Celtic Lore & Legend (26 page)

Was it not strange that she could not get quit of this sole annoyance of her life? One would have thought that she easily might. But by this time, there was nothing further from her intention, she wanted vengeance, full, adequate, and delicious vengeance on her audacious opponent. But he was a strange and terrible creature, and the means of retaliation came always, as it were, to his hand.

Bread and sweet milk was the only fare that Merodach cared for, and he, having bargained for that, would not want it, though he often got it with a curse and with ill will. The lady, having kept back his wonted allowance for some days, on the Sabbath morning following, she set him down a bowl of rich sweet milk, well drugged with a deadly poison, and then she lingered in a little anteroom to watch the success of her grand plot, and prevent any other creature from tasting of the poison. Merodach came in, and the house-maid says to him, “Here is your breakfast, creature.”

“Oho! My lady has been liberal this morning”, said he, “but I am beforehand with her—Here little Missie, you seem very hungry today—take you my breakfast.” And with that he set the beverage down to the lady’s favourite spaniel. It so happened that the lady’s only son came at that moment into the anteroom, seeking her and teazing his mamma about something which took her attention from the hall-table for a space. When she looked again, and saw Missie lapping up the sweet milk, she burst from her lobby like a dragon, screaming as if her head had been on fire, kicked the bowl and the remainder of its contents against the wall, and lifting Missie in her bosom, she retreated hastily, crying all the way.

“Ha, ha, ha—I have you now,” cried Merodach, as she vanished from the hall.

Poor Missie died immediately, and very privately; indeed she would have died and been buried, and never one have seen her, save her mistress, had not Merodach, by a luck that never failed him, popped his nose over the flower garden wall, just as his lady was laying her favourite in a grave of her own digging. She, not perceiving her tormentor, plied on at her task, apostrophising the insensate little carcass,—”Ah! Poor dear little creature, thou hast had a hard fortune, and has drank of the bitter potion that was not intended for thee, but he shall drink it three times double for thy sake.”

“Is that little Missie?” said the eldritch voice of the jotteryman, close at the lady’s ear. She uttered a loud scream and sank down on the bank. “Alack for poor little Missie!” continued the creature in a tone of mockery. “My heart is sorry for Missie. What has befallen her—whose breakfast cup did she drink?”

“Hence with thee, thou fiend!” cried the lady. “What right hast thou to interfere upon thy mistress’s privacy? Thy turn is coming yet, or may the nature of woman change within me.”

“It is changed already,” said the creature, grinning with delight; “I have thee now, I have thee now! And were it not to shew my superiority over thee, which I do every hour, I would sooner see thee strapped like a mad cat, or a worrying bratch. What wilt thou try next?”

“I will cut thy throat, and if I die for it, will rejoice in the deed, a deed of charity to all who dwell on the face of the earth. Go about thy business.”

“I have warned thee before, dame, and I now warn thee again that all thy mischief meditated against me will fall double on thine own head.”

“I want none of your warning, and none of your instructions, fiendish cur. Hence with your elvish face, and take care of yourself!”

It would be too disgusting and horrible to relate or read all the incidents that fell out between this unaccountable couple. Their enmity against each other had no end, and no mitigation, and scarcely a single day passed over on which her acts and malevolent ingenuity did not terminate fatally for some favourite thing of the lady’s, while all these doings never failed to appear as her own act. Scarcely was there a thing, animate or inanimate, on which she set a value, left to her, that was not destroyed, and yet scarcely one hour or minute could she remain absent from her tormentor, and yet all the while it seems, solely for the purpose of tormenting him.

But while all the rest of the establishment enjoyed peace and quietness from the fury of their termagant dame, matters grew worse and worse between the fascinated pair. The lady haunted the menial, in the same manner as the raven haunts the eagle, for a perpetual quarrel, though the former knows that in every encounter she is to come off the loser. But now noises were heard on the stairs by night, and it was whispered among the menials, that the lady had been seeking Merodach’s bed by night, on some horrible in tent. Several of them would have sworn that they had seen her passing and repassing on the stair after midnight, when all was quiet; but then it was likewise well known that Merodach slept with well fastened doors, and a companion in another bed in the same room, whose bed, too, was nearest the door. Nobody cared much what became of the jotteryman, for he was an unsocial and disagreeable person; but some one told him what they had seen, and hinted a suspicion of the lady’s intent. But the creature only bit his upper lip, winked with his eyes and said, “She had better let alone; she will be the first to rue that.”

Not long after this, to the horror of the family and the whole countryside, the laird’s only son was found murdered in his bed one morning, under circumstances that manifested the most fiendish cruelty and inveteracy on the part of his destroyer. As soon as the atrocious act was divulged, the lady
fell into convulsions, and lost her reason, and happy had it been for her had she never recovered either the use of her reason, or her corporeal functions any more, for there was blood upon her hand, which she took no care to conceal, and there was too little doubt that it was the blood of her own innocent and beloved boy, the sole heir and hope of the family.

The blow deprived the laird of all power of action; but the lady had a brother, a man of the law, who came and instantly proceeded to an investigation of this unaccountable murder, but before the Sheriff arrived, the housekeeper took the lady’s brother aside, and told him he had better not go on with the scrutiny, for she was sure that the crime would be brought home to her unfortunate mistress; and after examining into several corroborative circumstances, and viewing the state of the raving maniac, with the blood on her hand and arm, he made the investigation a very short one, declaring the domestics all exculpated.

The laird attended his boy’s funeral and laid his head in the grave, but appeared exactly like a man walking in a trance, an automaton, without feelings or sensations, oftentimes gazing at the funeral procession, as on something he could not comprehend. And when the death-bell of the parish church fell a-tolling, as the corpse approached the kirk-stile, he cast a dim eye up towards the belfry and said hastily, “What, what’s that? Och ay, we’re just in time, just in time”. And often was he hammering over the name of “Evil Merodach, King of Babylon” to himself. [
Editor’s Note
: This is probably a reference to the Persian monarch, Amel-Marduk, a son and successor of Nebuchadnezzer II, who ruled Babylonia from 562 to 560
B.C.
He is also referred to, amongst other sources, in the biblical Books of 2nd Kings and Jeremiah where his name is translated, in the King James version, as “Evil-Merodach.”] He seemed to have some far-fetched conception that his unaccountable jotteryman had a hand in the death of his only son,
and other lesser calamities, although the evidence in favour of Merodach’s innocence was as usual quite decisive.

The grievous mistake of Lady Wheelhope (for every landward laird’s wife was then styled Lady) can only be accounted for, by supposing her in a state of derangement, or rather under some evil influence over which she had no control, and to a person in such a state, the mistake was not so very unnatural. The mansion-house of Wheelhope was old and irregular. The stair had four acute turns, all the same, and four landing-places, all the same. In the uppermost chamber slept the two domestics—Merodach, in the bed farthest in, and in the chamber immediately below that, which was exactly similar, slept the young laird and his tutor, the former in the bed furthest in, and this, in the turmoil of raging passions, her own hand made herself childless.

Merodach was expelled from the family forthwith, but refused to accept any of his wages, which the man of law pressed upon him, for fear of further mischief, but he went away in apparent sullenness and discontent, no-one knowing whither.

When his dismissal was announced to the lady, who was watched day and night in her chamber, the news had such an effect on her, that her whole frame seemed electrified; the horrors of remorse vanished, and another passion, which I can neither comprehend nor define, took sole possession of her distempered spirit. “He
must
not go!...... He
shall
not go!” she exclaimed. “No, no, no—he shall not—he shall not—he shall not!” and she instantly set herself about making ready to follow him, uttering all the while, the most diabolical expressions, indicative of anticipated vengeance—”Oh, could I but snap his nerves one by one, and birl (spin) among his vitals! Could I but slice his heart off piecemeal in small messes and see his blood lopper and bubble, and spin away in purple slays, and then see him grin, and grin, and grin! Oh-oh-oh
How grand and beautiful a sight it would be to see him grin, and grin, and grin!” And in such a style she would run on for hours together.

She thought of nothing, she spoke of nothing, but the discarded jotteryman, whom most people now began to regard as a creature that was not canny (natural or human). They had seen him eat, and drink, and work like other people; still he had that about him that was not like other men. He was a boy in form, and an antediluvian in feature. Some thought he was a mule, between a Jew and an ape, some a wizard, some a kelpie, or a fairy, but most of all that he was really and truly a Brownie. What he was, I do not know, and therefore will not pretend to say, but be that as it may, in spite of locks and keys, watching and waking, the Lady of Wheelhope soon made her escape and eloped after him. The attendants indeed would have made oath that she was carried away by some invisible hand, for that it was impossible that she could have escaped on foot like other people; and this edition of the story took in the country, but sensible people viewed the matter in another light.

As, for instance, when Wattie Blythe, the laird’s old shepherd came in from the hill one morning, his wife Bessie, accosted him thus:—”His presence be about us Wattie Blythe! Have ye heard what has happened at the ha’? Things are aye turnin’ waur an’ waur there, and it looks like as if Providence had gi’en up our laird’s house to destruction. This grand estate maun now gang frae the Sprots, for it has finished them.”

“Na, na Bessie, it isna the estate that has finished the Sprots but the Sprots that hae finished it, an’ themsells into the boot. They hae been a wicked and degenerate race an’ aye the langer the waur, till they reached the utmost bounds o’ earthly wickedness an’ it’s time the de’il were looking after his ain.”

“Ah Wattie Blythe, ye never said a truer say. An’ that’s just the very point where your story ends and mine commences; for hanna the deil, or the fairies, or the brownies, ta’en our
lady away bodily, an’ the haill country is running an’ riding in search o’ her and there is twenty hunder merks offered to the first that can find her an’ bring her safe back. They hae ta’en her away, skin an’ bane, body an’ soul an’ a’ Wattie!”

“Hech-wow! but that is awesome! And where is thought they have ta’en her to Bessie?”

“O, they hae some guess at that frae her ain hints afore. It is thought they hae carried her after that Satan of a creature. Wha wrought sae muckle wae about the house. It is for him they are a’ looking, for they ken weel that where they get the tane they will get the tither.”

“Whew! Is that the gate o’t Bessie? Why then, the awfu’ story is nouther mair nor less than this, that the leddy made a lopement (elopement), as they ca’t and run away after a blackguard jotteryman. Hech-wow! wae’s me fro human frailty! But that’s just the gate! When aince the deil gets in the point o’ his finger, he will soon have in his haill hand. Ay, he wants but a hair to make a tether of, ony day. I hae seen her, a braw sonsy lass, but even then I feared she was devoted to destruction, for she aye mockit at religion. Bessie, an’ that’s no a good mark of a young body. An’ she made a’ its servants her enemies; an’ think you those good men’s prayers were a’ to blaw away i’ the wind, and be nae mair regarded? Na, na Bessie, my woman, take ye this mark baith o’ our ain bairns and aither folks—If ever ye see a young body that disregards the Sabbath, and makes a mock at the ordinances o’ religion, ye will never see that body come to muckle good. A braw hand she has made o’ her gibes an’ jeers at religion, an’ her mockeries o’ the poor persecuted hill-folk!—sunk down by degrees into the very dregs o’ sin and misery! run away after a scullion!”

“Fy, fy Wattie, how can ye say sae? It was well kenned that she hatit him wi’ a perfect an’ mortal hatred an’ tried to make away wi’ him mair ways nor ane.”

“Aha Bessie; but nipping and scarting are Scots folk’s wooing; an’ though it is but right that we suspend our judgements, there will naebody persuade me, if she be found alang wi’ the creature, but that she has run away after him in the natural way, on her twa shanks, without help either frae fairy or brownie.”

“I’ll never believe sic a thing of any woman born, let be a lady weel up in years.”

“Od help ye Bessie! ye dinna ken the stretch o’ corrupt nature. The best o’ us when left to oursel’s are nae better than strayed sheep, that will never find their way back to their ain pastures, an’ of a’ things made o’ mortal flesh, a wicked woman is the warst.”

“Alack a-day! we get the blame o’ muckle that we little deserve. But, Wattie, keep a gayan sharp look-out about the cleuchs [
Editor’s Note
: ravines] and caves o’ our glen, or hope, as ye ca’t, for the lady kens them a’ gayan weel, an’ gin the twenty hunder merks wad come our way, it might gang a waur gate. It wad tocher o’ our bonny lasses.”