His parishioners, about the end of spring, were taking a new millstone from Port Bheathain on Squrraside to the mill, by means of a pole run through its eye. The parson threw off his cassock, and assisted them. The cassock was left where it was thrown off. In the evening his wife sent a servant-maid for it. The maid found, lying on the cassock, a large black dog, which would not allow her to touch the garment. She came home without it, and refused to return. The wife herself and another servant then went, were bitten by the dog, and ultimately twelve persons, including the minister, died of hydrophobia.
So shocking an event could not take place without superstition busying itself about it. On Beltane night shortly before the event, the minister’s servant-man had gone early to bed, while it was yet day. There was “a large blazing fire of green oak” (beòlach mhòr dhearg de glas darach) on the floor of the room, and he closed and locked the door before going to bed. Through the night he heard a noise as of some one feeling for the lock and trying to open the door. He remained quiet, thinking the noise was made by young men, who came courting and had mistaken the door. Soon, however, the door opened, and a person whom he did not recognize entered. The stranger, without saying a word, went and stood at the fire. When he turned his back the servant observed that his feet were horse’s feet (spògun eich). In a short time the apparition went away, locking the door after it. The man rose and went to an old man in great estimation for his piety, who lived alone at Creag nan Con (the Dog Rock). The old man’s hut was a poor one, its door being made of wicker work and of the form called sgiathalan. No remonstrances could induce him to stay another night in the minister’s house, and it was arranged that he should sleep at the hut, and in the day time go to his work at the manse. He told the sight he had seen, and the good man inferred from the time of night at which the devil had been seen that evil was near the house. It was shortly after this that the dog went mad, and the frightened servant was the only one of the minister’s household that escaped.
THE GAÏCK CATASTROPHE (Mort Ghàthaig).
On the last night of last century[94] a disastrous casualty, in which six persons lost their lives, occurred in the deer forest of Gaïck in Badenoch. The wild tract of mountain land, to which the name is given, was not formally made into a deer forest till 1814, but its loneliness made it a favourite haunt of wild game at all times. There was not a house in the large extent of near thirty square miles beyond a hut for the shelter of hunters. Captain MacPherson of Ballychroän, an officer in the army, with some friends and gillies were passing the night of the 31st December, 1800, in this hut, when an avalanche, or whirlwind, or some unusual and destructive agency came upon them, and swept before it the building and all its inmates. When people came to look for the missing hunters they found the hut levelled to the ground, and its fragments scattered far and wide. The men’s bodies were scattered over distances of half a mile from the hut; the barrels of their guns were twisted, and over all there was a deep covering of snow, with here and there a man’s hand protruding through it. The whole Highlands rang with the catastrophe, and it is still to be heard of in the Hebrides as well as in the district in which it occurred. Popular superstition constructed upon it a wild tale of diabolical agency.
Captain MacPherson was popularly known as “The Black Officer of Ballychroän” (Ofhichier du Bailechrodhain). He is accused of being a “dark savage” man (dorcha doirbh), who had forsaken his wife and children, and had rooms below his house, whence the cries of people being tortured were heard by those who passed the neighbourhood at night. About the end of 1800 he was out among the Gaïck hills with a party of hunters, and passed the night in the hut mentioned. Late at night strange noises were heard about the house, and the roof was like to be knocked in about the ears of the inmates. First came an unearthly slashing sound, and then a noise as if the roof were being violently struck with a fishing rod. The dogs cowered in terror about the men’s feet. The captain rose and went out, and one of his attendants overheard him speaking to something, or some one, that answered with the voice of a he-goat. This being reproached him with the fewness of the men he had brought with him, and the Black Officer promised to come next time with a greater number.
Of the party who went on the next hunting expedition not one returned alive. The servant who said he had heard his master speaking to the devil refused positively to be one of the party, neither threats nor promises moved him, and others followed his example. Only one of the previous party, a Macfarlane from Rannoch, a good and pious man it is said, went. It was observed that this day the officer left his watch and keys at home, a thing he had never been known to do before. Macfarlane’s body was not found on the same day with the rest. It was carried further from the hut than the searchers thought of looking, and a person who had found before the body of one lost among the hills, was got to look for his remains. There is a saying that if a person finds a body once he is more apt to find another. When the melancholy procession with the dead bodies was on the way from the forest, even the elements were not at peace, but indicated the agency that had been at work. The day became exceedingly boisterous with wind and rain, so much so, when the Black Officer’s body was foremost, that the party was unable to move on, and the order had to be changed.
Two songs at least were composed on the occasion. One, strong in its praises of Captain MacPherson, will be found in Duanaire, p. 13; the other, among other things, says of him—
“The Black Officer of Ballychroän it was,
He turned his back on wife and children;
Had he fallen in the wars in France,