Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

“What a beautifu’ nicht!” said Grannie; “but come in, laddies.”

“You’re sure you have no company?” said Dugald, still hesitating to enter.

“Come, ye stoopid loon,” she replied. “There’s nobody here but me and the cat. Sit doon. Tak’ a stool, Kennie, my bonnie boy.”

A bonnie boy? Yes, there was no denying it. Kenneth, our hero, was a bonnie boy, and gave promise of growing up into a fine handsome man.

His broad blue bonnet was usually worn pretty far back, but even had he worn it forward, I do not think it would have been possible for it to suppress the wealth of dark short curls that rose up over his broad brown brow. His cheeks had the tint that health, the winds, and the sun had given them. His lips were rosy, and when he laughed he showed a set of teeth even and white, and a merry twinkle went upwards and danced about his dark, dark eyes. But at all other times those eyes were somewhat dreamy withal. Such was Kenneth McAlpine, and it was probably that same dreamy, thoughtful look in his eyes that made him appear older than he really was, for he had not yet seen his thirteenth year.

But there was one other reason to account for Kenneth’s looking somewhat older than his years. He had already come through a good deal of grief.

His father had once been a prosperous crofter or small farmer. Not that the crofts in Glen Alva were very large or very wealthy, but, when well cultivated, the land was grateful and yielded up its fruits abundantly.

Then the sea was not very far away, only a few miles, and fish therein were abundant and to be had only for the catching.

It was the broad Atlantic Ocean whose waves broke and thundered ceaselessly on the rocky shore just beyond the hills yonder. Only two years ago – what long, long years they had seemed to Kenneth! – this lad had used to spend many an hour by the seashore. Indeed, every hour that he could spare from school, or from home, he spent with the ocean.

I am quite right in saying with the ocean instead of by the sea, for Kenneth looked upon the sea as a friend and as a companion; he used to speak with it and talk to it; it seemed to understand him, and he it. What baskets of glorious fish he used to get from the sea! and what dozens of splendid steel blue lobsters and lordly crabs!

Kenneth used to fish from the rocks on days when he could not borrow old Duncan Reed’s cobble. Old Duncan was frail and rheumatic, and could not always go out to fish himself, but one way or another he had taught Kenneth nearly all he knew about the sea and fishing. He had taught him to row, and to scull, and to make and bait and busk a line, and to swim as well.

The making of a good strong line used to be a great pleasure to Kenneth. It was manufactured from horsehair. There was first and foremost the getting of this horsehair, for quite a quantity was required. It consisted of combings from the manes and tails of horses, and many a mile Kenneth used to pad to procure it. The main source of supply was the stables of a noble lord who lived in a great old-fashioned castle miles from Glen Alva. For the horsehair so obtained Kenneth used to give to the stablemen largess in fish. Then, having obtained his supply and carried it home, it was quite a long and tedious process to plait the line. But Kenneth knew no such word as tire, so he worked and worked away at early morning and late at night, and as yard after yard of the line was made, it was rolled upon a reel roughly hewn from a branch of the silvery birch, and probably at the end of a fortnight the line would be complete, and away Kenneth would rush like a young deer over the hills.

Nancy’s house on the moor lay between him and the shore, and however great a hurry Kenneth was in, he did not fail to call and speak a few moments with the “old witch wife,” as she was universally called, the truth being that she was no more a witch than you or I, reader, only she was an herbalist, and wise in many other ways.

Yes, Kenneth would always find time to call at old Nancy’s hut, and he never left the house without a drink of milk or whey – for Nancy kept a cow – or a cupful of heather ale. Nancy was famed far and near for making heather ale, and on Sundays the lads and lasses from a good way round, used to make a pilgrimage to Nancy’s and taste her wondrous brew.

Many a word of good advice Nancy had for Kenneth, too, her bonnie boy, and many a blessing.

He would soon arrive at the old fisherman’s hut, which was a boat turned upside down and let into a crevice of the rocks high enough up to prevent green seas from swamping it, although in stormy weather, with a west wind blowing, the spray used to dash right over the roof.

“On days like these,” old Duncan used to say, “I don’t need to put any salt in my porridge, for the sea-bree that drops down the chimney makes it salt enough.”

When Duncan got Kenneth’s horsehair line, he used to unroll it and try the strength of it, foot by foot and yard by yard, and if it bore the test, then Duncan would put his hand on the lad’s head and say, —

“My dear Kennie, you’ll be as good a fisherman as myself yet.”

And Kennie would smile, and say he hoped so, for he never meant to be anything else. How little he knew then the truth of the poet’s words, —

“There is a Divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them as we will.”

There isn’t much fancy work about the flies one needs to catch fish with, on the western shores of Scotland, nor about the rod you use. Only a strongish hook, and tied over that a morsel of white feather or even a bit of wool from the back of a lamb. The fish are not particular when hungry, and they nearly always are hungry, and there are times when you really cannot draw them in fast enough.

But at certain seasons of the year they don’t rise; they then prefer bait lowered down to them. They take breakfast in bed. The bait which they love most dearly of all is the inside of a crab, but as this is rather expensive, Kenneth and Duncan Reed were in the habit of using limpets, and they never failed to have good fortune with these.

Of course the limpets had to be gathered first, and as Kenneth was young and Duncan was old, it was the work of the boy to collect these. And when the tide was back you might have seen him at any time, far away out among the weed-covered boulders and rocks, with a chisel and hammer to knock the limpets off and a tiny basket on his back to pop them into.

Nor was there a deal of fancy work to be learned in rowing or sculling a cobble, but then, you know, the fisherman and little Kennie used to venture quite a long distance out to sea, for there was an island three miles away where the fish were very numerous, and thither they often went. And sometimes the sea was both rough and wild before they got back, and skill was then needed to keep her right and straight. For had a sea struck her broadside on, it might have capsized or staved the cobble, and if a great wave had broken over the stern, it might have swamped her, and she would have sunk, and both Kennie and his friend would then have been food for the creatures that dwell down in the dark caves beneath the ocean.

As to swimming, Kenneth seemed to take to it quite naturally, and many a little adventure he had in the water.

Once when swimming he was bitten on the knee by a horrible fish called on the shores of the Atlantic the miller’s thumb. It is a kind of skate or ray of immense size, with a fearfully large mouth filled with sharp teeth.

On this particular day the sun had been very bright and the water warm and clear, and Kenneth swam a long distance from the shore. When he returned he was very faint, and his knee was bleeding; he fell and lost consciousness almost immediately after he reached the pebbly beach. Duncan ran to his assistance, and soon got him round; then he bound up his knee.

“Was it a shark?” Kenneth had inquired.

“Oh! horrible! no, Kennie, no, for had a shark seized you, his teeth are so arranged and so hook-like that he couldn’t have let you go again had he wanted to ever so much.”

Another day, when Duncan and he were hauling in a hand line with an immensely great cod at the end of it, suddenly, for some unexplained reason or other, the line slipped, and almost at the same moment Kenneth fell overboard.

A codfish of say twenty pounds pulls with fearful force.

Kenneth was dragged under the water.

It was a trying time then for old Duncan’s nerves. Would the poor boy be dead before he got the great fish checked and in charge again?

Duncan dragged in the line as speedily as he dared.

Oh! how his heart had throbbed to think that there was a possibility of the line breaking, and his little friend being kept under the water till dead.

And oh! how joyful he was when Kenneth reappeared.

Kenneth really came up smiling, though he was spluttering a great deal as well. “I’m sure,” he said when he got into the boat again, and the fish was there as well, “I’m sure I’ve swallowed fully a pint of salt water, Duncan.”

Yes, Kenneth laughed heartily about it, but poor old Duncan was weeping, and before he could be himself again he must take off his broad blue bonnet and kneel down upon it in the stern sheets of the cobble, and return thanks to Him who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand.

There were days in summer when the sea was so blue and bright and still, that I think Kenneth used almost to go to sleep while floating on its surface.

Gathering the eggs of the sea-birds from off the cliffs and rocks was dangerous sport, but Kenneth loved it all the more on that account.

But he loved the sea in storm as well, and used to play among the billows and spray along the shore, or venture out a little distance for the pleasure of being rolled up again like a log of wood upon the beach.

Kenneth really could have said with the immortal Byron —

“And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joyOf youthful sports was on thy breast to be,Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boyI wantoned with thy breakers – they to meWere a delight; and if the freshening seaMade them a terror, ’twas a pleasing fear,For I was, as it were, a child of thee,And trusted to thy billows far and near,And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.”

Old Duncan Reed owned and worked a little lobster fishery of his own. And before the great grief came that deprived poor Kenneth of a father, he used to take great delight in helping the fisherman with this part of his work. It was very simple. They had wooden cages which they sank at the bottom of a deep pool among the rocks. There was a stone or two at the bottom of each cage to make it sink, and it was lowered down at night by a rope which was attached at the top of the water to a wooden float.

The cages were baited, and Duncan used to find it a capital plan to put a live crab or lobster into the cage. There was a hole at the top of each cage for the creatures to crawl in, but it was so arranged that once in they did not get out again.

As soon as one was sunk, rejoiced to find himself once more in his native element, the imprisoned shell-fish would begin to eat. And presently round would come another crab or lobster and look in for a little at him with his eyes, which, you know, are upon stalks.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself in there,” the newcomer would say.

The imprisoned animal would wave a claw at him, as much as to say, —

“Oh! very nicely indeed, but go away; don’t stand there and stare at a fellow when he is having his dinner. It is rude.”

“Is it good, though?” the other would ask.

“Delicious!” the reply would be.

“How ever did you get inside?”

“Look and see.”

Then the new-come lobster would find the hole in the top of the cage, and in he would pop. And presently more and more lobsters would come round and pop in one by one.

Well, but when they wanted to pop out again they would not find it so easy. In fact, there would be no way out for them, until Duncan hauled up the creel and pulled them forth to be boiled.

“It is so easy to get into a trap, but so difficult to get out again,” old Duncan would say to Kenneth, “so, my dear laddie, always all your life be sure to look before you leap.”

Old Duncan was a very merry old man; he used to tell Kenneth such funny stories, and tales of the deep blue sea, and all about sea-fairies, and water babies, and mermaids that live deep down beneath the ocean in coral caves. I do not think that old Duncan believed in these things himself, nor that he expected Kenneth to believe in them either, but they helped to pass the time, and often of a winter’s evening the boy would stay in the fisherman’s hut so late that night came on before he started for Glen Alva, and the stars would be all shining as he took his road across the hills and over the dreary moorland where Nancy lived.

Old Duncan Reed did not know the time except by the sun, and Kenneth had no watch, so he could never be sure on occasions like these what o’clock it really was.

But one thing Kenneth never did forget, and that was to bring a few fish or a lobster or a lovely crab for Nancy.

If her light was burning when he reached the little cottage, then he would go in; if not, he knew she had gone to bed, so he would hang the string of fish to the door latch – a very old-fashioned one with a thumb-piece – and go quietly away with Kooran. Or if it was a lobster with its claws tied, he used to tether it to the foot of a rose tree that grew near the door, and poor old Nancy found it in the morning, and was thankful accordingly. I’m sure of this, that Nancy never said her prayers without asking guidance, and a blessing for her bonnie boy.

And it was in this very cottage that Kenneth and Duncan the keeper now found themselves, in front of a nice peat fire, for though it was yet early in autumn, in this bleak Highland moorland the evenings struck chill and cold.

Nancy herself sat in the corner, with her grey grimalkin on her shoulder. The cat seemed asleep, only she had one eye open, and that eye was watching the door.

Chapter Three

The Story of the Fairy Knoll

“I’ve heard my reverend Grannie sayIn lanely glens ye like to stray,Or where auld ruined castles grey            Nod to the moon.Ye fright the nightly wanderer’s way,            Wi’ eldritch croon.”Burns.

(Croon – low mournful moan.)

Scene: The interior of Nancy Dobbell’s cottage. Nancy and her visitors round the peat fire, the light from which ever and anon brings the features of each out in bold relief, from the Rembrandtine darkness in the background. Nancy is talking, but knitting as well. Click, click, clickety, click, go the wires, sometimes very fast indeed, at other times more slowly, as if keeping time with Nancy’s thoughts and her spoken words.

“And what brings my bairns so late across the muir the nicht?” she asked.

“We knew ye wadna be in bed, Grannie,” said Dugald. “The moon is shinin’ so brichtly, I had expected to meet ye on the muir, gatherin’ herbs by its ghastly licht. We heard the owlet cryin’; had we met you, Grannie, it would have scared our senses awa’.”

“I wouldn’t have been afraid, Grannie,” said Kenneth.

For a moment there was silence, the old woman’s head had drooped on her breast, and the knitting wires clicked more slowly, like a clock before it stops.

But only for a moment; she raised her head again, and click, click, click, went the wires as fast as before, but both Kenneth and his companion noticed that Nancy’s cheeks were wet.

“Nancy’s auld and silly,” she said, “but Nancy was not always so. Heigho!”

“Oh, Grannie!” cried honest Dugald, hastening to atone for the cruelty of his first speech, but, in his very hurry, making a poor job of it. “Oh, Grannie, dinna say you’re silly; really folk say you’re wise and – and – ”

“A witch?” said Nancy, smiling.

“Well, may be so. Who can help what people say? But ’deed there is no’ a poor woman or man either in a’ the glen or parish that hasn’t a good word to say for you. Your simple medicines, Grannie, have brought comfort and joy to mony a hoose, no matter where ye got them or who – goodness be near us – helped you to gather them. When puir Jock Kelpie was drooned, did you no’ bide and comfort the widow, and sing to her and soothe her for weeks thegither? When Menzies’ bairns had the fever, and no’ a soul would gang near the hoose, wha tended them and cured them? Wha but Nancy Dobbell? And there’s no’ a bairn in a’ the clachan that doesn’t run to meet ye, Grannie, whenever ye come o’er the muir.”

The wires clicked very fast.

“And,” continued Dugald, “though you’re maybe no’ very bonnie noo, everybody says, ‘What a pretty woman Nancy must have been in her time!’”

Nancy’s chin fell again, but the wires worked steadily on. Her mind was away back now in the distant past. She was thinking of one summer’s evening by Saint Ronan’s Well, ’neath the old monk’s tree, of a plighted troth and a broken ring, and a lad that went away to sea, and never, never, never came back. A broken ring, and a broken heart, a sorrow that had shadowed her life.

Click, click, click. Ah, well, every life has its romance.

“But Kenneth here has something to tell ye, Grannie.”

Clickety, clickety, clickety, go the wires. Nancy is all interest now, for dearly does she love her boy Kennie.

Then Kenneth told her about the fairy knoll and the strange cave he had found in its interior.

He told her all the story, just as we already know it; and for once only during all that evening, the wires ceased to click, and the old woman’s hands fell on her lap as she listened.

“It was long, long ago,” said Nancy. “Your father, Kennie, was but a boy then, just like you are noo. And his father was but a young man – ”

“Ahem!” said the superstitious Highland keeper, giving a hasty half-frightened glance behind him into the darkness. “Ahem! you’ll not mak’ your story very fearsome, will ye, Grannie? Dinna forget the lateness o’ the nicht. Mind that we’ve o’er the lonesome muir to gang yet.”

“It was long ago,” said Nancy, addressing herself more particularly to Kenneth. “I lived then down by the kirk in the clachan, and there I was born, and the wee village was quieter far in those days than it is even now. Ye know, Kennie, where the burn joins the river, where the old ruin is among the willow trees?”

“Yes, Grannie.”

“Well, that house was no ruin then. It was deserted, though. It had gotten a bad name. Nobody would take it; and it seemed falling to pieces. The house stood, as you know, about a mile below your fairy knoll, and two miles beyond is the sea.”

“You are right, Grannie.”

“Everybody was surprised to find masons and carpenters working at Mill House one morning. It was let. It had been taken by a stranger. Even the laird knew nought about him. Only he paid a year’s rent in advance. That was enough for Laird McGee, who was a grippy auld man, and just as rich as grippy.

“It was an ugly house when they made the best of it, two-storied, with red tiles, blintering, blinking windows, and long uncanny-looking attics. It lay a good way back from the road. You went along through a thicket o’ willows by a little footpath, then across a stagnant ditch, on a rickety bridge, and this took you to the wild weedy lawn in front of the house itself. Even the road that led past the grounds was little frequented, only a bridle path at best, and it ended at last in a turf dyke (low wall), a march between twa lairds’ lands; if you followed this, it took you over the mountains to the seaside village of T – , and the footpath went pretty close to the knoll. A man and woman came to live at Mill House then; they kept a man-servant, and had one child, a pale-faced, old-fashioned-looking hunchback. The man drove a ramshackle trap, so that, taking them altogether, they were no favourites, all the more in that they never put nose beyond the doorstep on the Sabbath day.

“It was always thought, though, that Innkeeper McCaskill, of our clachan, knew more about this family than he cared to tell. Anyhow, he took them all their meat and groceries. And it was noted, too, and remarked upon that he ay took the parcel himsel’, a big one it used to be, and the auld grey mare on which he rode was as sorely laden coming as going to Mill House.

“Sometimes, but no’ very often, the hunchback laddie used to come on an errand down to the clachan; the bairns o’ the village were frightened at him first, frightened even to call him names or throw a sod at him, as bairns will at things that look weird and unco’.

“Corbett was the laddie’s name, but the bairns ay ca’d him Corbie.

“Corbie, though, improved on acquaintance. There seemed no harm in him, though, woe is me, he lookit auld, auld-fashioned.

“I suppose Corbie found it lonesome at the Mill House, for whenever he came down to the clachan he tried to mak’ acquaintance with the children. It wasna easy to do this. He brought them sweets and wild berries, and bit by bit he won their hearts till Corbie was the greatest favourite in a’ the clachan. There was only one house, though, he ever entered, and that was McCaskill’s. But the bairns would meet him on his return, and he ay turned his steps to the auld kirk-yard, and there, on a flat tombstone, he would sit doon and tell them story after story. And a more attentive audience no minister ever had even in the kirk on Sunday. What did Corbie tell them? Oh! just queer auld-world stories he’d heard tell of, or read in books. Stories about witches and warlocks, brownies, sprites, and spunkies. Ay, and about the good folks, the fairies themselves – ”

“Dinna, dinna,” muttered Dugald. “Think o’ the untimous hour, Grannie.”

“But one day, as poor Corbie was speakin’ and the bairns were listening wi’ round eyes and gaping mouths, who should appear on the scene but Corbie’s father?

“The laddie gave one low scream, like somebody in a nightmare. Then his father seized him, and oh! they say it was dismal to hear the howls of the poor laddie and the sound o’ the fearfu’ blows.

“Corbie didn’t appear again for many a day, but the human heart must have society, and by degrees Corbie commenced story-telling again, but no’ in the kirk-yard, only down in a thicket by the riverside, and always when there, some one was put to watch.

“I often passed that house, even at night, though the name it had now was worse and worse.

“I had used to have business at T – , across the hills.

“But so bad a name did that road get, that even by day the boldest would hardly venture to take the short cut to T – up along the laird’s march dyke. Belated travellers saw lights – dead candles they called them – flitting and flickering around the fairy knoll. Brownies and spunkies, they said, were met on the moor, and down by the riverside Kelpie himsel’ was often visible.”

(Kelpie, in Scotch folklore a kind of bogle, half man, half bat, often seen by midnight near the banks of ugly rivers. He lives in deep, dark pools.)

“A sturdy shepherd that had stayed too long at T – had met Kelpie, so they said; he was found next day cut and bleeding at the water-side, and was a raving maniac for weeks.

“One day I was setting out for the seaside village – I was young then, and strong – when near the clachan I met McCaskill.

“‘Can I trust ye,’ he said, ‘to deliver a letter at the Mill House?’

“I was feared to offend by refusing, so I took it. But lo! I forgot it a’thegither till I was coming hame. It was night, too, but deliver it I must.

“I took the road alang the auld march dyke across the hills. The moon was shining, but no’ very brightly, givin’ a feeble yellow kind o’ a licht through a haze o’ drivin’ clouds.

“Well, I was just near the dreariest part o’ the upper glen, and no’ far from the fairy knoll. I was wishing I were well past it, and away down to the clachan, where I could see the lights blinking cheerily from the houses among the trees.

“I was hurrying on, when suddenly, with an eldritch scream, something in white sprang from behind an etnach,” (juniper) “bush.

“I was a bold lass. Some would have fainted. My heart was in my mouth, but I felt impelled to throw myself at the thing, whatever it was. I rushed forward with a frightened shriek and grasped it. I wheeled its face towards the moon, and what think you saw I?”

“A brownie!” said Dugald. “Oh, Grannie, I’m all of a quiver.”

“He was no brownie. Only the auld, auld-fashioned face o’ little Corbie.”