Muirland, more than anyone else, was giving himself over to the noisy joy that frothed up like the dense spume on the beer and spread among the rest.
He was one of those creatures life never manages to tame, one of those men of energetic intelligence who fight on against all odds. A young lass from the county who had linked her destiny to Muirland’s had died giving birth after two years of matrimony, and Muirland swore he’d never marry again. No one in the neighborhood was ignorant of the cause of Tuilzie’s death: Muirland’s jealousy. Tuilzie, fragile and still almost a girl, was barely sixteen when she married the farmer. She loved him but did not know his passionate nature, the violence that could animate him, the torment he could inflict daily on himself and others. Jock Muirland was jealous, and the sweet tenderness of his spouse did not manage to calm him. Once, in the harshest wintertime, he sent her to Edinburgh to take her away from the courting supposedly being paid her by a minor laird who insisted on spending the winter on his lands.
All his friends, even the pastor, had shown him their dismay and reproached him for his conduct. He would only respond that he loved Tuilzie passionately, that he was the one to judge what was best for the success of their marriage. Under Jock’s rustic roof were heard frequent laments, shouts, and weeping, whose echoes reached outside the house. Tuilzie’s brother visited his brother-in-law to tell him his behavior was unpardonable, but the only result of this intervention was a violent fight. Day by day, the young woman withered away. Finally, the pain that consumed her took her life.
Muirland sank into a deep despair that lasted many years. But, since everything passes in this life and because he swore to remain a widower, slowly but surely he forgot the woman whose involuntary executioner he’d been. Other women, who for years had viewed him with horror, ended up forgiving him. Hallowe’en night found him as he’d been a long time back: jolly, ironic, amusing, a good drinker and teller of magnificent tales, full of jokes, adept at making sparkling comments that kept everyone’s good humor awake and prolonged the nocturnal gathering.
They’d already sung all the old epic romances when the twelve rings of the bell sounded midnight, and the echo spread in the distance. Everyone had drunk a great deal. The moment of the customary superstitious rites had come. Everyone got up, except Muirland.
“Let’s look for the kail,” they shouted, “let’s look for the kail.”
Boys and girls scattered over the fields and came back, one by one, carrying a root pulled from the earth: the kail. You must pull up by the roots the first plant that appears in your path; if the root is straight, your wife or husband will be elegant and tender; if the root is twisted, you will marry someone unpleasant-looking.∗ If soil sticks to the roots, your marriage will be happy and fertile; but if the root is thin and bare, your marriage will not last long. You can imagine the explosions of laughter, the merrymaking, and the jokes to which these conjugal indignities opened the way: the young men shoved one another, huddled together, compared results. Even the smallest children had their root.
“Poor Will Haverel!” exclaimed Muirland, studying the root one young man held in his hand. “Your wife will be ugly; the root you found looks like my pig’s tail.”
Then they sat down in a circle, and all tasted their roots. A bitter root presaged a bad husband; a sweet root, a foolish husband; if the root was aromatic, the husband would have an agreeable character.
This ceremony was followed by the tap-pickle. Blindfolded, the girls went out to pick three ears of wheat. If one of the three has no grain, no one doubts that the future husband will have to forgive her a premarital weakness. “Oh Nelly! Nelly! None of your ears has the tap-pickle, and you won’t be able to escape the jokes. And the fact is that just yesterday, the fause-house, or granary, witnessed a long conversation between you and Robert Luath.”
Muirland watched the games, without participating himself.
“The hazelnuts! The hazelnuts!” everyone shouted. Out of the basket they took a little bag of hazelnuts, and they all clustered around the fire they’d kept burning all this time. The moon shone brilliantly. Each one took a hazelnut. This is a celebrated and venerable rite. Couples form, and each hazelnut has on it the name of the person who chose it. Then all are tossed into the fire at the same time, both the nut with the sweetheart’s name and the nut with the name of the suitor. If the two nuts burn calmly next to each other, there will be a long and pleasant union, but if they burst and separate while burning, there will be discord and disharmony in the marriage. Often it’s the girl who deposits the image to which her soul is united in the flames. And what must her pain be when a separation occurs, and the future husband leaps crackling far away from her.
The bells had already struck one o’clock, and the peasants were still not tired of consulting the mystical oracles. The fear and faith that went along with the rituals infused the incantations with an unknown enchantment. The spunkies began to move through the reeds again. The girls trembled. The moon, now high in the sky, hid behind a cloud. They carried out the ceremony of the cobblestones, the candle ceremony, and the apple rite, great incantations I will not reveal. Willie Maillie, one of the most beautiful of the young women, sank her arm three times into the waters of the Doon, shouting: “My future husband, my unknown husband, where are you? Here is my hand.” Three times she repeated the incantation, and they heard her scream.
“Oh woe is me! The spunkie has caught my hand!” They all ran to her in fear. Only Muirland was unafraid. Maillie showed her bloody hand. The judges of both sexes, whose long experience made them skillful interpreters of magic signs, declared without hesitation that the scratches were not caused, as Muirland said, by the spiny points of the reeds, but that the young woman’s arm bore the marks of the sharp claw of the spunkie. And all recognized that meant the shadow of a jealous husband was to hang over Maillie’s future. The widowed farmer had drunk, perhaps, one too many.
“Jealous!” he exclaimed. “Jealous.”
He seemed to detect in his comrades’ declaration a malevolent allusion to his disgrace.
“I,” he continued, gulping down a canteen that had been filled to the brim with whiskey, “would prefer—a hundred times over—to marry a spunkie than to remarry. I know what it is to live chained up. It’s the same as living in a bottle with a monkey, a cat, or the hangman for a company. I was jealous of my poor Tuilzie. And perhaps I was wrong, but tell me, how could I not be jealous? What woman should not be watched over continuously? I didn’t sleep at night; I never left her alone for a moment during the day; I never closed my eyes, not for a moment. The business of the farm was going badly; everything was falling apart. Tuilzie herself was fading before my eyes. The devil take marriage!”
Some laughed; others maintained a scandalized silence. There still remained the last and most fearful of the incantations: the ceremony of the mirror.
Holding a candle in one hand, a person must stand before a small mirror. You breathe three times on the glass and dry it three times, repeating: “Appear, my husband,” or “Appear, my wife.” Then, over the shoulder of the person who inquires of destiny there appears a figure that is clearly reflected in the little mirror.
No one, after what happened to Maillie, dared to challenge the supernatural powers again. The mirror and candle were already prepared, but no one seemed to have any intention of using them. The murmur of the Doon could be heard among the rushes. The long silver ribbon that trembled over the waters in the distance seemed, in the eyes of the villagers, the sparkling trace of the spunkies, or the water imps. Muirland’s mare, a small Highland mare with black tail and white chest, whinnied with all her strength, in that way revealing the proximity of an evil spirit. The wind became ice cold, and the stalks of the reeds shook with a long and sad whisper. The women began to talk of going home, not omitting any good reason, including reproaches for husbands and brothers, alarms about the health of parents—in sum, the full domestic eloquence to which we, the kings of nature and the world
, submit so easily.
“Well then! Which of you dares to try the mirror?” exclaimed Muirland.
No one answered.
“What little courage you have,” the farmer went on. “You start trembling with the willows as soon as a bit of wind blows. I—as you well know—don’t want to remarry, because I want to sleep, and my eyelids refuse to close when I’m married, so I can’t begin the ceremony. You know it as well as I.”
But finally, since no one wanted to pick up the mirror, Jock Muirland took charge of it. “I’ll be an example to you,” and without hesitating he seized hold of the mirror. A candle was lit, and Muirland bravely spoke the words of the incantation.
“Appear then, my wife.”
Suddenly, a pale image with shining blond hair appeared over his shoulder. Muirland started with surprise and turned around, in case there might be a young girl behind him simulating the apparition. But no one had pretended to be the specter. The mirror slipped from his hands and smashed, but behind his shoulder there still appeared the white face with shining hair: Muirland shouted and fell facedown on the ground.
You should have seen how the villagers fled every which way, like leaves carried by the wind. In the place where, just a short time before everyone had given themselves to country amusements, there remained nothing except the remains of the festivity, the almost extinguished fire, empty jugs and canteens, and Muirland stretched out on the ground. Now the spunkies and their company returned en masse, and the storm, which was already in the air, joined their mysterious chants, the long howl to which the Scots give a picturesque name, Sugh. Muirland, getting to his feet, looked over his shoulder once again: that face was still there. It smiled at the farmer without saying a word, and Muirland could not tell if that head belonged to a body, since it only appeared when he turned around.
Muirland’s mouth was dry, and he felt his frozen tongue stuck to his palate. Gathering all his courage, he tried to engage that infernal being in conversation, but in vain: just seeing those pale features, those flaming curls, made his whole body tremble. He tried to flee, hoping to free himself from the apparition. He jumped on the small white mare and already had his foot in the stirrup to try one last time; but fear overwhelmed him. The head was still next to him, his inseparable companion. It was attached to his shoulder like those heads without a body whose profiles Gothic sculptors would sometimes place on top of a pillar or at the end of a cornice. Poor Meg, the little mare, whinnied with all her strength and kicked against the air, showing the same panic as her owner. Whenever Muirland turned around, the spunkie (it was doubtless one of those inhabitants of the marshes that was persecuting him) fixed on him its brilliant eyes of a deep blue, without brows to darken them or eyelids to veil their intolerable glow.
Muirland spurred the mare, always tormented by the anxiety of wanting to know if his pursuer was still there. But she did not abandon him; in vain, he made Meg gallop; in vain the moors and peaks fled behind him. Muirland no longer knew which road he was taking or where he was driving poor Meg. A single idea obsessed him: the spunkie, his companion; or rather his lady-friend, since she had all the malice and the charm of an eighteen-year-old girl. The vault of heaven became covered with thick clouds that seemed to devour him bit by bit. No poor devil ever found himself more alone out in the open fields, in a darkness so infernal. The wind blew as if to awaken the dead, and the rain fell obliquely from the violence of the tempest. The flashes of lightning faded, consumed by the clouds from which came an awe-inspiring roar. Poor Muirland! Your blue and red Scottish cap blew off, and you didn’t dare go back to retrieve it. The storm redoubled its fury; the Doon overflowed its banks, and Muirland, having galloped for an hour, discovered to his grief that he’d come right back to the spot where his ride had begun. There, under his eyes, was the ruined Cassilis church, and it looked as if a fire were blazing among the remains of the old pilasters; the flames shot out of the broken apertures, and the carvings stood out against that lugubrious background. Meg refused to go on, but the farmer, who’d lost his reason and thought he could feel the horrible head leaning against his shoulder, dug his spurs so hard into poor Meg’s flanks that she flew forward in spite of herself, in the face of the violence that had befallen her.
“Jock,” said a sweet voice, “marry me and you’ll never be afraid again.”
Imagine the profound horror of the wretched Muirland.
“Marry me,” repeated the spunkie.
Meanwhile, they were fleeing toward the cathedral that was in flames. Muirland, stopped in his tracks by the mutilated pillars and fallen statues, got off his horse; he’d drunk so much wine that night, so much beer, and spirits, had galloped so much and lived so many emotions that he’d finally grown accustomed to that state of mysterious excitation. Our farmer strode bravely into the roofless nave from which emerged an infernal fire.
The scene that then appeared before his eyes was new to him. A figure squatting at the center of the nave was holding on its bowed back an octagonal vessel in which a green and red flame was burning. The altar was arranged with the ancient ornaments of the Catholic rite. Demons with red hair standing on end had taken over the place meant for candles and were standing on the altar. All the grotesque and infernal forms that the fantasy of the painter or poet could ever imagine were crowding in, running around, and mixing together in multiple and strange forms. The seats meant for the chorus were taken by grave personages who were still wearing the clothing appropriate for their rank. But under their mozzettas skeletal hands could be seen, and from their empty eye sockets came no light. I will not say—because no human language could go that far—what incense they burned in that church, or what abominable parody of holy mysteries the demons were representing there.
Forty devils perched on the ancient gallery which long ago housed the cathedral organ, held Scottish bagpipes of different sizes. Twelve of them formed a throne for an enormous black cat that beat the time with a prolonged meow. The diabolical symphony made the half-ruined vault tremble, and from time to time, chunks of stone fell from above. Amid that tumult, some svelte skelpies, who resembled charming girls except for their tails, which showed beneath their white habits, were kneeling; and more than fifty skelpies, with their wings either extended or withdrawn, were dancing or resting. In the niches reserved for saints, arranged symmetrically around the central nave, desecrated tombs were opening. Out of them came death, in his white shroud, holding in his hands the funerary candle. With regard to the relics that hung from the walls: I will not stop to describe them. All the crimes committed in Scotland for twenty years were there, decorating the walls of the church abandoned to the demons.
There was the hangman’s noose, the murderer’s knife, the horrifying remnants of abortion, and the traces of incest. There were the hearts of the pitiless, blackened by vice, and the white hairs of a paternal head still stuck to the blade that committed parricide. Muirland stopped and turned around. The head of his traveling companion had not left its place. One of the monsters in charge of the infernal service took Muirland by the hand; he offered no resistance. He led Muirland to the altar, and Muirland followed his guide. He was overwhelmed, with no strength left. They all kneeled, and Muirland kneeled; they intoned some strange chants, but Muirland heard nothing. He remained immobile, in shock, as if petrified, awaiting his fate.
Meanwhile the diabolical hymns became more audible. The spunkies assigned to the corps of dancers spun around more and more frenetically in their infernal ring. The bagpipes screamed, bellowed, howled, and whistled with greater vehemence. Muirland turned around to see his ill-fated shoulder, which an undesirable guest had chosen as her residence.
“Ah!” he shouted with a long sigh of satisfaction.
The head had disappeared.
But when his hallucinated and astonished eyes returned to the objects that surrounded him, he was shocked to see, beside him, kneeling on a coffin, a young girl whose face was that of the ghost who’d chased him. A gray linen dress
covered her only to midthigh, and he could see the charming decollete, her shoulders, hidden by her blond hair, her virginal bosom, whose beauty shone through the light dress. Muirland was touched. Those graceful and delicate forms contrasted with the horrible apparitions that appeared around her. The skeleton that parodied the mass took Muirland’s hand in his twisted fingers and joined it to that of the young girl. When his strange fiancee squeezed his hand, Muirland felt the cold pain the common people attribute to the spunkies claws. It was too much for him. He closed his eyes and felt he was fainting. Partially overcome by a swoon he fought against, he thought he could guess whose infernal hands were putting him back up on his mare, which seemed to be waiting at the church doors. But his perceptions were confused, his sensations vague.
As you might imagine, a night like that left its traces on Muirland; he awoke as if he were coming out of a stupor and was surprised to find out he’d been married for some days. After Hallowe’en night he’d traveled to the mountains and brought back with him a young wife, who was now lying next to him in the old bed at the farm.
He rubbed his eyes and thought he was dreaming. Then he wanted to take a good look at the woman he’d chosen without knowing it and who was now Mrs. Muirland. The sun was already up. How charming his wife was! How sweet the light was in her ample gaze! What splendor in those eyes! And yet Muirland felt trapped by the strange light that emanated from those eyes. He came close to her; to his surprise, his wife—or at least so it seemed to him—had no eyelids. Large blue pupils of a deep blue appeared under the dark arch of her eyebrows, whose line was admirably subtle. Muirland sighed; the vague memory of the spunkie, of the nocturnal chase and the horrifying marriage in the cathedral, suddenly returned to his mind.
Fantastic Tales Page 15