Haunted Scotland

by Roddy Martine

  With long days of fixed blue sky and an oven-hot sun, the weather could not have been more glorious. Although equipped with jerseys, lycra shorts, open-face plastic helmets, and knee and elbow protection, such bare skin as was exposed rapidly turned nut-brown. Evenings brought the inevitable curse of the midge, but even this was bearable with sausages cooked over a fire of twigs and a few cans of lager. Their sleeping bags unrolled on the edge of a forest enclosure in close proximity to the River Cree, they passed their second night together in perfect harmony. The pressures of the outside world faded far from sight. ‘I could live like this forever,’ confided Andy as the night closed in.

  After the day’s exertions, both fell asleep the moment they closed their eyes. Usually, they would have remained unconscious until sunrise but on this particular night they awoke simultaneously.

  ‘There’s something over there,’ whispered Donald urgently, peering into the gloom. A rustling sound resonated in the long grass on the far side of the clearing, and through the half-light they could make out movement.

  ‘It’ll be a deer,’ said Andy calmly.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Donald. ‘I think it’s more like a large cat.’

  He turned on his torch and pointed it in the direction of the sounds. For a fleeting couple of seconds, they both saw it; what appeared to be a large black cat, a very large black cat. In an instant they were out of their sleeping bags and although scantily clad, took cover in the undergrowth behind them. After that, there was a silence followed by the sounds of tugging and tearing, and clank of metal as tin cups and a kettle were turned over. Then more silence.

  For a full half-hour, neither Andy nor Donald spoke. With no wind, the night air was unnaturally still and heavy. Finally, Andy took the initiative. ‘Do you still have the torch?’ he asked Donald.

  Donald handed it to him. ‘What do you think we should do?’ he said hesitantly.

  ‘We could just sit here until the sun comes up, but I think that whatever it was would have come for us by now if it was going to,’ suggested Andy. ‘Thank the Lord, it’s already starting to get light.’

  Sure enough, in less than an hour a pale sun was gradually caressing the scenery with a pastel wash. Emerging from the prickly undergrowth, the friends looked nervously about them.

  ‘All clear,’ said Andy, then groaned. ‘Damn! Look what the bastard’s done to our kit!’

  Across the clearing were signs of devastation. Andy’s sleeping bag had been ripped to pieces and their rucksacks plundered, the contents scattered all over the place. ‘I reckon we had a bloody lucky escape,’ said Donald. ‘Thank God the bikes are OK.’

  At the Clatteringshaws Visitor Centre, the ranger listened sympathetically to their story. ‘Must have escaped from a zoo,’ he concluded, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I’ve heard about big cats being seen on Speyside and around Dundee, but never around here.’

  ‘Well, we know what we saw,’ said Donald. ‘It was as big as a lynx or a puma.’

  The ranger smiled and made a note in his diary. ‘I’ll keep a look out for it,’ he said. ‘At least it didn’t attack you. If it had, we’d have beeen obliged to shoot it.’

  That was reassuring, thought Donald. ‘What about our things?’ he bemoaned. ‘My rucksack was brand new!’

  The ranger shook his head. ‘You could try your insurance, if you have any, but I’d change your story if I were you. Giant cats are a wee bit Walt Disney. They’ll probably think you’re trying it on.’

  Having replaced their damaged belongings, and restocked their food provisions, Andy and Donald set off undeterred, this time wheeling their bikes alongside the shore of the Black Loch to cross the Tenderghie Burn upstream to explore the waterfall. Once more, it was a day to remember as they threw off their shorts and vests to plunge into the icy torrent. That night they stretched out under the stars, orchestrated by the sound of the Grey Mare’s Tail Burn splashing nearby.

  ‘Perhaps we should have returned to the campsite,’ reflected Donald as he opened a can of lager.

  ‘Nonsense,’ replied Andy. ‘It’s so much better being here. That’s what we came for, isn’t it, to get away from it all?’

  Donald nodded in agreement. In a week’s time he would be back at his office desk, wearing a suit and tie. He should make the best of it.

  As the light faded around them, they lay talking to one another in their sleeping bags until eventually they fell sleep. Yet again, it was in the early hours that they both awoke at the exact same moment, as if primed to do so. This time they could see the black bulk of something enormous standing over them, silhouetted against the night sky. It was so close they could almost touch its thick black coat.

  ‘Oh my God,’ gasped Donald.

  ‘Don’t move,’ cautioned Andy.

  For what seemed an eternity, they lay rigid while the beast held its ground, its head looming over them, examining them in turn. Then, quite suddenly, it turned on its heels and sloped off into the darkness.

  ‘Do you think it followed us here?’ said Donald when his trembling subsided.

  ‘Well, at least it left our stuff alone this time,’ replied Andy nervously. ‘Do you think it’ll be back?’

  ‘Not now. It’ll be daylight soon.’ Neither was able to sleep, so Andy stoked up the remains of the fire and boiled the kettle to make tea. ‘What do you think it was?’ he asked Donald as he spooned sugar into his mug.

  Donald shook his head. ‘I reckon it’s an escaped panther, or something like that. But why did it decide to leave us alone this time?’ He stared hard at Andy. ‘I wasn’t imagining it, was I? It was pretty huge, wasn’t it?’

  His friend nodded. ‘Colossal,’ he concurred.

  ‘Ought we to tell the ranger?’

  Andy shrugged his shoulders. ‘He didn’t seem that interested, did he? Besides, I really don’t want to go back there again. I think we should press on. We’ve only a day left.’

  Mid-morning, the fine weather changed and a thin spray of rain washed across the parched landscape. With temperatures remaining high, however, it proved a welcome contrast from the relentless heat of the previous days. By evening, the sun had returned, casting a golden glow. By then Andy and Donald had covered some thirty miles and were freewheeling into the town of Newton Stewart.

  ‘Let’s find a hostel for tonight,’ pleaded Donald. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to cope with another cat call. Do you know what? I could really do with a pint in a pub and a night’s uninterrupted sleep.’

  Andy agreed, but, finding the town hostel full, they were redirected to an inexpensive bed and breakfast close to Creebridge. ‘You’ll like Mrs Hannay,’ the girl at the hostel told them. ‘She’s really easy going. Just loves her young men, she does.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m up to that,’ quipped Andy, but was reassured when Mrs Hannay turned out to be a plump, elderly woman intent on watering a flowerbed full of delphiniums and snapdragons.

  ‘Come ben the hoos,’ she announced cheerily, escorting them into a spacious bedroom at the back of her cottage. ‘Ye’ll have to share, mind,’ she continued. ‘But it’s a big enough bed.’

  ‘Civilisation,’ sighed Donald as he caught sight of the fresh linen sheets and adjoining bathroom. ‘Not that it hasn’t been great being out in the open, but this is paradise.’

  The cottage, whitewashed with a tiled roof, was set back from the road and fringed by old trees. They deposited their bicycles in the garden shed, and their amiable landlady directed them to a pub within walking distance. It was obviously well patronised and they were soon in conversation with Archie McLellan, who introduced himself as the local historian.

  ‘Ah, that’ll be the Dark Lord,’ he pronounced when they finished telling him about their experiences with the big cat.

  ‘The Dark Lord! Do you mean it’s some sort of phantom?’ gasped Andy, always susceptible to ghost stories.

  ‘Ay, that’ll be right,’ said Archie.

  Long ago, he explain
ed, all of the surrounding territory had belonged to either the Stewart earls of Galloway or their neighbours, the mighty House of Douglas. The Stewarts were a notably prolific dynasty, and, in the early eighteenth century, an earl of Galloway had presented a black cougar as a pet to one of his many illegitimate sons. It was a fine beast imported as a cub from North America, and soon became so attached to its master that it would only leave his side when he retired to bed.

  Now, as it transpired, this young man had recently quarrelled with a member of the Douglas family. Nobody remembers what the argument was about, only that on a dark autumnal night two armed horsemen arrived at the castle to seize the young lord and carry him off into the darkness by force. He was never seen again.

  The cougar cub was bereft and desperately searched for its master, eventually venturing further afield and disappearing into the hills. He was never caught, but as the years passed he became the stuff of legend. From sightings of a large black beast reported at intervals over the centuries, the phantom cat eventually earned the nickname of the Dark Lord.

  ‘It’ll be the Dark Lord you saw,’ confirmed Archie confidently. ‘He’s still searching for his master and the two men who took him away.’

  Back at the cottage, Andy and Donald joked about Archie’s story. ‘The Dark Lord must have thought our bikes were horses,’ quipped the former before falling asleep.

  The softness of the mattress sent both of them into a deep, relaxed sleep in which they dreamed of the open road and waterfalls and rolling hills. Then, all of a sudden, they were both wide awake and paralysed with terror.

  Standing at the foot of the bed was the looming hulk of the large black cat, its yellow eyes inflamed.

  ‘How did it get into our room?’ gasped Andy, sitting up, his back pressed against the headboard. ‘I thought you said you’d closed the window!’

  Donald was too petrified to speak.

  Once again, the two friends sat it out in an attempt to outstare the beast. Another eternity passed before, entirely without warning, the panther turned sideways to effortlessly leap through the bedroom wall. ‘My God, did you see that?’ groaned Donald. ‘I told you I shut the window.’

  At breakfast, Mrs Hannay was highly entertained by their revelation. ‘Och, dinna believe a word Archie McLellan tells you,’ she said. ‘It’ll have been my own wee moggie you saw.’

  As she spoke, a small black cat jumped onto the window seat before slipping out into the garden. ‘Let’s just say that I named him after the Dark Lord,’ said Mrs Hannay with a wink.

  21

  DISTILLED SPIRITS

  If a body could just find oot the exac’ proper proportion and quantity that ought to be drunk every day, and keep to that, I verily trow that he might live forever, without dying at a’, and that doctors and kirkyards would go oot o’ fashion.

  James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770–1835)

  Phantom cats, poltergeists, omens, enchanted forests and ancient curses. These old wives’ tales have been around for such a long time that there simply has to be something in them. Make fun of them if you must, but the very fact that nobody has ever been able entirely to disprove their credibility only serves to enhance the fascination we all have with them.

  On touring Speyside, the impression is of long expanses of tranquil meadowland encroached upon by the passive reaches of the River Spey as it winds its leisurely way towards the Moray Firth. This is the heart of Scotch whisky country, the land of the uisge beatha, the ‘Water of Life.’ Around every corner, and strikingly present in the intermittent small towns, are the Speyside distilleries with their distinctive pagoda turrets. Is it any wonder that here, more than anywhere else, the spirits of the past go hand in hand with spirits of a more liquid substance?

  Access to a reliable supply of water is integral to the manufacture of Scotch whisky. More than anything, it is the proximity of water which determines the setting for a distillery. But while the Rothes Burn that flows in front of the Glenrothes Distillery, south of Elgin, provides the power to harness its water wheel, the water for the stills needs to be as pure and cold as possible.

  Luckily there have always been ample supplies in the hills upstream, bubbling up through the granite rocks to emerge in a series of springs and wells. Among these sources is the Fairies’ Well, allegedly the scene of a gruesome double murder at the end of the fourteenth century.

  When the Fairies’ Well became a water source for Glenrothes a hundred or so years ago, it connected the distillery directly to one of the most enduring legends of Speyside. The story centres around the now ruined Castle of Rothes, then home to Sir Andrew Leslie.

  Sir Andrew’s daughter Mary was extremely beautiful and excited the interest of the notorious Alexander Stewart, the King’s Lieutenant in the Highlands, who later, for his various nefarious deeds, became known as ‘the Wolf of Badenoch’.

  Stewart soon realised he had competition for the lady’s hand in the form of Malcolm Grant, master of nearby Arndilly, who had recently returned from a crusade to the Holy Land. As long as Grant was on the scene, Stewart’s efforts to win Mary’s heart would come to nothing, so he decided to imprison his rival at his Castle of Lochindorb. When Grant escaped, Stewart decided to have him killed.

  The chosen assassin was Stewart’s attendant, a grotesque-looking dwarf known as ‘The Hawk’, who followed the two lovers on an evening stroll beside the Rothes Burn. When they reached the Fairies’ Well and sat down for a rest, the Hawk crept up from behind and stabbed Grant with his sgean dubh. He was about to use his dagger again when Mary Leslie leapt in between them and caught the blow. When the couple were discovered dead the next day, they were seen to be locked in each other’s arms beneath a bush that had grown up overnight.

  Thereafter, it is claimed, the bush only breaks into leaf on the anniversary of their deaths. Today, a small monument commemorating the legend stands opposite the Glenrothes Distillery beside the Rothes cemetery where the couple were supposedly interred.

  Whether this anecdote is to be believed or not, the Rothes kirkyard is undoubtedly the resting place of Biawa, one of the town’s favourite sons and also its most unlikely resident.

  Biawa, who died in 1972, had lived in Rothes from the end of the nineteenth century, when he was brought to Scotland from his native Africa by Major James Grant, owner of the Glen Grant distillery. Grant had been on safari and had come across the boy, then aged about ten, abandoned by the wayside – hence the name he was given.

  After efforts to trace his parents had failed, Major Grant decided to adopt Biawa as one of his servants. He started off as the major’s pageboy, served in the First World War and, at some point afterwards, played for his local football club, Rothes FC. It must have made the town appear very exotic to visiting players. There were not many soccer teams in Scotland with an African butler for a goalie.

  When the major died in 1931, he left Biawa the sum of £200 and instructed his heirs at Glen Grant House to retain him as a servant, ‘so long as he is obedient, respectful and willing to remain’. By all accounts, Biawa was a quiet soul whose one passion was Rothes FC, where he was given a complementary seat for life and a cup of tea at half-time whenever there was a match. Biawa’s contact with the Glenrothes Distillery was through those who worked there, and among these was Paul Rickards, who remembers him as an old man with long grey hair and a beard which gave him an uncanny resemblance to the Arthurian wizard Merlin.

  Paul was later put in charge of spirit quality at the Scotch whisky blenders Robertson & Baxter, a job which involved regular visits to distilleries, at least once or twice a year. On one such trip to Glenrothes in 1979, the stillman took him aside and warned him that ‘a presence’ had been seen in the newly built still-house.

  ‘He and several others had noticed an old, dark-skinned man with a straggly grey beard during the evening and night shifts,’ said Paul. ‘When he described him, I knew exactly who he was talking about.’

  Seven years after Biawa’s death, h
is spirit had obviously been disturbed.

  On returning home to Glasgow, Paul contacted Cedric Wilson, a professor of pharmacology who he knew had an interest in the paranormal. Professor Wilson was keen to find out more, and, as soon as permission had been obtained, the two men drove to Speyside to visit the distillery.

  It was over a weekend in the summer, and the distillery was closed for the silent season. After spending a morning on his own in the still-house, Professor Wilson concluded that the problem originated from the ancient ley lines which run under the foundations of the new building. Ley lines, which in the Chinese culture of feng shui are known as ‘dragon currents’, are made up of a series of supernatural pathways connecting with preordained sacred sites. From Rothes Castle, for example, these spiritual alignments run northwards through Rothes cemetery, and onwards to the old Pictish capital of Burghhead on the Moray Firth.

  The professor was absolutely convinced that Biawa’s spirit had been agitated when the foundations were excavated. Moreover, it was unlikely to be at peace until the magnetic force of the mystical currents had been restored. He therefore recommended that two stakes of scrap ‘pig iron’ be driven into the ground on either side of the still-house.

  What happened next convinced Paul that the professor was on to something. ‘He walked straight over to Biawa’s grave and said a few words in the form of a blessing.’

  How Professor Wilson knew exactly where to look for Biawa’s last resting place among the hundreds of nondescript tombstones that crowd the terraced slopes of the Rothes Cemetery remains a complete mystery. But whatever strange forces were at work on that day, no more ghosts have since been seen at the Glenrothes Distillery, and Biawa, the loyal servant and Rothes Football Club supporter, appears to have now found lasting peace.

  A former distillery manager who definitely failed to find lasting peace, however, was Duncan MacCallum of the Campbeltown distillery of Glen Scotia on Kintyre. A member of the West Highland Malt Distillers’ Society, which he helped to found in 1919, Duncan fell into such a deep depression when Glen Scotia closed in 1928 that he drowned himself in Cambeltown Loch. The distillery reopened in the late 1980s, and his lonely spectral figure has been a regular visitor ever since.