by Moira Miller
“Hoooooo-roooooo-eeeeeech!” wailed the bogle.
“Here, I hope you din’t hurt yourself, your bogleship,” said Hamish, most concerned.
“It’s nae u-u-u-use!” wailed the bogle in a sad, hollow voice. “You’re putting me off. You’re supposed to be terrified.”
“Och, I’m sorry,” laughed Hamish. He was beginning to enjoy himself. “Would it help if I pretended? Here, mind you don’t tear your – em – thing.” The bogle was struggling to untangle himself from a bramble bush he had fallen into.
“Ach, but you’re no’ really feared, are you?” sighed the bogle, with a sob in its voice.
“Well – to be honest, no,” admitted Hamish. “The way they were talking down at Wee Maggie’s I was expecting something really horrible – and you’re not that bad.”
“I’m no use at all,” moaned the bogle. “N-o-o-o u-u-u-use.” His voice was sad as the winter wind. “I’m just no good at this. I might as well give up and go home. But I haven’t got a h-o-o-o-o-me.” He rolled himself up into an untidy ball, groaning and moaning horribly.
“How’s that then?” said Hamish. The bogle unwound and wisped himself up a tree.
“Well, it’s like this,” he wailed. “I used to be dead happy, hanging aboot in the old hoose up on the Ben there. I had a great time hurroooing and haunting for aboot three hundred years. But it was an old, old hoose and it just fell tae bits. Naebody would come up and mend it because it was haunted, you see. It got awful cold and windy up there for a poor old bogle…”
“So now you’re looking for another wee cottage to haunt?”
“Right you are, pal,” said the bogle. “I thought this would be just the ticket, but it’s just as draughty. That wind’s gey cauld some nights. It’s no’ good for my roo-oo-oo-matissum!” He stretched out and drifted around Hamish like a thin bank of wet fog.
“Right enough, I can see the problem,” said Hamish as the bogle settled in a heap at his feet. “You have to find somewhere. Look, I tell you what. You just haunt about here for a wee while longer, and I’ll see if I can fix you up with something better.”
“Hoooooooo, yir a real pal!” wailed the bogle, vanishing altogether in his excitement.
“Don’t mention it,” said Hamish to the empty air. “I’ll be seeing you – wherever you are.”
***
Next morning, over breakfast, he told Mirren and his old mother the sad story of the bogle.
“He’s not coming here,” said his old mother firmly.
“But mother, I thought you didn’t believe in bogles!” said Hamish.
“Neither I do. Stuff and rubbish. But he’s still no’ coming all the same.” She sniffed and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“Och, poor old soul,” said Mirren, who was always kindhearted. “Maybe he could have a wee corner of the barn.”
“He’s no’ coming here!” said the old lady, firmly. “Not even to the barn. The hens would never lay another egg with that thing dreeping in and out.”
Hamish had to agree with her.
“Och, poor old bogle,” said Mirren, spooning porridge into Torquil. “I suppose there’s just nobody has any use for him at all… Here, just a minute though.” She stopped and smiled. “I’ve had an idea.”
***
The next day Mirren was up early and dressed in her good stout shoes and a warm skirt. She bundled Torquil up and hitched the wee pony to the cart.
“I’m away to see my faither for a day or so,” she said. “You tell yon bogle no’ tae worry. I’ll be back soon.”
“Flibbertigibbet!” grumbled the old lady, who was left to wash up the breakfast dishes. But Mirren was away off up the high road to the castle before anyone could stop her.
Mirren’s father, the Laird, was delighted to see his favourite daughter and even more delighted to see his wee grandson.
“And how are things these days, faither?” Mirren asked when they had settled down over a cup of tea.
“Och, not bad. Not bad. Awful quiet though, Mirren. We’re not getting nearly as many tourists round the castle as we used to. Hardly sold a postcard all year. I’m going to have to do something about it, though goodness knows what. But never mind that, my dear, let’s hear all your crack.”
So Mirren told her father all the gossip about Hamish, Camusbuie, the farm – and the bogle.
“And I was just thinking, faither, you’ve some fine big empty rooms in the castle. He could do a rare job haunting them for you.”
“A bogle! In my castle!” The Laird was a wee bit taken aback. “I don’t know about that, Mirren. It might put the cook off and, goodness knows, she’s bad enough.”
“Och, faither, he wouldn’t need to haunt the kitchens. You could have him in the dungeons if you wanted.”
“In the dungeons? Aye – well – maybe.” The Laird stopped and thought about it. “Here, Mirren, you’re brilliant. Maybe that’s what the castle needs. A real bogle! My very own haunted dungeon. Noo, there’s a thought…”
***
So it came about that the bogle was invited to move into the warm dry dungeon beneath the Laird’s castle. The Laird got a grant from the Tourist Office to put up some new signs and very soon word spread. People came from far and wide to see the haunted dungeon for themselves. The Laird organised all-year-round Hallowe’en parties and the bogle had a rare time vanishing in and out through the walls, shaking chains and generally putting on such a show that everyone went home boasting about how terrified they had been.
Hamish’s old mother was right too.
Within a week everyone had forgotten that the old cottage was ever haunted and, in no time at all, Camusbuie went back to being the quiet and peaceful wee village it had always been.
10.
Hamish and the Green Mist
It had been a long cold winter. The snow had lain thick on the tops of the hills around Camusbuie for weeks. The burn was a thin trickle of black water between hanging banks of ice, frozen into fantastic shapes. The fields were hard as stone and Hamish had to keep the cows in the byre and feed them on the hay stored through the long days of late summer. He came stamping in from the yard one morning, kicking the snow from his boots, his breath like a dragon’s in the cold air.
“Spring’s late this year,” he gasped. “You’d have thought the snow would have begun to melt by now.”
“Aye,” said his mother. “I don’t remember when we had such a long winter.” As if to agree with her, a bank of heavy black clouds rolled down from the top of the Ben. The hillside and trees above the farmhouse vanished in a swirling blizzard.
***
Week after week it went on. Everyone agreed they had never seen a winter like it. There was no sign of the ground thawing, no chance to plough or dig and plant the seeds for the summer. Down in Camusbuie they could talk of nothing else and, in the freezing air, there was no trace of the soft green mist of the first day of spring.
The old lady listened to Hamish complaining over and over, until at last she had had enough.
“You can sit there and moan until you’re blue in the face, Hamish, but I doubt if spring will return until you see to it yourself.”
“See to it myself? What on earth do you mean, mither? You ken fine spring and winter, aye and summer too, come and go on their own.”
“And there’s whiles they need a wee bit help, Hamish. I mind fine one winter your father had to do that. He climbed the Ben and I saw neither hide nor hair of him for two days. But when he came back down, the Green Mist followed him and – oh my, but that was a bonny summer.” She put down her knitting and smiled. “That was the year you were born.”
But Hamish was not listening. He was pulling on his heavy leather jerkin, and climbing into his big boots.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he shouted and trudged off, out into the cold.
It was hard work climbing the Ben. The snow had drifted deep and it was as if Hamish was a tiny creature, struggling to cros
s the soft quilt of a giant’s bed. With every footstep, he sank up to the knees.
No longer able to see where he was or find the path, he climbed higher and higher through the thick blizzard. The driving snow lashed his face and there was a great roaring in the air ahead of him. Clinging on with his fingers, he crawled the last few yards to the mountain top and struggled slowly to his feet. The wind seized at him like a ferocious dog tearing at a bone. On the sheet of thick ice his boots were useless and he went flying, head over heels down the frozen slopes of the far side. Over and over he tumbled, round and round, down and down the mountainside, until at last he fell into a thick bank of snow.
The frozen crust crumbled beneath him and Hamish fell, rumbledethump, into a white snow cave around the gnarled roots of an old tree. He rolled over and sat up, rubbing his elbow. High above him the wind raged across the hole through which he had fallen.
“You might have warned me you were coming,” grumbled a crotchety voice behind him. Hamish spun round. Bright eyes glittered in the darkness beneath the tree roots. Was it a wolf? Or worse?
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t exactly mean to drop in on you like that!”
“Stuff ’n’ puff!” snarled the crotchety voice again. “I expect They sent you to annoy me. They’re always at it, the pair of them.” A small man in a very scruffy green suit crawled from a tunnel in the snow and sat cross-legged, staring rudely at Hamish.
“Nobody sent me,” said Hamish, brushing himself down. “I came on my own. And who’s ‘They’ anyway?”
The little man crossed his arms above his very round stomach, and sniffed rudely.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know!” he said. “Or maybe you hadn’t noticed there’s a war on again.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hamish. “I came up here to try to do something about the winter and…”
“That’s what I mean,” the wee man squeaked in outrage. “They’re at it again and they don’t care who gets in the way. I should have been out of here and down the mountain weeks ago. But here we go again. His High and Mighty Maister of the Ice and the Great Laird of the Gales himself battering away as if nobody else mattered: ‘I’m the greatest’, ‘No you’re not!’”
The little man hopped around in a fury. “I’m telling you – whoever you are – their mother should have banged their heads together when they were just wee patches of bad weather!”
“I think I’m beginning to see,” said Hamish. “It’s all their fault. The winter going on like this.”
“You’re no’ very bright, are you?” said the wee man rudely. “A right big tumshie. Of course it’s all their fault!”
“I’ll ignore that,” said Hamish, trying hard to be dignified, “but how do you stop them fighting?”
“Make them think that somebody’s won, I suppose,” said the wee man. “Though goodness knows how.”
“You mean, if the Master of the Ice thought the Laird of the Gales had won, he’d give up, and…”
“If the Laird thought the Master of the Ice had won, he’d take a tirl to himself and leave me in peace to get on with the spring weather.”
“Well, there has to be a way,” said Hamish. “Just let me think about it for a bit.” He curled up in a corner of the snow hole and put his mind to the problem. It was not easy with the wee man sniffing and humphing and grumbling away to himself in the other corner, as he pulled together sticks and dry brushwood to build a fire. Hamish watched him crawl off into the snow tunnels around the tree roots and come back with more bundles of kindling.
“Here!” He grabbed the wee man excitedly by the sleeve. “I’ve got it. I’ve just had an idea.”
“Mind, whit ye’re at!” squawked the wee man. “That’s an expensive jaicket. An’ it’s only four hundred year old…”
Hamish was hardly listening. He grabbed the bundle of wood and scrabbled around to gather up more.
“As much as you can get!” he shouted. “I need it all. And help me up out of this hole.”
The wee man moaned and grumbled, but in the end he allowed Hamish to climb up onto his shoulders and passed out the brushwood.
“More! More!” shouted Hamish. “As much as you can get.” He dragged the wood, slipping and slithering across the ice, staggering against the howling wind, and piled it on the top of the Ben.
Higher and higher the heap grew while the wee man tunnelled beneath the frozen snow hunting for more.
And still the gale howled around Hamish and the ice forming on his hair and eyebrows jingled like tiny bells whenever he shook his head.
At last, when the pile of firewood was the size of a small house, Hamish called to the wee man to stop. He crumpled some dry brown bracken leaves, then took out a box of matches. Shielding them from the gale, he set fire to the bracken and shoved it deep into the heart of the woodpile. The Great Gale, furious at not being able to blow Hamish over, raged around the mountain top. The tiny flames caught up by it leapt into life and snatched at the sticks, the sticks caught and in no time at all the woodpile was a huge roaring fire, melting the surrounding ice.
The Master of the Ice, feeling a break in his armour, came sweeping back from the north, his deadly breath freezing everything in its path. Far beneath he saw the wind whip the flames until they lit the whole sky and melted the ice cap on top of the Ben of Balvie.
“I have lost,” he wailed. “I have lost to one greater than I.” The hailstones that swirled around them turned to rain, pitting the melting snow.
Then Hamish turned back to the hole.
“Are you there, wee man? I need green branches, pine and fir. Quickly now. Quickly.”
The wee man moaned and grumbled and tunnelled like a whirlwind. Holes appeared in the snow around Hamish, and out shot great branches heavy with sweet-smelling evergreen needles. He seized them and stuck them upright in the soft snow around him.
“Help me, quickly,” shouted Hamish, and the wee man raced around the mountainside sticking the branches in the snow until it seemed as if a tall forest grew there.
The Laird of the Gales, feeling his power broken by the branches, came storming down from the clouds to find a forest growing where none had been. Try though he might to rage and tear at the branches, Hamish and the wee man raced from one to the other, pushing them more and more firmly into the ground as it melted and softened in the heat of the fire. At last the Great Gale died to a whimper.
“I have lost,” he moaned softly. “I have lost to one greater than I.” The howling winds that raged around him died to a soft and gentle south wind.
As Hamish and the wee man stood and watched, the icicles around them began to drip, drip, drip. At first slowly, and then faster, joining the pools of water on the melting snow.
The clouds above them cleared and a Green Mist rose from the Fairy Glen and crept down the mountainside. Hamish turned to the wee man at his side, but he was no longer there. Rolled up in a green ball, he was trundling down the hillside. As he went, his voice drifted back up.
“Just as well I kent the right thing to do. Leave it to a big tumshie like yon and naething will ever get done!”
“Well, I like that!” gasped Hamish, then he laughed and looked around him.
Far, far below, a lazy thread of smoke curled up into the clear, blue, windless sky from the chimney of his wee farmhouse. He took a deep breath and sniffed the warmth of the first spring air. The white snow-covered fields would soon be ready for ploughing and planting, and the earliest snowdrops would be pushing through the black earth.
“Time for home,” said Hamish. “There’s work to be done.” And, unfastening his heavy leather jacket, he marched off down the mountainside to the farm.
11.
Hamish and the Birds
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap went the noise at the window in the very early morning. It woke Hamish from a deep sleep. He stretched and opened one eye to peer out at the grey dawn.
“Too soon to get up,”
he said and yawned and snuggled down again.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap went the noise at the window.
“Hamish,” muttered Mirren sleepily, “you’ll have to trim the branches of that honeysuckle. I’ve been asking you to do it for weeks.” She turned over and went back to sleep.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap the noise went on. The more Hamish tried to ignore it, the louder it seemed to become. At last he sighed, climbed out of bed, and padded over to the window.
It was no honeysuckle bush tapping on the glass. It was a bird, the small round robin redbreast, who lived on the farm. For several winters Mirren had given him corn and scraps when she fed the hens, and in spring he had perched at the heel of Hamish’s boot as he turned the earth, digging up fresh grubs and worms. The little robin was an old friend of the family.
“What’s all the row about?” grumbled Hamish. “Away back to your nest, you daft wee chookie. There’s people trying to sleep in here.” But the robin refused to be chased away. He bobbed up and down bossily on the windowsill, chirping loudly.
“Follow me, follow me.”
“Away you go,” said Hamish. “I’ve got more sense. I’m going back to bed. Shoo!” He shut the window firmly, and crawled under the quilt. The little bird was not to be chased away so easily, he fluffed his feathers angrily and went on tapping on the window pane.
“Follow me, follow me,” he called louder than ever.
“Och, see what he wants, Hamish,” whispered Mirren sleepily.
“Aye – well,” sighed Hamish. “I suppose there will be no peace in this house until I find out what it is.”
He climbed out of bed, dressed, and went out to find the little bird perched on a coil of rope in the yard.
“Follow me, follow me,” called the bird.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” grumbled Hamish, stuffing his shirt into his trousers and pushing his fingers through his untidy ginger hair. The robin fluttered uneasily around the coil of rope, sometimes settling on it, sometimes leaving it to fly around Hamish.
