The Brownie of Bodsbeck (Volume 1&2). James Hogg
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and singing with the most eldrich yells. In one instant all became dark, and he felt a weight upon his breast that seemed heavier than a mountain. They then lifted him up, and bore him away through the air for hundreds of miles, amid regions of utter darkness; but on his repeating the name of Jesus three times, they brought him back, and laid him down in an insensible state at the door of Chapelhope.
The feelings depicted in the features of the auditors were widely different on the close of this wonderful relation. The beauteous Katharine appeared full of anxious and woful concern, but no marks of fear appeared in her lovely face. The servants trembled every limb, and declared with one voice, that no man about Chapelhope was now sure of his life for a moment, and that nothing less than double wages should induce them to remain there another day. The goodwife lifted up her eyes to Heaven, and cried, “O the vails! the vails!—the vails are poured, and to pour!”
Walter pretended to laugh at the whole narration; but when he did, it was with an altered countenance, for he observed, what none of them did, that Kennedy had indeed been borne through the air by some means or other; for his shoes were all covered with moss, which, if he had walked, could not have been there, for the grass would have washed it off from whatever quarter he had come.
Kennedy remained several days about Chapelhope in a thoughtful, half delirious frame; but no entreaties could prevail with him at that time to accompany the men of the place to where he supposed the accident had happened, nor yet to give them any account where it was situated, for he averred that he heard a voice say to him in a solemn tone, “If you wish to live long, never tell what you have seen to–night, nor ever come this way again.” Happy had it been for him had he attended all along to this injunction. He slipped away from Chapelhope in a few days, and was no more seen until the time that Copland and his men appeared there. It was he who came as guide to that soldiers that were slain, and he fell with them in the strait linn of the South Grain of Chapelhope.
These mysterious and unaccountable incidents by degrees impressed the minds of the inhabitants with terror that cannot be described; no woman or boy would go out of doors after sunset, on any account whatever, and there was scarcely a man who durst venture forth alone after the fall of evening. If they could have been sure that brownies and fairies had only power to assume the human shape, they would not have been nearly in such peril and perplexity; but there was no form of any thing animate or inanimate, save that of a lamb, that they were sure of; they were of course waylaid at every turn, and kept in continual agitation. An owl was a most dangerous and suspicious–looking fellow—a white glede made them quake, and keep a sharp look–out upon his course in the air—a hare, with her large intelligent eyes and equivocal way of walking, was an object of general distrust—and a cat, squalling after dark, was the devil. Many were the ludicrous scenes that occurred, among which I cannot help mentioning those which follow, as being particularly whimsical.
Jasper, son to old John of the Muchrah, was the swiftest runner of his time; but of all those whose minds were kept in continual agitation on account of the late inundation of spirits into the country, Jasper was the chief. He was beset by them morning and evening; and even at high noon, if the day was dark, he never considered himself as quite safe. He depended entirely upon his speed in running to avoid their hellish intercourse; he essayed no other means—and many wonderful escapes he effected by this species of exertion alone. He was wont to knit stockings while tending his flock on the mountains; and happening to drop some yarn one evening, it trailed after him in a long ravelled coil along the sward. It was a little after the sun had gone down that Jasper was coming whistling and singing over the shoulder of the Hermon Law, when, chancing to cast a casual glance behind him, he espied something in shape of a horrible serpent, with an unequal body, and an enormous length of tail, coming stealing along the bent after him. His heart leapt to his mouth, (as he expressed it,) and his hair bristled so that it thrust the bonnet from his head. He knew that no such monster inhabited these mountains, and it momently occurred to him that it was the Brownie of Bodsbeck come to seize him in that most questionable shape. He betook him to his old means of safety in great haste, never doubting that he was well qualified to run from any object that crawled on the ground with its belly; but, after running a considerable way, he perceived his adversary coming at full stretch along the hill after him. His speed was redoubled; and, as he noted now and then that his inveterate pursuer gained no ground on him, his exertion was beyond that of man. There were two shepherds on an opposite hill who saw Jasper running without the plaid and the bonnet, and with a swiftness which they described as quite inconceivable. The cause set conjecture at defiance; but they remarked, that though he grew more and more spent, whenever he glanced behind he exerted himself anew, and strained a little harder. He continued his perseverance to the last, as any man would do who was running for bare life, until he came to a brook called the Ker Cleuch, in the crossing of which he fell down exhausted; he turned on his back to essay a last defence, and, to his joyful astonishment, perceived that the serpent likewise lay still and did not move. The truth was then discovered; but many suspected that Jasper never overcame that heat and that fright as long as he lived.
Jasper, among many encounters with the fairies and brownies, had another that terminated in a manner not quite so pleasant. The Brownie of Bodsbeck, or the Queen of the Fairies, (he was not sure which of them it was,) came to him one night as he was lying alone, and wide awake, as he conceived, and proffered him many fine things, and wealth and honours in abundance, if he would go along to a very fine country, which Jasper conjectured must have been Fairyland. He resisted all these tempting offers in the most decided manner, until at length the countenance of his visitant changed from the most placid and bewitching beauty to that of a fiend. The horrible form grappled with him, laid hold of both his wrists, and began to drag him off by force; but he struggled with all the energy of a man in despair, and at length, by a violent exertion, he disengaged his right hand. The enemy still continuing, however, to haul him off with the other, he was obliged to have recourse to a desperate expedient. Although quite naked, he reached his clothes with the one hand and drew his knife; but, in endeavouring to cut off those fingers which held his wrist so immovably fast, he fairly severed a piece of the thumb from his own left hand.
This was the very way that Jasper told the story to his dying day, denying stoutly that he was in a dream; and, singular as it may appear, I can vouch for the truth of it. Jasper Hay died at Gattonside at a right old age, in the year 1739; and they are yet alive who have heard him tell those stories, and seen him without the thumb of the left hand.
Things went on in this distracted and doubtful manner until the time when Walter is first introduced. On that day, at the meeting place, he found no fewer than 130 of the poor wanderers, many of them assembled to see him for the last time, and take an affectionate leave of him; for they had previously resolved to part, and scatter themselves again over the west country, even though certain death awaited them, as they could not in conscience longer remain to be the utter ruin of one who was so generous and friendly to them. They saw, that not only would his whole stock be wasted, but he would himself be subjected to confiscation of goods, and imprisonment, if to nothing worse. Walter said, the case seemed hard either way; but he had been thinking, that perhaps, if they remained quiet and inoffensive in that seclusion, the violence of the government might in a little relax, and they might then retire to their respective homes in peace. Walter soon heard with vexation that they made conscience of not living in peace, but of proclaiming aloud to the world the grievous wrongs and oppression that the church of Christ in Scotland laboured under. The doctor chap, as Walter always called him, illustrated at great length the sin that would lie to their charge, should they remain quiet and passive in a time like that, when the church’s all was at stake in these realms. “We are but a remnant,” added he, “a poor despised remnant; but if none stand up for the truth of the reformed religion, how are ever our liberties, civil or ecclesiastical, to be obtained? There are many who think with us, and who feel with us, who yet have not the courage to stand up for the truth; but the time must ere long come, that the kingdoms of the land will join in supporting a reformation, for the iniquity of the Amorite is wearing to the full.”
Walter did not much like disputing about these matters; but in this he felt that his reason acquiesced, and he answered thus: “Ye speak like a true man, and a clever man, Doctor; and if I had a desperate cause by the end, and wanted ane to back me in’t, the deil a step wad I gang ayont this moss hag