About twenty years ago, a house in Kilmoluag, Tiree, was the scene of similar disturbances. With one or two exceptions, all the people of the island believed them to be produced by some supernatural evil agency, and all the superstition that with the spread of education had been quietly dying out was revived in renewed vigour. No one could deny the agency of spirits when the evidence was so clear. The annoyance began by the trickling of dirty water, mixed with sand, from the roof. The burning peats were found among the bedclothes, and pebbles in bowls of milk, where no peats or pebbles ought to be; linen was lifted mysteriously from the washing, and found in another room; articles of furniture were moved without being touched by visible hands, and stones flew about the house. The disturbances did not occur during the day, nor when a large company assembled at the house. Several went to lay the ghost, and a good deal of powder and shot was wasted by persons of undoubted courage in firing in the air about the house. The annoyance became so bad, and the advice of “wise people” so positive, that the family removed to another house, in the hope the evil would not follow. The removal, however, had no effect, and it is privately rumoured, the disturbances ceased only when some money that had gone amissing was restored. The cause was never clearly ascertained, but there is reason to suspect it was caused, as all similar disturbances are, by some one suborned for the purpose and shielded from suspicion by a pretended simplicity and terror.
Numerous similar cases, which have occurred in the Highlands, might be instanced. Instances occurring in England, from that of Woodstock downwards, and in the south of Scotland, differ only as the circumstances of the countries do. They all seem to have the same characteristic, the tricks are such as it is perfectly possible for human agency to perform, but it is believed there is no human being about the place who does them. Stones come flying through the windows, as if they were thrown from the sky, and are found lying on the floor; the leg of a wheelbarrow startles two persons engaged within the house in earnest conversation, by coming flying between them through the window, and striking the opposite wall with violence; a peat strikes the incredulous stranger between the shoulders, and he goes home a believer, etc. These cantrips are exaggerated by fear and rumour, till at last the devil is believed to be unusually busy in the locality. Once this belief becomes popular, the delusion is easily carried on.
Bòcain, GOBLINS.
The number of these, resembling Luideag, seen about fords or bridges, and near the public road in lonely places, as has been already said, are numberless. Every unusual sight and sound, in the locality which has the name of being haunted, becomes a goblin to the timorous, and one of the most tiresome forms of ghost stories is, how the narrator was nearly frightened out of his wits (the quantity of which is not mentioned) by a horse standing with outstretched neck, and its head towards him, which he mistook for a gigantic human figure, by a white he-goat in the face of a rock, the plaintive cries of an owl, etc., etc. Most ghosts, however, are dependent not so much on the imagination of the individual spectator as on accumulated rumours, and their explanation is to be sought in men’s love of the marvellous and tendency to exaggeration. On the high road leading from the wood of Nant (Coill’ an Eannd) to Kilchrenan on Lochaweside, two or three summers ago, the traveller was met by a dark shadow, which passed him without his knowing how. On looking after him, he again saw the shadow, but this time moving away, and a little man in its centre, growing less as the shadow moved off. The little man was known as “Bodach beag Chill-a-Chreunain.”
About the same time a ghost haunted the neighbourhood of Inveraray, and caused great annoyance to the post and others travelling late. A man had a tussle with a ghost at Uchdan a Bhiorain dui in Appin, and said it felt in his arms like a bag of wool. Phantom men were to be seen at Uchdan na Dubhaig above Balachulish; at Ath-flèodair, a ford near Loch Maddy in Uist, ‘things’ are perpetually seen, and it takes a very courageous man to go from Portree home to Braes, in Skye, after dark. A mile above the manse, where the road is most lonely, and near the top of a gradual ascent, sounds of throttling are heard and dark moving objects are seen.
In the island of Coll, the top of the ascent above Grisipol had at one time an evil reputation as a haunted spot. At the summit of the pass, there is a white round rock called Cnoc Stoirr. One night a man, on his way to the west end of Coll, reached the place about midnight, and was joined by a man on horseback. The rider said not a word, and accompanied him for near three miles to the “Round House,” as a house, built for the accommodation of the farm-servants of Breacacha Castle was called. Whenever he attempted to enter any of the houses on the way, the silent horseman came between him and the house and prevented him. When they came to the Round House, the cock crew, and the horseman disappeared over the gate in a flame of fire. The man was lifted into the house, pouring with sweat, and going off in fainting fits.
In Glen Lyon, in Perthshire, there is a village called Caisle, and near it a ford (now a bridge) and ravine called Eas a Chaisle. In the early part of the present century, clods and stones were thrown by unseen hands at parties crossing this ford at night. At last, no one would venture to cross. A harum-scarum gentleman of the neighbourhood, popularly looked upon as an unbeliever and a man without fear of God or man, crossed one night, and the clods as usual began to fly about him. He cried out, “In the name of God I defy all from the pit”; and on his saying this a mysterious sound passed away up the ravine, and clod-throwing at the place was never afterwards heard of.
The district, now forming the parishes of Kilmartin and Kilmichael, at the west end of the Crinan Canal, is known in the neighbourhood as Argyle (Earra-ghaidheal), probably from a Celtic colony from Ireland having settled there first. The people, for instance, of Loch Aweside say of a person going down past Ford, that he is going down to Argyle. In course of time the name has been extended to the county. The public road leading through the district was once infested by a ghost, which caused considerable terror to the inhabitants. A person was got to lay it. He met the ghost and exorcised it in the name of Peter and Paul and John and all the most powerful saints, but it never moved. At last he called out peremptorily, “In the name of the Duke of Argyle, I tell you to get out of there immediately.” The ghost disappeared at once, and was never seen again.