Reluctance to mention names reaches its height in the case of dangerous or mysterious agencies. In Borneo, the natives avoid naming the smallpox. In Germany, the hare must not be named, or the rye-crop will be destroyed; and to mention the name of this innocent animal at sea, is, or was, reckoned by the Aberdeenshire fishermen an act of impiety, the punishment of which to be averted only by some mysterious charm. The Laplanders never mention the name of the bear, but prefer to speak of him as ‘the old man with the fur-coat.’ The motive here appears to be a fear that by naming the dreaded object his actual presence will be evoked; and this idea is preserved in one of our commonest sayings. Even if the object of terror does not actually appear, he will at least listen when he hears his name; and if anything unpleasant is said of him he is likely to resent it. Hence, in order to avoid even the semblance of reproach, his very name is made flattering. This phenomenon, generally termed euphemism, is of very common occurrence. The Greeks, for example, called the Furies the ‘Well-disposed ones;’ and the wicked fairy Puck was christened ‘Robin Goodfellow’ by the English peasantry. The modern Greeks euphemise the name of vinegar into ‘the sweet one.’ Were its real name to be mentioned, all the wine in the house would turn sour. We have an example of the converse of the principle of euphemism at work in the case of mothers among the savage tribes of Tonquin giving their children hideous names in order to frighten away evil spirits from molesting them.
It is, however, in the case of the most dreaded and most mysterious of all our enemies—Death—that the superstition becomes most apparent. ‘The very name of Death,’ says Montaigne, ‘strikes terror into people, and makes them cross themselves.’ Even the unsuperstitious have a vague reluctance to mentioning this dreaded name. Rather than say, ‘If Mr So-and-so should die,’ we say, ‘If anything should happen to Mr So-and-so.’ The Romans preferred the expression ‘He has lived’ to ‘He is dead.’ ‘M. Thiers a vécu’ was the form in which that statesman’s death was announced; not ‘M. Thiers est mort.’
The same reluctance is noticeable in mentioning the names of persons who are dead. A writer on the Shetland Isles tells us that no persuasion will induce a widow to mention her dead husband’s name. When we do happen to allude to a deceased friend by name, we often add some such expression as ‘Rest his soul!’ by way of antidote to our rashness; and this expression seems to have been used by the Romans in the same way. As might be expected, we find this carried to a great extreme among savages. In some tribes, when a man dies who bore the name of some common object—‘fire,’ for instance—the name for fire must be altered in consequence; and as proper names among savages are almost invariably the names of common objects, the rapid change that takes place in the language and the inconvenience resulting therefrom may be imagined. Civilisation has indeed made enormous progress from this cumbersome superstition to our own philosophy, which can ask with haughty indifference, ‘What’s in a name?’
THE HAUNTED BRIDGE.
A TALE OF THE HIGHLANDS.
There are probably few readers who are not familiar, to a greater or lesser extent, with the well-ventilated subject of superstition in the Highlands of Scotland. There are few mountain countries throughout the world that are not rich in lore and legend relating to the supernatural: their very configuration suggests that agencies more than ordinary have been employed in shaping out their features. It is curious to notice how very largely the demoniac theory enters into the calculations of the peasantry. For one Fairy glen or knowe there are a dozen Devil’s mills, bridges, caldrons, or punchbowls; in fact, it is almost always the beings that are supposed to be baleful and inimical to the human race that have had their personality perpetuated in these legends. This certainly seems a little incongruous; but as this is not a treatise on demonology, we are content to leave it so.
Superstition is part of the being of the mountaineer. Brave even to rashness, he will face the natural dangers that beset his life—in the torrent, on the peak, or in the forest; he fears no odds when he meets his foes. And yet this man, who can tread the dizzy ledge on the face of a precipice, who can hurl himself on levelled steel, is more timid and frightened than a child, when he conceives that forces other than earthly are being brought to bear on him. It is partly to the style and manner of his life that he owes this. He is brought more into the presence of nature than his neighbour of the plains; he becomes imbued with the spirit of his surroundings; the deep dark gloom of the woods, the lonesomeness of the mountain solitudes, the voices of the storm and of the torrent, and of their reproductions in the echoes, appeal to him; and a poetical imagination begotten of such an existence finishes the process. Thus the roar of a waterfall in its dark chasm becomes to him the howlings of some demon prisoned among the rocks; the sighing of the wind through the forest trees is caused by the passage of spirits; the mists that furl around the mountain peaks and are wafted so silently across crest and corrie are disembodied ghosts; and the sounds that break the stillness of the night are the shrieks and yells of fiends and their victims.
This brings me to my story. I fancy that most of my readers are acquainted more or less with the scenery of the Highlands; but in the case of by far the larger number of them, I venture to say that such acquaintance extends only to the Highlands in their summer or their autumn dress. If so, they only half know them. Brave is the tourist who ventures amid the bens and glens when rude King Boreas lords it over them; when winter’s wind roars adown the gorges of the hill, staggering the stalwart pines, mingling the withered leaves and the snowflakes in the desolate woods. When icicles hang from the hoary rocks, and the deep drift chokes up the ravines, mantles the slopes of the corries, and bends in cornices over the threatening cliffs; when the river roars through the plain—brown and swollen—and its parent torrents are leaping and raving among the boulders; when the mountain hare and the ptarmigan are white as the snow that harbours them; and the deer, driven from the hills by stress of weather, roam in herds through the low-lying woods; and the mountain fox leaves his cairn and prowls around the farm and the sheepfold—then, if you would enter into the spirit of loneliness and solitude, take your way to the Highlands. Do not imagine, however, that such is their condition during the whole of winter; on the contrary, I have painted a particularly black picture, and it was in very much better weather that, two or three years ago, I went north, in December, on a visit to some friends in Inverness-shire. The particular part of the county I stayed in does not materially affect my adventure, so I shall not disclose it.
My time sped by very pleasantly, although the district did not afford many neighbours at short distances; but this was a circumstance that always procured me an extra hearty welcome when I ventured far enough from home to call upon any people. On one of these expeditions I had ridden to a house about eight miles away, and the late hour of my arrival brought about an invitation to stay for dinner and spend the evening. My friends pushed their hospitality to such an extent, that they had almost prevailed upon me to stay the night as well, when a good-natured challenge changed my wavering plans into a firm determination to be off. Our conversation after dinner had not unnaturally turned upon ghost-stories, as the district was an out-of-the-way one, and the country-folk were fully persuaded of the existence of kelpies and warlocks of various kinds. What now happened was that some of the young people fancied they had found the reason why I was willing to stay all night, and boldly told me that I was frightened to cross a certain bridge on my way home that had the reputation of being haunted. I knew the spot well, though I had never found out its exact story; and when I had assured the country-people that I had no fears of the experiment, they solemnly shook their heads, and averred that not for sums untold would they cross the bridge after nightfall. On the present occasion, as I had been foremost among the sceptics during the story-telling, I felt my reputation at stake; and declaring I would on no account remain, I gave orders to have my pony brought round. The whole party came to the door to see me start—the elders inveighing against my foolishness in setting off at that time of night; the young people plying me with horrors, and telling me to be sure to come round next morning—if alive—and give an account of my adventures. To all I gave a merry reply, and lighting my pipe, swinging myself into the saddle, and shouting ‘Good-night,’ I cantered off down the avenue.
For a couple of miles the road led me down a deep wooded glen. On both sides the mountains towered aloft to a height of more than two thousand feet, their lower slopes thickly clad with pine and birch, their shoulders and summits white from a recent heavy snowfall. The river poured along tumultuously, close beneath the road, swirling past frowning cliffs of rock, brawling and battling with heaps of boulders, shooting in sheets of glancing foam over cascade and rapid. By daylight the scene was sufficiently grand and impressive; illumined as it now was by a faint moonlight, it was much more so. The night was calm and slightly frosty; but overhead, a strong breeze was blowing, and from time to time the moon was obscured by the flying clouds. The play of light and shade brought about by this was very beautiful; at one moment the shaggy hillsides and deep pools of the river were plunged in deepest shadow; in the next a flood of pale glory poured over them, painting the rushing stream with silver, shooting shafts of light among the tall trees, tracing mosaics on the dark surface of the road. Each clump of ferns, each bush and stump, took uncommon shape, and it required no great stretch of imagination to convert the boulders and reefs of rock out in the stream into waterbulls and kelpies. The rush and roar of the river drowned all other sounds; but with the exception of the echoing tread of my pony and the occasional bark of a fox from the hill, there was nothing else to be heard. On my way down the glen I passed a few scattered cottages, but their occupants were long ago in bed, although it was not much past ten o’clock.