Ghost

by Louise Welsh

  Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full history; and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have told it you – neither more nor less.

  Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very composedly: “Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honor of many a noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep yoursell out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a red-hot iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as scaulding your fingers wi’ a red-hot chanter. But yet it may be true, Steenie; and if the money cast up, I shall not know what to think of it. But where shall we find the Cat’s Cradle? There are cats enough about the old house, but I think they kitten without the ceremony of bed or cradle.”

  “We were best ask Hutcheon,” said my gudesire; “he kens a’ the odd corners about as weel as – another serving man that is now gane, and that I wad not like to name.”

  Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them that a ruinous turret lang disused, next to the clock house, only accessible by a ladder, for the opening was on the outside, above the battlements, was called of old the Cat’s Cradle.

  “There will I go immediately,” said Sir John; and he took – with what purpose Heaven kens – one of his father’s pistols from the hall table, where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened to the battlements.

  It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail, and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered at the turret door, where his body stopped the only little light that was in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi’ a vengeance, maist dang him back ower – bang! gaed the knight’s pistol, and Hutcheon, that held the ladder, and my gudesire, that stood beside him, hears a loud skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape down to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should come up and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneugh, and mony orra thing besides, that had been missing for mony a day. And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into the dining-parlor, and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him, and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he would hereafter be a good master to him, to make amends.

  “And now, Steenie,” said Sir John, “although this vision of yours tends, on the whole, to my father’s credit as an honest man, that he should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad constructions upon it concerning his soul’s health. So, I think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taen ower-muckle brandy to be very certain about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt” – his hand shook while he held it out – “it’s but a queer kind of document, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly in the fire.”

  “Od, but for as queer as it is, it’s a’ the voucher I have for my rent,” said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of Sir Robert’s discharge.

  “I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental book, and give you a discharge under my own hand,” said Sir John, “and that on the spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you shall sit, from this time downward, at an easier rent.”

  “Mony thanks to your honor,” said Steenie, who saw easily in what corner the wind was; “doubtless I will be conformable to all your honor’s commands; only I would willingly speak wi’ some powerful minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of soumons of appointment whilk your honor’s father –…”

  “Do not call the phantom my father!” said Sir John, interrupting him.

  “Well, then, the thing that was so like him,” said my gudesire; “he spoke of my coming back to see him this time twelvemonth, and it’s a weight on my conscience.”

  “Aweel, then,” said Sir John, “if you be so much distressed in mind, you may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the honor of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage from me.”

  Wi’ that, my father readily agreed that the receipt should be burned; and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi’ a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.

  My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the minister, when he had heard the story, said it was his real opinion that, though my gudesire had gane very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet as he had refused the devil’s arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink), and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped that, if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang forswore baith the pipes and the brandy – it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle or drink usquebaugh or tippenny.

  Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell; and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye’ll no hinder some to thread that it was nane o’ the auld Enemy that Dougal and Hutcheon saw in the laird’s room, but only that wanchancie creature the major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the laird’s whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if not better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister’s wife, after Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the molds. And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgment or memory – at least nothing to speak of – was obliged to tell the real narrative to his freends, for the credit of his good name. He might else have been charged for a warlock.

  The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor finished his long narrative with this moral: “You see, birkie, it is nae chancy thing to tak’ a stranger traveler for a guide when you are in an uncouth land.”

  “I should not have made that inference,” said I. “Your grandfather’s adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and distress; and fortunate for his landlord.”

  “Aye, but they had baith to sup the sauce o’ ’t sooner or later,” said Wandering Willie; “what was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died before he was much over threescore; and it was just like of a moment’s illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fullness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his plow, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir, sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at first; for Sir Regwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John and the oye of auld Sir Robert, and, wae ’s me! the last of the honorable house, took the farm aff our hands, and brought me into his household to have care of me. My head never settled since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will I have the heart to play the night. Look out, my gentle chap,” he resumed, in a different tone; “ye should see the lights at Brokenburn Glen by this time.”

  THE MYSTERIOUS BRIDE

  James Hogg

  James Hogg (1770–1835) was born in Ettrick. His mother was a collector of Scottish ballads and his grandfather Will o’ Phawhope was reputed to be the last man in the Borders to have spoken with the fairies. Hogg was apprenticed at the age of seven as a cowherd, for a half-yearly wage of a ewe-lamb and a pair of shoes. He wrote in Scots and English. Hogg’s novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, is a classic of Scottish literature.

  A great number of people now-a-days are beginning broadly to insinuate that there are no such things as ghosts, or spiritual beings visible to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned renegade, and, with his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow’s toddy, is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most impa
lpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heavenmend their wits! Before they had ventured to assert such things, Iwish they had been where I have often been; or, in particular, where the Laird of Birkendelly was on St. Lawrence’s Eve, in the year 1777, and sundry times subsequent to that.

  Be it known, then, to every reader of this relation of facts that happened in my own remembrance, that the road from Birkendelly to the great muckle village of Balmawhapple, (commonly called the muckle town, in opposition to the little town that stood on the other side of the burn) – that road, I say, lay between two thorn hedges, so well kept by the Laird’s hedger, so close, and so high, that a rabbit could not have escaped from the highway into any of the adjoining fields. Along this road was the Laird riding on the Eve of St. Lawrence, in a careless, indifferent manner, with his hat to one side, and his cane dancing a hornpipe on the curtch of the saddle before him. He was, moreover, chanting a song to himself, and I have heard people tell what song it was too. There was once a certain, or rather uncertain, bard, ycleped Robert Burns, who made a number of good songs; but this that the Laird sang was an amorous song of great antiquity, which, like all the said bard’s best songs, was sung one hundred and fifty years before he was born. It began thus:

  “I am the Laird of Windy-wa’s,

  I cam nae here without a cause,

  An’ I hae gotten forty fa’s

  In coming o’er the knowe, joe!

  The night it is baith wind and weet;

  The morn it will be snaw and sleet;

  My shoon are frozen to my feet;

  O, rise an’ let me in, joe!

  Let me in this ae night,” etc.

  This song was the Laird singing, while, at the same time, he was smudging and laughing at the catastrophe, when, ere ever aware, he beheld, a short way before him, an uncommonly elegant and beautiful girl walking in the same direction with him. “Aye,” said the Laird to himself, “here is something very attractive indeed! Where the deuce can she have sprung from? She must have risen out of the earth, for I never saw her till this breath. Well, I declare I have not seen such a female figure – I wish I had such an assignation with her as the Laird of Windy-wa’s had with his sweetheart.”

  As the Laird was half-thinking, half-speaking this to himself, the enchanting creature looked back at him with a motion of intelligence that she knew what he was half-saying, half-thinking, and then vanished over the summit of the rising ground before him, called the Birky Brow. “Aye, go your ways!” said the Laird; “I see by you, you’ll not be very hard to overtake. You cannot get off the road, and I’ll have a chat with you before you make the Deer’s Den.”

  The Laird jogged on. He did not sing the “Laird of Windy-wa’s” any more, for he felt a sort of stifling about his heart; but he often repeated to himself, “She’s a very fine woman! – a very fine woman indeed! – and to be walking here by herself! I cannot comprehend it.”

  When he reached the summit of the Birky Brow he did not see her, although he had a longer view of the road than before. He thought this very singular, and began to suspect that she wanted to escape him, although apparently rather lingering on him before. “I shall have another look at her, however,” thought the Laird; and off he set at a flying trot. No. He came first to one turn, then another. There was nothing of the young lady to be seen. “Unless she take wings and fly away, I shall be up with her,” quoth the Laird, and off he set at the full gallop.

  In the middle of his career he met with Mr. M’Murdie, of Aulton, who hailed him with, “Hilloa! Birkendelly! where the deuce are you flying at that rate?”

  “I was riding after a woman,” said the Laird, with great simplicity, reining in his steed.

  “Then I am sure no woman on earth can long escape you, unless she be in an air balloon.”

  “I don’t know that. Is she far gone?”

  “In which way do you mean?”

  “In this.”

  “Aha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee!” nichered M’Murdie, misconstruing the Laird’s meaning.

  “What do you laugh at, my dear sir? Do you know her, then?”

  “Ho-ho-ho! Hee-hee-hee! How should I, or how can I, know her, Birkendelly, unless you inform me who she is?”

  “Why, that is the very thing I want to know of you. I mean the young lady whom you met just now.”

  “You are raving, Birkendelly. I met no young lady, nor is there a single person on the road I have come by, while you know, that for a mile and a half forward your way she could not get out of it.”

  “I know that,” said the Laird, biting his lip, and looking greatly puzzled. “But confound me if I understand this; for I was within speech of her just now on the top of the Birky Brow there; and, when I think of it, she could not have been even thus far as yet. She had on a pure white gauze frock, a small green bonnet and feathers, and a green veil, which, flung back over her left shoulder, hung below her waist, and was altogether such an engaging figure that no man could have passed her on the road without taking some note of her. – Are you not making game of me? Did you not really meet with her?”

  “On my word of truth and honour, I did not. Come, ride back with me, and we shall meet her still, depend on it. She has given you the go-by on the road. Let us go; I am only going to call at the mill about some barley for the distillery, and will return with you to the big town.”

  Birkendelly returned with his friend. The sun was not yet set, yet M’Murdie could not help observing that the Laird looked thoughtful and confused, and not a word could he speak about anything save this lovely apparition with the white frock and the green veil; and lo, when they reached the top of Birky Brow, there was the maiden again before them, and exactly at the same spot where the Laird first saw her before, only walking in the contrary direction.

  “Well, this is the most extraordinary thing that I ever knew!” exclaimed the Laird.

  “What is it, sir?” said M’Murdie.

  “How that young lady could have eluded me,” returned the Laird. “See, here she is still!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, I don’t see her. Where is she?”

  “There, on the other side of the angle; but you are short sighted. See, there she is ascending the other eminence in her white frock and green veil, as I told you – What a lovely creature!”

  “Well, well, we have her fairly before us now, and shall see what she is like at all events,” said M’Murdie.

  Between the Birky Brow and this other slight eminence, there is an obtuse angle of the road at the part where it is lowest, and, in passing this, the two friends necessarily lost sight of the object of their curiosity. They pushed on at a quick pace – cleared the low angle – the maiden was not there! They rode full speed to the top of the eminence from whence a long extent of road was visible before them – there was no human creature in view! M’Murdie laughed aloud; but the Laird turned pale as death and bit his lip. His friend asked him, good-humouredly, why he was so much affected. He said, because he could not comprehend the meaning of this singular apparition or illusion, and it troubled him the more, as he now remembered a dream of the same nature which he had had, and which terminated in a dreadful manner.

  “Why, man, you are dreaming still,” said M’Murdie; “but never mind. It is quite common for men of your complexion to dream of beautiful maidens with white frocks, and green veils, bonnets, feathers, and slender waists. It is a lovely image, the creation of your own sanguine imagination, and you may worship it without any blame. Were her shoes black or green? – And her stockings, did you note them? The symmetry of the limbs, I am sure you did! Goodbye; I see you are not disposed to leave the spot. Perhaps she will appear to you again.”

  So saying, McMurdie rode on towards the mill, and Birkendelly, after musing for some time, turned his beast’s head slowly round, and began to move towards the great muckle village.

  The Laird’s feelings were now in terrible commotion. He was taken beyond measure with the beauty and elegance of the figure he h
ad seen; but he remembered, with a mixture of admiration and horror, that a dream of the same enchanting object had haunted his slumbers all the days of his life; yet, how singular that he should never have recollected the circumstance till now! But farther, with the dream there were connected some painful circumstances, which, though terrible in their issue, he could not recollect, so as to form them into any degree of arrangement.

  As he was considering deeply of these things, and riding slowly down the declivity, neither dancing his cane, nor singing the “Laird of Windy-wa’s,” he lifted up his eyes, and there was the girl on the same spot where he saw her first, walking deliberately up the Birky Brow. The sun was down; but it was the month of August and a fine evening, and the Laird, seized with an unconquerable desire to see and speak with that incomparable creature, could restrain himself no longer, but shouted out to her to stop till he came up. She beckoned acquiescence, and slackened her pace into a slow movement. The Laird turned the corner quickly, but when he had rounded it, the maiden was still there, though on the summit of the Brow. She turned round, and, with an ineffable smile and curtsy, saluted him, and again moved slowly on. She vanished gradually beyond the summit, and while the green feathers were still nodding in view and so nigh, that the Laird could have touched them with a fishing-rod, he reached the top of the Brow himself. There was no living soul there, nor onward, as far as his view reached. He now trembled every limb, and, without knowing what he did, rode straight on to the big town, not daring well to return and see what he had seen for three several times; and, certain he would see it again when the shades of evening were deepening, he deemed it proper and prudent to decline the pursuit of such a phantom any farther.

  He alighted at the Queen’s Head, called for some brandy and water, quite forgot what was his errand to the great muckle town that afternoon, there being nothing visible to his mental sight but lovely fairy images, with white gauze frocks and green veils. His friend, M’Murdie, joined him; they drank deep, bantered, reasoned, got angry, reasoned themselves calm again, and still all would not do. The Laird was conscious that he had seen the beautiful apparition, and, moreover, that she was the very maiden, or the resemblance of her, who, in the irrevocable decrees of Providence, was destined to be his. It was in vain that M’Murdie reasoned of impressions on the imagination, and