As he advanced to meet us, I was struck with the corselike paleness of his face, to which the glaze of his eyeballs, and the grizzly and tangled locks that strayed from beneath his bonnet, gave an inexpressibly ghastly effect. A transient gleam of electric fire shot from within his eyeballs into each of our countenances individually, as he was introduced to us in succession. We felt as if it had penetrated into the inmost recesses of our very souls. It appeared to us as if he had thereby been enabled, from long practice in the study of mankind, at once to read our several characters and thoughts, like so many lines of the great book of nature hastily skimmed over. To each of us in turn he bowed with a polished air, and a manner like that of a faded courtier of the age of Louis Quatorze, than the inhabitant of so humble a dwelling, in the simple and pastoral valley of Strathdawn; and strangely indeed did it contrast with the coarseness and poverty of his dress, and the squalid impropreté of his whole personal appearance.
After the usual preliminary salutations were over, I expressed a wish to see the far-famed magical kelpie’s bridle and mermaid’s stone, for the possession of which he is so celebrated in all the neighbouring districts.
“You shall see them both, sir,” said he, after eyeing me for a moment with a searching look. “To such gentlemen as you, I cannot refuse a sight of them, though they are hardly to be seen by vulgar eyes, and never to be handled by vulgar hands;” and, with a marked politeness of manner, he returned into the cottage to bring them out.
“Now,” said I to my companions, “you must keep him in talk, whilst I endeavour to steal a sketch of him.”
“Here are the wonderful implements of my art,” said he, as he returned, holding them up to our observation.
“They are very curious,” said I; “perhaps you will have the goodness to allow me to make a hasty drawing of them. I hope it will have no effect in taking away their virtues.
“Their virtues cannot be taken away by human hands,” replied Willox, gravely. “You are welcome to draw them if you please, sir, and I shall hold them for you so that you may best see them.”
I thanked him, and proceeded instantly to my work. My friends followed my injunctions so well as fully to occupy his attention in replying to their cross fire of queries, whilst I was myself obliged to interject a question now and then, in order to get him to turn his countenance towards me. The wonderful expression I have already alluded to appeared even yet more striking, on these occasions, by his ghost-like features being brought so closely and directly opposite to my eyes. I then looked in as it were upon his spirit,—and it was manifestly a spirit which, in ancient days, when superstition brooded as much over the proud castle of the bold baron, as it did over the humble cot of the timid peasant, might well enough have domineered over the minds of nobles and princes, nay subjected even crowned heads to its powerful control.
I did make sketches of the mermaid’s stone and the water-kelpie’s bridle, the two grand instruments of his art. As already described to us by Mr. Macpherson, we found the stone to be a circular and flattish lens, three inches diameter, of semi-opaque crystal, somewhat resembling, in shape and appearance, what is called a bull’s eye, used for transmitting light through the deck of a vessel into its smaller apartments below. The water-kelpie’s bridle consists of a flat piece of brass, annular in the middle, and having two lobe-like branches springing from it in two curves outwards, the wider part of each lobe being slightly recurved inwards, so that they present the appearance of two leaves when they are held flat. Attached to the ring part, but loose upon it, are two long doubled pieces of flat brass, and, between these, a short leathern thong is attached by a fastening so intricate that it might have rivalled the Gordian knot. It has not the most distant resemblance to any part of a bridle, and none of us could guess to what purpose, either useful or ornamental, it could have ever been applied. Willox’s own account of the acquirement of these two wonderful engines of his supernatural power, elicited by our repeated questions, was nearly as follows:—