Orkney Folk Tales Read online

  ‘You didn’t touch the pot,’ said Sati, ‘why is that?’

  The man looked like he was about to faint.

  ‘Here is your thief,’ declared Sati.

  The young man confessed on the spot that it was indeed he who stole the money. He was escorted to the hiding place where he had stashed the money and it was returned to the farmer. Sati received a handsome reward for solving the case and he returned home with his reputation intact. You see, Sati might not have known magic, but the one thing that he did know was human nature!

  10

  GHOSTS

  THE BLACK WIFE OF SCAR

  AND HER SISTERS

  John Traill was the laird of Westove in Sanday and he lived at Scar House in the early 1800s. He had made money in India, serving in the army, and while he was out there he took an Indian woman as his wife. They had four daughters together and everything went well until a letter arrived to say that his father was seriously ill and not expected to live long. This meant that he would inherit the estate and must return to Orkney as soon as possible. He made arrangements for his daughters’ education, leaving them in the care of a friend with sufficient funds to see that they were well provided for. He then prepared to leave, but so did his wife. He asked her coldly why she was packing as he had no intention of bringing her to Orkney with him. It was fine to have a black wife in India, but not so in the circles in which he moved in his native land. His wife’s dark eyes smouldered and she said, ‘I will be at Scar with you; living or dead.’

  He took a ship back to England and everything went well for the first part of the journey. But little did he know that his Indian wife had stowed away aboard the ship and was watching him. One night, as he stood by the rail of the ship looking at the vast darkness of the ocean, his wife slipped silently by his side and said, ‘I told you that I’d be at Scar with you, living or dead.’

  Traill was stunned by the sight of her standing beside him on the deck of the ship. He looked around and saw that there was no one to be seen so he grabbed his wife and threw her over the side of the ship. As he did that a seagull flew past and cried its screeching cry. Ever after that he could not stand to hear the cry of a seagull. The blood raced through his veins and beat in his ears as he stood there, the enormity of his crime starting to dawn on him. But no one had seen her on board and no one had seen her murdered, so he was free to carry on his life as he saw fit.

  He returned to Sanday and took up residence in Scar House; a large, rambling building that had been built in three stages over a period of time. It lies by the sea, where the seagulls constantly fly. His Indian wife and family were never mentioned and he was free to look for a new wife who would bring with her a dowry and maybe some more land.

  One winter’s night a servant girl went to the byre to milk the cows. Her only light was a flickering flame from the old cruisie lamp that burned fish oil with a rush wick. As she was milking the flame went out, leaving her in darkness. She thought that the cow must have flicked it with her tail, when suddenly the flame returned. This was very strange, but the girl continued milking. Then the light went out again only to return after a few seconds. The girl looked towards the lamp and her blood ran cold as she saw a black hand reaching out towards the flame and lifting it from the wick. After playing with it for a few seconds the hand returned the flame to its rightful place. The black wife of Scar had kept her word by saying that she would be there; living or dead.

  The haunting was not just confined to the byre for one of the rooms in the middle section of the house always had strange sounds emitting from it and strange, unexplainable events happening. It became known as ‘Peggy’s Hole’; though why it was ‘Peggy’s’ in particular is unknown.

  John Traill died of what was termed ‘not a very good disease’, which was the polite way of referring to syphilis. In his latter days he was unable to walk, so they used to sit him in a chair outside in the garden where he could feel the sun on his face. It was a pale sun compared to the one that once shone on him in Madras. But day after day he sat there, being constantly tormented by the sound that reminded him of his crime. He died in his chair as the seagulls cried in the skies above him.

  This is not the only ‘black wife’ story from Orkney, which makes me wonder if this is a type of story that is found in other areas.

  Old Nisthouse, Harray, was once the home of the Clouston family who were said to have had an interest in the slave trade. It was said that one of them brought home a black woman who lived with him for a time before disappearing. After that a black shape, known as the ‘black wife’ was seen in the field behind the house. A friend of mine’s mother saw it when she was a little girl, around 1900, and described it as a shapeless black mist rising up from the ground.

  The other haunting is at the house of Melsetter in North Walls on the island of Hoy. It was owned for a long time by the Moodie family. Captain James Moodie, of the Royal Navy, was fatally shot in Broad Street, Kirkwall, in 1725 as part of a feud. It is said that his ghost still walks the grounds of Melsetter House. But he has company, it seems. The Moodies sold the estate to the Heddle family in the early part of the nineteenth century. They adopted the name Moodie-Heddle through marriage and had business interests in Africa, including, it was said, slavery. One of the Moodie-Heddles returned to Orkney with a beautiful black woman, who lived with him for a time before disappearing. It was said that her ghost was seen in one of the rooms of the old house (since rebuilt) and walking in the grounds of the house. On another occasion a maid went into the nursery to put fuel on the fire and saw a woman standing in front of the fire, her arms resting on the mantelpiece and she was sobbing. The maid asked her what was wrong and the stranger turned around, revealing herself to be a black woman. The maid knew of the ghost and fled the room as quickly as she could.

  THE PHANTOM HAND

  The Links of Warsetter in Sanday is a large stretch of sandy ground that slopes down towards the sea. Large numbers of grey seals gather together to bask on the white, sandy beach that lies at its foot; a place where people seldom go.

  Where you get these sandy links you also get rabbits as the soft, well-drained ground is ideal for them. Once upon a time it was illegal to poach rabbits, as they were used by the big house as a source of meat. On the Links of Warsetter used to stand a house called Grindley, now long since gone. One night, under the cover of darkness, the man of Grindley set off to check his rabbit snares, to see if he would get a dinner out of them. He saw that one rabbit had gone down a rabbit hole with his snare, so he put his hand down the hole to retrieve it. Suddenly, a cold hand gripped his one and a thin voice said:

  Thoo can haad an’ I’ll draa,

  Till the cock o’ Grindley does craa.46

  The phantom hand had him in a vice-like grip and there was nothing that he could do but to wait there all night until the cock of Grindley crowed in the morning, at which moment the ghostly hand disappeared and the man was released from its grasp.

  THE WHITE LADY OF CLESTRAIN

  The Hall of Clestrain in Orphir was the birthplace of the Arctic explorer, Dr John Rae (1813–93), who mapped over 1,750 miles of the coast of Arctic Canada. The house in which he lived was a replacement for a much earlier house, which still lies down by the sea and was used as a storehouse in Rae’s day. As a boy he knew the following story and said that he would often see ghostly, flickering lights emanating from the house at night, which made his blood freeze with terror. He later discovered that these lights were caused by smugglers signalling to a boat at sea that the coast was clear for landing gin and brandy.

  In the mid-eighteenth century the laird of Clestrain was William Honyman, a great, blustering bully of a man, quick to anger and handy with his fists. Despite his signing a ‘Declaration for the Suppression of Smuggling’ it was said that there was no greater offender than him. Estate tenants paid their rent in kind, with grain being the main form of exchange. This grain was much in demand in areas like the Hebrides and Norway, where the
lairds would buy goods to bring back to Orkney and sell here. In 1758 Honyman decided that his son, Mungo, should join him on his latest trip down to the Hebrides with a boatload of grain to sell. His wife, Mary, was against the idea of her young son going on such a dangerous voyage, but William had made up his mind and once that was made up then he could not be persuaded otherwise. No matter how much she begged and wept he remained resolute and said that it was time for the boy to learn the trade of buying and selling.

  William Honyman had a personal servant called John, a man cut from the same cloth as his master. The boat was prepared and made ready for the sea voyage that lay ahead of it and the grain was put into sacks ready to be loaded on board once they were ready to sail. Before they left, Honyman took a large wooden box and filled it with his valuables. Rumour had it that it contained a large sum of money, family jewellery and a bag of Spanish dollars. He and his servant, John, carried the box up to the old hill dyke that separated the arable land from the common grazing on the hills above. They buried the box and on his return he instructed his wife to keep a watch on the hill dyke. The cargo was loaded and the laird set sail with his son and his servant, John, as crew. The heavily laden boat sailed across the bay, out through the Hoy Sound into the Atlantic Ocean and disappeared from view.

  Three months passed without news and then one evening in late August the laird’s boat was seen coming in through Hoy Sound and towards Clestrain. Mary and the servants gathered on the shore in eager anticipation of unloading the cargo that they had bought in the Hebrides. As the boat drew nearer they could see two figures standing in the bow of the boat and the laird at the helm. The boat sped swiftly towards its usual anchorage but when it reached the spot it slowly dissolved into thin air and was gone. The shock of seeing this phantom ship was too much for Mary’s sensitive nature and she had to be helped back to the house, where she died soon afterwards. News finally came which told how the laird, his son and servant were lost off Cape Wrath on their first day out of Orkney when the overloaded boat was swamped by a heavy sea.

  It was often said that the figure of a lady in white could be seen floating along the old hill dyke in the evening’s dying light. Mary Honyman still guards the treasure that her husband entrusted her with. It was also said that on the anniversary of his death, the ghost of the laird and his servant can be seen down by the shore preparing the cargo and getting ready to sail.

  Strangely enough, another house associated with Dr John Rae has a ghost story attached to it. After Dr Rae retired he and his wife lived at Berstane House, to the east of Kirkwall. My mother once told me of a story that she heard of a girl who was a servant in the house; after Rae’s time. The girl had become pregnant but had managed to conceal the fact from her employer, as she feared that she would be dismissed if he found out. One night she went into labour alone in her bedroom. They found her in the morning; she had passed out after the birth from the shock, pain and exhaustion and the baby had suffocated under the blankets. What happened to the girl, I don’t know, but it was said that her ghost still walks the corridors of the house, searching for her lost child.

  THE GHOST OF KIRKHOUSE

  There was once a dairymaid who worked at Kirkhouse in South Ronaldsay. She was said to be a notorious liar and she would often claim that she saw ghosts in the local kirkyard. When people said that they didn’t believe her she would reply, ‘May my feet go rotten and drop off if it isn’t true!’

  Strange to say, she fell victim to a disease that caused her feet to go gangrenous and they had to be amputated before she died. It is said that her ghost can be seen walking down a passage, holding a foot under each arm.

  THE WATCH

  Peter Mowat from Rackwick in Hoy had been visiting Longhope on business and was returning home along the cliffs. When he reached a place called the Geo Heads he met two strangers who were dressed in seamen’s clothing. The one stepped forward and asked him if he had the time on him. Peter took out his pocketwatch and told the man what the time was. The stranger looked at the watch in Peter’s hand and said, ‘Where did you get that watch?’

  ‘I bought it in Wick when I was there at the fishing,’ said Peter.

  ‘If you open the back of that watch,’ said the stranger, ‘you will find the number 33707 engraved on the inside of the back casing.’

  ‘Why, there might be indeed,’ said Peter, ‘in truth I have never looked, but I will now.’

  He opened the back of the watch and sure enough the number was there.

  ‘How did you know that number was there?’ asked Peter.

  ‘It is my watch;’ replied the stranger, ‘my corpse lies at the foot of this geo and the watch was stolen from me by a man from Longhope. There is a gold chain that goes with it too, which is still in my pocket, but the Longhope man became too scared to recover it. He sold the watch in Wick. You bought it in good faith, not knowing its history, but I have something to ask you to do for me. Take a boat and recover my body and give me a Christian burial. You can have the gold chain as your payment. Do this for me and you will never want for as long as you live but, if you refuse to do it, you will have no rest by day or night.’

  With that the two men disappeared into thin air. Peter ran home, as fast as his feet would carry him. He was afraid to carry out the ghost’s wishes, but still he was more afraid of what would happen if he didn’t, so he gathered a crew of elderly men and set off towards the geo. He found the fisherman’s skeleton just where he said it would be; lying on a ledge of rock above the sea. He recognised the clothing as that worn by the man that he had met on the clifftop, but it was ragged and tattered from exposure to the elements. Inside the waistcoat pocket he found the gold chain and clipped it onto his watch. The man’s remains were taken aboard the boat and brought to Rackwick and a funeral was arranged right away.

  THE UNBAPTISED BAIRN’S GHOST

  It was once believed that if a baby died without being baptised then it couldn’t rest as it wasn’t allowed to enter heaven without a name. Walter Traill Dennison recalled being asked by an illiterate couple to write the name of a stillborn baby on a slip of paper so that they could pin it onto the shroud to act as a ‘passport to paradise’. This was in the 1840s, so imagine my surprise to hear of it being done in my family in 1912. My great-uncle, Johnny Ernest Trousdell Drever, was married and his wife was expecting a baby. He had a job carting goods for a shop and was living at his wife’s parents’ house at the time. Before he left the house one morning he told his wife, Maggie, not to go to work in the kelp as she was nearly at her full term and the work was too heavy for her. After he left, his wife’s father made her go to the shore and carry up the heavy wet kelp with the others, which led to her miscarrying the baby boy that she was carrying. Johnny wrote the name ‘George Drever’ on a slip of paper and pinned it to the shroud; he also had a gravestone erected bearing the child’s name, which can still be seen in the Pierowall cemetery in Westray to this day. Sadly, they had no more children.

  In the farm of Mirland in Deerness there is a mound called Howedooack. It was said that a servant girl on the farm had an illegitimate baby that she killed as soon as it was born, burying the body in the mound. After that the ghost of a bairn was heard crying around the mound and it would follow people walking along the rough road that ran close by it. At that time there was a pub at Smiddybanks where ale could be bought (it closed in the 1880s). One night a man was heading home from the pub with a full head of steam when he heard the sound of a bairn coming crying behind him. He suffered it for a while before losing his temper and saying, ‘Hadd awey wae thee, bare erse!’47

  As soon as he said ‘bare erse’ the crying stopped, for the child had been given a name.

  My grandmother, Davina Drever, told the story of a child’s ghost who haunted a road in Westray. In the 1890s she was walking home from school with a friend when a white light rose from the road and floated in front of them. Many people saw it at various times until a minister went and spoke to it, after whic
h it was never seen again.

  THE WHITE HORSE OF CLUMLY

  At the end of the nineteenth century there were two young men working as labourers at the farm of Clumly in Sandwick. Everything was going fine until a pretty young girl from a neighbouring parish came to work there. Her beauty captivated both the young men and they started to court her. Flattered by the attention, the girl was happy to lead them on, not favouring the one above the other. Soon tempers started to fray as the two men tried to win the heart of the girl; any thoughts of a former friendship were dispelled and a bitter hatred took hold within them. It all came to a tragic conclusion one night when these two rivals were sent to the barn to thresh sheaves of corn. Facing each other with their flails in their hands they started to argue over the girl. Soon the insults were flying and their blood got hot. One of the men took up his flail and struck his rival over the head with it, killing him instantly. Faced with the sudden realisation of what he had done the murderer knew that he had to dispose of the body or face the hangman’s rope. He dragged the dead body over to the corner of the barn and piled straw over it to hide it from view. Once darkness fell he took a white horse from the farm and, putting the body into a sack, threw it over the horse’s back. He rode the horse as fast as he could towards the cliffs of Yesnaby, which stand tall and dark against the might of the Atlantic Ocean. He heard the sound of the waves far below, pounding against the cliff-face and it was into that churning sea that he threw his victim’s body. Mounting once more he rode back to the farm as fast as he could. As they neared the farm he urged the horse on to gallop towards a drystone dyke that surrounded one of the fields. He tried to get the horse to jump it, but its back hooves clipped the top of the wall, tearing down the top row of stones as it did so, before falling heavily to the ground. Both the horse and the rider were killed by the fall and their bodies were found lying there the next day. No matter how often people tried to rebuild the top row of stones on that dyke they are always on the ground once more the following morning. It is said that the ghost of the white horse and its rider can be seen in the evening, racing towards the cliffs at Yesnaby, forever condemned to relive that fateful night until the end of time.