LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 350, 27 July 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE HAUNTED SHIPS.

Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its woodlands, its bays, its cliffs, and headlands—and interesting on the English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the water, rich pastures, safe harbours, and numerous ships —there still linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the curious these tales afford a rich fund of entertainment, from the many diversities of the same story ; some dry and barren, and stripped of all the embellishment of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they resemble the inland traditions of the peasants ; but many of the oral treasures of the Galwegian or the Cambrian coast have the stamp of the Dane and the Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or faint affinity with the legitimate legends of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic outline of several of the most noted of the Northern ballads, the adventures and depredations of the old ocean kings, still lends life to the evening tale ; and among others, the story of the " Haunted Ships " is still popular among the maritime peasantry. One fine harvest evening I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder, of Allanbay, and committing ourselves to the water, we allowed a gentle wind from the east to waft lis at its pleasure toward the Scottish coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick, and skirting the land within a stone cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the mined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffel ascended beside us, and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came, softened into something like music, over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of the place. The moon glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of the pines of Caerlaverock, and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered down on the wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling beams of a thousand stars rendering every object visible. The tide, too, was coming in with that s v.'ift and silent swell observable when the wind is gentle; the woody curves along the land were filling with the flood, till it toirched the green branches of the drooping trees ; while in the centre current the roll and plunge of a thousand pellocks told to the experienced fisherman that salmon were abundant. As we looked we saw an old man emerging from a path that winded to the shore through a grove of doddered hazel j he

carried a halve-net on his back, while behind him came a girl, bearing a small harpoon with which the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey. The senior seated himself on a large grey stone, which overlooked the bay, laid aside his bonnet, and submitted his bosom and neck to the refreshing sea breeze; and taking his harpoon from his attendant, sat with the gravity and composure of the spirit of the flood, with his ministering nymph behind him. We pushed our shallop to the shore, and soon stood at their side. 1 This is old Mark Mac Moran, the mariner, with his grand-daughter Barbara,' said Kichard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear in it; 'he knows every creek and cavern and quicksand in Sol wait —has seen, the Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark, and at every bark has seen a ship sink ; and he has seen, too, the Haunted Ships in full sail; and if all tales be true, he hae sailed in them himself; he's an awful person.' Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something of the superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that common rumour had made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to maintain her intercourse with the invisible world. His hair, which seemed to have refused all intercourse with the comb, ,hung matted upon his shoulders ; a kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer around his neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments as far as a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all conceivable colours, and a pair of shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original structure remained, and clasped on his feet with two massive silver buckles. If the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his granddaughter was gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric, which, almost touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-like and round that they scarcely seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament which woman seeks much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young Barbara's influence over the heart of man ; but had bestowed a Eair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in quid light, so full of love and gentleness and joy, that all the sailors from Annawater to far Saint Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass of Mark Macmoran. She stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her hand, and seemed not dissatisfied with the glance I bestowed on her from time to time, and which I held more than requited by a single glance of those eyes which retained so many capricious hearts in subjection. The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines, and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark, the mariner, who, seated motionless on his grey stone, kept his eye fixed on the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow in which I saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them; and creeping inch by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the re. sistance which the liquid element receivedThe moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his hands together, and said, 'Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye for ever ! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here 1 Seven times have ye put my life in peril, three fair sons have you swept from my side, and two bonnie grandbairns; and now, even now, your waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm limbs in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine.'

Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young man appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his half-net in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose, and shouted, and waved him back from a place which to a person unacquainted with the dangers of the bay, real and superstitious, seomed sufficiently perilous ; his granddaughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her white hands; but the more they strove, the faster advanced the peasant till he stood to his middle in the water, while the tide increased every moment in depth and strength. ' Andrew, Andrew,' cried the young woman, in a voice quivering with emotion, ' turn, turn, I tell you. 0 the ship B—the Haunted Ships!' But the appearance of a fine run of fish had more influence with the peasant than the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward he dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne off his feet, and mingled like foam with the water, and hurried toward the fatal eddies which whirled and roared round the sunken ships. But he was a powerful young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of the projecting ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair, uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the prodigious rush of the current.

From a shealing of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the spot where he stood, came out an old woman, bent with age, and leaning on a crutch.

' I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the cheild be drowning, that he skirls sae uncannie ?' said the old woman, seating herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water. 'Ou aye,' she con tinued, ' he's doomed; heart and hand can never save him; boats, ropes, and man's strength, and wit, all vain J vain ! he's doomed, he's doomed, I'

By this time I had thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly by Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart superstition had great power; and with one push from the shore, and some exertion in sculling, we came within a quoitcast of the unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded towards us through the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on the surface of the water; but the eddying current sucked him down, and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on the vacant sea before us : but a breathing time before, a human being, full of youth and strength and hope, was there : his cries were still ringing in my ears and echoing in the woods; and now nothing was seen or heard save the turbulent expanse of water, and the sound of its chafing on the shores. We pushed back our shallop, and resumed our station on the cliff beside the old mariner and his descendant.

' Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly,' said Mark, 'in attempting to save the doomed ? Whoso touches those infernal ships, never survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them at midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and cannon, and shroud! Then is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamour of tongues, and the infernal whoop and halloo, and song, ringing far and wide. "Woe to the man who come 3 nigh them !' {To be contintled.')