A Tale of Wonder.
Considerable excitement has prevailed in a parish not far from Lochrutton, for the last week, from a report that something no very canny had been playing some mysterious cantrips about a sequestered farm-stead. On Sabbath, the 18th, noises unusual began to be distinctly heard, to the no small annoyance of the respected tenant and his family, and, as if emboldened by familiarity, each fiendly visit made some fresh inroad, in the shape of setting some particular article of furniture in motion.
Sometimes “peter-dick” was heard to begin at the window sash, and immediately chairs were heard to move too and fro – tables also, as if obsequious to the call, joined in the magic dance; nor was this all, the bed-clothes were taken off the children, and the curtains, neatly folded up, were thrown to the back of the bed. Nor were the meal sacks and their contents allowed to be idle spectators, for, as if by dint of the conjuror’s wand, they passed from one side of the room to the other.
Indeed it would be endless to repeat all the different movements attributed to this strange phantom. Suffice it to say that, on Wednesday evening, public curiosity became so great that many were seen wending their way to the haunted spot at the gloamin’, where a company of twenty-five brawny chiels waited anxiously till morning for the appearance of the supposed ghost – but no ghost came.
On the following evening the number would have trebled, for what with navvies at the water works, and a new bobbin factory established here, such a force could not have been mustered for a long time back for such an occasion, but, as the number on the preceding night had been considered more than enough, it was thought advisable to dispense with all their services save two or three confidential neighbours, who undertook to keep watch while the master and family got their much-needed sound repose, bereft of which they had been for several nights; and, as everything remained tranquil, it was pronounced to be all a hoax.
Yet the imagination had been wrought up to such a pitch, that it was not till the Sabbath morning, when a party in the house who had been strictly taken to task confessed to the whole affair, that the master could be made believe it, was anything else but something very solemn. Various were the conjectures – some bordering on the ridiculous – others imagining they felt something beginning at the feet, and going out at the crown of the head.
Nor were the groups passing and repassing to the bogly scene the least attractive part of the drama: one might be seen with a cudgel of such dimensions as evidently showed that he meant to deal a Lowerby lick in good earnest. Pocket pistols were called into requisition, and even swords that had passed through the American war unscathed, were wielded by men that might have been considered a match for a Goliah. There might be seen, no doubt, some that had been sacrificing rather freely to Bacchus, but upon the whole this demon story gained credence from men well-learned, and the reverse of being superstitious; yet what the pretended ghost’s intentions were remains a mystery unsolved as yet.
There seems to have been no ill-will on either side, and whether any assistance was got from other parties cannot as yet be proved. One thing is certain – since Wednesday the evil spirit has fled, and we hope will never be heard tell of neither here nor elsewhere any more. – Corres.
Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 28th May 1851.