Cortachy Castle, the seat of the Earl of Airlie, has long had its mysterious drummer; and whenever the sound of his drum is heard, it betokens the speedy death of a member of the Ogilvie family. The story goes that ‘either the drummer, or some officer whose emissary he was, had excited the jealousy of a former Lord Airlie, and that in consequence he was put to death by being thrust into his own drum and flung from the window of the tower, in which is situated the chamber where his music is apparently chiefly heard. It is said that he threatened to haunt the family if his life were taken,’ a promise which he has fulfilled.[338] With this strange warning may be compared the amusing story popularly known as ‘The Drummer of Tedworth,’ in which the ghost or evil spirit of a drummer, or the ghost of a drum, performed the principal part in this mysterious drama for ‘two entire years.’ The story, as succinctly given by George Cruikshank,[339] goes that in March 1661, Mr. Monpesson, a magistrate, caused a vagrant drummer to be arrested, who had been annoying the country by noisy demands for charity, and had ordered his drum to be taken from him, and left in the bailiff’s house. About the middle of the following April, when Mr. Monpesson was preparing for a journey to London, the bailiff sent the drum to his house. But on his return home, he was informed that noises had been heard, and then he heard the noises himself, which were a ‘thumping and drumming,’ accompanied by ‘a strange noise and hollow sound.’ The sign of it when it came was like a hurling in the air over the house, and at its going off, the beating of a drum, like that of the ‘breaking up of a guard.’ After a month’s disturbance outside the house, it came into the room where the drum lay. For an hour together it would beat ‘Roundheads and Cockolds,’ the ‘tattoo,’ and several other points of war as well as any drummer. Upon one occasion, when many were present, a gentleman said, ‘Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,’ which it did at once. And for further trial, he bid it for confirmation, if it were the drummer, to give five knocks and no more that night, which it did, and left the house quiet all the night after. ‘But,’ as George Cruikshank observes, ‘strange as it certainly was, is it not still more strange that educated gentlemen, and even clergymen, as in this case, also should believe that the Almighty would suffer an evil spirit to disturb and affright a whole innocent family, because the head of that family had, in his capacity as magistrate, thought it his duty to take away a drum from no doubt a drunken drummer, who, by his noisy conduct, had become a nuisance to the neighbourhood?’

In many parts of the country, phantom bells are supposed to be heard ringing their ghostly peals. Near Blackpool, about two miles out at sea, there once stood, tradition says, the church and cemetery of Kilmigrol, long ago submerged. Even now, in rough weather, the melancholy chimes of the bells may be heard sounding over the restless waters. A similar story is told of Jersey. According to a local legend, many years ago, ‘the twelve parish churches in that island possessed each a valuable peal of bells, but during a long civil war the bells were sold to defray the expenses of the troops. The bells were sent to France, but on the passage the ship foundered, and everything was lost. Since then, during a storm, these bells always ring at sea, and to this day the fishermen of St. Ouen’s Bay, before embarking, go to the edge of the water to listen if they can hear the bells; if so, nothing will induce them to leave the shore.’ With this story may be compared one told of Whitby Abbey, which was suppressed in 1539. The bells were sold, and placed on board to be conveyed to London. But, as soon as the vessel had moved out into the bay it sank, and beneath the waters the bells may occasionally be heard, a legend which has been thus poetically described:

Up from the heart of the ocean
The mellow music peals,
Where the sunlight makes its golden path,
And the seamew flits and wheels.

For many a chequered century,
Untired by flying time,
The bells no human fingers touch
Have rung their hidden chime.

To this day the tower of Forrabury Church, Cornwall, or, as it has been called by Mr. Hawker, ‘the silent tower of Bottreaux,’ remains without bells. It appears the bells were cast and shipped for Forrabury, but as the ship neared the shore, the captain swore and used profane language, whereupon the vessel sank beneath a sudden swell of the ocean. As it went down, the bells were heard tolling with a muffled peal; and ever since, when storms are at hand, their phantom sound is still audible from beneath the waves:

Still when the storm of Bottreaux’s waves
Is waking in his weedy caves,
Those bells that sullen surges hide,
Peal their deep tones beneath the tide—
‘Come to thy God in time,’
Thus saith the ocean chime;
‘Storm, whirlpool, billow past,
Come to thy God at last.’

Legends of this kind remind us of Southey’s ballad of the ‘Inchcape Bell,’ founded on a tragic legend. The abbots of Aberbrothock (Arbroath) fixed a bell on a rock, as a kindly warning to sailors, that obstruction having long been considered the chief difficulty in the navigation of the Firth of Forth. The bell was so fastened as to be rung by the agitation of the waves, but one day, Sir Ralph the Rover ‘cut the bell from the Inchcape float,’ and down sank the bell with a gurgling sound. Afterwards,

Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away,
He scoured the sea for many a day,
And now grown rich with plundered store,
He steers his course for Scotland’s shore.

But the night is dark and hazy, and—