HAUNTED HOUSES.
Some half a century ago or more a native of Rannoch resided at Bonskeid (Bonn-sgaod) in the neighbouring parish of Blair Athole. He was married to a Badenoch woman, who had brought servants with her from her own country. In fact the only servants about the house were from Badenoch. In obedience to the law, which ascribes that which is mysterious to that which is remote, Badenoch was at that time esteemed a great place for witchcraft and things “uncanny.” A series of unaccountable noises and appearances began about the house in Bonskeid. Turnips and peats, thrown by unseen hands, flew about the house, lights were blown out, furniture was mysteriously moved, bedclothes were pulled off, and no one could be sure that an article would be found by him where he had left it. In all this there was no appearance of mortal agency, and the whole business was at once assumed to be the work of evil spirits. A friend from Rannoch, who had been on a visit to the house, declared solemnly (and he was a God-fearing, trustworthy man) that he himself heard the spinning-wheel coming down stairs, and saw it falling in pieces on the floor of the room in which he and the family were sitting, without any visible agency, and without any part of it being broken or injured. He put it together again, and with his own hands carried it upstairs and left it in its original place. He had not sat long after coming down when the wheel again came in the same mysterious manner, and fell in pieces on the floor. On another occasion, as he stood in the byre, a turnip came and knocked the candle out of his hand. To his certain knowledge there was no one in the byre who could have thrown it. These flying turnips came sometimes as if they had been hurled through the wall. The unhappy man, in whose house this occurred, endured the persecution for more than a year, and was sadly broken in health and spirits by the trouble. One day as he stood on the hearth-stone, warming the back of his feet to the fire, the hearth-stone began to move. A Badenoch dark hussy (Caileag dhubh) was at the time standing by, with her elbow rested on the kitchen ‘dresser,’ and her chin on her hand. He observed her smiling, and it struck him she was at the bottom of all this bedevilment. He turned her and all the rest of the Badenoch servants away, and no further disturbance took place.
About twenty years ago, a house in Kilmoluag, Tiree, was the scene of similar disturbances. With one or two exceptions, all the people of the island believed them to be produced by some supernatural evil agency, and all the superstition that with the spread of education had been quietly dying out was revived in renewed vigour. No one could deny the agency of spirits when the evidence was so clear. The annoyance began by the trickling of dirty water, mixed with sand, from the roof. The burning peats were found among the bedclothes, and pebbles in bowls of milk, where no peats or pebbles ought to be; linen was lifted mysteriously from the washing, and found in another room; articles of furniture were moved without being touched by visible hands, and stones flew about the house. The disturbances did not occur during the day, nor when a large company assembled at the house. Several went to lay the ghost, and a good deal of powder and shot was wasted by persons of undoubted courage in firing in the air about the house. The annoyance became so bad, and the advice of “wise people” so positive, that the family removed to another house, in the hope the evil would not follow. The removal, however, had no effect, and it is privately rumoured, the disturbances ceased only when some money that had gone amissing was restored. The cause was never clearly ascertained, but there is reason to suspect it was caused, as all similar disturbances are, by some one suborned for the purpose and shielded from suspicion by a pretended simplicity and terror.
Numerous similar cases, which have occurred in the Highlands, might be instanced. Instances occurring in England, from that of Woodstock downwards, and in the south of Scotland, differ only as the circumstances of the countries do. They all seem to have the same characteristic, the tricks are such as it is perfectly possible for human agency to perform, but it is believed there is no human being about the place who does them. Stones come flying through the windows, as if they were thrown from the sky, and are found lying on the floor; the leg of a wheelbarrow startles two persons engaged within the house in earnest conversation, by coming flying between them through the window, and striking the opposite wall with violence; a peat strikes the incredulous stranger between the shoulders, and he goes home a believer, etc. These cantrips are exaggerated by fear and rumour, till at last the devil is believed to be unusually busy in the locality. Once this belief becomes popular, the delusion is easily carried on.
Bòcain, GOBLINS.
The number of these, resembling Luideag, seen about fords or bridges, and near the public road in lonely places, as has been already said, are numberless. Every unusual sight and sound, in the locality which has the name of being haunted, becomes a goblin to the timorous, and one of the most tiresome forms of ghost stories is, how the narrator was nearly frightened out of his wits (the quantity of which is not mentioned) by a horse standing with outstretched neck, and its head towards him, which he mistook for a gigantic human figure, by a white he-goat in the face of a rock, the plaintive cries of an owl, etc., etc. Most ghosts, however, are dependent not so much on the imagination of the individual spectator as on accumulated rumours, and their explanation is to be sought in men’s love of the marvellous and tendency to exaggeration. On the high road leading from the wood of Nant (Coill’ an Eannd) to Kilchrenan on Lochaweside, two or three summers ago, the traveller was met by a dark shadow, which passed him without his knowing how. On looking after him, he again saw the shadow, but this time moving away, and a little man in its centre, growing less as the shadow moved off. The little man was known as “Bodach beag Chill-a-Chreunain.”
About the same time a ghost haunted the neighbourhood of Inveraray, and caused great annoyance to the post and others travelling late. A man had a tussle with a ghost at Uchdan a Bhiorain dui in Appin, and said it felt in his arms like a bag of wool. Phantom men were to be seen at Uchdan na Dubhaig above Balachulish; at Ath-flèodair, a ford near Loch Maddy in Uist, ‘things’ are perpetually seen, and it takes a very courageous man to go from Portree home to Braes, in Skye, after dark. A mile above the manse, where the road is most lonely, and near the top of a gradual ascent, sounds of throttling are heard and dark moving objects are seen.
In the island of Coll, the top of the ascent above Grisipol had at one time an evil reputation as a haunted spot. At the summit of the pass, there is a white round rock called Cnoc Stoirr. One night a man, on his way to the west end of Coll, reached the place about midnight, and was joined by a man on horseback. The rider said not a word, and accompanied him for near three miles to the “Round House,” as a house, built for the accommodation of the farm-servants of Breacacha Castle was called. Whenever he attempted to enter any of the houses on the way, the silent horseman came between him and the house and prevented him. When they came to the Round House, the cock crew, and the horseman disappeared over the gate in a flame of fire. The man was lifted into the house, pouring with sweat, and going off in fainting fits.
In Glen Lyon, in Perthshire, there is a village called Caisle, and near it a ford (now a bridge) and ravine called Eas a Chaisle. In the early part of the present century, clods and stones were thrown by unseen hands at parties crossing this ford at night. At last, no one would venture to cross. A harum-scarum gentleman of the neighbourhood, popularly looked upon as an unbeliever and a man without fear of God or man, crossed one night, and the clods as usual began to fly about him. He cried out, “In the name of God I defy all from the pit”; and on his saying this a mysterious sound passed away up the ravine, and clod-throwing at the place was never afterwards heard of.
The district, now forming the parishes of Kilmartin and Kilmichael, at the west end of the Crinan Canal, is known in the neighbourhood as Argyle (Earra-ghaidheal), probably from a Celtic colony from Ireland having settled there first. The people, for instance, of Loch Aweside say of a person going down past Ford, that he is going down to Argyle. In course of time the name has been extended to the county. The public road leading through the district was once infested by a ghost, which caused considerable terror to the inhabitants. A person was got to lay it. He met the ghost and exorcised it in the name of Peter and Paul and John and all the most powerful saints, but it never moved. At last he called out peremptorily, “In the name of the Duke of Argyle, I tell you to get out of there immediately.” The ghost disappeared at once, and was never seen again.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CELTIC YEAR.
Bliadhna, a year, has been derived by writers on Celtic antiquities from Bel-ain, “the ring or circle of Baal,” but the derivation is at variance with etymological analogies, as well as inadmissible from there being no satisfactory evidence that Baalim worship ever extended to the Celtic tribes. It can only be regarded as part of that punning affectation with which Gaelic scholarship is disfigured. The initial bl occurs in many words which have in common the idea of separation, and bliadhna is likely connected with such words as bloigh, a fragment; ball, a spot, a limb, and denotes merely a division, or separate portion, of time.
The notations of the Celtic year belong to the Christian period, old style. If there are any traces of Pagan times they are only such as are to be gathered from a few names and ceremonies.
The four seasons are known as earrach, spring, samhradh, summer, fogharadh, harvest, and geamhradh, winter. The final syllable in each of these names is ràidh, a quarter or season of the year, a space of three months; and the student of Gaelic will note that the long and heavy vowel, of which it consists, is, contrary to the common rule affecting long vowels, shortened and made an apparently indifferent terminal syllable. It is still deemed, in many parts of the Highlands, unlucky to be proclaimed in one quarter of the year and married in the next, and the circumstance is called being “astride on the seasons” (gobhlach mu’n ràidh). It is an old saying, that the appearance of a season comes a month before its actual arrival; mìos roi gach ràidh choltas, i.e. a month before each season, is seen its appearance. The character of the seasons is described in an old riddle,
“Four came over,
Without boat or ship,
One yellow and white,
One brown, abounding in twigs,
One to handle the flail
And one to strip the trees.”[50]
There can be no doubt the origin of the names given to them belongs to a period anterior to Christianity.
Earrach, spring, is derived from ear, the head, the front, the east. In naming the four quarters of the heavens, the face, as in the case of the Hebrew names, is supposed to be toward the east. The right hand (deas) is the name given to the south, and the adjective tuaitheal, from tuath, the north, means “wrong, to the left, against the sun.” Hence also, toirt fo’n ear, lit. to take a thing from the east, means to observe; earalas, foresight, i.e. the having a thing in view; earar, the day after to-morrow, i.e. the day in front of it. The Latin bos, and the Greek ἔας or ἦς would indicate that the ancient Celtic name of the season was fearrach, and if so it may be connected with fear, vir, a man, the first par excellence, for, before, furasda, easy, etc. Eàrr means the tail, and the long syllable shows it to be only another form of iar, west, behind, after, the opposite of ear. Frequently these names for east and west are known as sear and siar, as e.g. cha-n fhearr an gille shiar na’n gille shear, “the lad from the west is no better than the lad from the east,” that is, it is but six of the one and half a dozen of the other.
Samhradh, summer, according to old glossaries, is from obs. samh, the sun, and means the sun season or quarter. This corresponds with the English name, which is evidently a softened form of sun-mer. Samh is now used to denote “the suffocating smell produced by excessive heat.”[51] In Tiree, it is the name given to the hazy heavy appearance of the Western ocean, and few expressions are more common than samh chuain t-siar, the oppressive feeling of which the uneasy sea on the west side of the island is productive. In the North Hebrides samh means the ocean itself. A common description over the whole Highlands of an intolerable stench is mharbhadh e na samhanaich, i.e. it would kill the savage people living in caves near the ocean, as giants were fabled to do.
Fogharadh, autumn, is likely connected with fogh, said to mean ease, hospitality, and foghainn, to suffice, with the same root idea of abundance.
Geamhradh, winter; Lat. hiems, Gr. χεῖμα. No doubt geamh is of the same origin as the Greek and Latin words, but it does not find its explanation in the Greek χεω, to pour. From its being found in gèamhlag, a crow-bar, gèimheal, a chain, geamhtach, short, stiff, and thick, there seems to have been a Gaelic root implying to bind, to be stiff, which gives a suitable derivation for the name of the season of frost and ice.
Mios, a month, is supposed to be connected with mias, a round platter, from the moon’s round orb completing its circle within the month. Greek μήν, Eol. μεις, a month; Lat. mensis; Sanscr. mâsas, a month, mâs, the moon. These show that undoubtedly the origin of the word is connected with the moon. The names in the Greek, Latin, and Teutonic languages show that there was originally an n in the word, and the Gaelic, as well as Sanscrit, bears testimony to the same fact, by the long vowel. It is a common thing in Hebrew for n at the end of a syllable and in the middle of a word to be assimilated to an immediately succeeding consonant, and it is more likely it so disappeared in some languages than that it was assumed by others. Another Gaelic name for the moon, ré, is also used to denote a portion of time; ri mo ré, during my lifetime.
Computation of time, however, by months and days of the month, as at present, was entirely unknown to the Highlander of former days; and even yet, the native population do not say “on such a day of such a month,” but so many days before or after the beginning of summer or other season, or before and after certain well-known term days and festivals, as St Bride’s day, St Patrick’s day, Whitsunday (caingis), Hallowtide (Samhuinn), etc. The time is always reckoned by the old style, and this difference of notation is at first confusing to a stranger. For instance, when told that the ling fishing on the West Coast lasts from the middle of spring till five weeks of summer, it will take a little thought on his part to realise that this means from the beginning of April to about the 18th of June. Names for the months are to be found in dictionaries, but they are obviously manufactured from the Latin names, and confined to modern printed Gaelic.
A connected account of the festivals and days by which the year was marked, must begin with the festivities by which its advent was celebrated.