e tale is so dream-like, that the
whole might pass for a vision of the night, I saw the form of a
man: his plaid was gray; his face was gray; and his hair, which
hung low 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
forever from man's enjoyment. The Form found something which in
shape and hue seemed a left-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. Now 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 coming snoring through the Solway;
ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and mirth, and minstrelsy,
which our ancestors heard; see them bound over the sandbanks and
sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in Blawhooly Bay,
while the shadowy figure lowers down the boat, and augments 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. Then the spectre ships vanish, and the drowning shriek
of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old
hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has
not departed from the earth. But I maun away, and trim my little
cottage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the
crickets, and my cold and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath
the green sod in the eerie kirkyard." And away the old dame tottered
to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and soon the
hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the key-hole
and window.
"I'll tell
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