LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 351, 28 July 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE HAUNTED SHIPS. (Continued.) To all this my Allanbay companion listened with a breathless I felt something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed I had seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner, ‘ How and when came these haunted ships there ? To me they seem but the melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to warn people to shun destruction than entice and delude them to it. ’ ‘And so/ said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in it than of mirth—' and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks seem to the eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem: that water, a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man, which seems so smooth, and so dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a human soul even now ; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level, is a faithless quicksand, out of which none escape. Things are otherwise than they seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow to live ; had you seen the storms, and braved the perils, and endured the distress which have befallen me ; had you sat gazing out on the dreary ocean at midnight on a haunted coast ; had you seen comrade after comrade, brother after brother, and son after son, swept away by the merciless ocean from your every side ; had you seen the shapes of friends, doomed to the wave and the quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams and visions of the night—then would your mind have been prepared for crediting the maritime legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish ships would have had their terrors for you, as they have for all who sojourn on this coast/ ‘ Of the time and the cause of their destruction,’ continued the old man, ‘ I know nothing certain; they have stood as you have seen them for unaccounted time ; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast have gone to pieces, and rotted, and sunk away in a few years, these two haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar or board been displaced. Maritime legends say that two ships of Denmark having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and dolor on the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken reck, and were wrecked in this bonnie bay as a sign to seamen to be gentle and devout. The night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon mildness and beauty; the sun had newly set; the moon came brighter and brighter out; and the reapers, laying their sickles at the root of the standing corn, stood on rock and bank, looking on the increasing magnitude of the waters, for sea and land were visible from Saint Bees to Bamhourie. The sails of two vessels were soon seen bent for the Scottish coast; and with a speed outrunning the swiftest ship, they approached the dangerous quicksands and headland of Borranpoint. On the deck of the foremost ship not a living soul was seen, ncr shape, unless something in darkness and form resembling a human shadow could be called a shape, which flitted from extremity to extremity of the ship, with the appearance of trimming the sails and directing the vessel’s course. But the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes ; the captain, and mate, and sailor, and cabin boy, all seemed there ; and from them the sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast which they skirted along was one of extreme danger; and the reapers shouted for them to beware of the sandbank and rock ; but of this friendly counsel no notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which sat on the prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and melancholy howl. The deep sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career of these desperate navigators ; but they passed, with the celerity of waterfowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked many pretty ships. * 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 y s nae fiend, but douce Janet Withershims, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her Cumberland cummers, and mickle nd wine will be spilt atween them. Dod, I would gladly have a toothfu’ I I’ll warrant it’s nane o’ your cauld, sour slaewater, like a bottle o’ Bailie Shrinkie’s port, but right drap-o’-my-heart’s blood stuff, that would waken a body right out o’ their last linen. I wonder where 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 drouthie 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 hansel 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 fowk. 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 drouket sark for ae glorious tout on’t,’ ye sinners/ said the minister’s son of a neighbouring parish, who united his father s lack of devotion with his mother’s love of liquor. ‘ Whist!—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 thee Scripture warrant for that; so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might ion 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. Bonnilie 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 dyke-water, and we’ll drink the health of bonnie Bell Blackness out of hel' 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 minstrelsy waxed louder than ever; and the forms of maidens, with instruments of music, and wine-cups in their hands, thronged tye decks. A boat was lowered j

and the same shadowy pilot who conducted the ships made it start toward 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 mariners; and its truth has been attested by many families whose sons and whose fathers have been drowned in the haunted bay of Blawhooly. ’ ‘ 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 Ship is done ? I can say no to that. Mickle have mine 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 Hallowmas-eve : 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 tryste with him in dark and lonely places. However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were passed and gone with me ; the mair’s the pity that pleasure should fly sae fast away—and as I could nae make sport I thought I should not mar any ; so but 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 blithe good man 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 woeful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nothing to support the m 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 Hallowmass night; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart wandering to other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame, Jt might he near the howe hour of 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 met with, and the fearful forms they see. My own blithe goodman had seen sights that made him grave enough at times, though he aye tried to law them away, ‘ Aweel, atween 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—l saw the form of a man ; his plaid was gray ; his hair was gray; and his hair, which hung down till it nearly came to the middle of his back, was as white as the white sea foam. He began to howk and dig under the bank ; an’ 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 lett-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. JN ow was nae that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see beneath the light of the Hallowmass 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 come snoring through the Solway; ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and minstrelsy, which our ancestors heard ; see them bound over the sandbanks and sunken rocks like seagulls, cast their anchors in Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figure lowers down the boat, and auguments 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. ( To be continued.)