“Old men shook their heads, and departed, saying, ‘We have seen the fiend sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray:’ but one young and wilful man said, ‘Fiend! I’ll warrant it’s nae fiend, but douce Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. ’Od, I would gladly have a toothfu’! I’ll warrant it’s nane o’ your cauld sour slae-water, like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie’s port, but right drap-o’-my-heart’s-blood stuff, that would waken a body out of their last linen. I wonder whaur the cummers will anchor their craft?’
“‘And I’ll vow,’ said another rustic, ‘the wine they quaff is none of your visionary drink, such as a drouthy body has dished out to his lips in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they sail in, which are made out of a cockle-shell, or a cast-off slipper, or the paring of a seaman’s right thumb-nail. I once got a handsel out of a witch’s quaigh myself;—auld Marion Mathers of Dustiefoot, whom they tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore; but the cummer raise as fast as they laid her down, and naewhere else would she lie but in the bonnie green kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible folk. So I’ll vow that the wine of a witch’s cup is as fell liquor as ever did a kindly turn to a poor man’s heart; and be they fiends, or be they witches, if they have red wine asteer, I’ll risk a droukit sark for ae glorious tout on’t.’
“‘Silence, ye sinners,’ said the minister’s son of a neighbouring parish, who united in his own person his father’s lack of devotion with his mother’s love of liquor. ‘Whisht! Speak as if ye had the fear of something holy before ye. Let the vessels run their own way to destruction: who can stay the eastern wind, and the current of the Solway sea? I can find ye Scripture warrant for that: so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad quicksand. There’s a surf running there would knock the ribs together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and commanded by the Prince of Darkness. Bonnily and bravely they sail away there; but before the blast blows by they’ll be wrecked; and red wine and strong brandy will be as rife as dykewater, and we’ll drink the health of bonnie Bell Blackness out of her left foot slipper.’
“The speech of the young profligate was applauded by several of his companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from whence they never returned. The two vessels were observed all at once to stop in the bosom of the bay, on the spot where their hulls now appear: the mirth and the minstrelsy waxed louder than ever; and the forms of the maidens, with instruments of music and wine-cups in their hands, thronged the decks. A boat was lowered; and the same shadowy pilot who conducted the ships made it start towards the shore with the rapidity of lightning, and its head knocked against the bank where the four young men stood, who longed for the unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with a laugh were they welcomed on deck; wine cups were given to each, and as they raised them to their lips the vessels melted away beneath their feet; and one loud shriek, mingled with laughter still louder, was heard over land and water for many miles. Nothing more was heard or seen till the morning, when the crowd who came to the beach saw with fear and wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as they now seem, masts and tackle gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name, country, or destination, could be known, was left remaining. Such is the tradition of the mariners.”
Chapter II.
“And trow ye,” said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by the drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor of the mariner’s legend; “and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the tale of the Haunted Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle have my ears heard, but more mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel: it was on Hallow-e’en, the nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell and charm were tried at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the dark waves of futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to the more visible blessings of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle courtship.
“Soft words in a maiden’s ear, and a kindly kiss o’ her lip, were old world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say that I have been free of the folly of daundering and daffin’ with a youth in my day, and keeping tryst with him in dark and lonely places. However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were past and gone with me; the mair’s the pity that pleasure should flee sae fast away,—and as I couldna make sport I thought I would not mar any; so out I sauntered into the fresh cold air, and sat down behind that old oak, and looked abroad on the wide sea. I had my ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time; it was in that very bay my blythe gudeman perished, with seven more in his company; and on that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming, I saw seven stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth. It was a woful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nought to support them but these twa hands, and God’s blessing, and a cow’s grass. I have never liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and mony’s the moonlight night I sit looking on these watery mountains, and these waste shores; it does my heart good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see it was Hallow-e’en; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart wandering to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame. It might be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making, and its singing brought strange old-world stories with it; and I thought on the dangers that sailors endure, the fates they meet with, and the fearful forms they see. My own blithe gude-man had seen sights that made him grave enough at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.
“Aweel, between that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I saw, or thought I saw (for the tale is so dream-like that the whole might pass for a vision of the night) the form of a man. His plaid was gray; his face was gray; and his hair, which hung low down till it nearly came to the middle of his back, was as white as the white sea-foam. He began to houk and dig under the bank; and God be near me! thought I, this maun be the unblessed spirit of auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser, who is doomed to dig for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many millions are hidden for ever from man’s enjoyment. The form found something, which in shape and hue seemed a left-foot slipper of brass; so down to the tide he marched, and placing it on the water, whirled it thrice round; and the infernal slipper dilated at every turn, till it became a bonnie barge with its sails bent, and on board leaped the form, and scudded swiftly away. He came to one of the haunted ships; and striking it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast and canvas, and mariners, started up: he touched the other haunted ship, and produced the like transformation; and away the three spectre ships bounded, leaving a track of fire behind them on the billows, which was long unextinguished.
“Now wasna that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of the Hallowmas moon? But the tale is far frae finished; for mariners say that once a year, on a certain night, if ye stand on the Borranpoint, ye will see the infernal shallops coming snoring through the Solway; ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy, which our ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figures lower down the boat, and augment their numbers with the four unhappy mortals to whose memory a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless sea cut upon it. Then the spectre-ships vanish, and the drowning shriek of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has not departed from the earth. But I maun away and trim my little cottage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the crickets, and my cauld and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath the green sod in the eerie kirkyard.”
And away the old dame tottered to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and soon the hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the key-hole and the window.