Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry/The Mother's Dream
THE MOTHER'S DREAM.
She slept—and there was visioned to her eye
A stately mountain, green it seemed, and high;
She sought to climb it—lo! a river dark
Rolled at its foot; there came a gallant bark,
And in the bark were forms the eldest fiend
Had shaped to mock God's image; fierce they leaned
O'er the ship's side, and, seizing her, rushed through
The river wave, which kindled as they flew.
Then to the bank came one and laughed aloud;
Bright robes he wore, stern was his look and proud:
He stretched his arm, and hailed her for his bride;
The shuddering waters washed his robe aside,
And showed a shape the fiend's tormenting flame
Had sorely vexed; she shrieked, and faintness came.
Then shouts she heard, and sound of gladsome song,
And saw a stream of torches flash along.
The feast was spread, the bridal couch prepared,
Dread forms stood round, with naked swords to guard.
Nor looked she long: one whispered in her ear,
"Come, climb thy bed; for lo! the bridegroom's near."
She cried to heaven—at once the wedding joy
Was changed to war-shout and to funeral cry;
Swords in the air, as sunshine, flashed and fell,
Then rose all crimsoned; loud came groan and yell,
And from the middle tumult started out
A form that seized her: blow, and shriek, and shout
Came thick behind. Down to the Solway flood
Fast was she borne—it seemed a sea of blood;
She felt it touch her knees, and with a scream
She started back, and wakened from her dream.
Legend of Lady Beatrice.
Were "The Mother's Dream" a traditionary fiction, and its predictions unfulfilled, gladness would be diffused around many hearths, and the tears wiped away from maliy matrons' cheeks. It was related to me by a Dumfriesshire lady: her voice was slow and gentle, and possessed that devotional Scottish melody of expression which gives so much antique richness and grace to speech. Under the shade of a long veil she sought to conceal a face where early grief had bleached the roses and impressed a sedate and settled sorrow on a brow particularly white and high. But her eye still retained something of the light of early life, which darkened or brightened as the joys, the sufferings, or the sorrows of wedded and maternal love gave a deeper interest or passion to her story.
"When woman is young," said she, with a sigh, but not of regret, "she loves to walk in the crowded streets and near the dwellings of men; when she becomes wiser, has seen the vanities and drunk of the miseries and woes of life, she chooses her walks in more lonely places, and, seeking converse with her spirit, shuns the joy and the mirth of the world. When sorrow, which misses few, had found me out, and made me a mateless bird, I once walked out to the margin of that beautiful sheet of water, the Ladye's Lowe. It was the heart of summer; the hills in which the lake lay embosomed were bright and green; sheep were scattered upon their sides; shepherds sat on their summits; while the grassy sward, descending to the quiet pure water, gave it so much of its own vernal hue that the eye could not always distinguish where the land and lake met. Its long green water-flags and broad lilies, which lay so fiat and so light along the surface, were unmoved, save by the course of a pair of wild swans, which for many years had grazed on the grassy margin or found food in the bottom of the lake.
"This pastoral quietness pertained more to modern than to ancient times. When the summer heat was high, and the waters of the lake low, the remains of a broken but narrow causeway, composed of square stones indented in a frame-work of massy oak, might still be traced, starting from a little bay on the northern side, and diving directly towards the centre of the lake. Tradition, in pursuing the history of this causeway, supplied the lake with an island, the island with a tower, and the tower with narratives of perils and bloodshed, and chivalry and love. These fireside traditions, varying according to the fancy of the peasantry, all concluded in a story too wild for ordinary belief. A battle is invariably described by some grey-headed narrator, fought on the southern side of the lake, and sufficiently perilous and bloody. A lady's voice is heard and a lady's form is seen among the armed men, in the middle of the fight. She is described as borne off towards the causeway by the lord of the tower, while the margin of the water is strewed with dead or dying men. She sees her father, her brother, fall in her defence; her lover, to whom she had been betrothed, and from whom she had been torn, die by her side; and the deep and lasting curse which she denounced against her ravisher, and the tower and the lake which gave him shelter is not forgotten; but it is too awful to mingle with the stories of a grave and a devout people. That night, it is said, a voice was heard as of a spirit running round and round the lake, and pronouncing a curse against it; the waters became agitated, and a shriek was heard at midnight. In the morning the castle of the Ladye's Lowe was sunk, and the waters of the lake slept seven fathoms deep over the copestone.
"They who attach credence to this wild legend are willing to support it by much curious testimony. They tell that when the waters are pure in summer-time, or when the winter's ice lies clear beneath the foot of the curler, the walls of the tower are distinctly seen without a stone displaced; while those who connect tales of wonder with every remarkable place say that once a year the castle arises at midnight from the bosom of the lake, with lights—not like the lights of this world—streaming from loophole and turret; while on the summit, like a banner spread, stands a lady clad in white, holding her hands to heaven, and shrieking. This vision is said to precede, by a night or two, the annual destruction of some person by the waters of the lake. The influence, of this superstition has made the Ladye's Lowe a solitary and a desolate place, has preserved its fish, which are both delicious and numerous, from the fisher's net and hook, and its wild swans from the gun of the fowler. The peasantry seldom seek the solitude of its beautiful banks, and avoid bathing in its waters; and when the winter gives its bosom to the curler or the skater, old men look grave and say, 'The Ladye's Lowe will have its yearly victim'; and its yearly victim, tradition tells us, it has ever had since the sinking of the tower.
"I had reached the margin of the lake, and sat looking on its wide pure expanse of water. Here and there the remains of an old tree or a stunted hawthorn broke and beautified the winding line of its border; while cattle, coming to drink and gaze at their shadows, took away from the solitude of the place. As my eye pursued the sinuous line of the lake, it was arrested by the appearance of a form, which seemed that of a human being, stretched motionless on the margin. I rose, and on going nearer I saw it was a man—the face cast upon the earth, and the hands spread. I thought death had been there; and while I was waving my hand for a shepherd, who sat on the hillside, to approach and assist me, I heard a groan and a low and melancholy cry; and presently he started up, and, seating himself on an old tree-root, rested a cheek on the palm of either hand, and gazed intently on the lake. He was a young man, the remains of health and beauty were still about him; but his locks, once curling and long, which maidens loved to look at, were now matted, and wild, and withered; his cheeks were hollow and pale, and his eyes, once the merriest and brightest in the district, shone now with a grey, wild, and unearthly light. As I looked upon this melancholy wreck of youth and strength, the unhappy being put both hands in the lake, and, lifting up water in his palms, scattered it in the air; then dipping both hands again, showered the water about his locks like rain. He continued, during this singular employment, to chant some strange and broken words with a wild tone and a faltering tongue:
SONG OF BENJIE SPEDLANDS.
Cursed be thou, O water, for my sake!
Misery to them who dip their hands in thee!
May the wild fowl forsake thy margin,
The fish leap no more in thy waves;
May the whirlwind scatter thee utterly,
And the lightning scorch thee up;
May the lily bloom no more on thy bosom,
And the white swan fly from thy floods!
Cursed be thou, O water, for my sake!
The babe unborn shall never bless thee;
May the flocks that taste of thee perish;
May the man who bathes in thy flood
Be crossed and cursed with unrequited love,
And go childless down to the grave.
As I curse thee with my delirious tongue,
I will mar thee with my unhappy hands!
As this water, cast on the passing wind,
Shall return to thy bosom no more,
So shall the light of morning forsake thee,
And night-darkness devour thee up.
As that pebble descends into thy deeps,
And that feather floats on thy waves,
So shall the good and the holy curse thee,
And the madman mar thee with dust.
Cursed mayst thou continue, for my sake,
For the sake of those thou hast slain;
For the father who mourned for his son,
For the mother who wailed for her child.
I heard the voice of sorrow on thy banks,
And a mother mourning by thy waters;
I saw her stretch her white hands over thee,
"The sound of the song rolled low and melancholy over the surface of the lake. I never heard a sound so dismal. During the third verse the singer took up water in the hollow of his hand, and threw it on the wind. Then he threw a pebble and a feather into the lake; and, gathering up the dust among the margin stones, strewed it over the surface of the water. When he concluded his wild verses he uttered a loud cry, and throwing himself suddenly on his face, spread out his hands, and lay, and quivered, and moaned like one in mortal agony.
"A young woman, in widow's weeds, and with a face still deeper in woe than her mourning dress, now came towards me, along the border of the lake. She had the face and the form of one whom I knew in my youth, the companion of my teens, and the life and love of all who had hearts worth a woman's wish. She was the grace of the preaching, the joy of the dance, through her native valley, and had the kindest and the gayest heart in the wide holms of Annandale. I rode at her wedding, and a gay woman was I; I danced at her wedding as if sorrow was never to come; and when I went to the kirking, and saw her so fair, and her husband so handsome, I said, in the simplicity of my heart, they will live long and happy on the earth. When I saw him again he was stretched in his shroud, and she was weeping, with an infant son on her knee, beside the coffin of her husband. Such remembrances can never pass away from the heart, and they came thick upon me as the companion of my early years approached. We had been long separated. I had resided in a distant part, till the loss of all I loved brought me back to seek for happiness in my native place, in the dwellings of departed friends and the haunts of early joys.
"Something of a smile passed over her face when she saw me, but it darkened suddenly down. We said little for awhile; the histories of our own sorrows were written on our faces; there was no need for speech. 'Alas! alas!' said she, 'a kind husband and three sweet bairns all gone to the green churchyard! But ye were blessed in the departure of your children compared to me. A mother's eye wept over them, a mother's knees nursed them, and a mother's hand did all that a mother's hand could do, till the breath went to Heaven from between their sweet lips. O woman, woman! ye were blessed compared with me!' And she sobbed aloud, and looked upon the lake, which lay clear and unruffled before us. At the sound of her voice the young man raised himself from the ground, gave one wild look at my companion, and uttering a cry, and covering his face with his hands, dropped flat on the earth, and lay mute and without motion.
"'See him, see him!' said she to me. 'His name is Benjie Spedlands; he was once the sweetest youth in the parish, but now the hand of Heaven is heavy upon him, and sore; he is enduring punishment for a season and a time; and heavy as was his trespass, so heavy has been his chastening.' I entreated her to tell me how he had offended, and also how it happened that her appearance gave him such pain, and made him cry and cover his face. 'It is a strange and a mournful story,' she answered; 'but it eases my spirit to relate it. O woman! I was once a merry and a happy creature, with a face as gladsome as the light of day; but for these eight long years I have had nought but cheerless days and joyless nights, sad thoughts and terrible dreams. Sorrow came in a dream to me, but it will not pass from me till I go to the grave.
"It happened during the summer-time, after I had lost my husband, that I was very down-spirited and lonesome, and my chief and only consolation was to watch over my fatherless son. He was a sweet child; and on the day he was two years old, when I ought to have been glad, and praised Him who had protected the widow and the orphan, I became more than usually melancholy, for evil forebodings kept down my spirits sorely, and caused me to wet the cheeks of my child with tears. You have been a mother, and may have known the tenderness and love which an infant will show her when she is distressed. He hung his little arms round my neck, hid his head in my bosom, and raised up such a murmur and a song of sorrow and sympathy, that I blessed him and smiled, and the bairn smiled, and so we fell asleep. It was about midnight that I dreamed a dream.
"'I dreamed myself seated at my own threshold, dandling my boy in the sun: sleep gives us many joys which are taken from us when we wake, and shadows out to us many woes which are interrupted by sorrow. I thought my husband was beside me; but, though he smiled, his look was more grave than in life, and there seemed a light about him, a purer light than that of day. I thought I saw the sun setting on the green hills before me. I heard the song of the maidens as they returned from the folds; saw the rooks flying in a long black and wavering train towards their customary pines; and beheld first one large star, and then another, arising in the firmament. And I looked again, and saw a little black cloud hanging between heaven and earth; it became larger and darker till it filled all the air, from the sky down to the bosom of the Ladye's Lowe. I wondered what this might mean, when presently the cloud began to move and roll along the earth, coming nearer and nearer, and it covered all the green fields, and shut out the light of heaven. And as it came closer, I thought I beheld shapes of men, and heard voices more shrill than human tongue. And the cloud stood still at the distance of a stone-cast. I grew sore afraid, and clasped my child to my bosom and sought to fly, but I could not move; the form of my husband had fled, and there was no one to comfort me. And I looked again, and lo! the cloud seemed cleft asunder, and I saw a black chariot, drawn by six black steeds, issue from the cloud. And I saw a shadow seated for a driver, and heard a voice say: "I am the bearer of woes to the sons and daughters of men; carry these sorrows abroad, they are in number eight." And all the steeds started forward; and when the chariot came to my threshold, the phantom tarried and said: "A woe and a woe for the son of the widow Rachel." And I rose and beheld in a chariot the coffins of seven children; and their names and their years were written thereon. And there lay another coffin; and as I bent over it I read the name of my son, and his years were numbered six; a tear fell from my cheek, and the letters vanished. And I heard the shadow say: "Woman, what hast thou done? Can thy tears contend with me?" And I saw a hand pass, as a hand when it writes, over the coffin again. And I looked, and I saw the name of my son, and his years were numbered nine. And a faintness came into my heart and a dimness into mine eye, and I sought to wash the words out with my tears, when the shadow said: "Woman, woman, take forth thy woe and go thy ways; I have houses seven to visit, and may not tarry for thy tears. Three years have I given for thy weeping, and I may give no more."
"'I have often wondered at my own strength, though it was all in a dream. "Vision," I said, "if thy commission is from the Evil One, lash thy fiend-steeds and begone." The shadow darkened as I spoke. "Vision," I said, "if thy mission is from Him who sits on the holy hill—'the Lord giveth and taketh away, blessed be His name'—do thy message and depart." And suddenly the coffin was laid at my door, the steeds and chariot fled, the thick clouds followed, and I beheld him no more. I gazed upon the name, and the years nine; and as I looked it vanished from my sight; and I awoke weeping, and found my locks drenched in sweat, and the band of my bosom burst asunder with the leaping of my heart.
"'And I told my dream, and all the people of the parish wondered; and those who had children waxed sorrowful, and were dismayed. And a woman who dwells by the Rowantree-burn came unto me, and said: "I hear that you have dreamed an evil dream; know ye how ye may eschew it?" And I answered: "I have dreamed an evil dream, and I know not how I may eschew it, save by prayers and humiliation." And the woman said to me: "Marvel not at what I may say: I am old, and the wisdom of ancient times is with me—such wisdom as foolish men formerly accounted evil. Listen to my words. Take the under-garment of thy child, and dip it at midnight in that water called the Ladye's Lowe, and hang it forth to dry in the new moonbeam. Take thy Bible on thy knees, and keep watch beside it; mickle is the courage of a woman when the child that milked her bosom is in danger. And a form, like unto the form of a lady, will arise from the lake, and will seek to turn the garment of thy son; see that ye quail not, but arise and say: 'Spirit, by all the salvation contained between the boards of this book, I order thee to depart and touch not the garment.'"
"'And while this woman spake, there came another woman, the wife of one who had sailed to a distant land, and had left her with two sweet children, and the name of the one was Samuel, and the name of the other John. Now John was a fair and comely child, the image of her husband; but he was not his mother's joy, for she loved Samuel, who bore the image of one she had loved in her youth; and this made her husband sorrowful, and caused him to sail to a far country. And when she came in, she said: "So ye have dreamed a bad dream, and ye have sought this ill woman of the Rowantree-burn to give the interpretation thereof; if evil is threatened, evil is the way you seek to avert it. Now listen unto me; 'the wind bloweth as it listeth'—the ways of God will not be changed by the wisdom of man. Providence may seek thy child for a saint; see that ye cast him not to the fiends by dealing with unholy charms and spells and with graceless hags. I have two fair children; one of them is his father's love, the other is mine. Say, saw ye not the name of John written on one of those visionary coffins? for I hope my Samuel will long be the grace of the green earth before he goes to the dowie mools." And the eyes of the woman of the Rowantree-burn flashed with anger, and she said, "Hearken to the words of this shameless woman! She seeks the destruction of the child of wedlock, and wishes life to the child of wantonness and sin. Lo! I say, hearken unto her. But the evil of her ways shall be to her as sadness, and what has given her joy shall be to the world a hissing and a scorn, to her a scourge and a curse. She will lose the sweet youth John, even as she wishes, but long and full of evil shall be the life of the child she loves." And upon this these two foolish women reproached each other with works of sin and with deeds of darkness; and, waxing wroth with their words, they tore each other's raiment and hair, and smote and bruised one another, and the clamour of their tongues increased exceedingly.
"'Now, in the midst of all this folly there came to my fireside a man cunning in the culture of corn, and versed in the cure of those evils which afflict dumb creatures. And when he saw the strife between the woman of the Rowantree-burn and the mariner's wife he laughed aloud in the fulness of his joy. "Strong may the strife be, and long may it continue," said he, "for pleasant is the feud between the raven and the hooded crow, and the small birds sing when the hawks of heaven fight. That woman has destroyed the firstlings of the flock, has dried up the udders to the sucking lambs, and lessened the riches of men who live by sweet cheese and fattened herds. She hath also cast her spells over the deep waters of Annan and Ae; the fish have fled, and the nets of the fishermen are dipped in vain. The fowls of heaven, too, have felt the cunning of her hand; the wild swans have left the Ladye's Lowe, the wild geese have fled from the royal lakes of Lochmaben, and the blackcock and the ptarmigan come no more to the snare of the fowler. Let her therefore scream and weep under the strong hand and sharp nails of her bitter enemy. And for the other woman—even she whose husband lives on the deep waters, and to whom she bears children in the image of other men—let her, I say, suffer from the fingers of witchcraft: pleasant is the strife between workers of wickedness; and woe to the wit and sorrow to the hand that seeks to sunder them. Now, touching this singular dream of thine, I have a word to say, and it is this: believe it not—it is the work of the grand architect of human misery, who seeks to draw people to sin in the dreams and shadows of the night. To men whose hearts are warm, and whose blood is young, he descends in soft and voluptuous visions. I have myself beheld a maiden with a languishing look and an eye blue and ensnaring, standing at my bedside, clothed out in a midnight dream with the shadowy beauty of a sleeping imagination; and this appeared, too, on that very night when my inward gifts and graces had raised me from a humble sower of seed-corn to become an elder of our godly kirk—praise be blessed, and may the deed be lauded of men. But it is not alone to the staid and the devout that the enemy appears in dreams; he presents the soldier with imaginary fields of peril and blood, and blesses his ear with the yell and the outcry of battle and the trumpet sound. To the maiden he comes in gallant shapes and costly raiment, with becks and bows, and feet which pace gracefully over the floor to the sound of the flute and dulcimer, and all manner of music. To the sleeping eye of a mother he digs a deep pit for the babe of her bosom, and lays the child that sucks her breast by the side of a fathomless stream. He shows her shrouds and empty coffins, figures stretched in white linen and kirkyard processions, and raises in her ear the wail of the matrons and the lyke-wake song. Heed not dreams therefore; they are the delusions of him who seeks to sink our souls. But bless thy God, and cherish thy child; keep his feet from the evil path, and his hand from the evil thing, and his tongue from uttering foolishness; and the boy shall become a stripling, and the stripling a man, wise in all his ways, and renowned in his generation, and thou shalt rejoice with abundance of joy."
"'While this devout person cheered my heart with his counsel, he was not unheard of those two foolish women; they liked not the wisdom of his words, nor his sayings concerning themselves, and they began with a fierce and sudden outcry, "A pretty elder, indeed," said the woman of the Rowantree-burn, "to come here in the shades and darkness of night to expound dreams to a rosy young widow. I'll warrant he would not care if the man-child were at the bottom of the Ladye's Lowe, so long as a full farm, a well-plenished house, and a loving dame in lily-white linen were to the fore. I wish I were a real witch for his sake, he should dree a kittle cast." The words of the mariner's wife chimed in with those of her antagonist. "A pretty elder, truly," said she, smiting her hands together close to his nose; "he'll come here to talk of sinful dreams, and flutes and dulcimers, and shaking of wanton legs, and the smiling of ensnaring eyes. And yet should the bairn of a poor body have a fairer look than ane's ain husband, he will threaten us with kirk censure and session rebuke, though it's weel kenned that mothers cannot command the complexion of their babes nor control the time when it pleases Providence to send them weeping into the world. There was my ain son Samuel; his father had sailed but ten months and a day when the sweet wean came; where was the marvel of that? If there was not an indulgence, and acts of wondrous bounty and kindness, and blessings in the shape of babes showered upon mariners, sorrowful would their lives be, dwelling so far from their wives in the deep wide waters.'
"'"Woman, woman," said the elder, "I came not hither to hearken to thy confession; go home and repent, and leave me to admonish the owner of this house, touching the dream with which her spirit is sorely troubled." "Admonish!" said the mariner's spouse, "I dare ye, sir, to use that word of scorn and kirk scandal to the widow of as douce a man as ever stepped in a black-leather shoe. Admonish, indeed! If ye are so full of the gracious spirit of counsel and admonition, wherefore have ye not come to cheer me in my lonesome home, where all I have is two bairns to keep sadness from my fireside? My husband is sailing on the great deep, and has not blessed my sight these three long years; mickle need have I of some one to soothe my widow-like lot. I could find ye something like Scripture warrant for such kindness which ye wot not of." And the woman went her ways; the man tarried but a little while; and the woman of the Rowantree-burn departed also, admonishing me to remember her words, and do as she had desired.
"'It was on the third evening after I dreamed my dream that I thought on the woman's words; and I debated with myself if such seekings after future events by means of charms and spells were wise and according to the Word. But old beliefs, and legendary stories, and the assurances of many wise and venerable people, have ever proved too hard for the cunning of wisdom and the pure light of the Gospel; and I thought on my grandmother, to whom the person of my grandfather, then in a remote land, was shown in a vision one Hallowmas Eve, and so I went my ways. It was near midnight when I reached the Ladye's Lowe, and, seating myself on the place where I now sit, I looked sadly to the heaven, and sorrowfully to the waters. The moon had arisen with her horns half filled; the stars had gathered around her; the sheep lay white and clustering on the hill-sides; the wild swans sailed in pairs along the quiet bosom of the lake; and the only sound I heard was that of the mother-duck, as she led her swarm of yellow young ones to graze on the tender herbage on the margin of the lake. I had wetted, as the woman bade me, the under-garment of my child, and hung it forth to dry on a little bush of broom, and there I sat watching it and ruminating on my lot, on the sorrows and joys of a mother. Midnight came; the lake lay still and beautiful; the wind was heard by fits among the bushes, and gushed gently over the bosom of the water with a sweet and a lulling sound. I looked and thought, and I thought and looked, till mine eyes waxed weary with watching, and I closed them for a time against the dazzling undulation of the water, which swelled and subsided beneath the clear moonlight. As I sat, something came before me as a vision in a dream, and I know not yet whether I slumbered or waked. Summer I thought was changed into winter, the reeds were frozen by the brook, snow lay white and dazzling on the ground, and a sheet of thick and transparent ice was spread over the bosom of the Ladye's Lowe. And, as I looked, the lake became crowded with men; I beheld the faces of many whom I knew, and heard the curling-stones rattle and ring, as they glided along the ice or smote upon one another; and the din and clamour of men flew far and wide. And my son appeared unto me, a child no more, but a stripling tall and fair and graceful, his fair hair curling on his shoulders. My heart leapt with joy. And seven young men were with him; I knew them all—his school companions; and their seven mothers came, I thought, and stood by my side, and as we looked we talked of our children. As they glided along the ice, they held by each other's hands, and sang a song; above them all I heard the voice of my son, and my heart rejoiced. As the song concluded, I heard a shriek as of many drowning; but I saw nothing, for the ice was fled from the bosom of the lake, and all that was visible was the wild swans with the lesser water-fowl. But all at once I saw my son come from the bottom of the lake; his locks were disordered and drenched, and deadly paleness was in his looks. One bore him out of the water in his arms, and laid him at my feet on the bank. I swooned away; and when I came to myself, I found the morning light approaching, the lake fowl sheltering themselves among the reeds; and, stiff with cold, and with a heavy heart, I returned home.
"Years passed on: my son grew fair and comely, out-rivalled his comrades at school, and became the joy of the young and the delight of the old. I often thought of my dream as I gazed on the child; and I said, in the fulness of a mother's pride, "Surely it was a vain and an idle vision, coloured into sadness by my fears; for a creature so full of life, and strength, and spirit, cannot pass away from the earth before his prime." Still, at other times the vision pressed on my heart, and I had sore combats with a misgiving mind; but I confided in Him above, and cheered my spirit as well as I might. I went with my son to the kirk, I accompanied him to the market, I walked with him on the green hills and on the banks of the deep rivers: I was with him in the dance, and my heart rejoiced to see him surpass the children of others: wherever he went, a mother's fears and a mother's feet followed him. Some derided my imaginings, and called me the dreaming widow; while others spoke with joy of his beauty and attainments, and said he was a happy son who had so tender and so prudent a mother.
"'It happened in the seventh year from my dream that a great curling bonspiel was to be played between the youths and the wedded men of the parish; and a controversy arose concerning the lake on which the game should be decided. It was the middle of December; the winter had been open and green; till suddenly the storm set in, and the lakes were frozen equal to bear the weight of a heavy man in the first night's frost. Several sheets of frozen water were mentioned: ancient tale and ancient belief had given a charm to the Ladye's Lowe which few people were willing to break; and the older and graver portion of the peasantry looked on it as a place of evil omen, where many might meet, but few would part. All this was withstood by a vain and froward youth, who despised ancient beliefs as idle superstitions, traditionary legends as the labour of credulous men; and who, in the pride and vanity of human knowledge, made it his boast that he believed nothing. He proposed to play the bonspiel on the Ladye's Lowe; the foolish young men his companions supported his wish; and not a few among the sedater sort consented to dismiss proverbial fears and to play their game on these ominous waters. I thought it was a sad sight to see so many greyheads pass my threshold, and so many young heads following, to sport on so perilous a place; but curiosity could not be restrained—young and old, the dame and the damsel, crowded the banks of the lake to behold the contest; and I heard the mirth of their tongues and the sound of their curling-stones as I sat at my hearth-fire. One of the foremost was Benjie Spedlands.'
"The unhappy mother had proceeded thus far, when the demented youth, who till now had lain silent and motionless by the side of the lake, uttered a groan, and, starting suddenly to his feet, came and stood beside us. He shed back his long and moistened locks from a burning and bewildered brow, and looking steadfastly in her face for a moment, said, 'Rachel, dost thou know me?' She answered only with a flood of tears, and a wave of her hand to be gone. 'Know me! ay, how can ye but know me, since for me that deadly water opened its lips, and swallowed thy darling up. If ye have have a tongue to curse and a heart to scorn me, scorn me then, and curse me; and let me be seen no more on this blessed earth. For the light of day is misery to me, and the cloud of night is full of sorrow and trouble. My reason departs, and I go and sojourn with the beasts of the field: it returns, and I fly from the face of man; but wherever I go, I hear the death-shriek of eight sweet youths in my ear, and the curses of mothers' lips on my name.' 'Young man,' she said, 'I shall not curse thee, though thy folly has made me childless: nor shall I scorn thee, for I may not scorn the image of Him above; but go from my presence, and herd with the brutes that perish, or stay among men, and seek to soothe thy smitten conscience by holy converse and by sincere repentance.' 'Repentance!' he said, with a wildness of eye that made me start: 'of what have I to repent? Did I make that deep lake, and cast thy son, and the sons of seven others, bound into its bosom. Repentance belongs to him who does a deed of evil; sorrow is his who witlessly brings misfortunes on others; and such mishap was mine. Hearken, and ye shall judge.'
"And he sat down by the side of the lake, and, taking up eight smooth stones in his hand, dropped them one by one into the water; then, turning round to us, he said: 'Even as the waters have closed over those eight pebbles, so did I see them close over eight sweet children. The ice crashed, and the children yelled; and as they sunk, one of them, even thy son, put forth his hand, and seizing me by the foot, said, "Oh, Benjie! save me, save me!" But the love of life was too strong in me, for I saw the deep, the fathomless water; and, far below, I beheld the walls of the old tower, and I thought on those doomed yearly to perish in this haunted lake, and I sought to free my foot from the hand of the innocent youth. But he held me fast, and, looking in my face, said, "Oh, Benjie! save me, save me!" And I thought how I had wiled him away from his mother's threshold, and carried him and his seven companions to the middle of the lake, with the promise of showing him the haunted towers and courts of the drowned castle; but the fears for my own life were too strong; so, putting down my hand, I freed my foot, and, escaping over the ice, left him to sink with his seven companions. Brief, brief was his struggle—a crash of the faithless ice, a plunge in the fathomless water, and a sharp shrill shriek of youthful agony, and all was over for him; but for me, broken slumbers, and a burning brain, and a vision that will not pass from me, of eight fair creatures drowning.'
"Ere he had concluded the unhappy mother had leaped to her feet, and stretched forth her hands over him, and, with every feature dilated with agony, gathered up her strength to curse and to confound him. 'Oh! wretched and contemptible creature,' she said, 'were I a man, as I am but a feeble woman, I would tread thee as dust aneath my feet, for thou art unworthy to live. God gave thee his own form, and gave thee hands to save, not to destroy, his fairest handiworks; but what heart, save thine, could have resisted a cry for mercy from one so fair and so innocent? Depart from my presence; crawl—for thou art unworthy to walk like man—crawl as the reptiles do, and let the hills cover thee, or the deeps devour thee; for who can wish thy base existence prolonged? The mother is unblest that bare thee, and hapless is he who owns thy name. Hereafter shall men scorn to count kindred with thee. Thou hast no brother to feel for a brother's shame, no sister to feel for thee a sister's sorrow, no kinsman to mourn for the reproach of kindred blood. Cursed be she who would bear for thee the sacred name of wife. Seven sons would I behold—and I saw one—wae's me!—dragged from the bottom of that fatal lake; see them borne over my threshold, with their long hanks of fair hair wetting the pavement, as the lovely locks of my sweet boy did, and stretch their lily limbs in linen which my own hands had spun for their bridal sheets, even as I stretched my own blessed child—rather than be the mother of such a wretch as thou!' From this fearful malediction, the delirious youth sought not to escape; he threw himself with his face to the earth, spread out his hands on the turf, and renewed his sobbings and his moans, while the sorrowful mother returned to a cheerless home and an empty fireside.
"Such was her fearful dream; and such was its slow, but sure and unhappy, fulfilment. She did not long survive the desolation of her house. Her footsteps were too frequent by the lake, and by the grave of her husband and child, for the peace of her spirit; she faded, and sank away; and now the churchyard grass grows green and long above her. Old people stop by her grave, and relate with a low voice, and many a sigh, her sad and remarkable story. But grass will never grow over the body of Benjie Spedlands. He was shunned by the old and loathed by the young; and the selfish cruelty of his nature met with the singular punishment of a mental alienation, dead to all other feeling save that of agony for the death of the eight children. He wandered into all lonesome places, and sought to escape from the company of all living things. His favourite seat was on a little hill-top, which overlooks the head of the Ladye's Lowe. There he sat watching the water, with an intensity of gaze which nothing could interrupt. Sometimes he was observed to descend with the swiftness of a bird in its flight, and dash into the lake, and snatch and struggle in the water like one saving a creature from drowning. One winter evening, a twelvemonth from the day of the fatal catastrophe on the lake, he was seen to run round its bank like one in agony, stretching out his hands, and shouting to something he imagined he saw in the water. The night grew dark and stormy; the sleet fell, and thick hail came, and the winds augmented. Still his voice was heard at times far shriller than the tempest—old men shuddered at the sound—about midnight it ceased, and was never heard more. His hat was found floating by the side of the water, but he was never more seen nor heard of—his death-lights, glimmering for a season on the lake, told to many that he had found, perhaps sought, a grave in the deepest part of the Ladye's Lowe."