I can only give you an old Scottish story of the last century, with the incidents of which I became familiar in my student days when attending the ancient university of St. Andrew's, where I worked my way manfully through the classes of chemistry, anatomy, and natural philosophy; and felt as proud of my academic gown as I have done in later years of my red coat and epaulettes, and perhaps as happy, too, for some of the most joyous days, and certainly the most uproarious nights of my past life, have been spent in the auld East Neuk of Fife—God bless it!
And now for my legend.
It was a cold night in the March of the year 1708. The hour of ten had tolled from the old Gothic collegiate church; beating on his drum, the drummer in the livery of the burgh had proceeded from the Market-cross to the ruins of St. David's Castle, and from thence to the chapel of St. Rufus, and having made one long roll or flourish at the point from whence his peregrination began, he adjourned to the "Thane of Fife" to procure a dram, while the good folks of Crail composed themselves for the night, and the barring of doors and windows announced that those who were within had resolved to make themselves comfortable and secure, while those unfortunate wights that were without were likely to remain so.
Hollowly the German Sea was booming on the rocks of the harbour; and from its hazy surface a cold east wind swept over the flat, bleak coast of Crail; a star peeped at times between the flying clouds, and even the moon looked forth once, but immediately veiled her face again, as if one glance at the iron shore and barren scenery, unenlivened by hedge or tree, were quite enough to prevent her from looking again.
The town-drummer had received his dram and withdrawn, and Master Spiggot, the gudeman or landlord of the Thane of Fife, the principal tavern, and only inn or hostel in the burgh, was taking a last view of the main street, and considering the propriety of closing for the night. It was broad, spacious, and is still overlooked by many a tall and gable-ended mansion, whose antique and massive aspect announces that, like other Fifeshire burghs before the Union in the preceding year, it had seen better days. Indeed, the house then occupied by Master Spiggot himself, and from which his sign bearing the panoplied Thane at full gallop on a caparisoned steed, swung creaking in the night wind, was one of those ancient edifices, and in former days had belonged to the provost of the adjoining kirk: but this was (as Spiggot said), "in the auld-warld times o' the Papistrie."
The gudeman shook his white head solemnly and sadly, as he looked down the empty thoroughfare.
"There was a time," he muttered, and paused.
Silent and desolate as any in the ruins of Thebes, the street was half covered with weeds and rank grass that grew between the stones, and Spiggot could see them waving in the dim starlight.
Crail is an out-of-the-way place. It is without thoroughfare and without trade; few leave it and still fewer think of going there, for there one feels as if on the very verge of society; for even by day, there reigns a monastic gloom, a desertion, a melancholy, a uniform and voiceless silence, broken only by the croak of the gleds and the cawing of the clamorous gulls nestling on the old church tower, while the sea booms incessantly as it rolls on the rocky beach.
But there was a time when it was otherwise; when the hum of commerce rose around its sculptured cross, and there was a daily bustle in the chambers of its Town-hall, for there a portly provost and bailies with a battalion of seventeen corpulent councillors sat solemnly deliberating on the affairs of the burgh, and swelling with a municipal importance that was felt throughout the whole East Neuk of Fife; for, in those days, the bearded Russ and red-haired Dane, the Norwayer and the Hollander, laden with merchandise, furled their sails in that deserted harbour where now scarcely a fisherboat is seen; for on Crail, as on all its sister towns along the coast, fell surely and heavily that decay of trade which succeeded the Union in 1707.