The Brownie of Bodsbeck, and Other Tales Volume I Part 2

CHAPTER IV.

Walter visited them next day at the time and place appointed, taking with him a dozen of bannocks and a small cheese. These he was obliged to steal out of his own pantry, for he durst not by any means trust his wife and family with the discovery he had made, knowing that he might as well have confided it with the curate himself, the sworn enemy of his motley protegees. They gathered around him with protestations of grat.i.tude and esteem; for the deserted and oppressed generally cling to the first symptoms of friendship and protection with an ardency that too often overshoots its aim. Walter naturally felt an honest pride, not so much in that he had done, as that he intended to do; but before he produced his repast, he began in a most serious way to question them relating to some late incidents already mentioned.

They all with one a.s.sent declared, and took G.o.d to witness, that they knew nothing at all about the death of the five soldiers; that it was not perpetrated by them, nor any connected with them; nor could they comprehend, in the least degree, how it was effected, if not by some supernatural agency-a judgment sent down from Heaven for their b.l.o.o.d.y intent. With regard to the murder of the priest, they were sorry that they knew so much. It was perpetrated by a few rash men of their number, but entirely without their concurrent a.s.sent, as well as knowledge; that though his death might have been necessary to the saving of a great number of valuable lives, they had, nevertheless, unanimously protested against it; that the perpetrators had retired from their body, they knew not whither; and that at that very time the Rev. Messrs Alexander Shiels and James Renwick were engaged in arranging for publication a general protest against many things alleged against them by their enemies, and that among others.[A]

There was a candour in this to which Walter's heart a.s.sented. He feasted them with his plentiful and homely cheer-promised to visit them every day, and so to employ his shepherds that none of them should come into that quarter to distress them. Walter was as good as his word-He visited them every day-told them all the news that he could gather of the troops that beleagured them-of the executions that were weekly and daily taking place-and of every thing else relating to the state of the country. He came loaden with food to them daily; and when he found it impossible to steal his own bread, b.u.t.ter, and cheese, he supplied their wants from his flock. The numbers of the persecuted increased on his hands incalculably-The gudewife of Chapelhope's bannocks vanished by scores, and the unconscionable, insatiable Brownie of Bodsbeck was blamed for the whole.

Some time previous to this, a young vagrant, of the name of Kennedy, chanced to be out on these moors shooting grouse, which were extremely plentiful. He tarried until the twilight, for he had the art of calling the heathfowl around him in great numbers, by imitating the cry of the hen. He took his station for this purpose in one of those moss.h.a.gs formerly described; but he had not well begun to call ere his ears were saluted by the whistling of so many plovers that he could not hear his own voice. He was obliged to desist, and lay for some time listening, in expectation that they would soon cease crying. When lying thus, he heard distinctly the sound of something like human voices, that spoke in whispers hard by him; he likewise imagined that he heard the pattering of feet, which he took for those of horses, and, convinced that it was a raid of the fairies, he became mortally afraid; he crept closer to the earth, and in a short time heard a swell of the most mellifluous music that ever rose on the night. He then got up, and fled with precipitation away, as he thought, from the place whence the music seemed to arise; but ere he had proceeded above an hundred paces, he met with one of the strangest accidents that ever happened to man.

That same night, about, or a little before, the hour of midnight, two of Laidlaw's men, who happened to be awake, imagined that they heard a slight noise without; they arose, and looked cautiously out at a small hole that was in the end of the stable where they slept, and beheld to their dismay the appearance of four men, who came toward them carrying a coffin; on their coming close to the corner of the stable, where the two men stood, the latter heard one of them say distinctly, in a whisper, "Where shall we lay him?"

"We must leave him in the barn," said another.

"I fear," said a third, "the door of that will be locked;" and they past on.

The men were petrified; they put on their clothes, but they durst not move, until, in a short time thereafter, a dreadful bellowing and noise burst forth about the door of the farmhouse. The family was alarmed, and gathered out to see what was the matter; and behold! there lay poor Kennedy in a most piteous plight, and, in fact, stark staring mad. He continued in a high fever all the night, and the next morning; but a little after noon he became somewhat more calm, and related to them a most marvellous tale indeed.

He said, that by the time he arose to fly from the sound of the music, the moor was become extremely dark, and he could not see with any degree of accuracy where he was running, but that he still continued to hear the sounds, which, as he thought, came still nigher and nigher behind him. He was, however, mistaken in this conjecture; for in a short s.p.a.ce he stumbled on a hole in the heath, into which he sunk at once, and fell into a pit which he described as being at least fifty fathom deep; that he there found himself immediately beside a mult.i.tude of hideous beings, with green clothes, and blue faces, who sat in a circle round a small golden lamp, gaping and singing with the most eldrich yells. In one instant all became dark, and he felt a weight upon his breast that seemed heavier than a mountain. They then lifted him up, and bore him away through the air for hundreds of miles, amid regions of utter darkness; but on his repeating the name of Jesus three times, they brought him back, and laid him down in an insensible state at the door of Chapelhope.

The feelings depicted in the features of the auditors were widely different on the close of this wonderful relation. The beauteous Katharine appeared full of anxious and woful concern, but no marks of fear appeared in her lovely face. The servants trembled every limb, and declared with one voice, that no man about Chapelhope was now sure of his life for a moment, and that nothing less than double wages should induce them to remain there another day. The goodwife lifted up her eyes to Heaven, and cried, "O the vails! the vails!-the vails are poured, and to pour!"

Walter pretended to laugh at the whole narration; but when he did, it was with an altered countenance, for he observed, what none of them did, that Kennedy had indeed been borne through the air by some means or other; for his shoes were all covered with moss, which, if he had walked, could not have been there, for the gra.s.s would have washed it off from whatever quarter he had come.

Kennedy remained several days about Chapelhope in a thoughtful, half delirious frame; but no entreaties could prevail with him at that time to accompany the men of the place to where he supposed the accident had happened, nor yet to give them any account where it was situated, for he averred that he heard a voice say to him in a solemn tone, "If you wish to live long, never tell what you have seen tonight, nor ever come this way again." Happy had it been for him had he attended all along to this injunction. He slipped away from Chapelhope in a few days, and was no more seen until the time that Copland and his men appeared there. It was he who came as guide to that soldiers that were slain, and he fell with them in the strait linn of the South Grain of Chapelhope.

These mysterious and unaccountable incidents by degrees impressed the minds of the inhabitants with terror that cannot be described; no woman or boy would go out of doors after sunset, on any account whatever, and there was scarcely a man who durst venture forth alone after the fall of evening. If they could have been sure that brownies and fairies had only power to a.s.sume the human shape, they would not have been nearly in such peril and perplexity; but there was no form of any thing animate or inanimate, save that of a lamb, that they were sure of; they were of course waylaid at every turn, and kept in continual agitation. An owl was a most dangerous and suspiciouslooking fellow-a white glede made them quake, and keep a sharp lookout upon his course in the air-a hare, with her large intelligent eyes and equivocal way of walking, was an object of general distrust-and a cat, squalling after dark, was the devil. Many were the ludicrous scenes that occurred, among which I cannot help mentioning those which follow, as being particularly whimsical.

Jasper, son to old John of the Muchrah, was the swiftest runner of his time; but of all those whose minds were kept in continual agitation on account of the late inundation of spirits into the country, Jasper was the chief. He was beset by them morning and evening; and even at high noon, if the day was dark, he never considered himself as quite safe. He depended entirely upon his speed in running to avoid their h.e.l.lish intercourse; he essayed no other means-and many wonderful escapes he effected by this species of exertion alone. He was wont to knit stockings while tending his flock on the mountains; and happening to drop some yarn one evening, it trailed after him in a long ravelled coil along the sward. It was a little after the sun had gone down that Jasper was coming whistling and singing over the shoulder of the Hermon Law, when, chancing to cast a casual glance behind him, he espied something in shape of a horrible serpent, with an unequal body, and an enormous length of tail, coming stealing along the bent after him. His heart leapt to his mouth, (as he expressed it,) and his hair bristled so that it thrust the bonnet from his head. He knew that no such monster inhabited these mountains, and it momently occurred to him that it was the Brownie of Bodsbeck come to seize him in that most questionable shape. He betook him to his old means of safety in great haste, never doubting that he was well qualified to run from any object that crawled on the ground with its belly; but, after running a considerable way, he perceived his adversary coming at full stretch along the hill after him.

His speed was redoubled; and, as he noted now and then that his inveterate pursuer gained no ground on him, his exertion was beyond that of man. There were two shepherds on an opposite hill who saw Jasper running without the plaid and the bonnet, and with a swiftness which they described as quite inconceivable. The cause set conjecture at defiance; but they remarked, that though he grew more and more spent, whenever he glanced behind he exerted himself anew, and strained a little harder. He continued his perseverance to the last, as any man would do who was running for bare life, until he came to a brook called the Ker Cleuch, in the crossing of which he fell down exhausted; he turned on his back to essay a last defence, and, to his joyful astonishment, perceived that the serpent likewise lay still and did not move. The truth was then discovered; but many suspected that Jasper never overcame that heat and that fright as long as he lived.

Jasper, among many encounters with the fairies and brownies, had another that terminated in a manner not quite so pleasant. The Brownie of Bodsbeck, or the Queen of the Fairies, (he was not sure which of them it was,) came to him one night as he was lying alone, and wide awake, as he conceived, and proffered him many fine things, and wealth and honours in abundance, if he would go along to a very fine country, which Jasper conjectured must have been Fairyland. He resisted all these tempting offers in the most decided manner, until at length the countenance of his visitant changed from the most placid and bewitching beauty to that of a fiend. The horrible form grappled with him, laid hold of both his wrists, and began to drag him off by force; but he struggled with all the energy of a man in despair, and at length, by a violent exertion, he disengaged his right hand. The enemy still continuing, however, to haul him off with the other, he was obliged to have recourse to a desperate expedient. Although quite naked, he reached his clothes with the one hand and drew his knife; but, in endeavouring to cut off those fingers which held his wrist so immovably fast, he fairly severed a piece of the thumb from his own left hand.

This was the very way that Jasper told the story to his dying day, denying stoutly that he was in a dream; and, singular as it may appear, I can vouch for the truth of it. Jasper Hay died at Gattonside at a right old age, in the year 1739; and they are yet alive who have heard him tell those stories, and seen him without the thumb of the left hand.

Things went on in this distracted and doubtful manner until the time when Walter is first introduced. On that day, at the meeting place, he found no fewer than 130 of the poor wanderers, many of them a.s.sembled to see him for the last time, and take an affectionate leave of him; for they had previously resolved to part, and scatter themselves again over the west country, even though certain death awaited them, as they could not in conscience longer remain to be the utter ruin of one who was so generous and friendly to them. They saw, that not only would his whole stock be wasted, but he would himself be subjected to confiscation of goods, and imprisonment, if to nothing worse. Walter said, the case seemed hard either way; but he had been thinking, that perhaps, if they remained quiet and inoffensive in that seclusion, the violence of the government might in a little relax, and they might then retire to their respective homes in peace. Walter soon heard with vexation that they made conscience of _not living in peace_, but of proclaiming aloud to the world the grievous wrongs and oppression that the church of Christ in Scotland laboured under. The _doctor chap_, as Walter always called him, ill.u.s.trated at great length the sin that would lie to their charge, should they remain quiet and pa.s.sive in a time like that, when the church's all was at stake in these realms. "We are but a remnant," added he, "a poor despised remnant; but if none stand up for the truth of the reformed religion, how are ever our liberties, civil or ecclesiastical, to be obtained? There are many who think with us, and who feel with us, who yet have not the courage to stand up for the truth; but the time must ere long come, that the kingdoms of the land will join in supporting a reformation, for the iniquity of the Amorite is wearing to the full."

Walter did not much like disputing about these matters; but in this he felt that his reason acquiesced, and he answered thus: "Ye speak like a true man, and a clever man, Doctor; and if I had a desperate cause by the end, and wanted ane to back me in't, the deil a step wad I gang ayont this moss hag to find him; but, Doctor, there's a time for every thing. I wadna hae ye to fling away a gude cause, as I wad do a rotten ewe, that winna haud ony langer. But dinna ye think that a fitter time may come to mak a push? ye'll maybe sell mae precious lives for nae end, wi' your declarations; take care that you, and the like o' you, haena these lives to answer for.-I like nae desperate broostles-od, man, it's like ane that's just gaun to turn divour, taking on a' the debt he can."

"Dinna fear, gudeman! dinna fear! There's nae blood shed in sic a cause that can ever be shed in vain. Na, na! that blood will argue better at the bar o' Heaven for poor distressed Scotland than all the prayers of all the living. We hae done muckle, but we'll do mair yet-muckle blood has been wantonly and diabolically shed, and our's may rin wi' the rest-we'll no thraw't wantonly and exultingly away; but, when our day comes, we'll gie it cheerfully-as cheerfully, gudeman, as ever ye paid your mail to a kind landlord, even though the season had been hard and stormy. We had aince enough of this warld's wealth, and to spare; but we hae naething now but our blood, and we'll part wi' that as cheerfully as the rest. And it will tell some day! and ye may live to see it yet. But enough, gudeman; we have all resolved, that, whatever the consequence may be, to live no more on your bounty-therefore, do not urge it-but give us all your hand-Farewell!-and may G.o.d bless you in all your actings and undertakings!-There is little chance that we shall ever meet again-We have no reward to give but our blessing and good wishes; but, whenever a knee here present is bowed at the footstool of grace, you will be remembered."

Walter could not bear thus to part with them, and to give them up as it were to certain destruction. He argued as well as he could on the imprudence of the step they were going to take-of the impossibility of their finding a retreat so inaccessible in all the bounds of the south of Scotland, and the prospect that there was of the persecution soon relaxing. But when he had said all that he could say, a thin spare old man, with grey dishevelled locks, and looks, Walter said, as stern as the adders that he had lately been eating, rose up to address him.

There was that in his manner which commanded the most intense attention.

"Dost thou talk of our rulers relaxing?" said he. "Blind and mistaken man! thou dost not know them. No; they will never relax till their blood shall be mixed with their sacrifices. That insatiate, gloomy, papistical tyrant and usurper, the Duke of York, and his commissioner, have issued laws and regulations more exterminating than ever. But yesterday we received the woeful intelligence, that, within these eight days, one hundred and fifty of our brethren have suffered by death or banishment, and nearly onehalf of these have been murdered, even without the sham formality of trial or impeachment, nor had they intimation of the fate that awaited them. York hath said in full a.s.sembly, 'that neither the realm nor the motherchurch can ever be safe, until the south of Scotland is again made a hunting forest;' and his commissioner hath sworn by the living G.o.d, 'that never a whig shall again have time or warning to prepare for Heaven, for that h.e.l.l is too good for them.' Can we hope for these men relaxing? No! The detestable and b.l.o.o.d.y Clavers, that wizard! that eater of toads! that locust of the infernal pit, hems us in closer and closer on one side, and that Muscovite beast on the other! They thirst for our blood; and our death and tortures are to them matter of great sport and amus.e.m.e.nt. My name is Mackail! I had two brave and beautiful sons, and I had but two; one of these had his brains shot out on the moss of Monyhive without a question, charge, or reply. I gathered up his brains and shattered skull with these hands, tied them in my own napkin, and buried him alone, for no one durst a.s.sist me. His murderers stood by and mocked me, cursed me for a dog, and swore if I howled any more that they would send me after him. My eldest son, my beloved Hew, was hung like a dog at the Marketcross of Edinburgh. I conversed with him, I prayed with him in prison, kissed him, and bade him farewell on the scaffold! My brave, my generous, my beautiful son! I tell thee, man, thou who preachest up peace and forbearance with tyrants, should ever the profligate Charles, or his diabolical brother-should ever the murderer Clavers, or any of his h.e.l.lhounds of the north, dare set foot in Heaven, one look from the calm benignant face of my martyred son would drive them out howling!"

All this time the old man shed not a tear; his voice was wildly solemn, but his looks were mixed with madness. He had up his hand to swear, to pray, or to prophecy, Walter knew not which, but he was restrained by his a.s.sociates, and led aside, so that Walter saw no more of him; but he said he could not get him out of his mind for many a day, for sic another desperate auld body he had never seen.

These harangues took up much of the time that they had to spare, but ere they parted Walter persuaded them, probably by his strong homely reasoning, to remain where they were. He said, since they persisted in refusing to take more of his flock, there was an extensive common beyond the height, called Gemsope, which had been a royal forest, where many gentlemen and wealthy farmers had sheep that fed promiscuously; and considering their necessitous circ.u.mstances, he thought it no evil, and he advised them to go and take from that glen as many as would serve to support nature for a time;-that for his part he had many a good wedder and dinmont there, and was willing to run his risk, which would then fall equal on a number, and only on such as were rich and could well bear it. In this plan, after some scruples which were overborne by the majority, they at length fully and thankfully acquiesced.

That same day, on his way homeward, Walter heard the wonderful relation of the apparition of his beloved daughter in the Hope at midnight; he learned that Clavers would be there in a few days, and he had sent away above 100 men to steal sheep-all these things made him thoughtful and uneasy after he had reached his home, wet and fatigued.-"It will be a b.l.o.o.d.y night in Gemsope this," he said, sighing, not recollecting what he said or to whom he said it. He could trust his wife with any of his family concerns, but as long as she continued to be so much influenced by the curate Clerk, the sworn enemy of his poor persecuted flock, he durst not give her a hint of their retreat.

Walter became still more and more perplexed from all that he heard from his wife, as well as from every one else-he found that, in truth, there was some mysterious thing about his house-the whole family seemed convinced of it-there were many things seen, heard, and done there that he could in nowise account for in a rational way, and though he resisted the general belief for a good while, that the house was haunted, circ.u.mstances at length obliged him to yield to the torrent, and he believed as faithfully in the Brownie of Bodsbeck as any of them all.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] This curious protest is still extant, and shows the true spirit of the old Covenanters or Cameronians, as they have since been called, better than any work remaining. It is called in the t.i.tle page, "_An informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented Remnant of the suffering Antipopish, Antiprelatic, Antierastian, Antisectarian, true Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland_." It is dated at Leadhills in 1687, and is the conjoint work of Mr James Renwick, and Mr Alexander Shiels, author of _The Hind let loose_. The following is an extract from it, p. 107:-

"And in like manner we do hereby disclaim all unwarrantable practices committed by any few persons reputed to be of us, whereby the Lord hath been offended, his cause wronged, and we all made to endure the scourge of tongues; for which things we have desired to make conscience of mourning before the Lord, both in public and private. As the unwarrantable manner of killing that curate at the Corsephairn, though he was a man of death both by the laws of G.o.d and man, and the fact not materially murder; it being gone about contrary to our declaration, common or competent consent, (the conclusion and deed being known only to three or four persons) in a rash and not a Christian manner, and also other offences being committed at the time; which miscarriages have proven a mean to stop and r.e.t.a.r.d lawful, laudable, and warrantable proceeding, both as to matter and manner."

These _other offences committed at the time_, unquestionably refer to the slaughter of the Highland soldiers; about which, there was great stir and numerous conjectures in the country; although, owing to the revolution that immediately followed, the perpetrators were never taken, nor the cause tried in a court of justice, nor indeed was the incident ever generally known.

CHAPTER V.

The house which Walter occupied was on the very spot where the farmhouse of Chapelhope now stands, but it was twice as long; indeed, a part of the house that is still standing, or was lately so, is the very one that was built for Laidlaw when he first entered to that large farm.

There was likewise an outshot from the back of the house, called the Old Room, which had a door that entered from without, as well as one from the parlour within. The end of this apartment stood close to the bottom of the steep bank behind the house, which was then thickly wooded, as was the whole of the long bank behind, so that, consequently, any one, with a little caution, might easily have gone out or come in there, without being seen by any of the family. It contained a bed, in which any casual vagrant, or itinerant pedlar slept, besides a great deal of lumber; and as few entered there, it had altogether a damp, mouldy, dismal appearance. There was likewise a dark closet in one corner of it, with an old rusty lock, which none of the family had ever seen opened.

The most part of the family soon grew suspicious of this place. Sounds, either real or imaginary, were heard issuing from it, and it was carefully shunned by them all. Walter had always, as I said, mocked at the idea of the Old Room being haunted, until that very night when we began with him, and where, after many roundabouts, we have now found him again.

It will be recollected that the conversation between Walter and his wife, which is narrated in the first chapter of this book, terminated with a charge from him never more to mention the mysterious story relating to their daughter and these five men that were destroyed.

After this she retired about some housewife business, and left Walter by himself to muse on that he had seen and heard. He was sitting musing, and that deeply, on the strange apparition of his daughter that old John had seen, when he thought he heard something behind him making a sound as if it growled inwardly. He looked around and saw that it was his dog Reaver, who was always an inmate of every place that his master entered-he was standing in an att.i.tude of rage, but at the same time there was a mixture of wild terror in his appearance-His eyes, that gleamed like red burning coals, were pointed directly to the door that opened from the corner of the parlour into the Old Room-Walter was astonished, for he well knew his acuteness, but he kept his eyes on him and said not a word-The dog went forward with a movement scarce perceptible, until he came close to the door, but on putting his nose and ear to the bottom of it, he burst out with such a bay and howl as were truly frightful, and ran about the apartment as if mad, trying to break through the walls and window boards.-Walter was fairly overcome; there is nothing frightens a shepherd so much as the seeing of his dog frightened. The shepherd's dog of the true breed will boldly attack any animal on earth in defence of his master, or at his command; and it is no good sign indeed when he appears terrified, for the shepherd well knows that his dog can discover spirits by the savour of the wind, when he is all unconscious that any such beings are near.

Walter fled into the kitchen with precipitation-he found all the family standing in alarm, for they had heard the hideous uproar in the room.

"What's the matter?" said halfadozen at once.

"What's the matter!" said Walter, churlishly-"nothing at all is the matter-tell me who of you were in the Old Room, and what you were seeking there?"

"No-none of them had been in the Old Room-the whole of the family were present, nor had one of them been away."

Walter's countenance changed-he fixed his eyes on the ground for the s.p.a.ce of a minute.

"Then I am sure," said he, emphatically, "something worse is there."

A breathless silence ensued; save that some groans and muttered prayers issued from the lips of the goodwife, who sat in a posture of deep humility, with her brow leaned on both hands.

"Some of you go and see," added Walter, "what it _is_ that is in the Old Room."

Every eye in the house turned on another, but no one spoke or offered to move. At length Katharine, who seemed in great anxiety lest any of them should have had the courage to go, went lightly up to her father, and said, "I will go, sir, if you please."

"Do, my dear, and let some of the men go with you."

"No, sir; none of the men shall go with me."