Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 09

by Unknown

This supply very soon ceased—the animals in the neighbourhood having either been consumed or frightened away to more inaccessible places. The wretched beings, like others in their situation, had recourse to the woods for acorns; but the time of the year had passed, and no nuts were to be found. Weakness preyed on their limbs; and several of their number, unable longer to go in search of food, which was nowhere to be found, lay on the floor of the cavern in the agonies of a hunger which their stronger companions, concerned for their own fate, would not alleviate. All ties between the members of the association began to give way before the despair of absolute famine. They ceased all personal communication; silence, feeding on the morbid forms of misery called up by diseased imaginations, reigned throughout the society of skeletons, and hollow eyes, which spoke unutterable things, glanced through the gloom of the cavern, where a glimmering fire, on which they had, for a time, prepared the little meat they had procured, was still kept up, by adding a few pieces of wood from the neighbouring forest. No notice was taken of each other's agonies, nor could the groans which mixed and sounded with a hollow noise through the dark recess, have been distinguished by the ear of sympathy; an occasional scream from a female sufferer who experienced a paroxysm of more than her ordinary agony, was only capable of fixing the attention for an instant, till individual pain laid hold again of the tortured feelings.

A person of the name of Andrew Christie, a butcher, originally from Perth, had endeavoured, at first, to organise the society, with a view to save himself and his fellow-sufferers. He was a strong, hardy man; and, if any of the number could be said to retain a small portion of self-command, in the midst of the horrible scene of suffering which surrounded them, it was this man. He was still able to walk, though with difficulty, and continued to feed the fire, going out occasionally and seizing on grubs that were to be found about the mouth of the cavern. The others were unable to follow his example, and even he latterly was unfitted for his loathsome search. All were now nearly in the same predicament: agony and despair reigned throughout, to the exclusion of a single beam of hope of any one ever again visiting the haunts of man. At Christie's side a woman ceased to groan; an intermission of agony was a circumstance, and the only circumstance to be remarked. The thought struck him she was dead; he laid his hand upon her mouth to be assured of the fact; she was no more! The dead body was a talisman in the temple of misery—in a short time, that body was gone!

The Rubicon of the strongest of natural prejudices was passed, with the goading furies of hunger and despair behind. A prejudice overcome is an acquisition of liberty, though it may be for evil. The death of the woman had saved them all from death; but the efficacy of the salvation would postpone a similar course of relief. Christie saw the predicament of his friends, and proposed in the hollow, husky voice of starvation, that one of their number should die by lot, and that then, having recovered strength, they should proceed to the mountain pass and procure victims.

This oration was received with groans, meant to be of applause. The lot of death fell on another woman, who was sacrificed to the prevailing demon. A consequent recovery of strength now fitted the survivors for their dreadful task. They proceeded to the mountain pass, headed by Christie, and killed a traveller, by knocking him on the head with a hammer,and then removed him to the cavern, where his body was treated in the same manner as that of the woman on whom the lot of death had fallen. They repeated this operation whenever their hunger returned; making no selection of their victims, unless when there was a choice between a foot-passenger and a horseman—the latter of whom, always preferred for the sake of his horse, was dragged from his seat with a large iron hook, fixed to the end of a pole—an invention of Christie's, serving afterwards to give him the dreadful name by which he became so well known. That which hunger at first suggested became afterwards a matter of choice, if not of fiendish delight. The silent process of assuaging the pain arising from want subsequently changed into a banquet of cannibals; the song of rivalry was sounded in dithyrambic measure over the dead body of the victim, and the corrybantic dance of the wretches who required to still conscience by noise, or die, was footed to the wild music which, escaping from the cavern, rung among the hills. Such were the obsequies which Scotchmen, resigning the nature of man, amidst unheard-of agonies, celebrated over the corpses of their countrymen.

These things reached the ears of government; and an armed force was despatched to the hills to seize the cannibals. Several of them were caught; but Christie and some others escaped, and were never captured. The bones of their victims were collected, and conveyed to Perth; where, upon being counted, it appeared that they had killed no fewer than thirty travellers. From these transactions sprung that name, Christiecleek, which is so familiar to the ears of Scotchmen. "Christiecleek! Christiecleek!" became instantly the national nursery bugbear. No child would cry after the charmed name escaped from the lips of the nurse; and even old people shuddered at the mention of a term which produced ideas so revolting to human nature, and so derogatory of Scottish character.

Now it is said that, some time after the performance of the dreadful tragedy we have narrated, an old man in the town of Dumfries, who had three children by his wife, quarrelled her often for the use of a term intended simply to pacify her children when they cried, but which he declared was too much even for his ears. He was a respectable merchant, had earned a considerable sum of money by his trade, and was reputed a most godly man, attending divine service regularly, and performing all the domestic duties with order and great suavity of manner. His neighbours looked up to him with love and respect, and solicited his counsel in their difficulties. His name—David Maxwell—was applauded in the neighbourhood, and he received great sympathy from all who knew him, in consequence of having, as was reported, lost an only brother among Christiecleek's victims—a fact he had concealed from his wife, till her use of the name compelled him to mention it to her, but which afterwards came to be well known.

The silence of the mother had, however, no effect upon the urchins, who, the more they were requested to cease terrifying each other by their national terriculamentum, "Christiecleek," the more terrible it appeared to them, and the more they used it. If they abstained from the use of the word in the presence of their parents, they were the more ready to have recourse to it in the passages of the house, and in the dark rooms, and wherever the dreaded being might be supposed to be. The pastime was general throughout Scotland; and David Maxwell's children only followed an example which has been repeated for five hundred years. "Christiecleek!—Christiecleek!" What Scotchman has not heard the dreaded words? Time rolled on, and the Misses Maxwell resigned their childish pastime for the duties of women. Their father had become a very old man; and the attentions which their mother could not bestow, were willingly yielded by the young women, who were remarked as being very beautiful, as well as very good. They loved their father dearly, and looked upon their filial duties as willing tributes of affection. After they became intrusted with the secret, they substituted for the cry of their youth, which had given their father so much pain, pity for the brother of the victim of the execrated fiend.

At last David Maxwell came to die; and, as he lay on his bed, surrounded by his wife and daughters, he seemed to be wrestling with some dreadful thought which allowed him no rest, but wrung from him, incessantly, heavy groans and muttered prayers. His wife pressed him to open his heart to her, or, if he was disinclined to repose that confidence in her when dying, which he had awarded to her so liberally during a long union, he should, she recommended, send for Father John of the Monastery of St Agnes, and be shrived. The daughters wept as they heard these melancholy statements, and the old man sympathised in their sorrow, which seemed to give him additional pain. At last he seemed inclined to be communicative, and, after a struggle, said to his wife—

"Wha is to tak care o' my dochters when I am consigned to that cauld habitation whar a faither's love and an enemy's anger are alike unfelt and unknown? My effects will be sufficient for the support o' my household; but money, without a guardian, is only a temptation to destroyers and deceivers. If I could get this point settled to my satisfaction, I micht die in peace."

"You never tauld me o' yer freens, David," said his wife—"a circumstance that has often grieved me. The hundreds o' Maxwells in the Stewartry and in Dumfries-shire surely contain among them some relation, however distant; but my uncle will act as guardian to our dochters, and ye hae tried his honesty."