Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

KENNETH ORE.

Kenneth Ore, a Highlander of Ross-shire, who lived some time in the seventeenth century, may be regarded as the Peden of the class whom I have described as superstitious without religion. It is said, that when serving as a field labourer with a wealthy clansman, who resided somewhere near Brahan Castle, he made himself so formidable to the clansman’s wife by his shrewd sarcastic humour, that she resolved on destroying him by poison. With this design, she mixed a preparation of noxious herbs with his food, when he was one day employed in digging turf in a solitary morass, and brought it to him in a pitcher. She found him lying asleep on one of those conical fairy hillocks which abound in some parts of the Highlands; and her courage failing her, instead of awakening him, she set down the pitcher by his side, and returned home. He awoke shortly after, and, seeing the food, would have begun his repast, but feeling something press coldly against his heart, he opened his waistcoat, and found a beautiful smooth stone, resembling a pearl, but much larger, which had apparently been dropped into his breast while he slept. He gazed at it in admiration, and became conscious as he gazed that a strange faculty of seeing the future as distinctly as the present, and men’s real designs and motives as clearly as their actions, was miraculously imparted to him. And it was well for him that he should have become so knowing at such a crisis; for the first secret he became acquainted with was that of the treachery practised against him by his mistress. But he derived little advantage from the faculty ever after, for he led, it is said till extreme old age, an unsettled, unhappy kind of life—wandering from place to place, a prophet only of evil, or of little trifling events, fitted to attract notice when they occurred, merely from the circumstance of their having been foretold.

There was a time of evil, he said, coming over the Highlands, when all things would appear fair and promising, and yet be both bad in themselves, and the beginnings of what would prove worse. A road would be opened among the hills from sea to sea, and a bridge built over every stream; but the people would be degenerating as their country was growing better; there would be ministers among them without grace, and maidens without shame; and the clans would have become so heartless, that they would flee out of their country before an army of sheep. Moss and muir would be converted into corn-land, and yet hunger press as sorely on the poor as ever. Darker days would follow, for there would arise a terrible persecution, during which a ford in the river Oickel, at the head of the Dornoch Firth, would render a passage over the dead bodies of men, attired in the plaid and bonnet; and on the hill of Finnbheim, in Sutherlandshire, a raven would drink her full of human blood three times a day for three successive days. The greater part of this prophecy belongs to the future; but almost all his minor ones are said to have met their fulfilment. He predicted, it is affirmed, that there would be dram-shops at the end of almost every furrow; that a cow would calve on the top of the old tower of Fairburn; that a fox would rear a litter of cubs on the hearth-stone of Castle Downie; that another animal of the same species, but white as snow, would be killed on the western coast of Sutherlandshire; that a wild deer would be taken alive at Fortrose Point; that a rivulet in Western Ross would be dried up in winter; and that there would be a deaf Seaforth. But it would be much easier to prove that these events have really taken place than that they have been foretold. Some of his other prophecies are nearly as equivocal, it has been remarked, as the responses of the old oracles, and true merely in the letter, or in some hidden meaning capable of being elicited by only the events which they anticipated. He predicted, it is said, that the ancient Chanonry of Ross, which is still standing, would fall “full of Mackenzies;” and as the floor of the building has been used, for time immemorial, as a burying-place by several powerful families of this name, it is supposed that the prophecy cannot fail, in this way, of meeting its accomplishment. He predicted, too, that a huge natural arch near the Storhead of Assynt would be thrown down, and with so terrible a crash that the cattle of Led-more, a proprietor who lived twenty miles inland, would break from their fastenings at the noise. It so happened, however, says the story, that some of Led-more’s cattle, which were grazing on the lands of another proprietor, were housed within a few hundred yards of the arch when it fell. The prophet, shortly before his death, is said to have flung the white stone into a lake near Brahan, uttering as his last prediction, that it would be found many years after, when all his prophecies would be fulfilled, by a lame humpbacked mendicant.

There is a superstitious belief which, in the extent to which it has been received, ranks next in place to that enthusiasm which inspired the visionary and the prophet; and it was alike common in the past age to the Highlander and the Presbyterian. I allude to the belief that evil spirits have a power of assuming visible forms, in which to tempt and affright the good, and sometimes destroy the bad—a belief as old, at least, as the days of St. Dunstan, perhaps much older. For it seems probable that Satan is merely a successor in the class of stories which illustrates this belief to the infernal deities; indeed, in some of our more ancient Scottish traditions, nearly the old designation of one of these is retained. The victims of Flowden were summoned at the Cross of Edinburgh in the name of Platcock, i.e., Pluto. There is but one story of this class which I at present remember in the writings of Walker—that of Peden in the cave of Galloway; the author of Waverley, however, in referring to the story, attests the prevalence of the belief. The autobiographies of Methodists of the last century abound with such; they form, too, in this part of the country (for the story of Donald Roy and the dog is but one of a thousand) the most numerous class of our traditions. Out of this multitudinous class I shall select, by way of specimen, two stories which belong to the low country party, and two others peculiar to the Highlands.

THOMAS HOGG AND THE MAN-HORSE.

Not much more than thirty years ago, a Cromarty fisherman of staid, serious character, who had been visiting a friend in the upper part of the parish, was returning home after nightfall by the Inverness road. The night was still and calm, and a thick mantle of dull yellowish clouds, which descended on every side from the centre to the horizon, so obscured the light of the moon, though at full, that beyond the hedges which bounded the road all objects seemed blended together without colour or outline. The fisherman was pacing along in one of his happiest moods; his mind occupied by serious thoughts, tempered by the feelings of a genial devotion, when the stillness was suddenly broken by a combination of the most discordant sounds he had ever heard. At first he supposed that a pack of hounds had opened in full cry in the field beside him; and then, for the sounds sunk as suddenly as they had risen, that they were ranging the moors on the opposite side of the hill. Anon there was a fresh burst, as if the whole pack were baying at him through the hedge. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a handful of crumbs, the residue of his last sea stock; but as he held them out to the supposed dogs, instead of open throats and glaring eyes, he saw only the appearance of a man, and the sounds ceased. “Ah!” thought he, “here is the keeper of the pack;—I am safe.” He resumed his walk homewards, the figure keeping pace with him as he went, until, reaching a gap in the hedge, he saw it turning towards the road. He paused to await its coming up; but what was his astonishment and horror to see it growing taller and taller as it neared the gap, and then, dropping on all fours, assume the form of a horse. He hurried onwards; the horse hurried too. He stood still; the horse likewise stood. He walked at his ordinary pace; the horse walked also, taking step for step with him, without either outstripping him or falling behind. It seemed an ugly misshapen animal, bristling all over with black shaggy hair, and lame of a foot. It accompanied him until he reached the gate of a burying-ground, which lies about two hundred yards outside the town; where he was blinded for a moment by what seemed an intensely bright flash of lightning; and, on recovering his sight, he found that he was alone. There is a much older but very similar story told of a man of Ferindonald, who, when on a night journey, is said to have encountered the evil one in five different shapes, and to have lost his senses through fright a few hours after; but this story, unlike the one related, could be rationally enough accounted for, by supposing the man to have lost his senses a few hours before.

THE WATCHMEN OF CULLICUDEN.

The parishes of Cullicuden and Kiltearn are situated on opposite sides of the bay of Cromarty; and their respective manses, at the beginning of the last century, nearly fronted each other; the waters of the bay flowing between. Their clergymen, at that period, were much famed for the sanctity of their lives, and their diligence in the duties of their profession; and, from the similarity of their characters, they became strongly attached. They were both hard students; and, for at least two hours after midnight, the lights in their closet windows would be seen as if twinkling at each other across the Firth. When the light of the one was extinguished, the other regarded it as a signal to retire to rest. “But, how now,” thought the minister of Kiltearn, as one night, in answer to the accustomed sign, he dropped the extinguisher on his candle, “how now are the sleeping watchmen to fulfil their duties? Would it not be better that, like sentinels, we should relieve each other by turns? There would then be at all times within the bounds appointed us, open eyes and a praying heart.” He imparted the thought to his friend; and ever after, as long as they lived, the one minister never retired to bed until the casement of the other had given evidence that he had risen to relieve him. A few years after this arrangement had taken place, a parishioner of Cullicuden, who had been detained by business till a late hour in some of the neighbouring parishes, was walking homeward over the solitary Maolbuoy, when he was joined by a stranger gentleman, who seemed journeying in the same direction, and entered with him into conversation. He found him to be one of the most intelligent, amusing men he had ever met with. He seemed to know everything; and though he was evidently no friend to the Church, he did nothing worse than laugh at it. The man of Cullicuden felt more than half inclined to laugh at it too, and more than half convinced by the ludicrous stories of the stranger, that its observances were merely good jokes. In this mood they reached the extreme edge of the Maolbuoy, where it borders on Cullicuden, when the stranger made a full stop. “Our road runs this way,” said the man. “Ah!” replied the stranger, “but I cannot accompany you: see you that?” pointing, as he spoke, to a faint twinkling light on the opposite side of the bay—“The watchman is stationed there, and I dare not come a step further.” It was only from this confession that the Cullicuden man learned the true character of his companion.

THE LADY OF ARDVROCK.

The merely superstitious stories of this class are generally of a wilder and more imaginative cast than those which have sprung up within the pale of the Church; and the chief actor in them is presented to us in a more imposing attitude, and in some instances bears rather a better character. Somewhat less than a century ago (I am wretchedly uncertain in my dates), the ancient castle of Ardvrock in Assynt was tenanted by a dowager lady—a wicked old woman, who had a singular knack of setting the people in her neighbourhood together by the ears. A gentleman who lived with his wife at a little distance from the castle, was lucky enough to escape for the first few years; but on the birth of a child his jealousy was awakened by some insinuations dropped by the old lady, and he taxed his wife with infidelity, and even threatened to destroy the infant. The poor woman in her distress wrote to two of her brothers, who resided in a distant part of the country; and in a few days after they both alighted at her gate. They remonstrated with her husband, but to no effect. “We have but one resource,” said the younger brother, who had been a traveller, and had spent some years in Italy; “let us pass this evening in the manner we have passed so many happy ones before, and visit to-morrow the old lady of Ardvrock. I will confront her with perhaps as clever a person as herself; and whatever else may come of our visit, we shall at least arrive at the truth.” On the morrow they accordingly set out for the castle—a grey, whinstone building, standing partly on a low moory promontory, and partly out of a narrow strip of lake which occupies a deep hollow between two hills. The lady received them with much seeming kindness, and replied to their inquiries on the point which mainly interested them with much apparent candour. “You can have no objection,” said the younger brother to her, “that we put the matter to the proof, by calling in a mutual acquaintance?” She replied in the negative. The party were seated in the low-browed hall of the castle, a large, rude chamber, roofed and floored with stone, and furnished with a row of narrow, unglazed windows, which opened to the lake. The day was calm, and the sun riding overhead in a deep blue sky, unspecked by a cloud. The younger brother rose from his seat on the reply of the lady, and bending towards the floor, began to write upon it with his finger, and to mutter in a strange language; and as he wrote and muttered, the waters of the lake began to heave and swell, and a deep fleece of vapour, that rose from the surface like an exhalation, to spread over the face of the heavens. At length a tall black figure, as indistinct as the shadow of a man by moonlight, was seen standing beside the wall. “Now,” said the brother to the husband, “put your questions to that, but make haste;” and the latter, as bidden, inquired of the spectre, in a brief tremulous whisper, whether his wife had been faithful to him. The figure replied in the affirmative: as it spoke, a huge wave from the lake came dashing against the wall of the castle, breaking in at the hall windows; a tremendous storm of wind and hail burst upon the roof and the turrets, and the floor seemed to sink and rise beneath their feet like the deck of a ship in a tempest. “He will not away from us without his bountith,” said the brother to the lady, “whom can you best spare?” She tottered to the door, and as she opened it, a little orphan girl, one of the household, came rushing into the hall, as if scared by the tempest. The lady pointed to the girl: “No, not the orphan!” exclaimed the appearance; “I dare not take her.” Another immense wave from the lake came rushing in at the windows, half filling the apartment, and the whole building seemed toppling over. “Then take the old witch herself!” shouted out the elder brother, pointing to the lady—“take her.”—“She is mine already,” said the shadow, “but her term is hardly out yet; I take with me, however, one whom your sister will miss more.” It disappeared as it spoke, without, as it seemed, accomplishing its threat; but the party, on their return home, found that the infant, whose birth had been rendered the occasion of so much disquiet, had died at the very time the spectre vanished. It is said, too, that for five years after the grain produced in Assynt was black and shrivelled, and that the herrings forsook the lochs. At the end of that period the castle of Ardvrock was consumed by fire, kindled no one knew how; and luckily, as it would seem, for the country, the wicked lady perished in the flames; for after her death things went on in their natural course—the corn ripened as before, and the herrings returned to the lochs.