Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry/The Ghost with the Golden Casket
THE GHOST WITH THE GOLDEN CASKET.
Is my soul tamed
And baby-rid with the thought that flood or field
Can render back, to scare men and the moon,
The airy shapes of the corses they enwomb?
And what if 'tis so—shall I lose the crown
Of my most golden hope, 'cause its fair circle
Is haunted by a shadow?
From the coast of Cumberland the beautiful old Castle of Caerlaverock is seen standing on the point of a fine green promontory, bounded by the river Nith on one side, by the deep sea on another, by the almost impassable morass of Solway on a third; while, far beyond, you observe the three spires of Dumfries and the high green hills of Dalswinton and Keir. It was formerly the residence of the almost princely names of Douglas, Seaton, Kirkpatrick, and Maxwell: it is now the dwelling-place of the hawk and the owl, its courts are a lair for cattle, and its walls afford a midnight shelter to the passing smuggler, or, like those of the city doomed in Scripture, are places for the fishermen to dry their nets. Between this fine old ruin and the banks of the Nith, at the foot of a grove of pines, and within a stonecast of tide-mark, the remains of a rude cottage are yet visible to the curious eye; the bramble and the wild plum have in vain tried to triumph over the huge grey granite blocks which composed the foundations of its walls. The vestiges of a small garden may still be traced, more particularly in summer, when roses and lilies, and other relics of its former beauty, begin to open their bloom, clinging, amid the neglect and desolation of the place, with something like human affection, to the soil. This rustic ruin presents no attractions to the eye of the profound antiquary, compared to those of its more stately companion, Caerlaverock Castle; but with this rude cottage and its garden tradition connects a tale so wild and so moving as to elevate it, in the contemplation of the peasantry, above all the princely feasts
and feudal atrocities of its neighbour.
It is now some fifty years since I visited the parish of Caerlaverock; but the memory of its people, its scenery, and the story of "The Ghost with the Golden Casket" are as fresh with me as matters of yesterday. I had walked out to the river bank one sweet afternoon of July, when the fishermen were hastening to dip their nets in the coming tide, and the broad waters of the Solway sea were swelling and leaping against bank and cliff as far as the eye could reach. It was studded over with boats, and its more unfrequented bays were white with water-fowl. I sat down on a small grassy mound between the cottage ruins and the old garden plat, and gazed, with all the hitherto untasted pleasure of a stranger, on the beautiful scene before me. On the right, and beyond the river, the mouldering relics of the ancient religion of Scotland ascended, in unassimilating beauty, above the humble kirk of New Abbey and its squalid village; farther to the south rose the white sharp cliffs of Barnhourie, while on the left stood the ancient keeps of Cumlongan and Torthorald and the Castle of Caerlaverock. Over the whole looked the stately green mountain of Criffel, confronting its more stately but less beautiful neighbour, Skiddaw, while between them flowed the deep wide sea of Solway, hemmed with cliff and castle and town.
As I sat looking on the increasing multitudes of waters, and watching the success of the fishermen, I became aware of the approach of an old man, leading, as one will conduct a dog in a string, a fine young milch cow, in a halter of twisted hair, which, passing through the ends of two pieces of flat wood fitted to the animal's cheekbones, pressed her nose, and gave her great pain whenever she became disobedient. The cow seemed willing to enjoy the luxury of a browze on the rich pasture which surrounded the little ruined cottage, but in this humble wish she was not to be indulged, for the aged owner, coiling up the tether, and seizing her closely by the head, conducted her past the tempting herbage, towards a small and close-cropped hillock, a good stone-cast distant. In this piece of self-denial the animal seemed reluctant to sympathize; she snuffed the fresh green pasture, and plunged and startled, and nearly broke away. What the old man's strength seemed nearly unequal to was accomplished by speech:
"Bonnie lady, bonnie lady," said he, in a soothing tone, "it canna be, it mauna be—hinnie! hinnie! What would become of my three bonnie grandbairns, made fatherless and mitherless by that false flood afore us, if they supped milk and tasted butter that came from the greensward of this doomed and unblessed spot?"
The animal appeared to comprehend something in her own way from the speech of her owner; she abated her resistance, and, indulging only in a passing glance at the rich deep herbage, passed on to her destined pasture.
I had often heard of the singular superstitions of the Scottish peasantry, and that every hillock had its song, every hill its ballad, and every valley its tale. I followed with my eye the old man and his cow; he went but a little way, till, seating himself on the ground, retaining still the tether in his hand, he said: "Now, bonnie lady, feast thy fill on this good greensward—it is halesome and holy compared to the sward at the doomed cottage of auld Gibbie Gyrape. Leave that to smugglers' nags: Willie o' Brandyburn and Roaring Jock o' Kempstane will ca' the haunted ha' a hained bit—they are godless fearnoughts." I looked at the person of the peasant: he was a stout hale old man, with a weather-beaten face, furrowed something by time, and perhaps by sorrow. Though summer was at its warmest he wore a broad chequered mantle, fastened at the bosom with a skewer of steel, a broad bonnet, from beneath the circumference of which straggled a few thin locks as white as driven snow, shining like amber and softer than the finest flax, while his legs were warmly cased in blue-ribbed boot-hose. Having laid his charge to the grass, he looked leisurely around him, and espying me—a stranger, and dressed above the manner of the peasantry—he acknowledged my presence by touching his bonnet; and, as if willing to communicate something of importance, he struck the tether stake in the ground and came to the old garden fence.
Wishing to know the peasant's reasons for avoiding the ruins, I thus addressed him: "This is a pretty spot, my aged friend, and the herbage looks so fresh and abundant that I would advise thee to bring thy charge hither; and while she continued to browze I would gladly listen to the history of thy white locks, for they seem to have been bleached in many tempests."
"Ay, ay," said the peasant, shaking his white head with a grave smile, "they have braved sundry tempests between sixteen and sixty; but, touching this pasture, sir, I know nobody who would like their cows to crop it—the aged cattle shun the place, the bushes bloom but bear no fruit, the birds never build in the branches, the children never come near to play, and the aged never choose it for a resting-place; but pointing it out, as they pass, to the young, tell them the story of its desolation. Sae ye see, sir, having nae goodwill to such a spot of earth myself, I like little to see a stranger sitting in such an unblessed place; and I would as good as advise ye to come owre with me to the cowslip knoll; there are reasons mony that an honest man should nae sit there."
I arose at once, and, seating myself beside the peasant on the cowslip knoll, desired to know something of the history of the spot from which he had just warned me. The Caledonian looked on me with an air of embarrassment.
"I am just thinking," said he, "that as ye are an English man I should nae acquaint ye with such a story. Ye'll make it, I'm doubting, a matter of reproach and vaunt when ye gae hame how Willie Borlan o' Caerlaverock told ye a tale of Scottish iniquity that cowed all the stories in Southron book or history."
This unexpected obstacle was soon removed. "My sage and considerate friend," I said, "I have the blood in my bosom will keep me from revealing such a tale to the scoffer and scorner. I am something of a Caerlaverock man, the grandson of Marion Stobie of Dookdub."
The peasant seized my hand. "Marion Stobie! bonnie Marion Stobie o' Dookdub, whom I wooed sae sair and loved sae lang! Man, I love ye for her sake; and well was it for her braw English bridegroom that William Borlan—frail and faded now, but strong and in manhood then—was a thousand miles from Caerlaverock, rolling on the salt sea, when she was brided. Ye have the glance of her ee; I could ken 't yet amang ten thousand, grey as my head is. I will tell the grandson of bonnie Marion Stobie ony tale he likes to ask for, and the story of 'The Ghost and the Gowd Casket' shall be foremost.
"You may imagine, then," said the old Caerlaverock peasant, rising at once with the commencement of his story from his native dialect into very passable English—"you may imagine these ruined walls raised again in their beauty—whitened, and covered with a coating of green broom; that garden, now desolate, filled with herbs in their season, and with flowers, hemmed round with a fence of cherry and plum-trees; and the whole possessed by a young fisherman, who won a fair subsistence for his wife and children from the waters of the Solway sea; you may imagine it, too, as far from the present time as fifty years. There are only two persons living now who remember when the Bonne-Homme-Richard, the first ship ever Richard Faulder commanded, was wrecked on the Pellock sand; one of these persons now addresses you, the other is the fisherman who once owned that cottage—whose name ought never to be named, and whose life seems lengthened as a warning to the earth how fierce God's judgments are. Life changes—all breathing things have their time and their season; but the Solway flows in the same beauty—Criffel rises in the same majesty—the light of morning comes and the full moon arises now as they did then. But this moralizing matters little. It was about the middle of harvest—I remember the day well; it had been sultry and suffocating, accompanied by rushings of wind, sudden convulsions of the water, and cloudings of the sun—I heard my father sigh, and say, 'Dool—dool to them found on the deep sea to-night; there will happen strong storm and fearful tempest.' The day closed and the moon came over Skiddaw: all was perfectly clear and still—frequent dashings and whirling agitations of the sea were soon heard mingling with the hasty clang of the water-fowls' wings as they forsook the waves and sought shelter among the hollows of the rocks. The storm was nigh. The sky darkened down at once—clap after clap of thunder followed, and lightning flashed so vividly and so frequent that the wide and agitated expanse of Solway was visible from side to side—from St. Bees to Barnhourie. A very heavy rain, mingled with hail, succeeded; and a wind accompanied it so fierce and so high that the white foam of the sea was showered as thick as snow on the summit of Caerlaverock Castle.
"Through this perilous sea, and amid this darkness and tempest, a bark was observed coming swiftly down the middle of the sea, her sails rent and her decks crowded with people. The carry, as it is called, of the tempest, was direct from St. Bees to Caerlaverock; and experienced swains could see that the bark would be driven full on the fatal shoals of the Scottish side; but the lightning was so fierce that few dared venture to look on the approaching vessel or take measures for endeavouring to preserve the lives of the unfortunate mariners. My father stood on the threshold of his door, and beheld all that passed in the bosom of the sea. The bark approached fast—her canvas rent to threads, her masts nearly levelled with the deck, and the sea foaming over her so deep and so strong as to threaten to sweep the remains of her crew from the little refuge the broken masts and splintered beams still afforded them. She now seemed within half a mile of the shore when a strong flash of lightning, that appeared to hang over the bark for a moment, showed the figure of a lady, richly dressed, clinging to a youth who was pressing her to his bosom. My father exclaimed, 'Saddle me my black horse and saddle me my grey, and bring them down to the Deadman's Bank;' and, swift in action as he was in resolve, he hastened to the shore, his servants following with his horses. The shore of Solway presented then, as it does now, the same varying line of coast; and the house of my father stood in the bosom of a little bay, nearly a mile from where we sit. The remains of an old forest interposed between the bay at Deadman's Bank and the bay at our feet; and mariners had learned to wish that, if it were their doom to be wrecked, it might be in the bay of douce William Borlan rather than that of Gilbert Gyrape, the proprietor of that ruined cottage. But human wishes are vanities, wished either by sea or land. I have heard my father say he could never forget the cries of the mariners as the bark smote on the Pellock Bank, and the flood rushed through the chasms made by the concussion; but he would far less forget the agony of a lady—the loveliest that could be looked upon—and the calm and affectionate courage of the young man who supported her, and endeavoured to save her from destruction. Richard Faulder, the only man who survived, has often sat at my fireside, and sung me a very rude, but a very moving ballad, which he made on this young and unhappy pair; and the old mariner assured me he had only added rhymes, and a descriptive line or two, to the language in which Sir William Musgrave endeavoured to soothe and support his wife."
It seemed a thing truly singular that at this very moment two young fishermen, who sat on the margin of the sea below us, watching their halve-nets, should sing, and with much sweetness, the very song the old man had described. They warbled verse and verse alternately, and rock and bay seemed to retain and then release the sound. Nothing is so sweet as a song by the sea-side on a tranquil evening.
SIR WILLIAM MUSGRAVE.
First Fisherman.
"O lady, lady, why do you weep?
Though the wind be loosed on the raging deep,
Though the heaven be mirker than mirk may be,
And our frail bark ships a fearful sea—
Yet thou art safe, as on that sweet night
When our bridal candles gleamed far and bright."—
There came a shriek, and there came a sound,
And the Solway roared, and the ship spun round.
Second Fisherman.
"O lady, lady, why do you cry?
Though the waves be flashing topmast high,
Though our frail bark yields to the dashing brine,
And heaven and earth show no saving sign,
There is One who comes in the time of need,
And curbs the waves as we curb a steed."—
The lightning came with the whirlwind blast,
And cleaved the prow, and smote down the mast.
First Fisherman.
"O lady, lady, weep not, nor wail,
Though the sea runs howe as Dalswinton vale,
Then flashes high as Barnhourie brave,
And yawns for thee like the yearning grave—
Though 'twixt thee and the ravening flood
There is but my arm, and this. splintering wood,
The fell quicksand, or the famished brine,
Can ne'er harm a face so fair as thine."
Both.
"O lady, lady, be bold and brave,
Spread thy white breast to the fearful wave,
And cling to me with that white right hand,
And I'll set thee safe on the good dry land."—
A lightning flash on the shallop strook,
The Solway roared, and Caerlaverock shook:
From the sinking ship there were shriekings cast,
That were heard above the tempest's blast.
The young fishermen having concluded their song, my companion proceeded: "The lightning still flashed vivid and fast, and the storm raged with unabated fury; for between the ship and the shore the sea broke in frightful undulation, and leaped on the greensward several fathoms deep abreast. My father, mounted on one horse, and holding another in his hand, stood prepared to give all the aid that a brave man could to the unhappy mariners; but neither horse nor man could endure the onset of that tremendous surge. The bark bore for a time the fury of the element; but a strong eastern wind came suddenly upon her, and crushing her between the wave and the freestone bank, drove her from the entrance of my father's little bay towards the dwelling of Gibbie Gyrape, and the thick forest intervening, she was out of sight in a moment. My father saw, for the last time, the lady and her husband looking shoreward from the side of the vessel, as she drifted along; and, as he galloped round the head of the forest, he heard for the last time the outcry of some, and the wail and intercession of others. When he came before the fisherman's house, a fearful sight presented itself—the ship, dashed to atoms, covered the shore with its wreck and with the bodies of the mariners—not a living soul escaped, save Richard Faulder, whom the fiend who guides the spectre-shallop of Solway had rendered proof to perils on the deep. The fisherman himself came suddenly from his cottage, all dripping and drenched, and my father addressed him:—'Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert, what a fearful sight is this!—has Heaven blessed thee with making thee the means of saving a human soul!' 'Nor soul nor body have I saved,' said the fisherman, doggedly: 'I have done my best—the storm proved too stark, and the lightning too fierce for me; their boat alone came near with a lady and a casket of gold, but she was swallowed up with the surge.' My father confessed afterwards that he was touched with the tone in which these words were delivered, and made answer: 'If thou hast done thy best to save souls to-night, a bright reward will be thine; if thou hast been fonder for gain than for working the mariners' redemption, thou hast much to answer for.' As he uttered these words, an immense wave rolled landward as far as the place where they stood—it almost left its foam on their faces—and suddenly receding, deposited at their feet the dead body of the lady. As my father lifted her in his arms, he observed that the jewels which had adorned her hair, at that time worn long, had been forcibly rent away—the diamonds and gold that enclosed her neck, and ornamented the bosom of her rich satin dress, had been torn off—the rings removed from her fingers; and on her neck, lately so lily-white and pure, there appeared the marks of hands—not laid there in love and gentleness, but with a fierce and deadly grasp.
"The lady was buried with the body of her husband, side by side, in Caerlaverock burial-ground. My father never openly accused Gilbert the fisherman of having murdered the lady for her riches as she reached the shore, preserved, as was supposed, from sinking by her long, wide, and stiff satin robes; but from that hour till the hour of his death my father never broke bread with him—never shook him or his by the hand, nor spoke with them in wrath or in love. The fisherman from that time, too, waxed rich and prosperous, and from being the needy proprietor of a halve-net, and the tenant at will of a rude cottage, he became, by purchase, lord of a handsome inheritance, proceeded to build a bonny mansion, and called it Gyrape-ha'; and became a leading man in a flock of a purer kind of Presbyterians—and a precept and example to the community.
"Though the portioner of Gyrape-ha' prospered wondrously, his claims to parochial distinction, and the continuance of his fortune, were treated with scorn by many, and with doubt by all: though nothing open or direct was said—looks, more cutting at times than the keenest speech, and actions still more expressive, showed that the hearts of honest men were alienated—the cause was left to his own interpretation. The peasant scrupled to become his servant—sailors hesitated to receive his grain on board, lest perils should find them on the deep—the beggar ceased to solicit alms—the drover and horse-couper, an unscrupling generation, found out a more distant mode of concluding bargains than by shaking his hand—his daughters, handsome and blue-eyed, were neither wooed nor married—no maiden would hold tryste with his sons—though maidens were then as little loth as they are now; and the aged peasant, as he passed his new mansion, would shake his head and say, 'The voice of spilt blood will be lifted up against thee—and a spirit shall come up from the waters will make the corner-stone of thy habitation tremble and quake.'
"It happened, during the summer which succeeded this unfortunate shipwreck, that I accompanied my father to the Solway, to examine his nets. It was near midnight—the tide was making, and I sat down by his side, and watched the coming of the waters. The shore was glittering in starlight as far as the eye could reach. Gilbert the fisherman had that morning removed from his cottage to his new mansion—the former was, therefore, untenanted; and the latter, from its vantage-ground on the crest of the hill, threw down to us the sound of mirth and music and dancing, a revelry common in Scotland on taking possession of a new house. As we lay quietly looking on the swelling sea, and observing the water-fowl swimming and ducking in the increasing waters, the sound of the merriment became more audible. My father listened to the mirth, looked to the sea, looked to the deserted cottage, and then to the new mansion, and said: 'My son, I have a counsel to give thee—treasure it in thy heart, and practise it in thy life—the daughters of him of Gyrape-ha' are fair, and have an eye that would wile away the wits of the wisest; their father has wealth—I say nought of the way he came by it—they will have golden portions doubtless. But I would rather lay thy head aneath the gowans in Caerlaverock kirkyard, and son have I none beside thee, than see thee lay it on the bridal pillow with the begotten of that man, though she had Nithsdale for her dowry. Let not my words be as seed sown on the ocean—I may not now tell thee why this warning is given. Before that fatal shipwreck, I would have said Prudence Gyrape, in her kirtle, was a better bride than some who have golden dowers. I have long thought some one would see a sight—and often, while holding my halve-net in the midnight tide, have I looked for something to appear—for where blood is shed, there doth the spirit haunt for a time, and give warning to man. May I be strengthened to endure the sight!'
"I answered not, being accustomed to regard my father's counsel as a matter not to be debated, as a solemn command: we heard something like the rustling of wings on the water, accompanied by a slight curling motion of the tide. 'God haud his right hand about us!' said my father, breathing thick with emotion and awe, and looking on the sea with a gaze so intense that his eyes seemed to dilate, and the hair of his forehead to project forward and bristle into life. I looked, but observed nothing, save a long line of thin and quivering light, dancing along the surface of the sea: it ascended the bank, on which it seemed to linger for a moment, and then entering the fisherman's cottage, made roof and rafter gleam with a sudden illumination. 'I'll tell thee what, Gibbie Gyrape,' said my father, 'I wouldna be the owner of thy heart, and the proprietor of thy right hand, for all the treasures in earth and ocean.' A loud and piercing scream from the cottage made us thrill with fear, and in a moment the figures of three human beings rushed into the open air, and ran towards us with a swiftness which supernatural dread alone could inspire. We instantly knew them to be three noted smugglers, who infested the country; and rallying when they found my father maintain his ground, they thus mingled their fears and the secrets of their trade—for terror fairly overpowered their habitual caution.
"'I vow by the night tide, and the crooked timber,' said Willie Weethause, 'I never beheld sic a light as yon since our distillation pipe took fire, and made a burnt instead of a drink-offering of our spirits; I'll uphold it comes for nae good—a warning may be—sae ye may gang on, Wattie Bouseaway, wi' yere wickedness; as for me, I'se gae hame and repent.' 'Saulless bodie!' said his companion, whose natural hardihood was considerably supported by his communion with the brandy-cup—'saulless bodie, for a flaff o' fire and a maiden's shadow would ye forswear the gallant trade? Saul to gude! but auld Miller Morison shall turn yere thrapple into a drain-pipe to wyse the waste water from his mill, if ye turn back now, and help us nae through with as strong an importation as ever cheered the throat, and cheeped in the crapin. Confound the fizzenless bodie! he glowers as if this fine starlight were something frae the warst side of the world, and thae staring een o' his are busy shaping heaven's sweetest and balmiest air into the figures of wraiths and goblins.' 'Robert Telfer,' said my father, addressing the third smuggler, 'tell me nought of the secrets of your perilous craft, but tell me what you have seen, and why ye uttered that fearful scream, that made the wood-doves start from Caerlaverock pines.' 'I'll tell ye what, goodman,' said the mariner, 'I have seen the fires o' heaven running as thick along the sky, and on the surface of the ocean, as ye ever saw the blaze on a bowl o' punch at a merry-making, and neither quaked nor screamed; but ye'll mind the light that came to that cottage to-night was one for some fearful purport, which let the wise expound; sae it lessened nae one's courage to quail for sic an apparition. Od! if I thought living soul would ever make the start I gied an upcast to me, I'll drill his breast-bane wi' my dirk like a turnip lantern.'
"My father mollified the wrath of this maritime desperado, by assuring him he beheld the light go from the sea to the cottage, and that he shook with terror, for it seemed no common light. 'Ou God! then,' said hopeful Robin, 'since it was one o' our ain cannie sea apparitions, I care less about it. I took it for some landward sprite! and now I think on't, where were my een? Did it no stand amang its ain light, with its long hanks of hair dripping and drenched; with a casket of gold in ae hand, and the other guarding its throat? I'll be bound it's the ghost o' some sonsie lass that has had her neck nipped for her gold; and had she stayed till I emptied the bicker o' brandy, I would have ask'd a cannie question or twae.' Willie Weethause had now fairly overcome his consternation, and began to feel all his love for the gallant trade, as his comrade called it, return. 'The tide serves, lads! the tide serves: let us slip our drap o' brandy into the bit bonnie boat, and tottle away amang the sweet starlight as far as the Kingholm or the town quarry—ye ken we have to meet Bailie Gardevine, and Laird Soukaway o' Ladlemouth.' They returned, not without hesitation and fear, to the old cottage; carried their brandy to the boat; and, as my father and I went home, we heard the dipping of their oars in the Nith, along the banks of which they sold their liquor, and told their tale of fear, magnifying its horror at every step, and introducing abundance of variations.
"The story of 'The Ghost with the Golden Casket' flew over the country-side with all its variations, and with many comments: some said they saw her, and some thought they saw her; and those who had the hardihood to keep watch on the beach at midnight, had their tales to tell of terrible lights and strange visions. With one who delighted in the marvellous, the spectre was decked in attributes that made the circle of auditors tighten round the hearth; while others, who allowed to a ghost only a certain quantity of thin air to clothe itself in, reduced it in their description to a very unpoetic shadow, or a kind of better sort of will-o'-the-wisp, that could for its own amusement counterfeit the human shape. There were many who, like my father, beheld the singular illumination appear at midnight on the coast; saw also something sailing along with it in the form of a lady in bright garments, her hair long and wet, and shining in diamonds; and heard a struggle, and the shriek as of a creature drowning.
"The belief of the peasantry did not long confine the apparition to the sea-coast; it was seen sometimes late at night far inland, and following Gilbert the fisherman, like a human shadow—like a pure light—like a white garment—and often in the shape, and with the attributes, in which it disturbed the carousal of the smugglers. I heard douce Davie Haining—a God-fearing man, and an elder of the Burgher congregation, and on whose word I could well lippen, when drink was kept from his head—I heard him say that as he rode home late from the Roodfair of Dumfries—the night was dark, there lay a dusting of snow on the ground, and no one appeared on the road but himself—he was lilting and singing the cannie end of the auld sang, 'There's a cuttie stool in our kirk,' which was made on some foolish quean's misfortune, when he heard the sound of horses' feet behind him at full gallop, and ere he could look round, who should flee past, urging his horse with whip and spur, but Gilbert the fisherman! 'Little wonder that he galloped,' said the elder, 'for a fearful form hovered around him, making many a clutch at him, and with every clutch uttering a shriek most piercing to hear.' But why should I make a long story of a common tale? The curse of spilt blood fell on him, and on his children, and on all he possessed; his sons and daughters died; his flocks perished; his grain grew, but never filled the ear; and fire came from heaven, or rose from hell, and consumed his house, and all that was therein. He is now a man of ninety years—a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, without a house to put his white head in, with the unexpiated curse still clinging to him."
While my companion was making this summary of human wretchedness, I observed the figure of a man, stooping to the earth with extreme age, gliding through among the bushes of the ruined cottage, and approaching the advancing tide. He wore a loose great-coat, patched to the ground, and fastened round his waist by a belt and buckle; the remains of stockings and shoes were on his feet; a kind of fisherman's cap surmounted some remaining white hairs, while a long peeled stick supported him as he went.
companion gave an involuntary shudder when he saw him—"Lo, and behold, now, here comes Gilbert the fisherman! once every twenty-four hours doth he come, let the wind and the rain be as they will, to the nightly tide, to work o'er again, in imagination, his auld tragedy of unrighteousness. See how he waves his hand, as if he welcomed some one from sea—he raises his voice, too, as if something in the water required his counsel; and see how he dashes up to the middle, and grapples with the water as if he clutched a human being!"
I looked on the old man, and heard him call, in a hollow and broken voice: "O hoy! the ship, O hoy,—turn your boat's head ashore! And, my bonnie lady, keep haud o' yere casket. Hech be't! that wave would have sunk a three-decker, let be a slender boat. See—see, an' she binna sailing aboon the water like a wild swan!" And, wading deeper in the tide as he spoke, he seemed to clutch at something with both hands, and struggle with it in the water.
"Na! na! dinna haud your white hands to me—ye wear owre mickle gowd in your hair, and o'er many diamonds on your bosom, to 'scape drowning. There's as mickle gowd in this casket as would have sunk thee seventy fathom deep." And he continued to hold his hands under the water, muttering all the while.
"She's half gane now—and I'll be a braw laird, and build a bonnie house, and gang crousely to kirk and market; now I may let the waves work their will—my work will be ta'en for theirs."
He turned to wade to the shore, but a large and heavy wave came full dash on him, and bore him off his feet, and ere any assistance reached him, all human aid was too late; for nature was so exhausted with the fulness of years, and with his exertions, that a spoonful of water would have drowned him. The body of this miserable old man was interred, after some opposition from the peasantry, beneath the wall of the kirkyard; and from that time, the Ghost with the Golden Casket was seen no more, and only continued to haunt the evening tale of the hind and the farmer.