Celtic Lore & Legend (25 page)

One desperate though wary stride and she was struggling in Coll’s embrace. One glance in her eyes, and he saw that he was striving with a mad woman. Back, back, she dragged him and he had nothing to grasp by. The rock was slippery and his shod feet would not cling to it. Back, back! A hoarse panting, a dire swinging to and fro; and then the rock was standing naked against the sky, no-one was there, and Coll Dhu and Evleen Blake lay shattered far below.

Relationships between the fairies and their human neighbors were always problematic. For the ancient Celts, fairies were everywhere. They were the embodiment of the natural forces that were in the landscape all around. But, even though they were supernatural beings, they often exhibited qualities that were recognizably human: They could be flattered, appealed to, angered, and irritated. They could also show displeasure, anger, or downright cruelty if they so chose. And it was also said that they could show love and hate, just as humans can. In fact, many Celtic seers stated that experienced such emotions far more keenly than any human.

Living cheek by jowl with such unpredictable beings was often difficult for their human neighbors. An old tale from Rathlin Island off the north Irish coast tells of how the fairies came and cursed a family for teeming (washing) potatoes too close to a fairy mound and for allowing the water to seep into their hall. The family never enjoyed any success after
that, and several of them were said to have died prematurely, whilst several others remained childless. Such was the penalty for annoying the fairies.

One had to be careful in other ways. In many parts of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales it was considered ill luck to speak to a fairy, even when one of them spoke first. Everywhere it was believed that accepting money from the fairy kind was to invite disaster. In fact, it was better to have nothing to do with the fairies at all and to keep oneself to one’s own kind.

Scottish writer and poet James Hogg (1770–1835), widely known as the “Ettrick Shepherd,” was well aware of the powers and forces that dwelt in the landscape all around him and of how capricious they could be. Born and raised in the Ettrick Forest on the Scottish Borders, much of Hogg’s writings and poetry, “The Mountain Bard” (1807), “The Forest Minstrel” (1810), “Mador of the Moor” (1816), and his celebrated “Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” (1824), reflect his rural background and the perspectives of the country people. He also wrote several supernatural tales, of which “The Brownie of the Black Haggs” is one: a tale of eerie retribution and justice that ably reflects the relationship between humans and the fairy kind.

by James Hogg

When the Spotts were lairds of Wheelhope, which is now a long time ago, there was one of the ladies who was very badly spoken of in the country. People did not openly assert that Lady Wheelhope was a witch but everyone had an aversion to hearing her named, and when by chance she happened to be mentioned, old men would shake their heads and say “ach, let
us alane o’ her! The less ye meddle wi’ her the better!” Auld wives would give over spinning, and, as a pretence for hearing what might be said about her, poke in the fire with the tongs, cocking up their ears all the while; and then after some meaning coughs, hems and haws, would haply say, “Hech-wow sirs! An’ a’ be true that’s said!” or something equally wise and decisive as that.

In short, Lady Wheelhope was accounted a very bad woman. She was an inexorable tyrant to her family, quarrelled with the servants. Often cursing them, and turning them away, especially if they were religious, for these she could not endure, but she suspected them of everything bad. Whenever she found out any of the servant men of the laird’s establishment for religious characters, she soon gave them up to the military and got them shot [
Editor’s Note
: During the late 1600s and part of the 1700s, the only form of worship that was tolerated in the British Isles was the Anglican Church. This was meant to disadvantage the Catholics, but it also disadvantaged Presbyterians, particularly the Covenanting Presbyterians, many of whom lived on the Borders. Presbyterianism was treated largely as treason, and those who worshipped in this manner were liable to be executed.], and several girls that were regular in their devotions, she was supposed to have popped off with poison. She was certainly a wicked woman, else many good people were mistaken in her character, and the poor persecuted Covenanters were obliged to unite in their prayers against her.

As for the laird, he was a stump. A big, dun-faced, pluffy body, that cared neither for good nor evil and did not know the one from the other. He laughed at his lady’s tantrums and barley-hoods (outbursts), and the greater the rage she got into; the laird thought it the better sport. One day when two servant maids came running to him, and told him that his lady had felled one of their companions, the laird laughed heartily at them, and said he did not doubt it.

“Why sir, how can you laugh?” said they. “The poor girl is killed.”

“Very likely, very likely” said the laird. “Well, it will teach her to take care who she angers again.”

“And, sir, your lady will be hanged.”

“Very likely; well it will learn her how to strike so rashly again—Ha ha ha! Will it not Jessy?”

But when that same Jessy died suddenly one morning, the laird was great confounded and seemed dimly to comprehend that there had been unfair play going on. There was little doubt that she was taken off by poison, but whether the lady did it through jealousy or not, was never divulged; but it greatly bamboozled and astonished the poor laird, for his nerves failed him, and his whole frame became paralytic. He seems to have been exactly in the same frame of mind with a colley I once had. He was extremely fond of the gun as long as I did not kill anything with her (there being no game laws in Ettrick Forest in those days) and he got a grand chase after the hares when I missed them. But there was one day I chanced for a marvel to shoot one dead, a few paces before his nose. I’ll never forget the astonishment that the poor beast manifested. He stared for a while at the gun, and another while at the dead hare, and seemed to be drawing the conclusion that if the case stood thus, there was no creature sure of its life. Finally, he took his tail between his legs, and ran away home, and never again would face a gun in all his life.

So it was precisely with Laird Sprot of Wheelhope. As long as the lady’s wrath produced only noise and splutter among the servants, he thought it fine sport, but when he saw what he believed the dreadful effects of it, her became like a barrel organ out of tune, and could only discourse one note which he did to everyone he met. “I wish she munna hae gotten something she has been the waur of”. This note he repeated early and late, sleeping and waking, alone and in company, from the moment that Jessy died till she was buried; and on going
to the churchyard as chief mourner, he whispered it to her relations by the way. When they came to the grave, he took his stand at the head, nor would he give place to the girl’s father, but there he stood like a huge post, as though he neither saw or heard, and when he had lowered her late comely head into the grave and dropped the cord, he slowly lifted his hat with one hand, wiped his dim eyes with the back of the other, and said in a deep tremulous tone: “Poor lassie! I wish she dinna get something she had been the waur of.”

This death made a great noise among the common people; but there was no protection for the life of the subject in those days, and provided a man or woman was a true loyal subject, and a real Anti-Covenanter, any of them might kill as they liked. So there was no-one to take cognisance of the circumstances relating to the death of poor Jessy.

After this, the lady walked softly for the space of two or three years. She saw that she had rendered herself odious, and had entirely lost her husband’s countenance, which she liked worst of all. But the evil propensity could not be overcome, and a poor boy, whom the laird out of compassion had taken into his service, being found dead one morning, the country people could no longer be restrained, so they went in a body to the Sheriff, and insisted on an investigation. It was proved that she detested the boy and had often threatened him and had given him brose (meal) and butter the afternoon before he died, but the cause was ultimately dismissed, and the pursuers fined.

No-one can tell to what height of wickedness she might now have proceeded, had not a check of a very singular kind been laid upon her. Among the servants that came home at the next term, was one who called himself Merodach; and a strange person he was. He had the form of a boy, but the features of one a hundred years old, save that his eyes had a brilliancy and restlessness, which was very extraordinary, bearing a strong resemblance to the eyes of a well-known species of
monkey. He was forward and perverse in all his actions, and disregarded the pleasure and displeasure of any person, but he performed his work well and with apparent ease. From the moment that he entered the house, the lady conceived a mortal antipathy against him, and besought the laird to turn him away. But the laird, of himself, never turned away any body, and moreover he had hired him for a trivial wage, and the fellow neither wanted activity or perseverance. The natural consequence of this arrangement was that the lady instantly set herself to make Merodach’s life as bitter as it was possible, in order to get early quit of a domestic, every way so disgusting. Her hatred of him was not like a common antipathy, entertained by one human being against another—she hated him, as one might hate a toad or an adder; and his occupation of jotteryman (as the laird termed his servant of all work) keeping him always about her hand, it must have proved highly disagreeable.

She scolded him, she raged at him, but he only mocked her wrath, and giggled and laughed at her, with the most provoking derision. She tried to fell him again and again, but never, with all her address, could she hit him, and never did she make a blow at him that she did not repent it. She was heavy and unwieldy, and he as quick in his motions as a monkey; besides, he usually had her in such an ungovernable rage, that when she flew at him, she hardly knew what she was doing. At one time, she guided her blow towards him, and he at the same instant, avoided it with such dexterity, that she knocked down the chief hind or foreman; and then Merodach giggled so heartily that, lifting the kitchen poker, she threw it at him with a full design of knocking out his brains, but the missile only broken every plate and ashet on the kitchen dresser.

She then hasted to the laird, crying bitterly and telling him she would not suffer that wretch Merodach, as she called him, to stay another night in the family.

“Why then put him away and trouble me no more about him,” said the laird.

“Put him away!” exclaimed she; “I have already ordered him away a hundred times; and charged him never to let me see his horrible face again; but he only flouts me, and tells me he’ll see me at the devil first.”

The pertinacity of the fellow amused the laird exceedingly, his dim eyes turned upwards into his head with delight; he then looked two ways at once, turned round his back on her, and laughed till the tears ran down his dun cheeks, but he could only articulate: “You’re fitted now.”

The lady’s cry of rage still increasing from this derision, she flew on the laird, and said he was not worthy of the name of a man, if he did not turn away that pestilence, after the way he had abused her.

“Why Shusy, my dear, what has he done to you?”

“What has he done to me! Has he not caused me to knock down John Thomson and I do not know if he will come to life again?”

“Have you felled your favourite John Thomson?” said the laird, laughing more heartily than before, “you might have done a worse deed than that. But what evil has John done?”

“And has he not broken every plate and dish on the whole dresser?” continued the lad lady, disregarding the laird’s question, “and for all that devastation he only mocks my displeasure—absolutely mocks me—and if you do not have him turned away, and hanged and shot for his deeds, you are not worthy of the name of man.”

“O alack! What a devastation among the china metal”, said the laird and calling on Merodach he said. “Tell me thou evil Merodach of Babylon, how thou dared to knock down thy lady’s favourite, John Thomson.”

“Not I your honour. It was my lady herself, who got into such a furious rage at me, that she mistook her man, and felled Mr. Thomson; and the good man’s skull is fractured.”

“That was very odd”, said the laird, chuckling, “I do not comprehend it. But then, what the devil set you smashing all my lady’s delft and china ware?—That was a most infamous and provoking action.”

“It was she herself, your honour. Sorry would I have been to have broken one dish belonging to the house. I take all the house servants to witness, that my lady smashed all the dishes with a poker, and now lays the blame on me.”

The laid turned his dim and delighted eyes on his lady who was crying with vexation and rage, and seemed meditating another attack on the culprit, which he did not at all appear to shun, but rather encourage. She, however, vented her wrath in threatenings of the most deep and desperate revenge, the creature all the while assuring her that she would be foiled, and that in all her encounters and contests with him, she would ultimately come to the worst. He was resolved to do his duty, and therefore before his master he defied her.

The laird thought more than he considered it prudent to reveal, but he had little doubt that his wife would wreak vengeance on his jotteryman which she avowed, and as little of her capability. He almost shuddered when he recollected one who had taken something
that she had been the waur of
.

In a word, the Lady of Wheelhope’s inveterate malignity against this one object, was like the rod of Moses, that swallowed up the rest of the serpents. All her wickedness and evil propensities seemed to be superseded by it, if not utterly absorbed in its virtues. The rest of the family now lived in comparative peace and quietness; for early and late her malevolence was venting itself against the jotteryman, and him alone. It was a delirium of hatred and vengeance, on which the whole bent and bias of her inclination was set. She could not stay
away from the creature’s presence, for in the intervals when absent from him, she spent her breath in curses and execrations, and then, not being able to rest, she ran again to seek him, her eyes gleaming with the anticipated delights of vengeance, while, ever and anon, all the scaith, the ridicule and the harm rebounded on herself.