The other Highland story of this class is, if possible, of a still wilder character.
The river Auldgrande, after pursuing a winding course through the mountainous parish of Kiltearn for about six miles, falls into the upper part of the Firth of Cromarty. For a considerable distance it runs through a precipitous gulf of great depth, and so near do the sides approach each other, that herd-boys have been known to climb across on the trees, which, jutting out on either edge, interweave their branches over the centre. In many places the river is wholly invisible: its voice, however, is ever lifted up in a wild, sepulchral wailing, that seems the lament of an imprisoned spirit. In one part there is a bridge of undressed logs thrown over the chasm. “And here,” says the late Dr. Robertson in his statistical account of the parish, “the observer, if he can look down on the gulf below without any uneasy sensation, will be gratified by a view equally awful and astonishing. The wildness of the steep and rugged rocks—the gloomy horror of the cliffs and caverns, inaccessible to mortal tread, and where the genial rays of the sun never yet penetrated—the waterfalls, which are heard pouring down in different places of the precipice, with sounds various in proportion to their distances—the hoarse and hollow murmuring of the river, which runs at the depth of one hundred and thirty feet below the surface of the earth—the fine groves of pines, which majestically climb the sides of a beautiful eminence that rises immediately from the brink of the chasm—all these objects cannot be contemplated without exciting emotions of wonder and admiration in the mind of every beholder.”
THE LADY OF BALCONIE.
The house and lands of Balconie, a beautiful Highland property, lie within a few miles of the chasm. There is a tradition that, about two centuries ago, the proprietor was married to a lady of very retired habits; who, though little known beyond her narrow circle of acquaintance, was regarded within that circle with a feeling of mingled fear and respect. She was singularly reserved, and it was said spent more of her waking hours in solitary rambles on the banks of the Auldgrande, in places where no one else would choose to be alone, than in the house of Balconie. Of a sudden, however, she became more social, and seemed desirous to attach to herself, by acts of kindness and confidence, one of her own maids, a simple Highland girl; but there hung a mysterious wildness about her—a sort of atmosphere of dread and suspicion—which the change had not removed; and her new companion always felt oppressed, when left alone with her, by a strange sinking of the vital powers—a shrinking apparently of the very heart—as if she were in the presence of a creature of another world. And after spending with her, on one occasion, a whole day, in which she had been more than usually agitated by this feeling, and her ill-mated companion more than ordinarily silent and melancholy, she accompanied her at her bidding, as the evening was coming on, to the banks of the Auldgrande.
They reached the chasm just as the sun was sinking beneath the hill, and flinging his last gleam on the topmost boughs of the birches and hazels which then, as now, formed a screen over the opening. All beneath was dark as midnight. “Let us approach nearer the edge,” said the lady, speaking for the first time since she had quitted the house. “Not nearer, ma’am,” said the terrified girl; “the sun is almost set, and strange sights have been seen in the gully after nightfall.” “Pshaw,” said the lady, “how can you believe such stories? Come, I will show you a path which leads to the water: it is one of the finest places in the world; I have seen it a thousand times, and must see it again to-night. Come,” she continued, grasping her by the arm, “I desire it much, and so down we must go.” “No, lady!” exclaimed the terrified girl, struggling to extricate herself, and not more startled by the proposal than by the almost fiendish expression of mingled anger and fear which now shaded the features of her mistress, “I shall swoon with terror and fall over.” “Nay, wretch, there is no escape!” replied the lady, in a voice heightened almost to a scream, as, with a strength that contrasted portentously with her delicate form, she dragged her, despite of her exertions, towards the chasm. “Suffer me, ma’am, to accompany you,” said a strong masculine voice from behind; “your surety, you may remember, must be a willing one.” A dark-looking man, in green, stood beside them; and the lady, quitting her grasp with an expression of passive despair, suffered the stranger to lead her towards the chasm. She turned round on reaching the precipice, and, untying from her belt a bunch of household keys, flung them up the bank towards the girl; and then, taking what seemed to be a farewell look of the setting sun, for the whole had happened in so brief a space that the sun’s upper disk still peeped over the hill, she disappeared with her companion behind the nearer edge of the gulf. The keys struck, in falling, against a huge granitic boulder, and sinking into it as if it were a mass of melted wax, left an impression which is still pointed out to the curious visitor. The girl stood rooted to the spot in utter amazement.
On returning home, and communicating her strange story, the husband of the lady, accompanied by all the males of his household, rushed out towards the chasm; and its perilous edge became a scene of shouts, and cries, and the gleaming of torches. But, though the search was prolonged for whole days by an eager and still increasing party, it proved fruitless. There lay the ponderous boulder impressed by the keys; immediately beside it yawned the sheer descent of the chasm; a shrub, half uprooted, hung dangling from the brink; there was a faint line drawn along the green mould of the precipice a few yards lower down; and that was just all. The river at this point is hidden by a projecting crag, but the Highlanders could hear it fretting and growling over the pointed rocks, like a wild beast in its den; and as they listened and thought of the lady, the blood curdled at their hearts. At length the search was relinquished, and they returned to their homes to wonder, and surmise, and tax their memories, though in vain, for a parallel instance. Months and years glided away, and the mystery was at length assigned its own little niche among the multitudinous events of the past.
About ten years after, a middle-aged Highlander, the servant of a maiden lady who resided near the Auldgrande, was engaged one day in fishing in the river, a little below where it issues from the chasm. He was a shrewd fellow, brave as a lion and kindly-natured withal, but not more than sufficiently honest; and his mistress, a stingy old woman, trusted him only when she could not help it. He was more than usually successful this day in his fishing; and picking out some of the best of the fish for his aged mother, who lived in the neighbourhood, he hid them under a bush, and then set out for his mistress with the rest. “Are you quite sure, Donald,” inquired the old lady as she turned over the contents of his basket, “that this is the whole of your fishing?—where have you hid the rest?” “Not one more, lady, could I find in the burn.” “O Donald!” said the lady. “No, lady,” reiterated Donald, “devil a one!” And then, when the lady’s back was turned, off he went to the bush to bring away the fish appropriated to his mother. But the whole had disappeared; and a faintly marked track, spangled with scales, remained to show that they had been dragged apparently by some animal along the grass in the direction of the chasm.
The track went winding over grass and stone along the edge of the stream, and struck off, as the banks contracted and became more steep and precipitous, by a beaten path which ran along the edge of the crags at nearly the level of the water, and which, strangely enough, Donald had never seen before. He pursued it, however, with the resolution of tracing the animal to its den. The channel narrowed as he proceeded; the stream which, as he entered the chasm, was eddying beneath him in rings of a mossy brown, became one milky strip of white, and, in the language of the poet, “boiled, and wheeled, and foamed, and thundered through;” the precipices on either hand, beetled in some places so high over his head as to shut out the sky, while in others, where they receded, he could barely catch a glimpse of it through a thick screen of leaves and bushes, whose boughs meeting midway, seemed twisted together like pieces of basket work. From the more than twilight gloom of the place, the track he pursued seemed almost lost, and he was quite on the eve of giving up the pursuit, when, turning an abrupt angle of the rock, he found the path terminate in an immense cavern. As he entered, two gigantic dogs, which had been sleeping one on each side of the opening, rose lazily from their beds, and yawning as they turned up their slow heavy eyes to his face, they laid themselves down again. A little further on there was a chair and table of iron apparently much corroded by the damps of the cavern. Donald’s fish, and a large mass of leaven prepared for baking, lay on the table; in the chair sat the lady of Balconie.
Their astonishment was mutual. “O Donald!” exclaimed the lady, “what brings you here?” “I come in quest of my fish,” said Donald, “but, O lady! what keeps you here? Come away with me, and I will bring you home; and you will be lady of Balconie yet.” “No, no!” she replied, “that day is past; I am fixed to this seat, and all the Highlands could not raise me from it.” Donald looked hard at the iron chair; its ponderous legs rose direct out of the solid rock as if growing out of it, and a thick iron chain red with rust, that lay under it, communicated at the one end to a strong ring, and was fastened round the other to one of the lady’s ankles. “Besides,” continued the lady, “look at these dogs.—Oh! why have you come here? The fish you have denied to your mistress in the name of my jailer, and his they have become; but how are you yourself to escape!” Donald looked at the dogs. They had again risen from their beds, and were now eyeing him with a keen vigilant expression, very unlike that with which they had regarded him on his entrance. He scratched his head. “’Deed, mem,” he said, “I dinna weel ken;—I maun first durk the twa tykes, I’m thinking.” “No,” said the lady, “there is but one way; be on the alert.” She laid hold of the mass of leaven which lay on the table, flung a piece to each of the dogs, and waved her hand for Donald to quit the cave. Away he sprang; stood for a moment as he reached the path to bid farewell to the lady; and after a long and dangerous scramble among the precipices, for the way seemed narrower, and steeper, and more slippery than when he had passed by it to the cave, he emerged from the chasm just as the evening was beginning to darken into night. And no one, since the adventure of Donald, has seen aught of the lady of Balconie.