The Three Perils of Man; or, War, Women, and Witchcraft, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by James Hogg

The friar proceeded as he had said, and all the rest joined him with becoming devotion, save the poet, whose orisons that night were somewhat cold. He could not brook the charm that drew Delany from his own side to his rival's knee. The Master sat aloof, biting his lip, and grinning in derision; but, at one part of the service, although the curate does not say what part, he was insensibly overcome, and fell into a painful oblivious dream. The strains of the sacred music, simple as they were, stole over his soul, as some remembrance of early life sometimes steals into the heart of enfeebled age, reminding the decaying and dying worm of joys he can no more see, and of feelings of delight that have perished for ever.—If a son of the mountains of the north were transported to some far foreign clime, and there doomed to remain for life: After sojourning in that land for half an age, until grey and bowed down, if by chance, on some still evening, or mayhap through the eddies of the storm, one of the strains of his native land were poured on his ear, think of the recollections it would awaken in his mind: How painfully thrilling the sensations! Would it not be like the last sweet beam of a hope he was never more to cherish, a last look of all that was dear on earth?—Such were the feelings that crept unbidden over the soul of the enchanter, on hearing the sweet sounds, that reminded him of a religion he had for ever renounced, and in which he had never firmly believed till he had believed to tremble.

In this troubled trance he sat leaning against the wall, until the worshippers had reached the middle of the hymn to the Saviour. He then was seized with strong convulsions, and, rising up, with staggering steps, he fled from the chamber, crying as he went,—"Cruel and improvident things! reptiles! cursed, whining sycophants! that would send me to my doom before my time!" He rushed out to the battlements, and, groping his way through the storm, took shelter in the narrow staircase, that he might hear no more of the sounds that thus troubled and distracted his soul. What dread had seized him, or what he had seen or heard, his guests knew not; but they had scarcely well ended their hymn, when he rushed again in among them, with wildered looks, and his hair standing on end, seeming glad to take shelter among those from whom he had so lately fled with abhorrence. No one enquired the cause, for all were so weary and overcome with slumber; and every one then composed himself to sleep in the manner that best suited his convenience.

The storm continued to rage with unabated violence, and, after they had laid themselves down, they found that the castle was all tottering and quaking before it. The firmest heart was appalled; for the rocking of the castle was not all; every now and then they heard eldritch shrieks arising, as of some wretch perishing, or rather, as some of them thought, like the voices of angry spirits yelling through the tempest. When one of these howling sounds came on the blast, every one of our prostrate friends breathed a deep sigh, or uttered some exclamatory sound, Charlie had always one, which he uttered even after he was asleep. "Hech! Gude sauf us, sirs! what will be the upshot o' a' this?" The Master sat muffled up in the corner close behind them, and after he judged them all to be asleep he fell a-crooning a sort of hymn in an under key. The poet was, however, more than half awake, and gathered up some broken fragments of it. Poets are never to trust when they give quotations from memory out of the works of others; and perhaps honest Carol might add some bombastic lines of his own, but he always averred that the following lines formed a part of the warlock's hymn.

"Pother, pother,
My master and brother!
Who may endure thee,
Thus failing in fury?
King of the tempest that travels the plain;
King of the snow, and the hail, and the rain,
Lend to thy lever yet seven times seven,
Blow up the blue flame for bolt and for levin,
The red forge of hell with the bellows of heaven!
With hoop, and with hammer!
With yell, and with yammer;
Hold them at play,
Till the dawn of the day!
Pother! pother!
My sovereign and brother!

"O strain to thy lever,
This world to sever
In two or in three—
What joy it would be!
What toiling, and moiling, and mighty commotions!
What rending of hills, and what roaring of oceans!
Ay, that is thy voice, I know it full well;
And that is thy whistle's majestic swell;
But why wilt thou ride thy furious race,
Along the bounds of vacant space,
While there is tongue of flesh to scream,
And life to start, and blood to stream?
Yet pother, pother!
My sovereign and brother!
And men shall see, ere the rising sun,
What deeds thy mighty arm hath done."

If it was true that the Master sung these ridiculous lines, which is not very likely, his "sovereign and brother" had not accepted of his sacrifice, nor paid due deference to his incense of praise. For, a little before the break of day, our group were aroused from their profound slumbers by loud and reiterated cries. The lamp was still burning feebly and blue. Charlie, whose ear was well trained to catch any alarm, was the first to start up; but the sight that he saw soon laid him again flat on the floor, though not before he had leaped clear over a narrow oak-table and two forms. There was a black being, that appeared to be half-man and half-beast, dragging Master Michael Scott along the room toward the door; yet he dragged him with difficulty, and at some times the wizard seemed rather to prevail. Horrible as this phantom was, all those who saw it agreed that there was something about it that instantly reminded them of the late seneschal; and, as they raised their heads and beheld it, every heart was chilled with terror. Charlie pronounced his short, loud prayer, which has already been recorded in this history, and which consisted merely of one vehement sentence of three syllables; yea, he pronounced it as he flew; and then squatting in a corner, and covering his head with his cloak, that, whatever dreadful thing happened, he might not see it, there he lay repeating his little prayer as fast as human breath could utter it.

The demon struggled hard with the Master; and the latter, as may well be supposed, exerted his utmost power,—so that his adversary only got him toward the door as it were by inches. When he found himself losing ground, he always made a certain writhing motion, which cannot be described, and which every time extricated him somewhat from his adversary's clutches. Then the apparition laid hold of him again by the left side with his lobster claws, and that gripe uniformly caused the wizard to utter a loud and piercing cry. At such times Charlie's little prayer might be heard waxing still louder as the strife increased; and, though he lifted not his face from the earth, he continued a kind of spurning motion with his feet, as if he would fain have burrowed under the wall like a mole.

For a long time no one durst move to the Master's assistance. The scene so far surpassed ought they had ever conceived in horror, that their senses remained altogether benumbed. The combat continued with unabated ardour. The Master foamed at the mouth, his hair stood all on end, and his bloodshot eyes stared wildly, as if they would have started from their sockets. At length the fiend so far prevailed as to drag the Master close to the door, where he threw him down, and made a motion as if he would have dashed him through below it. But Michael was flesh and blood, and could not enter nor depart by the key-hole, or the foot of the door, like the beings with whom he had to do. The demon therefore tried to open the door; but the enchanter's muscular frame being jammed against it, it could not be opened at once. Michael's efforts were now directed to that object alone, namely, the keeping of the door shut, and he exerted himself till his remaining strength was exhausted, but at last suffered himself to be dragged back from the door, repeating these words as he lay flat on his back:—"'Tis done! 'Tis done! 'Tis over! 'Tis over!"

The lookers on sat and trembled, all save the friar, who had by that time somewhat rallied his scattered senses, and stood on his feet. The fiend had dragged the Master back from the door by the feet, and holding him down by the grey hair with one hand, he opened the door with the other; then, stooping down, he twisted the one hand, armed with red crooked claws, in his hair, and the other in his long grizzled beard. The friar had stepped forward, and, at that moment, laying the rood on the Master's forehead with the one hand, and the open Book of the Gospels on his breast with the other, he pronounced a sacred Name, and in that name commanded the demon to depart. Swift as the javelin leaves the hand of the warrior, or the winged shaft flies from the bowstring, did the monster fly from the symbols of a creed by which he and his confederate powers were all controlled, and from a name and authority at which the depths of hell trembled. He rushed out at the door with a yell of dismay, and threw himself from the battlement on the yielding wind. The friar peeped forth after him, but he only heard a booming sound, which died on the gale, and beheld like a dragon of blue livid fire flying toward the east, in the direction of the hill of Eildon.

The friar returned into the chamber with a countenance beaming with joy. No conqueror ever returned from the field of battle with an exultation of mind so sublime as that which now lighted up his uncourtly mien. His victory had been so sudden and so complete, that all present were astounded at the greatness and extent of his power, and none of his friends doubted that his might was as far above that of their host as the sun or the stars are above the earth. They had in this instance seen it exemplified in a manner not to be disputed; and there was the Master himself still sitting on the floor, and gazing on his deliverer with astonishment.