The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, Andrew Lang [free children's online books txt] 📗

to speak out of the mouth of a dog, and tell you you must go and bury these bones”.  Upon this I went straight to my brother to his house, and told him what had happened to me.  My brother having told the minister of Blair, he and I came to the minister on Monday thereafter, as he was examining in a neighbour’s house in the same town where I live.  And the minister, with my brother and me and two or three more, went to the place where the apparition said the bones were buried, when Rychalzie met us accidentally; and the minister told Rychalzie the story in the presence of all that were there assembled, and desired the liberty from him to break up the ground to search for the bones.  Rychalzie made some scruples to allow us to break up the ground, but said he would go along with us to Glasclune {149a}; and if he advised, he would allow search to be made.  Accordingly he went straight along with my brother and me and James Chalmers, a neighbour who lives in the Hilltown of Mause, to Glasclune, and told Glasclune the story as above narrated; and he advised Rychalzie to allow the search to be made, whereupon he gave his consent to it.

“‘The day after, being Friday, we convened about thirty or forty men and went to the Isle, and broke up the ground in many places, searching for the bones, but we found nothing.

“‘On Wednesday the 23rd December, about twelve o’clock, when I was in my bed, I heard a voice but saw nothing; the voice said, “Come away”. {149b} Upon this I rose out of my bed, cast on my coat and went to the door, but did not see it.  And I said, “In the name of God, what do you demand of me now?”  It answered, “Go, take up these bones”.  I said, “How shall I get these bones?”  It answered again, “At the side of a withered bush, {150} and there are but seven or eight of them remaining”.  I asked, “Was there any more guilty of that action but you?”  It answered, “No”.  I asked again, “What is the reason you trouble me?”  It answered, “Because you are the youngest”.  Then said I to it, “Depart from me, and give me a sign that I may know the particular spot, and give me time”.  [Here there is written on the margin in a different hand, “You will find the bones at the side of a withered bush.  There are but eight of them, and for a sign you will find the print of a cross impressed on the ground.”]  On the morrow, being Thursday, I went alone to the Isle to see if I could find any sign, and immediately I saw both the bush, which was a small bush, the greatest stick in it being about the thickness of a staff, and it was withered about half-way down; and also the sign, which was about a foot from the bush.  The sign was an exact cross, thus X; each of the two lines was about a foot and a half in length and near three inches broad, and more than an inch deeper than the rest of the ground, as if it had been pressed down, for the ground was not cut.  On the morrow, being Friday, I went and told my brother of the voice that had spoken to me, and that I had gone and seen the bush which it directed me to and the above-mentioned sign at it.  The next day, being Saturday, my brother and I went, together with seven or eight men with us, to the Isle.  About sun-rising we all saw the bush and the sign at it; and upon breaking up the ground just at the bush, we found the bones, viz., the chaft-teeth (jaw-teeth-molars) in it, one of the thigh bones, one of the shoulder blades, and a small bone which we supposed to be a collar bone, which was more consumed than any of the rest, and two other small bones, which we thought to be bones of the sword-arm.  By the time we had digged up those bones, there convened about forty men who also saw them.  The minister and Rychalzie came to the place and saw them.

“‘We immediately sent to the other side of the water, to Claywhat, {151} to a wright that was cutting timber there, whom Claywhat brought over with him, who immediately made a coffin for the bones, and my wife brought linen to wrap them in, and I wrapped the bones in the linen myself and put them in the coffin before all these people, and sent for the mort-cloth and buried them in the churchyard of Blair that evening.  There were near an hundred persons at the burial, and it was a little after sunset when they were buried.’”

“This above account I have written down as dictated to me by William Soutar in the presence of Robert Graham, brother to the Laird of Balgowan, and of my two sons, James and John Rattray, at Craighall, 30th December, 1730.

“We at Craighall heard nothing of this history till after the search was over, but it was told us on the morrow by some of the servants who had been with the rest at the search; and on Saturday Glasclune’s son came over to Craighall and told us that William Soutar had given a very distinct account of it to his father.

“On St. Andrew’s Day, the 1st of December, this David Soutar (the ghost) listed himself a soldier, being very soon after the time the apparition said the murder was committed, and William Soutar declares he had no remembrance of him till that apparition named him as brother to George Soutar; then, he said, he began to recollect that when he was about ten years of age he had seen him once at his father’s in a soldier’s habit, after which he went abroad and was never more heard of; neither did William ever before hear of his having listed as a soldier, neither did William ever before hear of his having killed a man, nor, indeed, was there ever anything heard of it in the country, and it is not yet known who the person was that was killed, and whose bones are now found.

“My son John and I went within a few days after to visit Glasclune, and had the account from him as William had told him over.  From thence we went to Middle Mause to hear it from himself; but he being from home, his father, who also lives in that town, gave us the same account of it which Glasclune had done, and the poor man could not refrain from shedding tears as he told it, as Glasclune told us his son was under very great concern when he spoke of it to him.  We all thought this a very odd story, and were under suspense about it because the bones had not been found upon the search.

“(Another account that also seems to have been written by the bishop mentions that the murderer on committing the deed went home, and on looking in at the window he saw William Soutar lying in a cradle—hence it was the ghaist always came to him, and not to any of the other relations.)”

Mr. Hay Newton, of Newton Hall, a man of great antiquarian tastes in the last generation, wrote the following notes on the matter:—

“Widow M’Laren, aged seventy-nine, a native of Braemar, but who has resided on the Craighall estate for sixty years, says that the tradition is that the man was murdered for his money; that he was a Highland drover on his return journey from the south; that he arrived late at night at the Mains of Mause and wished to get to Rychalzie; that he stayed at the Mains of Mause all night, but left it early next morning, when David Soutar with his dog accompanied him to show him the road; but that with the assistance of the dog he murdered the drover and took his money at the place mentioned; that there was a tailor at work in his father’s house that morning when he returned after committing the murder (according to the custom at that date by which tailors went out to make up customers’ own cloth at their own houses), and that his mother being surprised at his strange appearance, asked him what he had been about, to which inquiry he made no reply; that he did not remain long in the country afterwards, but went to England and never returned.  The last time he was seen he went down by the Brae of Cockridge.  A man of the name of Irons, a fisherman in Blairgowrie, says that his father, who died a very old man some years ago, was present at the getting of the bones.  Mr. Small, Finzyhan, when bringing his daughter home from school in Edinburgh, saw a coffin at the door of a public house near Rychalzie where he generally stopped, but he did not go in as usual, thinking that there was a death in the family.  The innkeeper came out and asked him why he was passing the door, and told him the coffin contained the bones of the murdered man which had been collected, upon which he went into the house.

“The Soutars disliked much to be questioned on the subject of the Dog of Mause.  Thomas Soutar, who was tenant in Easter Mause, formerly named Knowhead of Mause, and died last year upwards of eighty years of age, said that the Soutars came originally from Annandale, and that their name was Johnston; that there were three brothers who fled from that part of the country on account of their having killed a man; that they came by Soutar’s Hill, and having asked the name of the hill, were told ‘Soutar,’ upon which they said, ‘Soutar be it then,’ and took that name.  One of the brothers went south and the others came north.” {155a}

The appearance of human ghosts in the form of beasts is common enough; in Shropshire they usually “come” as bulls.  (See Miss Burne’s Shropshire Folklore.)  They do not usually speak, like the Dog o’ Mause.  M. d’Assier, a French Darwinian, explains that ghosts revert “atavistically” to lower forms of animal life! {155b}

We now, in accordance with a promise already made, give an example of the ghosts of beasts!  Here an explanation by the theory that the consciousness of the beast survives death and affects with a hallucination the minds of living men and animals, will hardly pass current.  But if such cases were as common and told on evidence as respectable as that which vouches for appearances of the dead, believers in these would either have to shift their ground, or to grant that

Admitted to that equal sky,
Our faithful dog may bear us company.

We omit such things as the dripping death wraith of a drowned cat who appeared to a lady, or the illused monkey who died in a Chinese house, after which he haunted it by rapping, secreting objects, and, in short, in the usual way. {155c}  We adduce

PETER’S GHOST

A naval officer visited a friend in the country.  Several men were sitting round the smoking-room fire when he arrived, and a fox-terrier was with them.  Presently the heavy, shambling footsteps of an old dog, and the metallic shaking sound of his collar, were heard coming up stairs.

“Here’s old Peter!” said his visitor.

“Peter’s dead!” whispered his owner.

The sounds passed through the closed door, heard by all; they pattered into the room; the fox-terrier bristled up, growled, and pursued a viewless object across the carpet; from the hearth-rug sounded