Legends Of Longdendale Part 11

The pursuers clearly gained upon the foe, but the latter reached the next dip of the road well ahead, and disappeared from sight. A few minutes later, when the Longdendale band reached the top of the descent, a glad sight met their eyes. Across the narrow path, just where the road bent, Jock had drawn up his men, and already the archers were at work. Already several of the Scotch lay dead upon the road, and the rest were in confusion. Ere they could rally, with a wild shout the pursuing yeomen burst on them at the charge, and then there was a fray well worth the telling. It only lasted a few minutes, and Jock backed out of it the moment he found the sweet maid Bess safely in his arms. But the rest of the Longdendale lads laid l.u.s.tily about them until the work was done. A palatable work it was to them--a clashing of blades, a crashing of axes, and then the great Scottish raid was over. Yeoman Andrew was avenged, and he had more in plunder from the Scots than made up the total of the damages he had sustained.

It is said that many a "guid wife" in bonnie Scotland looked southwards with eager eyes for the homecoming of her "man" from the foray in Longdendale, but always looked in vain. For the ravens had a rich feast spread on the hills above the Derbyshire and Cheshire border, and those Longdendale moors were dotted white with the bleaching bones of Scottish men.

XIII.

The Legend of Gallow's Clough.

Near Mottram, on the verge of the moors, overlooking what is now the high road to Stalybridge, is a spot known as Gallow's Clough, which, as its name implies, was in feudal times the scene of the Gibbeting of malefactors. Here in the good old days, was reared the gallows, whereon the criminal was first "hanged by the neck until he was dead,"

and from which his body was afterwards suspended in chains, until the weather and the birds between them had picked the flesh away, and nothing remained but a few bones--a grim reminder of the power of the law, and the folly and risk of departing from the paths of virtue.

In the days when gibbetting was fashionable, it behoved almost every petty township to possess its own gallows, for there was far too great a demand for the services of rope and hangman to permit of only a few recognised places of execution, and one common hangman, as is the custom at the present time. Not that people were very much worse than they are now, but the extreme punishment of the law was meted out for what are now considered the minor crimes of sheep and cattle stealing, poaching, highway robbery, house-breaking with violence, and such like offences. The sight of a dead man dangling between earth and sky was of too common a nature to cause surprise, even so late as the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Wild and lonesome as the Gallow's Clough is at the present day, it was a much bleaker and more awesome place in the days when the gibbet was standing there. Then it was considered as a place accursed, and was said to be haunted by the ghosts of all the dead men who had been strangled there. Even in the daylight folk gave the spot a wide berth, and at night when the winds moaned down the gullies from the hills, and swayed the dead men to and fro, and caused the chains to clank and rattle, then, indeed, the traveller kept as far off as his route would permit, and hurried past with beating heart, and face blanched with fear.

Nor was that all the terror. Witches were said to infest the place at certain seasons, and in the darkness to hold converse with the ghosts of the malefactors, from whom they learned how to transact deeds of darkness successfully. Men forced to pa.s.s that way at these seasons had seen from a distance the crouching forms of the old hags, and had even heard their crooning voices, and the fiendish laughter with which they accompanied their terrible midnight revels. Many a timid dame added a pet.i.tion to her prayers--that Providence would accord her and all belonging to her, special protection from the witches who danced and plotted and sang the h.e.l.l-song round the gibbet at Gallow's Clough.

On a certain day in the olden time, a throng of people might have been seen wending their way through Mottram to the place of execution at Gallow's Clough. It was a gloomy procession,--calculated to depress the beholder for the remainder of the day, and probably for many days to come. First marched a company of well-armed men--part of the retinue of the feudal lord--and in their midst was one bound, and wearing a halter dangling from his neck. Behind came a motley company of the country-folk--some weeping, some grimly silent, and some few laughing and jesting. Most of those who thus followed in the heels of the armed men were women, and in the front rank of these was a handsome peasant girl, who wrung her hands and cried aloud as though distracted.

The prisoner--condemned man though he was, with only a few hundred yards between himself and death--walked with a firm tread, and head held proudly erect. Now and then he turned his head to look at the weeping, wailing girl, and at such times his eyes grew moist: when the guards somewhat roughly thrust the girl back, his lips compressed, and his chest heaved, and his arms tugged at the thongs which bound him, in a manner which indicated that it would have fared ill with the guards had the young man been free. But beyond those silent manifestations of feeling, the prisoner marched to his death as calmly and fearlessly as though the journey had been an ordinary country walk.

Presently the procession reached the gibbet at Gallow's Clough, and here it halted. The guard cleared a s.p.a.ce about the gibbet, and by means of their axes and bills kept back the crowd. The prisoner and the executioners took their place beneath the gallows, and near them stood a well-dressed man--the representative of the feudal lord.

Without loss of time, and with but little ceremony, the executioners went about their business, heedless of the cries of the women, and the piteous appeals for mercy from the handsome peasant girl.

Soon the preparations were complete; the well-dressed, officious-looking personage drew forth a doc.u.ment, and proceeded to read aloud the details of the crime for which the poor wretch had to suffer death--shooting at and killing deer in his lordship's forest of Longdendale--a crime of so serious a nature in the eyes of the authorities of that day that nothing less than the death of the offender could atone for the sin. The reading being ended, the reader nodded to the executioners, and they made as though to carry out the sentence forthwith.

But at this juncture a diversion was created, for the young woman who had hitherto so persistently and closely hung upon the steps of the guard, burst through the ring and threw herself upon her knees before the lord's representative.

"Mercy, mercy, Master Steward! Thou canst save him yet; and it is such a little crime. What is one deer from the forest against the life of a good man? He but shot the deer because I--his wife--and his child needed food. And if thou sparest his life we will work, and more than doubly make up the loss to his lordship."

The steward--a dark man of evil countenance--looked at the girl for a moment, and hesitated; then he caught the eye of the prisoner, and instantly his face grew stern.

"Get thee gone, thou baggage," said he, spurning the female. "Stop her mouth, some of you; or, if she will scream, take her to the ducking stool."

Then, turning to the hangman, he curtly said:

"Do your work."

With a wild cry of despair, the girl sprang up, leaped towards the condemned man, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him, and then, before any could stop her, burst from the crowd and fled, shrieking and laughing, over the wastes of the hills. In another moment the prisoner was dangling in the air, and before the night fell the gibbet at Gallow's Clough held the ghastly form of a dead man swinging in chains.

It was midnight, and the skies were inky black; not a single star showed in the heavens, and there was no moon. A cold wind moaned down the gully, and swung the dead man in his chains so that the gibbet rocked and creaked. In the distant farms the timid country folk shivered in their beds, and as the wind shook the cas.e.m.e.nts, they trembled the more, and told each other they could hear the clanking of the chains and the shrieking of the witches at Gallow's Clough.

It was a night on which few would care to stir out of doors, but for all that there were those who set out through the eerie darkness to wend their way to the gibbet. When night had fallen, the dead man's wife crept down from the hills and stood beneath the swaying form of her lifeless husband, and with a grim energy cast pebbles, and uttered shrill cries to scare away the birds that came to peck at the carrion that had once been man.

As she kept her vigil, she sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of wild songs, and ever and anon talked to the dead man as though he could understand. It was clear that the woman's grief had driven her mad.

Towards midnight she slackened in her exertions, and seated herself at the foot of the gibbet, contenting herself with fearful but intermittent screams to scare away the birds. But presently nature gave out, and she fell into a troubled slumber. She was awakened by the sensation that some other mortal was near, and with a wild cry she sprang to her feet to find herself confronted by an old hag who appeared to be sawing at the dead man's wrist, as though to sever the hand from the arm.

"Malediction," croaked the hag, "who art thou?"

"I am his wife," answered the mad woman. "What dost thou want, witch?"

"Ah!" said the hag; "now I know thee. Thou hast need of help and friendship--I will be thy friend."

"What dost thou here?" said the woman, unheeding the latter part of the sentence.

"I seek a dead man's hand, and a dead man's flesh. The hand I would dry and wither in the smoke of the fire, and it will point out the way by which my schemes may achieve success. Of the fat of the dead man I would make candles--witch-lights--and by their glimmer I shall see, and see, and see,--things and secrets that are hidden from mortal eyes."

"Thou shalt not touch this dead man; he is my husband. Seek what thou requirest elsewhere."

The witch placed a long hand on the distracted widow's shoulder.

"Be not so foolish, poor wench," said she. "Trouble not over what I do. I tell thee I am thy friend, and the hand of thy dead husband once in my possession, will be of more service to thee than if left rotting here. Will not the ravens come--the birds of the air--and peck the bones clean; and is that not a greater defilement than boiling the fat in the witches' kitchen, and drying the dead man's hand in the smoke of the witches' fire? Listen!--dost know the meaning of revenge?"

The poor widow's eyes glistened as though a fire burned within her brain, and she repeated the single word "Revenge."

The old witch laughed, and said:

"Ah--thou knowest that. Tell me thy story."

Then the younger woman told the tale of want and woe and cruel wrong.

"The steward cast his eyes on me," she said, "but I loved my husband, and would have nought to do with him. And one day, my man being near when the tyrant insulted me, struck him to the ground, whereupon the steward dismissed him from his post, and we were made beggars. Then my child sickened, and since we needed nourishment, and there was no chance of honest labour for my husband, he took to the forest and shot one of the deer, saying that no wife or child of his should starve as long as there were any of G.o.d's creatures to be shot in the woods of Longdendale. The steward heard of this, and, like a wicked fiend, he hounded my man to death. There his body hangs, and the man who drove him to sin walks about in pride and power."

She ended her story with a wail, and commenced to tear at her hair.

"Where is thy child?" asked the hag.

The distracted creature pointed to a bundle, which she had previously deposited at the foot of the gallows. In the bundle was the form of a male child, lately dead.

"Dead too, like its father," said the witch. "How did it die?"

"It died of want and of grief. Grief poisoned my milk, and the child drank of it and died."

"Does anyone know 'tis dead?"

"No one but me--its mother."

The witch looked intently at the eyes of the mother, as though she would read her very soul.

"And thou would'st have revenge?" she asked at length.

"Would I not," answered the woman; "Oh, would I not. 'Tis all I live for now. Give me vengeance and I will become thy slave."