THE HAUNTED BRIDGE.
A TALE OF THE HIGHLANDS.
There are probably few readers who are not familiar, to a greater or lesser extent, with the well-ventilated subject of superstition in the Highlands of Scotland. There are few mountain countries throughout the world that are not rich in lore and legend relating to the supernatural: their very configuration suggests that agencies more than ordinary have been employed in shaping out their features. It is curious to notice how very largely the demoniac theory enters into the calculations of the peasantry. For one Fairy glen or knowe there are a dozen Devil’s mills, bridges, caldrons, or punchbowls; in fact, it is almost always the beings that are supposed to be baleful and inimical to the human race that have had their personality perpetuated in these legends. This certainly seems a little incongruous; but as this is not a treatise on demonology, we are content to leave it so.
Superstition is part of the being of the mountaineer. Brave even to rashness, he will face the natural dangers that beset his life—in the torrent, on the peak, or in the forest; he fears no odds when he meets his foes. And yet this man, who can tread the dizzy ledge on the face of a precipice, who can hurl himself on levelled steel, is more timid and frightened than a child, when he conceives that forces other than earthly are being brought to bear on him. It is partly to the style and manner of his life that he owes this. He is brought more into the presence of nature than his neighbour of the plains; he becomes imbued with the spirit of his surroundings; the deep dark gloom of the woods, the lonesomeness of the mountain solitudes, the voices of the storm and of the torrent, and of their reproductions in the echoes, appeal to him; and a poetical imagination begotten of such an existence finishes the process. Thus the roar of a waterfall in its dark chasm becomes to him the howlings of some demon prisoned among the rocks; the sighing of the wind through the forest trees is caused by the passage of spirits; the mists that furl around the mountain peaks and are wafted so silently across crest and corrie are disembodied ghosts; and the sounds that break the stillness of the night are the shrieks and yells of fiends and their victims.
This brings me to my story. I fancy that most of my readers are acquainted more or less with the scenery of the Highlands; but in the case of by far the larger number of them, I venture to say that such acquaintance extends only to the Highlands in their summer or their autumn dress. If so, they only half know them. Brave is the tourist who ventures amid the bens and glens when rude King Boreas lords it over them; when winter’s wind roars adown the gorges of the hill, staggering the stalwart pines, mingling the withered leaves and the snowflakes in the desolate woods. When icicles hang from the hoary rocks, and the deep drift chokes up the ravines, mantles the slopes of the corries, and bends in cornices over the threatening cliffs; when the river roars through the plain—brown and swollen—and its parent torrents are leaping and raving among the boulders; when the mountain hare and the ptarmigan are white as the snow that harbours them; and the deer, driven from the hills by stress of weather, roam in herds through the low-lying woods; and the mountain fox leaves his cairn and prowls around the farm and the sheepfold—then, if you would enter into the spirit of loneliness and solitude, take your way to the Highlands. Do not imagine, however, that such is their condition during the whole of winter; on the contrary, I have painted a particularly black picture, and it was in very much better weather that, two or three years ago, I went north, in December, on a visit to some friends in Inverness-shire. The particular part of the county I stayed in does not materially affect my adventure, so I shall not disclose it.
My time sped by very pleasantly, although the district did not afford many neighbours at short distances; but this was a circumstance that always procured me an extra hearty welcome when I ventured far enough from home to call upon any people. On one of these expeditions I had ridden to a house about eight miles away, and the late hour of my arrival brought about an invitation to stay for dinner and spend the evening. My friends pushed their hospitality to such an extent, that they had almost prevailed upon me to stay the night as well, when a good-natured challenge changed my wavering plans into a firm determination to be off. Our conversation after dinner had not unnaturally turned upon ghost-stories, as the district was an out-of-the-way one, and the country-folk were fully persuaded of the existence of kelpies and warlocks of various kinds. What now happened was that some of the young people fancied they had found the reason why I was willing to stay all night, and boldly told me that I was frightened to cross a certain bridge on my way home that had the reputation of being haunted. I knew the spot well, though I had never found out its exact story; and when I had assured the country-people that I had no fears of the experiment, they solemnly shook their heads, and averred that not for sums untold would they cross the bridge after nightfall. On the present occasion, as I had been foremost among the sceptics during the story-telling, I felt my reputation at stake; and declaring I would on no account remain, I gave orders to have my pony brought round. The whole party came to the door to see me start—the elders inveighing against my foolishness in setting off at that time of night; the young people plying me with horrors, and telling me to be sure to come round next morning—if alive—and give an account of my adventures. To all I gave a merry reply, and lighting my pipe, swinging myself into the saddle, and shouting ‘Good-night,’ I cantered off down the avenue.
For a couple of miles the road led me down a deep wooded glen. On both sides the mountains towered aloft to a height of more than two thousand feet, their lower slopes thickly clad with pine and birch, their shoulders and summits white from a recent heavy snowfall. The river poured along tumultuously, close beneath the road, swirling past frowning cliffs of rock, brawling and battling with heaps of boulders, shooting in sheets of glancing foam over cascade and rapid. By daylight the scene was sufficiently grand and impressive; illumined as it now was by a faint moonlight, it was much more so. The night was calm and slightly frosty; but overhead, a strong breeze was blowing, and from time to time the moon was obscured by the flying clouds. The play of light and shade brought about by this was very beautiful; at one moment the shaggy hillsides and deep pools of the river were plunged in deepest shadow; in the next a flood of pale glory poured over them, painting the rushing stream with silver, shooting shafts of light among the tall trees, tracing mosaics on the dark surface of the road. Each clump of ferns, each bush and stump, took uncommon shape, and it required no great stretch of imagination to convert the boulders and reefs of rock out in the stream into waterbulls and kelpies. The rush and roar of the river drowned all other sounds; but with the exception of the echoing tread of my pony and the occasional bark of a fox from the hill, there was nothing else to be heard. On my way down the glen I passed a few scattered cottages, but their occupants were long ago in bed, although it was not much past ten o’clock.
The wilder part of the glen ended in a fine pass, where the hills towered almost straight up from the river, and the pines threw so deep a shadow, that for a few yards it was impossible to see the road. Just beyond, the mountains retreated to right and left, and through a short and level tract of meadow-land, road and stream made their way down to the shores of the loch. Ahead of me I could see its broad bosom glancing in the moonlight, and the great snow-clad mountains beyond it. As the improved condition of the road now made rapid progression easier, I gave the pony his head, and he went along in a style that promised soon to land me at my destination.
There was only one thing that troubled me—the haunted bridge. Once past it, and I should thoroughly enjoy my moonlight ride. I do not know whether it was the thought of the ghost-stories with which we had beguiled the hours after dinner, and which now kept recurring to my mind in spite of all effort to the contrary, or whether it was the solemn and impressive scenery I had passed through in the glen, that had unstrung me; but the nearer I drew to the bridge the more uncomfortable I felt regarding it. It was not exactly fear, but a vague presentiment of evil—the Highland blood asserting itself. I could not get rid of the sensation. I tried to hum and to whistle, but the forced merriment soon died a natural death. I was now on the loneliest part of the road. From the bottom of the glen as far as the bridge—about three miles—there was not a single cottage; and more than a mile on the other side of it lay a scattered hamlet. The moon, too, which had hitherto befriended me, now threatened to withdraw its light; and where clumps of trees overhung the road the darkness was deep. The pony carried me along bravely—he knew he was going home; and in a short time a turn in the road showed me, some distance ahead, a ribbon of white high upon the dark hillside. It was the stream that ran beneath the fatal bridge.
Better get out of this as soon as possible, I thought; and with voice and stick I encouraged the pony to increased speed. On we went! The roar of the haunted stream was loud and near now; the gloom increased as we plunged deeper into the wood that filled its basin; in another minute the bridge would be far behind, when, without the least warning, the pony shied to one side and then stood stock still, quivering all over. The shock all but sent me flying over its head; but by an effort I kept my seat. I had not far to look for the cause of the beast’s fright. Not a dozen yards away were the dimly seen parapets of the bridge; and on one of them crouched an object that froze me with terror. There are some moments in which the events of a lifetime pass in review; there are some glances in which an infinity of detail can be taken in quicker than eye can close. This was one of them. I do not suppose that my eye rested on the object of my terror for more than a second; but in that brief space I saw what seemed like the upper part of a distorted human body, hunchbacked and without legs, with a face that glowed with the red light of fire! I can laugh now, when I think of my fright; but at the moment, I remember getting the pony into motion somehow with stick, bridle, and voice, and speeding across the bridge like a thunderbolt, crouching down, Tam o’ Shanter-like, and momentarily expecting to feel the grip of a clammy hand on my neck! Hard, hard we galloped through the hamlet I have mentioned; nor did I slacken the pace until the lights of my abode had gleamed through the plantation, and we were safe and sound in the stable-yard.
To make a really good ghost-story, my narrative should go no further; but the sequel has still to be told. I invented an excuse to appease the curiosity of my friends, who naturally were anxious to know what had sent us home in such a fashion—the pony in a lather, and myself with a scared, unintelligible expression. I did not want to tell the real story until I had made some effort to unravel it. With this end in view, I started on foot soon after breakfast for the house I had dined at, intending to make a thorough examination of the bridge and the course of the stream on my way, and to question some of the cottagers in the hamlet. I was saved the trouble, however. I had not gone much more than a mile, when I perceived coming along the road towards me a sturdy pedlar, with a fur cap on his head, and a pack of very large dimensions fastened on his broad shoulders. Such fellows are very commonly met with in the outlying districts of the Highlands, where they do a roaring trade in ribbons, sham jewellery, and smallwares, besides carrying a fund of gossip from place to place. In the specimen of the class now before me I was not long in recognising the ghost of the haunted bridge, and in hailing him I was soon in possession of the whole story. ‘Yes; he was the man that was sitting on the brig about eleven o’clock; and was I the gentleman that rode past as if all the witches in the countryside were at his heels? Faith, it was a proper fright I had given him.’
‘But tell me,’ I asked, ‘what on earth were you doing there at such a time of night?’
‘Weel, sir, I was very late of gettin’ across the ferry; and it was a langer step than I had thocht doon to the village; and I had had a guid walk the day already, and was tired-like. The brig was kind o’ handy for a rest; so I just sat doon on the dike and had a bit smoke o’ the pipe. Losh, sir, when ye cam scourin’ past, I thocht it was the deil himsel’; but then I just thocht that it was mysel’ sitting in the shadow that had frighted your beastie, and it had run awa’ wi’ you like. And when I cam the length o’ the village, I just had to creep into a bit shed; and wi’ my pack and some straw I soon made a bed.’
So here was the whole story. The deep shadow on the bridge had prevented me from seeing the sitter’s legs; the heavy knapsack had given him a humpback; the fur cap and the glow of the pipe accounted for the fiery countenance. With mutual explanations we parted—he to push his sales in the villages beyond; I, to hurry on to the house in the glen, whose inmates at first evinced the liveliest interest in the over-night episode—an interest, however, which waned to disappointment as I proceeded to explain how the ghost was laid. I may mention that I omitted the ‘scourin’ past’ portion of the adventure. How they will chaff me when they read this!