The Haunted Ships

: Folk-lore And Legends Scotland

"Though my mind's not

Hoodwinked with rustic marvels, I do think

There are more things in the grove, the air, the flood,

Yea, and the charnelled earth, than what wise man,

Who walks so proud as if his form alone

Filled the wide temple of the universe,

Will let a frail mind say. I'd write i' the creed

O' the sagest head alive, that fearful forms,

Holy or reprobate, do p ge men's heels;

That shapes, too horrid for our gaze, stand o'er

The murderer's dust, and for revenge glare up,

Even till the stars weep fire for very pity."



Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its

woodland, its bays, its cliffs, and headlands; and interesting on the

English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the

water, rich pastures, safe harbours, and numerous ships, there still

linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them

connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the curious

these tales afford a rich fund of entertainment, from the many

diversities of the same story; some dry and barren, and stripped of all

the embellishments of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of a

superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they resemble the

inland traditions of the peasants; but many of the oral treasures of the

Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast have the stamp of the Dane and the

Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or faint affinity with the

legitimate legends of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic outline

of several of the most noted of the northern ballads, the adventures and

depredations of the old ocean kings, still lends life to the evening

tale; and, among others, the story of the Haunted Ships is still popular

among the maritime peasantry.



One fine harvest evening I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder,

of Allanbay, and, committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a gentle

wind from the east to waft us at its pleasure towards the Scottish coast.

We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick, and, skirting the land within

a stonecast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the

ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffel ascended

beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the

winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came softened into something

like music over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and

wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of the place.

The moon glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of the pines of

Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered down on wood and

headland and bay the twinkling beams of a thousand stars, rendering every

object visible. The tide, too, was coming with that swift and silent

swell observable when the wind is gentle; the woody curves along the land

were filling with the flood, till it touched the green branches of the

drooping trees; while in the centre current the roll and the plunge of a

thousand pellocks told to the experienced fisherman that salmon were

abundant.



As we looked, we saw an old man emerging from a path that wound to the

shore through a grove of doddered hazel; he carried a halve-net on his

back, while behind him came a girl, bearing a small harpoon, with which

the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey. The senior

seated himself on a large grey stone, which overlooked the bay, laid

aside his bonnet, and submitted his bosom and neck to the refreshing sea

breeze, and, taking his harpoon from his attendant, sat with the gravity

and composure of a spirit of the flood, with his ministering nymph behind

him. We pushed our shallop to the shore, and soon stood at their side.



"This is old Mark Macmoran the mariner, with his granddaughter Barbara,"

said Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear in it; "he

knows every creek and cavern and quicksand in Solway; has seen the

Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark, and at

every bark has seen a ship sink; and he has seen, too, the Haunted Ships

in full sail; and, if all tales be true, he has sailed in them

himself;--he's an awful person."



Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something of the

superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that common rumour

had made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to maintain her

intercourse with the invisible world. His hair, which seemed to have

refused all intercourse with the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders; a

kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round his

neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments as far as a

pair of hose, darned with yarn of all conceivable colours, and a pair of

shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original structure

remained, and clasped on his feet with two massy silver buckles. If the

dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his granddaughter was

gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round the

bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric,

which, almost touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy

feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely seemed to touch the

grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament which woman seeks

much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than

adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which the

small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not

trusted to a handsome shape and a sylph-like air for young Barbara's

influence over the heart of man, but had bestowed a pair of large bright

blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and gentleness and

joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint Bees acknowledged

their power, and sang songs about the bonnie lass of Mark Macmoran. She

stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her hand, and seemed

not dissatisfied with the glances I bestowed on her from time to time,

and which I held more than requited by a single glance of those eyes

which retained so many capricious hearts in subjection.



The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our

feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines,

and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops

and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of

white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the

mariner, who, seated motionless on his grey stone, kept his eye fixed on

the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow, in which I

saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he

looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the

black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the

quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and

desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch

by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a

long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element

received.



The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his

hands together, and said: "Blessed be the tide that will break over and

bury ye for ever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers,

has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil

were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from

you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its

shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye!

Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined

ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye

here! Seven times have ye put my life in peril, three fair sons have ye

swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and now, even now, your

waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm limbs

in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam,

and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for

another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine."



Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young

man appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his halve-net

in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose and shouted, and

waved him back from a place which, to a person unacquainted with the

dangers of the bay, real and superstitious, seemed sufficiently perilous;

his granddaughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her white

hands; but the more they strove, the faster advanced the peasant, till he

stood to his middle in the water, while the tide increased every moment

in depth and strength. "Andrew, Andrew," cried the young woman, in a

voice quavering with emotion, "turn, turn, I tell you! O the Ships, the

Haunted Ships!" But the appearance of a fine run of fish had more

influence with the peasant than the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward

he dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne off his feet, and

mingled like foam with the water, and hurried towards the fatal eddies

which whirled and roared round the sunken ships. But he was a powerful

young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of the projecting ribs

of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair,

uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the prodigious rush

of the current.



From a shealing of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the

spot where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning on

a crutch. "I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the chield

be drowning that he skirls sae uncannily?" said the old woman, seating

herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water. "Ou, ay," she

continued, "he's doomed, he's doomed; heart and hand can never save him;

boats, ropes, and man's strength and wit, all vain! vain!--he's doomed,



he's doomed!"



By this time I had thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly

by Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart superstition

had great power, and with one push from the shore, and some exertion in

sculling, we came within a quoitcast of the unfortunate fisherman. He

stayed not to profit by our aid; for, when he perceived us near, he

uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded towards us through the

agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on

the surface of the water, but the eddying current sucked him down; and

all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood, and

clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on the

vacant sea before us; but a breathing-time before, a human being, full of

youth and strength and hope, was there; his cries were still ringing in

my ears, and echoing in the woods; and now nothing was seen or heard save

the turbulent expanse of water, and the sound of its chafing on the

shores. We pushed back our shallop, and resumed our station on the cliff

beside the old mariner and his descendant.



"Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly," said Mark, "in

attempting to save the doomed? Whoso touches those infernal ships never

survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them at

midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former

beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud! Then

is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin windows,

and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamour of tongues, and the

infernal whoop and halloo and song, ringing far and wide. Woe to the man

who comes nigh them!"



To all this my Allanbay companion listened with a breathless attention. I

felt something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed I

had seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner, "How

and when came these Haunted Ships there? To me they seem but the

melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to warn

people to shun destruction than entice and delude them to it."



"And so," said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in it

than of mirth; "and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks seem

to the eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem: that

water, a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man, which seems so

smooth and so dimpling and so gentle, has swallowed up a human soul even

now; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level, is a faithless

quicksand, out of which none escape. Things are otherwise than they

seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow to live; had you

seen the storms, and braved the perils, and endured the distresses which

have befallen me; had you sat gazing out on the dreary ocean at midnight

on a haunted coast; had you seen comrade after comrade, brother after

brother, and son after son, swept away by the merciless ocean from your

very side; had you seen the shapes of friends, doomed to the wave and the

quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams and visions of the night, then

would your mind have been prepared for crediting the maritime legends of

mariners; and the two haunted Danish ships would have had their terrors

for you, as they have for all who sojourn on this coast.



"Of the time and the cause of their destruction," continued the old man,

"I know nothing certain; they have stood as you have seen them for

uncounted time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast

have gone to pieces, and rotted and sunk away in a few years, these two

haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar

or board been displaced. Maritime legend says that two ships of Denmark

having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and dolor on

the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock,

and were wrecked in this bonnie bay, as a sign to seamen to be gentle and

devout. The night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon

mildness and beauty: the sun had newly set; the moon came brighter and

brighter out; and the reapers, laying their sickles at the root of the

standing corn, stood on rock and bank, looking at the increasing

magnitude of the waters, for sea and land were visible from Saint Bees to

Barnhourie. The sails of two vessels were soon seen bent for the

Scottish coast; and, with a speed outrunning the swiftest ship, they

approached the dangerous quicksands and headland of Borranpoint. On the

deck of the foremost ship not a living soul was seen, or shape, unless

something in darkness and form, resembling a human shadow could be called

a shape, which flitted from extremity to extremity of the ship, with the

appearance of trimming the sails, and directing the vessel's course. But

the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes; the captain

and mate, and sailor and cabin-boy, all seemed there; and from them the

sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast

which they skirted along was one of extreme danger, and the reapers

shouted to warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this friendly

counsel no notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which

sat on the prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and melancholy

howl. The deep sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career

of these desperate navigators; but they passed, with the celerity of

water-fowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked many pretty ships.



"Old men shook their heads and departed, saying, 'We have seen 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 cockel-shell 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 neighbouring parish,

who united in his own person his father's lack of devotion with his

mother's love of liquor. 'Whist!--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.

Bonnily 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 towards 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 Hallowmas 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 tryst 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 couldna 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 good-man 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 Hallowmas 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 dreamlike that the whole might pass for

a vision of the night,--I saw the form of a man; his plaid was grey, his

face was grey; 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 for

ever 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 wasna that a bonnie and fearful sight

to see beneath the light of the Hallowmas moon? But the tale is far frae

finished, for mariners say that once a year, on a certain night, if ye

stand on the Borran Point, 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 keyhole

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 cannily 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 uncanny 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 hadna 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 old Moll

the present of a new kirtle and a stone of cheese."



"O father!" said his granddaughter 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 canny 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

Arbigland-bank: 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

wedded 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 peebles was heard for sundry miles. All at once light

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

labour.



"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, good-wife,

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, Sandy; and hadna 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 Damsonplum 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!"