle and that old turret. Perhaps she came to look at the last
resting-place of her much loved and wayward minstrel, Castelar. Maybe
she came to revisit the favourite haunts of her beloved girl Queen—truly
called the Queen of the Roses; but to my dying day I shall never forget
that face, that lovely, pathetic face I saw years ago, and which may
still be seen by some. What! must you really go now; won’t you have
another cup of tea? Very well, good bye.”
As I wended my way Clubwards I could not but think of the strange tale I
had just heard and of Castelar’s sad end, and I could not help wondering
if I should ever be favoured with a sight of this beautiful White Lady.
[Illustration]
A Spiritualistic Seance.
The M’Whiskers, whom I met at Oban, were very jolly old people. Papa
M’Whisker had made a big fortune teaplanting in Ceylon, and had bought,
and added to Dramdotty Castle in the far, far north. They were perfectly
full of ghosts and spiritualism, and at Dramdotty they seemed to have a
ghost for every day in the week. On Monday there was the “Spotted Nun,”
on Tuesday the “Floating Infant,” on Wednesday the “Headless Dwarf,”
on Thursday the “Vanishing Nigger,” on Friday the “Burnt Lady,” and on
Saturday the “Human Balloon,” and on Sunday the whole lot attended on
them, and, I daresay, went to the kirk with them.