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Post by dreamy on Jun 11, 2006 19:56:18 GMT 10
Scotland's Nostradamus and the Queen of the Fairies IAIN LUNDY True Thomas sat on Huntley bank, And he beheld a lady gay; A lady that was brisk and bold, Come riding o’er the ferny brae.
Her skirt was of the grass green silk, Her mantle of the velvet fine; At every lock of her horse’s mane, Hung fifty silver bells and nine.SO BEGINS the ballad of the quaint 13th-century figure known as Scotland's Nostradamus and his enchantment by the Queen of the Fairies. Thomas of Ercildoune - more commonly known as Thomas the Rhymer - was a soothsayer of such repute that for a time his fame rivalled that of the Arthurian magician Merlin. Thomas the Rhymer and the Fairy Queen by the artist James Thompson. The accuracy of what happened to Thomas and how he gained his supernatural powers has become confused over the centuries, but there are common threads running through every variation of the story. It is, in essence, a fairy story but one which seeks to explain how Thomas was able to predict some of the most important events in Scottish history, including the defeat by the English at the Battle of Flodden and the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England. Very few "fairy stories" are given such credence as that of Thomas and his dalliance with the Queen of Elfland. After all, he was no fairy. He was a real person and his predictions – which were written down - were treated so seriously that they were consulted before both the two Jacobite rebellions. So who was Thomas and why was he singled out for mystical powers? Born around 1220, he lived in Learmont Tower, near Ercildoune, now Earlston in Berwickshire. Close by there stood a grove of hardwood trees on the banks of Huntly Burn and as a youngster Thomas had a favourite tree under which he used to lie. The story goes that as he lay there one day he saw the beautiful Queen of the Fairies approaching on her graceful white horse. She was wearing green silk and velvet and on her horse's mane there hung 59 silver bells. Thomas was entranced by her beauty and readily complied when the Queen asked him to kiss her underneath his favourite tree. He then agreed to accompany her, and the two rode off into the Eildon Hills where Thomas spent seven years as the Queen's lover in her fairy home in Elfland. The Eildon Hills in Berwickshire, where Thomas and his fairy queen are said to have lived. The years seemed only a few minutes to Thomas. But when the time came for the Queen to return him to mortal land, she made him promise never to speak of what he had seen. He agreed and she gave him an apple and said: "Take this for thy wages Thomas, it will give thee a tongue that can never lie." From then on he was known as "True Thomas". The Queen also conferred on him the gift of prophecy. He used his new powers to prophesy several significant historical events including the death of King Alexander lll; the succession of Robert the Bruce to the throne of Scotland; the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Flodden; the defeat of Mary, Queen of Scots' forces at the Battle of Pinkie in 1567; and the Union of the Crowns in 1603. He is also said to have predicted the Scottish success at the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745. The story of Thomas is told in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, which was included by Sir Walter Scott in his work, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In recent years recordings of the ballad have been made by the folk-rock band Steeleye Span and Scottish folk musician Ewan MacColl. Thomas himself was a noted poet and is supposed to be the author of one of the oldest-known surviving Scottish stories, Sir Tristrem, also edited by Sir Walter himself. There is one final twist to the saga of Thomas the Rhymer. One day, many years after returning from Elfland, he walked out of his house to his favourite tree under which he had first met the Queen. He has never returned and has not been seen since. According to legend he will return one day to help Scotland in her hour of greatest need. Some might say that time is not far off. heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=841922006
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Post by dreamy on Mar 15, 2006 0:22:43 GMT 10
The missing library of Iona DIANE MACLEAN THE ISLAND of Iona off the west coast of Scotland is steeped in ancient lore and mystery. Known internationally as the monastic birthplace of Scottish religion, it is a place of pilgrimage and deep spirituality. St Columba landed there in 563 AD with 13 followers and established a monastery. This isolated island, off the south-western tip of Mull, was soon to become the intellectual powerhouse of the medieval world. Columba's monastry he established grew into one of the most important seats of learning in Europe. There are those who say that Columba didn't choose this island by accident, but that it is a place which has magnetically attracted spiritual seekers since before the birth of Christ. To them this island is a special place thought to have been the repository of many ancient items and many ancient mysteries. They believe that Iona once housed an incredible library and held the most extraordinary books known to man. Think Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose or the recent international best-seller The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason and consider that a hunt for hidden knowledge and elusive manuscripts could actually be very real. Pre-Columba the island was sometimes referred to as Innis nam Druidneach, the Isle of Druids. Old stories record St Columba and his followers fighting off the local Druid elders when they landed to take possession of the island. This version of history sees fifth-century Druids escaping persecution from Imperial Rome and finding sanctuary on the outer wilds of civilisation. There, it is said, they founded a library – which if true would be extraordinary, as the Druids were not known as a people who wrote down their teachings. The impact that finding this library would have on our interpretation of history would be explosive. But as revelatory as this would be, it gets even better. Another story attached to the island suggests that as well as housing the written records of the Druids it was also home to books from the greatest library in Europe. Scottish history is a murky puddle. Few records exist for the first half of the first millennium. Stories, myths and half-truths cloud this period and a consensus is impossible to find. Yet some histories have King Fergus II joining forces with Alaric the Goth to fight the Roman Empire during its decline and fall. This version of history reports that when Rome fell in 410 AD Fergus II was not only there, but carried off books from the plundered libraries of that once great city. These books would have been marvellous: illuminated religious manuscripts, books from the ancient Greek philosophers and ancient Persians. This treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom was said to have been brought back by Fergus and taken to Iona for safekeeping in the Druidic library. Is it possible that this more recently built cloister on Iona stands on the site of an ancient library? If this library were ever found it would be historical dynamite. Unfortunately for such a potentially great story, there isn't a lot of historical proof. Dr William Ferguson, author of The Identity of the Scottish Nation, doesn't think it terribly likely. "This is a tradition, a tale, there is no proof," says Ferguson "There may have been such books, but if they did exist, then they've vanished. Nobody's ever been able to prove or disprove it." Yet there was one historian who gave credence to the presence of ancient manuscripts on the island. Hector Boece, a 14th century Scottish philosopher, claimed he wrote his book History of the Scottish People based on a mysterious tome that he found on Iona. However, few historians give credence to Boece's book, regarding him as something of a Walter Mitty character. There is a serious question mark over whether Boece really found books on Iona or whether he made up his history. Whilst historians are not exactly queuing up to support the Druidic/ancient Roman library, there does still remain a mystery to be solved. When Columba established his first Celtic church on Iona in the sixth century he established a scriptorium. Dr E Mairi MacArthur, author of Columba's Island: Iona from Past to Present, is convinced that books would have been produced there from his time. "The monastic library must have been there from Columba. All the monasteries had monks scribbling away," says MacArthur. An extract from the Book of Kells. Some say Columba himself had a hand in this book, others suggest it wasn't written until the seventh century. These monks worked tirelessly illuminating manuscripts and copying and writing poetry. One only has to look to the greatest surviving example from Iona – the Book of Kells, currently at Trinity College, Dublin – to imagine the treasures that were housed here. Such was the quality of the work done on Iona that at its height it became one of the greatest centres of learning in Dark Age Europe. And here lies the final enigma. The Book of Kells may have survived, but what happened to the other books? Many historians think they were destroyed in the ninth century during Viking raids, but MacArthur for one is not so sure. "The idea goes that the monks must have had books, the Vikings came and the books have disappeared, ergo the Vikings took or destroyed the books," she says. MacArthur thinks it is much more likely that the books travelled between Iona and Ireland, or perhaps even further afield. Or there is the possibility that they were hidden for safekeeping. St Andrews University archaeology students certainly thought they had been hidden. In the 1950s they conducted a dig on the Treshnish Islands, near to Iona, in search of the lost books. They found nothing. But who knows if they could still be there, a hidden cache of history and knowledge that, if found, might possibly represent the most important find of our time. heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=313532006
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Post by dreamy on Nov 18, 2005 9:17:26 GMT 10
(John Norman Collie, Professor of Organic Chemistry at University College London) The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDuiDIANE MACLEAN PROFESSOR Norman Collie was a man of science, a professor of chemistry at the University College London. He was also an avid hill-walker and the last man anyone expected to tell absurd stories of strange footsteps on a remote hill. Yet that was the tale he told at the annual general meeting of the Cairngorm Club in Aberdeen on a dark, winter night in December 1925. Collie had been alone on Ben MacDui, the highest peak in the Cairngorms and the second highest in Scotland, in 1891 when he was became convinced that he was being stalked. "I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps," he said. "For every few steps I took I heard a crunch, and then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own." Overwhelmed by a sudden and fierce terror he ran four or five miles down the mountain as "the eerie crunch, crunch sounded behind". This was the first official record of a strange presence on the hilltops high up in the Cairngorms, but it was not the last. A number of experienced climbers - rational men and women - have since given accounts of encountering Am Fear Liath Mor (The Big Grey Man) on the mountain. Physical descriptions agree that the figure is hairy, huge - about 10 feet tall - with pointed ears, long legs and finger-like talons on his feet. So far so yeti, but descriptions of the Grey Man don’t stop there. Rather bizarrely, a couple of witnesses claim the creature wears a top hat and whenever he appears, the sound of loud, crunching footsteps echo across the mountain. Some hear singing, others ghostly laughter. The Grey Man is apparently more often felt than physically seen. Climbers experience uncontrolled terror, deep despair and huge negative energy. Not surprisingly many walkers feel an overwhelming desire to run away. Some have felt themselves pursued by echoing footsteps. Others are hypnotically drawn to the edge of cliffs. (The Cairngorms: home of Scotland's Yeti?) There have been a number of explanations put forward to explain the Grey Man, from the reasonable to the surreal. Among the favourites is that the beast is some type of big-foot species long thought extinct. If this sounds too plausible, then you may choose to believe that he is some mystical holy man or even an extraterrestrial. More recently it has been suggested that Ben MacDhui is a "window" area – an interface between two worlds. Could the Grey Man be the portal guardian, placed among the high Scottish hills to deter intruders? More sensible suggestions consider that the Grey Man is a geological holograph, an optical illusion or perhaps a hallucination brought about by oxygen starvation. If you prefer your explanations totally down-to-earth then consider this. A similar phenomenon was witnessed in Germany’s Black Forest. People were terrified, claiming to witness misty grey men following them and hearing the echoing of footsteps. Scientific enquiries found a startling conclusion. The German Grey Man? These German climbers were being spooked by nothing more sinister than their own shadows. This article: heritage.scotsman.com/diagrams.cfm?cid=1&id=40002005
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Post by dreamy on Nov 18, 2005 9:08:04 GMT 10
The fairy flag of MacLeod legend
Many, many years ago, the Chief of Clan MacLeod was a handsome, intelligent man, and all the young ladies in the area were very attracted to him, but none suited his fancy. One day, he met a fairy princess, a bean sidhe, one of the Shining Folk. Like all the other females he met, she fell madly in love with him, and he with her as well. When the princess appealed to the King of the Fairies, for permission to marry the handsome Chief, he refused, saying that it would only break her heart, as humans soon age and die, and the Shining Folk live forever. She cried and wept so bitterly that even the great King relented, and agreed that she and the Chief could be hand-fasted for a year and a day. But, at the end of that time, she must return to the land of Faerie and leave behind everything from the human world. She agreed, and soon she and the young MacLeod were married with great ceremony.
No happier time ever existed before or since for the Clan MacLeod, for the Chief and Lady MacLeod were enraptured of each other totally. As you might expect, soon a strapping and handsome son was born to the happy couple, and the rejoicing and celebration by the Clan went on for days. However, the days soon passed and a year and a day were gone in a heartbeat. The King led the Faerie Raide down from the clouds to the end of the great causeway of Dunvegan Castle, and there they waited in all their glamourie and finery for the Lady MacLeod to keep her promise.
Lady MacLeod knew that she had no choice, so she held her son to her, hugged him tightly, and at last, ran from the castle tower to join the Faerie Raide, and returned with them to the land of Faerie. Before she left, however, she made her husband promise that her child would never be left alone, and never be allowed to cry, for she could not bear the sound of her son's cries. The Chief was broken-hearted with the loss of his wife, but he knew, as did she, that the day would come when she would return. He kept his promise, and never was the young MacLeod allowed to cry and never was he left unattended. However, the Laird of MacLeod remained depressed, and grieved for the loss of his lady.
The folk of the clan decided that something must be done, and on his birthday, a great feast was proclaimed with revelry and dancing until dawn. The Laird had always been a grand dancer, and at long last he agreed to dance to the pipers' tunes. So great was the celebration that the young maid assigned to watch the infant Laird left his nursery and crept to the top of the stairs to watch the folk dancing in all their finery and to listen to the wonderful music. So enraptured was she that she did not hear the young Laird awaken and begin to cry. So pitiful was his crying that it was heard all the way in the Land of Faerie, and when his mother heard it, she immediately appeared at his crib, took him in her arms, and comforted him, drying his tears and wrapping him in her fairy shawl. She whispered magic words in his ears, laid her now-sleeping son in his crib, kissed him once more on the forehead, and was gone.
Years later when the young lad grew older, he told his father of his mother's late-night visit, and that her shawl was a magic talisman. It was to be kept in a safe place, and if anyone not of the Clan MacLeod touched it, they would vanish in a puff of smoke. If ever the Clan MacLeod faced mortal danger, the Fairy Flag was to be waved three times, and the hosts of Faerie, the Knights of the Faerie Raide, would ride to the defense of the Clan MacLeod. There were to be three such blessings, and only in the most dire consequences should the Faerie magic be used. The Chief placed the Fairy Flag in a special locked box, and it was carried with the Chief wherever he went.
Hundreds of years later, the fierce Clan Donald of the Lord of the Isles had besieged the MacLeods in battle, and the MacLeods were outnumbered three to one. Just before the Donalds' last charge, the Chief opened the box, and placing the fairy flag on a pole, waved it once, twice, and three times. As the third wave was completed, the Fairy magic caused the MacLeods to appear to be ten times their number! Thinking that the MacLeods had been reinforced, the Donalds turned and ran, never to threaten the MacLeods to this very day.
On another occasion, a terrible plague had killed nearly all the MacLeod's cattle, and the Chief faced the prospect of a winter of starvation for all his people. Having no alternative, he went to the tallest tower of Dunvegan Castle, attached the Fairy Flag to a pole, and waved it once, twice, three times. The Hosts of Faerie rode down from the clouds, swords drawn, and rode like the wind over the dead and dying cattle. They touched each cow with their swords, and where there once had been dead and dying cows, now stood huge, healthy, and well-fattened cattle, more than enough to feed the Clan for the winter to come.
There remains one more waving of the Fairy Flag, and the Flag is on display at Dunvegan Castle, there awaiting the next threat to the Clan MacLeod.
It is said during World War II that young men from the Clan MacLeod carried pictures of the Flag in their wallets while flying in the Battle of Britain, and not one of them was lost to the German flyers. In fact, the Chief of Clan MacLeod had agreed to bring the Fairy Flag to England and wave it from the Cliffs of Dover should the Germans attempt to invade Great Britain.
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Post by dreamy on Oct 31, 2005 8:36:20 GMT 10
The Death Waltz
Years ago, when all beyond the Missouri was a waste, the military post at Fort Union, New Mexico, was the only spot for miles around where any of the graces of social life could be discovered. Among the ladies at the post was a certain gay young woman, the sister-in-law of a captain, who enjoyed the variety and spice of adventure to be found there, and enjoyed, too, the homage that the young officers paid to her, for women who could be loved or liked were not many in that wild country. A young lieutenant proved especially susceptible to her charms, and devoted himself to her in the hope that he should ultimiately win her hand. His experience with the world was not large enough to enable him to distinguish between the womanly woman and the coquette.
One day messengers came dashing into the fort with news of an Apache outbreak, and a detachment was ordered out to chase and punish the marauding Indians. The lieutenant was put in command of the expedition, but before starting he confided his love to the young woman, who not only acknowledged that she returned his affection, but promised that if the fortune of war deprived him of life she would never marry another. As he bade her good-by he was heard to say, "That is well. Nobody else shall have you. I will come back and make my claim."
In a few days the detachment came back, but the lieutenant was missing. It was noticed that the bride-elect grieved but little for him, and nobody was surpirsed when she announced her intention of marrying a young man from the East. The wedding-day arrived. All was gayety at the post, and in the evening the mess-room was decorated for a ball. As the dance was in full swing a door flew open with a bang, letting in a draught of air that made the candles burn dim, and a strange cry, unlike that of any human creature, sounded through the house. All eyes turned to the door. In it stood the swollen body of a dead man dressed in the stained uniform of an officer. The temple was marked by a hatchet-gash, the scalp was gone, the eyes were wide open and burned with a terrible light.
Walking to the bride the body drew her from the arms of her husband who, like the rest of the company, stood as in a trance, without the power of motion, and clasping her to its bosom began a waltz. The musicians, who afterward declared that they did not know what they were doing, struck up a demoniac dance, and the couple spun around and around, the woman growing paler and paler, until at last the fallen jaw and staring eyes showed that life was also extinct in her. The dead man allowed her to sink to the floor, stood over her for a moment, wrung his hands as he sounded his fearful cry again, then vanished through the door.
A few days later a troop of soldiers who had been to the scene of the Apache encounter returned with the body of the lieutenant.
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Post by dreamy on Oct 31, 2005 8:33:49 GMT 10
The Last Kiss
Late one night, a young man was driving home along a dark country road. It was a Saturday night and it was raining. As he rounded a long curve, his headlights lit up a young woman standing at the side of the road. She was wearing a white dress and was all wet from the rain. He thought he knew what had happened: The girl had quarreled with her date and had chosen to walk home rather than stay with the guy. The young man skidded to a stop before the young woman could even raised her hand to thumb a ride.
He leaned over and opened the door for her to get in.
She slid into the seat and shut the door. With a smile she said, "Would you take me home? I just live a mile down the road."
That was when he noticed how pretty she was. He almost couldn't think of anything to say, she was so pretty. He said, "Sure."
He took off his letter jacket and offered it to her. She leaned forward and draped it around her shoulders. It was too crowded in the front seat for her to put her arms into the sleeves.
The boy dropped the car into gear, and he still hadn't thought of anything to say when they passes the church and the graveyard and came to a two story house.
"This is my house," she said.
They stopped, and he got out and walked her to the door. They stood looking at each other for a moment and before he could think of a way to ask her for a kiss, she leaned over and kissed him. He was so surprised that she had opened the screen door, opened the front door, and gone inside the house before he could speak. He realized that she was still wearing his letter jacket and for a moment he thought about knocking on the door. But the house was dark, her parents were probably asleep, and she might get into trouble for getting in so late if he woke them.
Besides, the jacket gave him the perfect excuse to come see her again.
Sunday morning, about time for church, he came back to the house and knocked on the door. A tired, sad-looking woman answered. He asked if he could talk to the ladies daughter.
"My daughter is dead," said the woman. "She died one year ago last night in a car wreck one mile down the road or so at the long curve."
"That's not possible!" said the man. "I gave her a ride home last night!"
"If you don't believe me," said the woman, "go look for yourself. She's buried in the graveyard there in the third row."
The young man walked into the cemetery. In the third row of headstones, he found what he was looking for.
A pink marble headstone was inscribed with the name Laurie, and over the rounded corners of the stone was his letter jacket.
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Post by dreamy on Oct 31, 2005 8:32:36 GMT 10
Child's ghost story... (Author Unknown)
A few years ago, I was involved in the conversion of some 17th Century buildings in Durham City, England, from houses into shops and a cafe.
For those who've never been, Durham is an old Cathedral town, with many old buildings crammed into quite a small space.
These particular buildings were based around an old courtyard of Saddler Street, and consisted of a large building of about three stories and a narrower one of similar height. These were seriously old and atmospheric buildings; the smaller of the two had beams which were reckoned to have been old ship's timbers from about the time of the Spanish Armada, and the larger one had lots of narrow passageways upstairs, and a big oak panelled room.
While I helped prepare the smaller building for use, the larger building was being converted into a Cafe.
Taran, the daughter of the owners of the Cafe, used to play alone on one of the upper floors of the building while her parents worked downstairs.
(At this time she was about three years old, I think, and her parents swore later that they hadn't mentioned death to her in any particular way - all her grandparents were still alive and she'd never had any pets which might have expired.)
On this occasion her parents could hear her thumping about upstairs, and called her down.
"Don't make so much noise, dear!" they said.
"It's not me, it's Davvy making the noise" she answered promptly.
Like many children of that age, Taran had pretty regular games with imaginary friends, so her parents weren't too impressed by this attempt to duck the blame.
"Well, ask her not to be so noisy" they asked.
"I will", said Taran, "but she likes making noise because she doesn't get to play much. She says she's been dead for such a long time that she can only come out to play with me"...
In an interesting development, a few days after this happened, Taran (who had never been spoken to about death, remember) started holding funeral services for her Barbie dolls; putting them in boxes and surrounding them with flowers, saying prayers "for the dead Barbie" and generally being quite alarming. She stopped short of burying them, though!
Over a few months, the cafe was finished and opened, and in time Taran's fascination with death wore off, and - as far as I know - nothing more was heard of "Davvy".
- - although it's worth mentioning that the staff at the cafe often receive warnings from people who visit the upstairs toilets that they can hear a child playing in the stockroom...
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Post by dreamy on Oct 31, 2005 8:30:58 GMT 10
The Red Room by H.G. Wells
"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me." And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.
"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.
"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet."
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale ayes wide open. "Ay," she broke in; "and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty." She swayed her head slowly from side to side. "A many things to see and sorrow for."
I half suspected the old people were trying to enhanve the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. "Well," I said, "if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind."
"It’s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more.
I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an arm-chair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered arm gave this new-comer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.
"I said - it’s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had ceased for a while.
"It’s my own choosing," I answered.
The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and brigth and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.
"Why don’t you have a drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer towards him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaky arm that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualitites seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.
"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there.
The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other.
"If," I said a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me."
"There’s a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to the red room to-night-"
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"You go alone."
"Very well," I answered. "And which way do I go?"
"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the steps."
"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular.
"And are you really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"It is what I came for," I said, and moved towards the door. As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.
"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.
"It’s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm.
I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.
I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old fashioned furniture of the housekeeper’s room in which they foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, and older age, and age when things spiritual were different from this of ours, less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly - the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.
The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. Everything was in its place: the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling, and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening in the moonlight. That incident for at time restored my nerve, and a procelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me.
The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence of the landing.
I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place; and never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband’s jest of frightening her. And looking around that large shadowy room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness. My candle was a little tongue of flame in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light. I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper - and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My precise examination had done me good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position.
By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibilty of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire’s flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time. Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there. I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. "By Jove!" said I aloud; ‘that draught’s a strong one!’ and taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet.
"Odd!" I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?"
I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it. The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.
"This won’t do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed. "What’s up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.
"Steady on!" I said. "These candles are wanted," speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it.
As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove, then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting three, as two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way, I dropped the matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out of the stars. Now and then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance. I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that stayed off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!
I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. The candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might - once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run for the door.
But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.
I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I asked; "I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are."
They told me then, and I heard of the haunted red room as one who hears a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your forehead and lips."
It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. "You believe now," said the old man, "that the room is haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend.
"Yes," said I; "the room is haunted."
"And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared ... Tell us, is it truly the old earl who - "
"No,’ said I; ‘it is not."
"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It is his poor young countess who was frightened - "
"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse - "
"Well?" they said.
"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man," said I; "and that is, in all its nakedness - Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room - "
I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages. Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. "That is it," said he. "I knew that was it. A power of darkness. To put such a curse upon a woman! It lurkes there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in that room of hers - black Fear, and there will be - so long as this house of sin endures.’
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