by Bob Curran
“The Brownie of the Black Haggs”
by James Hogg
When the Spotts were lairds of Wheelhope, which is now a long time ago, there was one of the ladies who was very badly spoken of in the country. People did not openly assert that Lady Wheelhope was a witch but everyone had an aversion to hearing her named, and when by chance she happened to be mentioned, old men would shake their heads and say “ach, let us alane o’ her! The less ye meddle wi’ her the better!” Auld wives would give over spinning, and, as a pretence for hearing what might be said about her, poke in the fire with the tongs, cocking up their ears all the while; and then after some meaning coughs, hems and haws, would haply say, “Hech-wow sirs! An’ a’ be true that’s said!” or something equally wise and decisive as that.
In short, Lady Wheelhope was accounted a very bad woman. She was an inexorable tyrant to her family, quarrelled with the servants. Often cursing them, and turning them away, especially if they were religious, for these she could not endure, but she suspected them of everything bad. Whenever she found out any of the servant men of the laird’s establishment for religious characters, she soon gave them up to the military and got them shot [Editor’s Note: During the late 1600s and part of the 1700s, the only form of worship that was tolerated in the British Isles was the Anglican Church. This was meant to disadvantage the Catholics, but it also disadvantaged Presbyterians, particularly the Covenanting Presbyterians, many of whom lived on the Borders. Presbyterianism was treated largely as treason, and those who worshipped in this manner were liable to be executed.], and several girls that were regular in their devotions, she was supposed to have popped off with poison. She was certainly a wicked woman, else many good people were mistaken in her character, and the poor persecuted Covenanters were obliged to unite in their prayers against her.
As for the laird, he was a stump. A big, dun-faced, pluffy body, that cared neither for good nor evil and did not know the one from the other. He laughed at his lady’s tantrums and barley-hoods (outbursts), and the greater the rage she got into; the laird thought it the better sport. One day when two servant maids came running to him, and told him that his lady had felled one of their companions, the laird laughed heartily at them, and said he did not doubt it.
“Why sir, how can you laugh?” said they. “The poor girl is killed.”
“Very likely, very likely” said the laird. “Well, it will teach her to take care who she angers again.”
“And, sir, your lady will be hanged.”
“Very likely; well it will learn her how to strike so rashly again—Ha ha ha! Will it not Jessy?”
But when that same Jessy died suddenly one morning, the laird was great confounded and seemed dimly to comprehend that there had been unfair play going on. There was little doubt that she was taken off by poison, but whether the lady did it through jealousy or not, was never divulged; but it greatly bamboozled and astonished the poor laird, for his nerves failed him, and his whole frame became paralytic. He seems to have been exactly in the same frame of mind with a colley I once had. He was extremely fond of the gun as long as I did not kill anything with her (there being no game laws in Ettrick Forest in those days) and he got a grand chase after the hares when I missed them. But there was one day I chanced for a marvel to shoot one dead, a few paces before his nose. I’ll never forget the astonishment that the poor beast manifested. He stared for a while at the gun, and another while at the dead hare, and seemed to be drawing the conclusion that if the case stood thus, there was no creature sure of its life. Finally, he took his tail between his legs, and ran away home, and never again would face a gun in all his life.
So it was precisely with Laird Sprot of Wheelhope. As long as the lady’s wrath produced only noise and splutter among the servants, he thought it fine sport, but when he saw what he believed the dreadful effects of it, her became like a barrel organ out of tune, and could only discourse one note which he did to everyone he met. “I wish she munna hae gotten something she has been the waur of”. This note he repeated early and late, sleeping and waking, alone and in company, from the moment that Jessy died till she was buried; and on going to the churchyard as chief mourner, he whispered it to her relations by the way. When they came to the grave, he took his stand at the head, nor would he give place to the girl’s father, but there he stood like a huge post, as though he neither saw or heard, and when he had lowered her late comely head into the grave and dropped the cord, he slowly lifted his hat with one hand, wiped his dim eyes with the back of the other, and said in a deep tremulous tone: “Poor lassie! I wish she dinna get something she had been the waur of.”
This death made a great noise among the common people; but there was no protection for the life of the subject in those days, and provided a man or woman was a true loyal subject, and a real Anti-Covenanter, any of them might kill as they liked. So there was no-one to take cognisance of the circumstances relating to the death of poor Jessy.
After this, the lady walked softly for the space of two or three years. She saw that she had rendered herself odious, and had entirely lost her husband’s countenance, which she liked worst of all. But the evil propensity could not be overcome, and a poor boy, whom the laird out of compassion had taken into his service, being found dead one morning, the country people could no longer be restrained, so they went in a body to the Sheriff, and insisted on an investigation. It was proved that she detested the boy and had often threatened him and had given him brose (meal) and butter the afternoon before he died, but the cause was ultimately dismissed, and the pursuers fined.
No-one can tell to what height of wickedness she might now have proceeded, had not a check of a very singular kind been laid upon her. Among the servants that came home at the next term, was one who called himself Merodach; and a strange person he was. He had the form of a boy, but the features of one a hundred years old, save that his eyes had a brilliancy and restlessness, which was very extraordinary, bearing a strong resemblance to the eyes of a well-known species of monkey. He was forward and perverse in all his actions, and disregarded the pleasure and displeasure of any person, but he performed his work well and with apparent ease. From the moment that he entered the house, the lady conceived a mortal antipathy against him, and besought the laird to turn him away. But the laird, of himself, never turned away any body, and moreover he had hired him for a trivial wage, and the fellow neither wanted activity or perseverance. The natural consequence of this arrangement was that the lady instantly set herself to make Merodach’s life as bitter as it was possible, in order to get early quit of a domestic, every way so disgusting. Her hatred of him was not like a common antipathy, entertained by one human being against another—she hated him, as one might hate a toad or an adder; and his occupation of jotteryman (as the laird termed his servant of all work) keeping him always about her hand, it must have proved highly disagreeable.
She scolded him, she raged at him, but he only mocked her wrath, and giggled and laughed at her, with the most provoking derision. She tried to fell him again and again, but never, with all her address, could she hit him, and never did she make a blow at him that she did not repent it. She was heavy and unwieldy, and he as quick in his motions as a monkey; besides, he usually had her in such an ungovernable rage, that when she flew at him, she hardly knew what she was doing. At one time, she guided her blow towards him, and he at the same instant, avoided it with such dexterity, that she knocked down the chief hind or foreman; and then Merodach giggled so heartily that, lifting the kitchen poker, she threw it at him with a full design of knocking out his brains, but the missile only broken every plate and ashet on the kitchen dresser.
She then hasted to the laird, crying bitterly and telling him she would not suffer that wretch Merodach, as she called him, to stay another night in the family.
“Why then put him away and trouble me no more about him,” said the laird.
“Put him away!” exclaimed she; “I have already ordered him away a hundred times;
and charged him never to let me see his horrible face again; but he only flouts me, and tells me he’ll see me at the devil first.”
The pertinacity of the fellow amused the laird exceedingly, his dim eyes turned upwards into his head with delight; he then looked two ways at once, turned round his back on her, and laughed till the tears ran down his dun cheeks, but he could only articulate: “You’re fitted now.”
The lady’s cry of rage still increasing from this derision, she flew on the laird, and said he was not worthy of the name of a man, if he did not turn away that pestilence, after the way he had abused her.
“Why Shusy, my dear, what has he done to you?”
“What has he done to me! Has he not caused me to knock down John Thomson and I do not know if he will come to life again?”
“Have you felled your favourite John Thomson?” said the laird, laughing more heartily than before, “you might have done a worse deed than that. But what evil has John done?”
“And has he not broken every plate and dish on the whole dresser?” continued the lad lady, disregarding the laird’s question, “and for all that devastation he only mocks my displeasure—absolutely mocks me—and if you do not have him turned away, and hanged and shot for his deeds, you are not worthy of the name of man.”
“O alack! What a devastation among the china metal”, said the laird and calling on Merodach he said. “Tell me thou evil Merodach of Babylon, how thou dared to knock down thy lady’s favourite, John Thomson.”
“Not I your honour. It was my lady herself, who got into such a furious rage at me, that she mistook her man, and felled Mr. Thomson; and the good man’s skull is fractured.”
“That was very odd”, said the laird, chuckling, “I do not comprehend it. But then, what the devil set you smashing all my lady’s delft and china ware?—That was a most infamous and provoking action.”
“It was she herself, your honour. Sorry would I have been to have broken one dish belonging to the house. I take all the house servants to witness, that my lady smashed all the dishes with a poker, and now lays the blame on me.”
The laid turned his dim and delighted eyes on his lady who was crying with vexation and rage, and seemed meditating another attack on the culprit, which he did not at all appear to shun, but rather encourage. She, however, vented her wrath in threatenings of the most deep and desperate revenge, the creature all the while assuring her that she would be foiled, and that in all her encounters and contests with him, she would ultimately come to the worst. He was resolved to do his duty, and therefore before his master he defied her.
The laird thought more than he considered it prudent to reveal, but he had little doubt that his wife would wreak vengeance on his jotteryman which she avowed, and as little of her capability. He almost shuddered when he recollected one who had taken something that she had been the waur of.
In a word, the Lady of Wheelhope’s inveterate malignity against this one object, was like the rod of Moses, that swallowed up the rest of the serpents. All her wickedness and evil propensities seemed to be superseded by it, if not utterly absorbed in its virtues. The rest of the family now lived in comparative peace and quietness; for early and late her malevolence was venting itself against the jotteryman, and him alone. It was a delirium of hatred and vengeance, on which the whole bent and bias of her inclination was set. She could not stay away from the creature’s presence, for in the intervals when absent from him, she spent her breath in curses and execrations, and then, not being able to rest, she ran again to seek him, her eyes gleaming with the anticipated delights of vengeance, while, ever and anon, all the scaith, the ridicule and the harm rebounded on herself.
Was it not strange that she could not get quit of this sole annoyance of her life? One would have thought that she easily might. But by this time, there was nothing further from her intention, she wanted vengeance, full, adequate, and delicious vengeance on her audacious opponent. But he was a strange and terrible creature, and the means of retaliation came always, as it were, to his hand.
Bread and sweet milk was the only fare that Merodach cared for, and he, having bargained for that, would not want it, though he often got it with a curse and with ill will. The lady, having kept back his wonted allowance for some days, on the Sabbath morning following, she set him down a bowl of rich sweet milk, well drugged with a deadly poison, and then she lingered in a little anteroom to watch the success of her grand plot, and prevent any other creature from tasting of the poison. Merodach came in, and the house-maid says to him, “Here is your breakfast, creature.”
“Oho! My lady has been liberal this morning”, said he, “but I am beforehand with her—Here little Missie, you seem very hungry today—take you my breakfast.” And with that he set the beverage down to the lady’s favourite spaniel. It so happened that the lady’s only son came at that moment into the anteroom, seeking her and teazing his mamma about something which took her attention from the hall-table for a space. When she looked again, and saw Missie lapping up the sweet milk, she burst from her lobby like a dragon, screaming as if her head had been on fire, kicked the bowl and the remainder of its contents against the wall, and lifting Missie in her bosom, she retreated hastily, crying all the way.
“Ha, ha, ha—I have you now,” cried Merodach, as she vanished from the hall.
Poor Missie died immediately, and very privately; indeed she would have died and been buried, and never one have seen her, save her mistress, had not Merodach, by a luck that never failed him, popped his nose over the flower garden wall, just as his lady was laying her favourite in a grave of her own digging. She, not perceiving her tormentor, plied on at her task, apostrophising the insensate little carcass,—”Ah! Poor dear little creature, thou hast had a hard fortune, and has drank of the bitter potion that was not intended for thee, but he shall drink it three times double for thy sake.”
“Is that little Missie?” said the eldritch voice of the jotteryman, close at the lady’s ear. She uttered a loud scream and sank down on the bank. “Alack for poor little Missie!” continued the creature in a tone of mockery. “My heart is sorry for Missie. What has befallen her—whose breakfast cup did she drink?”
“Hence with thee, thou fiend!” cried the lady. “What right hast thou to interfere upon thy mistress’s privacy? Thy turn is coming yet, or may the nature of woman change within me.”
“It is changed already,” said the creature, grinning with delight; “I have thee now, I have thee now! And were it not to shew my superiority over thee, which I do every hour, I would sooner see thee strapped like a mad cat, or a worrying bratch. What wilt thou try next?”
“I will cut thy throat, and if I die for it, will rejoice in the deed, a deed of charity to all who dwell on the face of the earth. Go about thy business.”
“I have warned thee before, dame, and I now warn thee again that all thy mischief meditated against me will fall double on thine own head.”
“I want none of your warning, and none of your instructions, fiendish cur. Hence with your elvish face, and take care of yourself!”
It would be too disgusting and horrible to relate or read all the incidents that fell out between this unaccountable couple. Their enmity against each other had no end, and no mitigation, and scarcely a single day passed over on which her acts and malevolent ingenuity did not terminate fatally for some favourite thing of the lady’s, while all these doings never failed to appear as her own act. Scarcely was there a thing, animate or inanimate, on which she set a value, left to her, that was not destroyed, and yet scarcely one hour or minute could she remain absent from her tormentor, and yet all the while it seems, solely for the purpose of tormenting him.
But while all the rest of the establishment enjoyed peace and quietness from the fury of their termagant dame, matters grew worse and worse between the fascinated pair. The lady haunted the menial, in the same manner as the raven haunts the eagle, for a perpetual quarrel, though the former knows that in every encounter she is to come
off the loser. But now noises were heard on the stairs by night, and it was whispered among the menials, that the lady had been seeking Merodach’s bed by night, on some horrible in tent. Several of them would have sworn that they had seen her passing and repassing on the stair after midnight, when all was quiet; but then it was likewise well known that Merodach slept with well fastened doors, and a companion in another bed in the same room, whose bed, too, was nearest the door. Nobody cared much what became of the jotteryman, for he was an unsocial and disagreeable person; but some one told him what they had seen, and hinted a suspicion of the lady’s intent. But the creature only bit his upper lip, winked with his eyes and said, “She had better let alone; she will be the first to rue that.”
Not long after this, to the horror of the family and the whole countryside, the laird’s only son was found murdered in his bed one morning, under circumstances that manifested the most fiendish cruelty and inveteracy on the part of his destroyer. As soon as the atrocious act was divulged, the lady fell into convulsions, and lost her reason, and happy had it been for her had she never recovered either the use of her reason, or her corporeal functions any more, for there was blood upon her hand, which she took no care to conceal, and there was too little doubt that it was the blood of her own innocent and beloved boy, the sole heir and hope of the family.
The blow deprived the laird of all power of action; but the lady had a brother, a man of the law, who came and instantly proceeded to an investigation of this unaccountable murder, but before the Sheriff arrived, the housekeeper took the lady’s brother aside, and told him he had better not go on with the scrutiny, for she was sure that the crime would be brought home to her unfortunate mistress; and after examining into several corroborative circumstances, and viewing the state of the raving maniac, with the blood on her hand and arm, he made the investigation a very short one, declaring the domestics all exculpated.
