Celtic Lore & Legend (30 page)

It appears then, from the diary of this learned master of the grammar school—for such was his office as well as perpetual curate of the parish—‘that a pestilential disease did break forth in our town in the beginning of the year 1665; yea, and it likewise invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief scholars sickened and died’. ‘Among those who yielded to the malign influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son of the worshipful heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial motion and earnest desire, I did consent to preach his funeral sermon’. It should be remembered here that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at the hands of his master, it was in consonance with the habitual usage of those times. The old services for the dead had been abolished by law, and in the
stead of sacrament and ceremony, moth’s mind and year’s mind, the sole substitute which survived was the general desire ‘to partake’ as they called it, of a posthumous discourse, replete with lofty eulogy and flattering remembrance of the living and the dead. The diary proceeds:

“I fulfilled my undertaking and preached over the coffin in the presence of a full assemblage of mourners and lachrymose friends. An ancient gentleman, who was then and there in the church, a Mr. Bligh of Botathen, was very much affected by my discourse, and he was heard to repeat to himself certain parenthesis therefrom, especially a phrase from Maro Vigilius which I had applied to the deceased youth: “
Et peur ipse fuit cantari dignus
.”

The cause whereby the old gentleman was moved by my applications, was this: He had a firstborn and only son—a child who, but a very few months before, had been not unworthy the character I drew of young Master Eliot but who, by some strange accident, had of late quite fallen away from his parents’ hopes and become moody, and sullen, and distraught. When the funeral obsequies were over, I had no sooner come out of church than I was accosted by this aged parent, and he besought me incontinently, with a singular energy, that I would resort with him forthwith to his abode at Botathen that very night, nor could I have delivered myself from his importunity, had not Mr. Eliot urged his claim to enjoy my company at his own house. Hereupon I got loose, but not until I had pledged a fast assurance that I would pay him, faithfully, an early visit the next day”.

“The Place” as it was called, of Botathen, where old Mr. Bligh resided, was a low-roofed gabled manor-house of the fifteenth century, walled and mullioned, with clustered chimneys of dark-grey stone from the neighbouring quarries of Ventor-gan. The manor was flanked by a pleasance or enclosure in one space, of garden and lawn, and it was surrounded by a solemn grove of stag-horned trees. It had the sombre
aspect of age and of solitude, and looked the very scene of strange and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every gloomy glade around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. Hither, according to his appointment on the morrow, Parson Ruddal betook himself. Another clergyman, as it appeared, had been invited to meet him, who very soon after his arrival, proposed a walk together in the pleasance on the pretext of showing him, as a stranger, the walks, and trees, until the dinner-bell should strike. There, with much prolixity, and with many a solemn pause, his brother minister proceeded to “unfold the mystery”.

A singular infelicity, he declared, had befallen young Master Bligh, once the hopeful heir of his parents and of the lands of Botathen. Whereas he had been from childhood a blithe and marry boy, “the gladness”, like Isaac of old, of his father’s age, he had suddenly, and of late, become morose and silent—nay, even austere and stern—dwelling apart, always solemn, often in tears. The lad had at first repulsed all questions as to the origin of the great change, but of late he had yielded to the importune researches of his parents, and had disclosed the secret cause. It appeared that he resorted every day, by a pathway across the fields, to this very clergyman’s house who had charge of his education and grounded him in the studies suitable to his age. In the course of his daily walk, he had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between. There, in a certain spot, and always in one and the same place, the lad declared that he encountered every day, a woman with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a long loose garment of frieze, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. Her name, he said, was Dorothy Dinglet, for he had known her well from his childhood, and she often used to come to his parents’ house; but that which troubled him was that she had now been dead three years, and he himself had been with the neighbours at her burial; so that
as the youth alleged, with great simplicity, since he had seen her body laid in the grave, this that he saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost.

“Questioned again and again”, said the clergyman, “he never contradicts himself; but he relates the same and the simple tale as a thing that cannot be gainsaid. Indeed, the lad’s observance is keen and calm for a boy of his age. The hair of the appearance, sayeth he, is not like anything alive, but is so soft and light that it seemeth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set and never blink—no, not so when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemeth to swim along the top of the grass, and her hand which is stretched out always, seemeth to point at something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming, for she never faileth to meet him and to pass on, that hath quenched his spirits; and although he never seeth her by night, yet cannot he get his natural rest”.

Thus far the clergyman; whereupon the dinner clock did sound, and we went into the house. After dinner, young Master Bligh had withdrawn with his tutor, under excuse of their books, his parents did forthwith beset me as to my thoughts about their son. So I said warily, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if the lad will be free with me, and fulfil all that I desire”. The mother was overjoyed, but I perceived that old Mr. Bligh turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. Then they bade that Master Bligh should be called to meet me in the pleasance forthwith. The boy came, and he rehearsed to me his tale with an open countenance, and, withal, a pretty modesty of speech. Verily, he seemed
ingenui vultis puer ingenuique pudoris
. Then I signified to him my purpose.

“Tomorrow”, said I, “we will go together to the place; and if, as I doubt not, the woman shall appear, it will for me to proceed according to knowledge, and by rules laid down in my books”.

The unaltered scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take an interest in the supernatural tales of old. The pathway leads along a moorland waste, where large masses of rock stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden and purple garniture on every side. Amidst all these, and winding along between the rocks, is a natural footway, worn by the scant, rare tread of the village traveller. Just midway, a somewhat larger stretch than usual of green sod expands, which is skirted by the path, and which is still identified as the legendary haunt of the phantom, by the name of Parson Rudall’s Ghost.

But we must draw the record of the first interview between the minister and Dorothy from his own words. “We met”, thus he writes, “in the pleasance very early, before any others in the house were awake, and together the lad and myself proceeded towards the field. The youth was quite composed, and carried his Bible under his arm, from whence he read to me verses, which he said he had lately picked out, to have always in his mind. These were Job vii. 14, “Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrfiest me through visions” and Deuteronomy xxviii. 67, “In the morning thou shalt say Would to God it were evening and in the evening thou shalt say Would to God it were morning, for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see”.

I was much pleased with the lad’s ingenuity in these pious applications, but for mine own part, I was somewhat anxious and out of cheer. For aught I knew, this might be a
daemonium meridianum
, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the most perilous withal. We had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when we both saw her at once, gliding towards us, as punctually as the ancient writers describe the mention of their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending
the herbage”. The aspect of the woman was exactly that which had been related by the lad. There was the pale and stony face, the strange and misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed that gazed, yet not on us, but on something that they saw, far, far away, one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like a sail upon a stream, and glided past the spot where we stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that overcame me, as I stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul, separate from her bones and flesh, that my heart and purpose both failed me. I had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but I did not. I stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean out of sight. One thing remarkable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the favourite of young Master Bligh, had followed us, and lo! when the woman drew nigh, the poor creature began to yell and bark piteously, and ran backward and away, like a thing dismayed and appalled. We returned to the house, and after I had said all that I could to pacify the lad, and to soothe the aged people, I took my leave for that time, with a promise that when I had fulfilled certain business elsewhere which I then alleged, I would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause.

January 7, 1665—At my own house, I find, by my books, what is expedient to be done; and then Apage, Sathanas!

January 9, 1665—This day I took leave of my wife and family, under the pretext of engagements elsewhere, and made my secret journey to our diocesan city, wherein the good and venerable bishop then abode.

January 10—
Deo gratias
, in safe arrival in Exeter; craved and obtained immediate audience with his lordship, pleading it was for counsel and admonition on a weighty and pressing cause; called to the presence; made obeisance; then and by command stated my case—the Botathen perplexity—which I moved with strong and earnest instances and solemn asseverations
of that which I had myself seen and heard. Demanded by his lordship, what was the succour that I had come to entreat at his hands. Replied, licence for my exorcism, that so I might ministerially, allay this spiritual visitant, and thus render to the living and the dead, release from this surprise.

“But”, said our bishop, “on what authority do you allege that I am entrusted with the faculty so to do? Our Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient power on the grounds of perversion and abuse”.

“Nay, my lord” I humbly answered, “”under favour, the seventy-second of the canons ratified and rejoined on us, the clergy, anno Domini 1604, doth expressly provide, that no minister,
unless he hath
the licence of his diocesan bishop, shall essay to exorcise a spirit, evil or good”. Therefore it was. I did here mildly allege, “that I did not presume to enter on such a work without lawful privilege under your lordship’s hand and seal”. Hereupon did out wise and learned bishop, sitting in his chair, condescend upon the theme at some length, with many gracious interpretations from ancient writers and from Holy Scriptures, and I did humbly rejoin and reply, till the upshot was that he did call in his secretary and command him to draw the aforesaid faculty, forthwith and without further delay, assigning him a form, insomuch that the matter was incontinently done, and after I had disbursed into the secretary’s hands certain monies for signatory purposes, as the manner of such officers hath always been, the bishop did himself affix his signature under the
sigellum
of his see, and deliver the document into my hands. When I knelt to receive his benediction, he softly said: “Let it be secret, Mr. R. Weak brethren! Weak brethren!”

This interview with the bishop, and the success with which he vanquished his lordship’s scruples, would seem to have confirmed Parson Rudall very strongly in his own esteem, and to have invested him with that courage which he evidently lacked at his first encounter with the ghost.

The entries proceed:

January 11, 1665—‘Therewithal did I hasten home and prepare my instruments, and cast my figures for the onset of the next day Took out my ring of brass, and put it on the index finger of my right hand, with the
scutum Davidix
traced thereon.”

January 12, 1665—Rode into the gateway at Botathen, armed at all points, but not with Saul’s armour, and ready. There is danger from demons but so there is in the surrounding air every day. At early morning then, and alone—for so the usage ordains—I betook me towards the field. It was void and I therefore had due time to prepare. First, I paced and measured out my circle on the grass. Then did I mark my pentacle in the very midst, and at the intersection of the five angles, I did set up and fix my crutch of raun (rowan). Lastly, I took my station south, at the true line of the meridian, and stood facing due north. I watched and watched for a long time. At last there was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft and rippling sound, and all at once a shape appeared, and came on towards me gradually. I opened my parchment-scroll and read aloud the command. She paused and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still, then I rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. She drew near my ring but halted at first outside; on the brink. I sounded again, and at the third time I gave the signal in Syriac—the speech which is used, they say, where such ones dwell and converse in thoughts that glide.