CHAPTER 32

Commissions and black bills he had,

And a’ the land went hey-gae mad,

The like was never seen, joe:

To dance and caper in the air,

And there’s an end of him, joe.

Old Jacobite Song

Weel, ye see, my masters and mistresses, this is what I never expected to see. There is something sae grand in being in the presence of a King and Queen and their courtiers, that it brings me in mind of the devil and his agents that I have been in the habit of entertaining for a month bygane. But there is some wee difference in masters for a’ that; for, in my late service, if I had been brought in to entertain them, in an instant they would have had me transformed into some paltry animal, and then amused themselves by tormenting that animal to death, by dissecting it while living. But the queerest thing of all was this – there was aye a spark of life that they could not destroy, which, for all their cruelties, remained active and intelligent as before; and the moment they put that spark of life out of one animal, they popped it into another, and there was I obliged to undergo the same dismemberment and pain once more, and so on for ever. The inflicting of torment was their chief delight, and of that delight there was no satiety – it seemed still to increase by gratification.

On the very first day that I entered on my probation they had a feast, as my comrades know, and as I also have good reason to know, for on that day I suffered death nine times; and yet I was Gibbie Jordan again before night. They first turned me into a cock, and after the three pages had chased me round the castle, and thrown stones at me till I was hanging out my tongue, and could not cackle another lilt, they seized me, took me into the scullery, and drew my neck. Ere ever I was aware, they had me transformed into a huge lubberly calf, while one of the hellish pages was dragging me by the neck with a prickly rope made of hurcheon hides, and the two others were belabouring my rumple with cudgels. I suspected their intentions, and being still terrified for death, and inclining rather to suffer any thing, I drew back, shook my head, and bellowed at them, while they still redoubled their blows on my carcase, and cursed me. In spite of all I could do, they dragged me gasping into the slaughter-house, kept the knife an excruciating long time at my throat, and then, after piercing the jugular vein, they laughed immoderately to see me running about, bleeding to death, with my glazed stupid eyes; and when, through faintness, I began to flounder and grovel on the floor, they laughed amain, threshed me to make me plunge a little more, and when I could do nothing farther than give a faint baa! they thought that the best sport of all, and mimicked me.

I had scarcely ceased baaing as a calf, when I found myself a beautiful cappercailzie, winging the winter cloud, and three devils of falcons after me. ‘Now,’ thinks I to myself, ‘If I do not give you the glaiks now, my hellish masters, may I never wap a wing again. By all the powers of swiftness, but I shall try for once if the feathers shall not carry the flesh away.’ Sanct Martha, as I did scour the rimy firmament! I took the wind in my tail, but I went with such amazing velocity that I left it behind me, and as I clove it, it seemed to return in my face. I reached the shoulder of a lofty mountain, and then I laid back my wings, and bolted through the air like a flash of lightning. ‘O ho! Messrs Hawks, where are you now?’ thought I to myself. Good Lord! ere ever I was aware, there was ane o’ them gave me a nab on the crown, that dovered me, and gart me tumble heels-o’er-head down frae the shelves of the clouds; and lighting with a dunt on the ground, I had nae shift but to stap my head in a heather bush, and let them pelt at me till I got some breath again. Then I made for a cottage, thinking the inmates could not but pity my condition, and drive the hawks away from me. I took cover among their cabbage, in the sight of both man and wife; but instead of pitying me, the one came with an old spear, and the other with the tongs, to finish my existence – and always when the falcons came down on me with their talons, the two cried out, ‘Weel done, little hawkie! Yether him up! puik him weel!’ I was forced to take wing again, till at length, through fatigue and want of feathers I dropt close to the castle whence I had set out, and the three falcons, closing with me, first picked out my eyes and then my brains. I was stabbed as a salmon, hunted as a roe-buck, felled as a bull, and had my head chopped off for a drake. The dinner was made up of me. I supplied every dish, and then was forced to cook them all afterward. It was no wonder that I could not partake of the fragments of the meal.

From the moment that the Christian warriors were all dismissed with disgrace from the castle, the devil became contumacious with the Master, and assayed to carry matters with a very high hand. But he had to do with one that would not succumb, no not in the smallest point, but who opposed him with a degree of virulence of which even the master fiend seemed scarcely capable. It was a scene of constant contention and rage, and the little subordinate demons did not always know which to obey. It was, if it please your Majesties, a scene acted in terrible magnificence, of which I have seen several poor and abortive emblems among mortal men. And henceforth I shall aways believe and feel, when I see a family or society constantly involved in disputes, wranglings, and angry emotions, that they are children of the wicked one, and moved by the spirit of discord, that bane of the human race.

‘The worthy gentleman hath said well,’ said the abbot. ‘It is a moral truth that can never be too deeply impressed, that peace and love only lead to happiness. They are emanations from above, and the contrary passions from beneath. All the fierce and fiery passions of the soul are the offspring of hell fire. But a truce with preaching. Honest friend, go on with your strange relation, and acquaint us in what manner his infernal majesty and the king of mortal magicians spent their time.’

In constant discord and jarring. The devil challenged the Master with impotency in entertaining a poor crazy monk, and submitting to be protected and even cowed by him; at which the Master took high offence, and retorted in the bitterest terms; while the other always hinted that he would make him repent his intercourse with that preposterous and presumptive fool. So he termed our own worthy friar and head chaplain.

In one thing only they agreed, and that was in abusing the witches. Never were there poor deluded creatures guided in such a way as they. The devil says to the Master one day in my hearing, ‘Brother Michael,’ says he, ‘I have an act of justice to perform to all our true and trusty female lieges in this quarter. I gave them my princely word of honour, that on their yielding themselves up souls and bodies to me and to my service, they should all be married!, and all to young and goodly husbands too. That having been the principal, and almost the only boon, the good consistent creatures required of me for the sacrifice they made, they must not be disappointed.’ The Master acquiesced, but at the same time remarked, with what I judged unreasonable chagrin, that when he was keeping his word so punctually, it betokened nothing good for those to whom he kept it.

Well, we had a witch’s wedding every night for nine nights running; but such extreme of wickedness is past all human comprehension, beyond the possibility of description. The marriage ceremony itself, always performed by a demon in the habit of a friar, was a piece of the most horrid blasphemy ever conceived; and every night one of the witches was married to the devil in disguise. Sometimes the bridegroom made his appearance as a gay cavalier, sometimes as a country squire, a foreign merchant, a minstrel, and a moss-trooper. The old wretch of a bride was all painted by some devilish cantrip, and bedecked with false jewels, and though she seemed always aware of the deceit in a certain degree, from former experiences, yet it was wonderful with what avidity each of the old creatures clung to her enamoured and goodly husband! How they mumped and minced in their talking, and ogled with their old grey ropy eyes! And then how they danced! Gracious me, how they flung, and danced among the deils and the warlocks! and capered and snapped their fingers, giving their partners often a jerk on the nose or the temple as they passed and repassed in the reel, as quick as green clocks on a pool. Then the bedding of the brides, these surpassed all description; and as they had me fairly in thrall, I was suffered to witness every thing. The first witch bride was led out at the back door of the castle with much state and ceremony, into a place that had been a bowling green, and in which there was nothing else save a bowling green: Yet, to my amazement, there stood a bower of the most superb magnificence; and there, in a chamber hung with gorgeous tapestry that glittered all with gold and rubies, the loving couple retired to their repose, and to all the delights and joys of so happy an union. Then wishing them the greatest conjugal felicity, all the gallants returned to the castle. But I, being curious to see what would be the end of this grand pavilion in the bowling-green, which I knew must be merely a delusion, a vision, a shadow of something that had no stability of existence, went up to the top of the castle, and from a loop-hole sat and watched what was to be the end of this phenomenon. I waited a good long while, and began to think all was real, and that the splendid witch had met with a happy fortune – for I knew them too well to be all witches from former happy experience. But at length the lusty bridegroom, as I supposed, began to weary of his mate, for I saw the form of the bower beginning to change, and fall flat on the top, and its hue also became of a lurid fiery colour. I cannot tell your Majesties what sort of sensations I felt when I saw the wedded couple sinking gradually down through a bed of red burning fire, and the poor old beldame writhing to death in the arms of a huge and terrible monster, that squeezed her in its embraces, and hugged her, and caressed her till the spark of wretched life was wholly extinguished. I saw distinctly by the light of the flame that surrounded them, and marked every twist of the features, and every quiver of the convulsed limbs; yet these were not more impressive than the joy of the exulting fiend, who continued to caress and kiss his agonized mate to the last, and called her his love, and his darling, and his heart’s delight. At length the distortions of the human countenance reached their acme – the shrivelled bosom forgot to throb, and, with the expiry of the mortal spark, the lurid flame that burnt around them also went out, and all was darkness, There was no bower, no chamber, no bridal bed, but a cold winter soil; and I thought that, through the gloom, I perceived the couple still lying on it.

As I could get no rest all that night for thinking of the terrible scene I had witnessed, as soon as the sun rose next morning I went out to the bowling-green, but found nothing there save the strangled body of the wretched woman – a dismal and humbling sight – squeezed almost to a jelly, and every bone broken as if it had been smashed on an anvil. Being curious to examine her robes in which she appeared with such splendour the evening before, and her jewels, part of which I had seen her lay carefully aside, I took every thing up as it lay. Her robes were a small heap of the most wretched rags imaginable: her pearl necklace was a string of dead beetles, and her diamond rings pieces of thread, on which were fastened small knots of clay, and every thing else proportionally mean. While I was standing considering this vile degradation that had taken place, I heard a voice at a little distance that called to me and said, ‘Gibbie Jordan! Gibbie Jordan! why standest thou in amazement at a true emblem of all worldly grandeur! It is all equally unreal and unsubstantial as that on which thou lookest, and to that it must all come at last.’

‘Hout, friend,’ thought I, ‘it canna surely be a’ sae perfectly unreal as this, else what does it signify?’ But a’ that I could look and glime about, I could never discover the speaker that said this; and when I thought seriously of the matter, I found that it comes a’ to the same thing in the end.

‘Honest friend, thou hast again illustrated a momentous moral truth,’ said the abbot – ‘and I thank thee for it. Thou hast the art, in thy simplicity, of extracting more good out of real evil than any expounder of divine truths throughout the land. Thou art both a moral and a natural philosopher, and I intend conferring on thee some benefice under the church, that thy talents may no longer remain locked up in a helmet. Prithee, go on with thy extraordinary narrative; but these witch weddings are too horrible for mortal ears.’

Then you may consider, my Lord Abbot, what they were for mortal eyes, especially such a run of them, which were every night varied in their horrors, and terminated in something perfectly distinct from all those preceding. On the second night the bridegroom was a foreign merchant, a man of bustle and punctuality, who said he could not remain late with his kind convivial friends, and was under the necessity of carrying his bride off at an early hour, having business of importance to transact on the morrow. It was a speculation, he said, on which he calculated making a good profit, and a man who was coming in to have a wife, and in all probability a small family to maintain, required to look after and attend to these matters. The witch caressed him in ecstacy when he made this speech, and proffered to go with him as soon as he chose. She saluted her cronies, and bade them farewell; and although there is no love among those sort of people, yet there was still so much of human nature remaining, that there seemed to subsist a degree of regret that they should never meet again. My own heart was even sore for the wretched beldame; for I had witnessed a scene the preceding night which had been withheld from her view, and those of the other brides that were to be; and I knew that a fate somewhat similar awaited them all. They mounted this one behind the spruce merchant on a tall gallant charger whose eyes gleamed like lightning, and away they set over the leas of Carterhaugh, at a light gallop; but at every bound the swiftness of the steed increased, till it was quickly beyond the speed of the eagle. The witch held like grim death, and would fain have expostulated with the bridegroom on the madness of risking their necks for a little per centage – but her velocity was such that she could make no farther speech of it, than just a squeak now and then like a short hare. The reckless merchant flew on, still increasing his rapidity, until he came to the very highest rock of the Harehead linn. The witch knew of the dreadful chasm that was before them, and weening that her husband did not know she uttered a piercing shriek; but the void was only thirty yards across and a hundred deep, so the fearless merchant, meaning to take it at one leap, made his charger bound from the top of the precipice. The infernal courser cleared the linn, but the witch’s head failing, she toppled off about the middle space. There were two fishermen spearing salmon in the bottom of the gulf, who saw the phenomenon pass over their heads, and the wife lose her hold and fall off; they heard her likewise saying, as she came adown the air, ‘Aih, what a fa’ I will get!’ And as she said, so it fell out; for she alighted on the rocks a short space from the place where they stood, and was literally dashed in pieces; but the steed ran away with the merchant over hill and dale like a thunderbolt, and neither the one nor the other ever looked over his shoulder to see what had befallen the bride.

This continuation of horrors still depriving me of rest, I went into the linn the next morning to look after the corpse; but the three pages, Prig, Prim, and Pricker, were engaged with it, cutting it trimly up, and hanging it on the trees of the linn to be frozen, so that they might thereby be enabled to preserve it for some grand experiment. In the same manner did they serve the remains of all the brides; none of them ever being buried – but there was one taken away bodily. I shall now, in conformity with your reverence’s hint, desist from the description of any more of these weddings, and proceed to the adventure by which I attained my liberty.

I had often attempted this, both by night and by day, but these imps seemed to possess a sort of prescience, for in all my attempts I was seized and maltreated so grossly that I gave up all hopes of escape, otherwise than by some upbreaking of the warlock’s establishment, and of all such incidents I had resolved to avail myself, and you all see that at last I have succeeded – which happened on this wise.

Still as Christmas tide drew on, the wranglings between my two chief masters, the devil and the warlock, grew more and more fierce; and as I heard they were obliged to sever before that time, I both hoped and dreaded some terrible convulsion. The fiend, for several successive days, was always hinting to the Master that it now behoved the latter to deliver him up the black book and the divining rod; and he tried to cajole him out of them by fair speeches and boundless promises: but with these requests the Master testified no disposition to comply, and the promises he utterly disregarded, bidding him bestow his promises on those who did not know him. At length the fiend fairly told him, that he must and would have the possession of these invaluable treasures, which ought never to have been put into the hands of mortal man, and that now he would have them if he should tear his heart from his bosom to attain the boon.

I weened that matters were come to that pass now that the Master would be obliged to yield, and that all this show of resistance was only the ebullition of a proud and indignant spirit struggling against the yoke under which it knew it was obliged to bow, like a horse that champs the bit, to the sway of which it knows too well it must submit. In all this, however, I had reckoned before mine host, and knew not the resources of the great magician. Beneath the influence of the cross I found him a child, a novice, a nonentity, unresolved and inconsistent in his actions. But amongst the beings with whom he associated I found him a superior intelligence, a spirit formed to controul the mightiest energies, and not brooking submission to any power unless by compulsion. To my utter astonishment he not only gave the archfiend absolute refusal, but haughty defiance; and then it was apparent, that, except from necessity, all forbearance was at an end.

‘Preposterous madman! dost thou know whom thou beardest?’ said the fiend, gnashing his teeth with rage and thirst of vengeance: ‘Knowest thou with whom thou art contending, thou maniac? – and that I can wring thy soul out of thy body, consigning the one to the dunghill, and the other to elemental slavery, at my will and pleasure?’

‘I defy thee,’ said the Master: ‘Do thy worst. He that imparts a moiety of his power to another, must abide by the consequences. Do I not know with whom I am contending? Yes! I know thee! And thou art so well aware that I do, that at this moment thou tremblest beneath my rod. I know thee for a liar, a deceiver, a backbiter, and a spirit of insatiable malevolence. Who can lay one of these charges to my name? Were I immortal as thou art, how I would hurl thee from thy usurped and tyrannic sway over the mighty energies of nature. Were I freed of the incumbrances of mortality – of blood that may be let out by a bodkin – bones that may be broken by the tip of an oxgoad – and breath that may be stopped by the twang of a bow-string; of vitals, subjected to be torn by disease – preyed on by hunger, thirst, and a thousand casualties beside: – yes, were I rid of these congregated impediments, as I shall soon be, I would thrust thee down into that subordinate sphere of action to which only thy perverse nature is fitted. This black book and this divining-rod are mine. They were consigned to my hands by thyself and the four viceroys of the elements, and part with them shall I never, either in life or in death; and while I possess them I am thy superior. Begone, and let me hear no more of thy brawling at this time, lest I humble thee, and trample on thee before thy day of power be expired.’

This the Master pronounced in loud and furious accents; and as he finished he struck the devil across the gorge with his golden rod. The blow made him spring aloof, and tumble into the air, it had such powerful effect on his frame; and when he stood again on his feet, he roared with rage and indignation, in a voice that resembled thunder. The Master had the black book belted to his bosom, with bands of steel, that were hammered in the forge of hell; and laying his left hand upon that, and brandishing his divining-rod in his right, he dared the fiend to the combat. The latter approached, and poured from his mouth and nostrils such a stream of liquid flame on the magician, that it appeared like a fiery rainbow between them. This greatly incommoded the Master, and made him skip like a mountebank; but it was soon exhausted, and then the fiend threw trees and rocks at him, some of the latter of the weight of five tons. All these the Master eschewed; and though he sought no other weapons but his rod, he brake in upon his antagonist, and chaced him from the field. Then the war of words again commenced, which increased to a tempest of threatening, wrath, and defiance. The arch-demon boasted of his legions, and of their irresistible power; and threatened to bring them all to the contest, and annihilate the Master and his adherents, root and branch.

‘I have already said that I fear neither them nor thee,’ said the Master. ‘What though thou hast the sovereignty over the element of fire, and all the fierce and indurated spirits that sojourn and ply in the sultry regions of flame, as also of the grovelling spirits of the mould? Have not I at my command those of the air and the water? I can muster against thee the storm, the whirlwind, and the raging tempest, the overwhelming wave, and the descending torrent. These shall extinguish thy meteor hosts, and sweep thy moldwarps from the face of the earth. I am in the midst of my elements here. Thou art out of thine, and that thou shalt feel when thou bringest it to trial.’

Thus parted these two once-bound associates, but now jealous and inexorable foes – a good lesson to all those who form combinations inimical to the laws or authority of the land in which they reside. Like those master-spirits, such are likewise conspirators against rightful sovereignty, although on a smaller scale; and like those whom they imitate, and by whom they are moved, their counsels will always be turned either to foolishness or against themselves.

‘The sphere that this man hath filled in society,’ said the abbot, ‘is far below that in which he ought to have moved. If his narrative is true, which I can hardly believe, he turns it to most excellent uses; and if it is an apologue, it is one well conceived for the purposes of instruction. Verily, this gentleman hath never moved in his proper sphere.’

‘I think it is not very unlikely that your reverence says,’ said Sir Ringan, ‘for he made no great figure in it. Tho’ I had always a partiality for him, I had no great faith in his valour. He would rather have cut down a warrior behind his back than before his face any time. He has made mare quake this night wi’ his tale than ever he did wi’ his weapon. I entreat ye to get on, laird, and let us hear how they made up matters.’

Made up matters, does my chief say? That was a term no more mentioned between them. They separated but to raise their different forces, and meet again with more fury and effect. The Master spoke to his three pages, and asked if they were resolved to stand firm to his interest? They answered, that they would, till the term of their bondage expired.

‘Then am I doubly armed!’ said the Master, exultingly; ‘and I will show your tyrant that I can quell his utmost rage. Speed thee, my trusty and nimble spirits; speed to the western and northern spheres, and rouse the slumbering angels of the winds and the waters. Tell them to muster their array, and bear hitherward – to rear the broad billows of the Atlantic up against the breast of heaven, and to make a bellows of every cloud to gather the winds up behind them. Then bring down the irresistible spirits of the frozen north in ambush – and who shall stand against their fury! How soon will you execute your commissions?’

‘Master, I’ll ring the surface of the ocean, from the line to the first field of pickled ice, before the hour-glass is half run.’

‘Master, I’ll look south on the polar star – call every whale, sea-monster, and ice-shagged spirit by his name, and return to you before the cock-bittern can boomb his vesper.’

‘And I’ll to the moon,

And the stars aboon,

And rack my invention

For the coming contention:

And the wind and the weet,

And the snow and the sleet,

I’ll gather and gather,

And drive them on hither.’

With that the three imps departed on their several missions, but not before they had seized me, and bound me to a ring on a turret of the castle. The Master retired into his apartment for some time, but soon came up to the level space on the top of the castle, our old birth, and strode about in the most violent agitation, but appearing rather to be moved by anger and impatience than by dread. At length, he came up to me, and said, ‘How now, droich? What thinkest thou of all this?’

I said nothing, for I durst not answer a word.

‘Dost thou think,’ continued he, ‘that there exists another being, either mortal or immortal, like me, thy master?’

I still durst not answer a word; for if I had said no, it would have been blasphemy; and if I had said yes, it would have provoked him to do me a mischief; so I looked at my bonds, and held my peace.

‘Thou darest not say there is,’ continued he; ‘but I know what thou thinkest. Sit thou there in peace till this great trial of power be over; and if thou darest for thy life invoke another name than mine, thou shalt never stir from that spot dead or alive. But if thou takest heed to this injunction, and cease from all petitions to, or mention of, a name which thou mayest judge superior to mine, then shalt thou be set at liberty to join thy friends.’

I determined to attend to this – but he waited not for my answer, but strode away, looking now and then on the book of destiny, and at the western heaven alternately. At length he exclaimed, ‘Yonder they come! Yonder they rise in grand battalia! Noble and potent spirits! How speedily have you executed your commission. Yonder comes the muster of my array, and who shall stand against them!’

I looked towards the west when I heard him talking in such ecstacies, but could see nothing save a phalanx of towering clouds, rolling up in wreaths from the dun horizon. I had seen the same scene a hundred times, and could hardly help smiling at his enthusiasm, especially when he went over a long muster-roll of the names of spirits and monsters whom he saw approaching in the cloud. ‘It is a sign that warlocks have clear een,’ thinks I, quietly, ‘for I see nothing but a range of rolling and restless clouds.’ However, he was so overjoyed with the sight of this visionary array, that, having no other to communicate with, he came rapidly up to me, and said, ‘Tell me, droich, didst thou ever witness any thing so truly grand as the approach of this host of mine?’

‘You must first lend me the use of your eyes that I may see them,’ said I; ‘for, on my word, I see nothing save two or three files of castled clouds, which I have seen an hundred times.’

With that he lent me a blow with his rod, and said, though not apparently in wrath, ‘Thou hast no brighter eyes, and no brighter conceptions, than a hedgehog, but art a mere clod of the valley, a worm; if I knew of aught lower to liken thee to, I would do it! Dost thou see nothing like fleets and armies approaching yonder? Dost thou not see an hundred and seven of the ships of the ocean above, coming full sail, with colours flying, and canvas spread? Seest thou not also, to the south of these, two files of behemoths, with ten thousand warriorspirits beside?’

I looked again, and though I was sensible it must be a delusion brought on by the stroke of his powerful rod, yet I did see the appearance of a glorious fleet of ships coming bounding along the surface of the firmament of air, while every mainsail was bosomed out like the side of a Highland mountain. I saw, besides, whole columns of what I supposed to be crocodiles, sharks, kelpies, and water-horses, with a thousand monsters never dreamed of by human being. The Master marked my astonishment, and exulted still the more; and then he desired me to turn round, and look toward the north. At first I could see nothing; but on being touched again with the divining-rod, I shall never forget such a sight as opened gradually to my view. The whole northern hemisphere, from the eastern to the western horizon, was covered with marshalled hosts of the shades of gigantic warriors. They were all mailed in white armour, as if it had been sprinkled with hoar-frost; and their beards, which had the appearance of icicles, hung down, swinging in the wind, like so many inverted forests, stripped of their foliage and bark, and encrusted with ice. They were all mounted on the ghosts of crackens, whales, and walruses: and for bows and quivers each had a blown bladder on his back as large as the hill of Ben-Nevis. My heart quaked at the view of these tremendous polar spirits, and I said, ‘Great and magnificent Master, are yon terrible chaps all coming hither?’

‘Certes they are,’ said he: ‘Why dost thou ask after having heard my mandate sent forth?’

‘Because,’ said I, ‘If you bearded spirits be a’ coming here, I wish I were somewhere alse, for the like of yon was never beheld by man. If your opponents dare face you, they have a spirit beyond what I can conceive.’

‘They will be here, and that instantly,’ said he, ‘And lo! yonder they come! I will go down and meet them on the open field. But, in the meantime, I will loose you with my own hands, for who knows what may be the issue of this day; remain where thou art, for here thou shalt be safe, but no where else.’

I looked; and as far as my eyes could discern, I saw as it were a thousand thousand sparks of fire rising from the east, that came in a straight line toward me, and with great velocity. As they came nearer I perceived that they were all fiery serpents, with faces like men, and small flaming spears issuing from their mouths, which they held between their teeth, or drew in as they listed. These were led on to the combat by the arch-fiend himself, who came at their head in the form of a huge fiery dragon with his iron crown on his head, and wings springing from his shoulders behind, that reached as high as the hill of Blackandro. ‘Aih! God guide us!’ thinks I to mysel, ‘Michael has an awsome adversary to contend with the day!’ He was nothing daunted, however, but went boldly down the valley, where he was met by hosts of crawling monsters, such as snakes, lizards, and a thousand others. These I took to be the spirits of the element of earth – but they were lubbards in a field of battle, for, at a brandish of the Master’s magical rod, they ran off wagging their tails in such a vengeance of a hurry that they overturned one another.

The van of Michael’s western array had by this time gained the middle sky, and hung boiling and wheeling like a troubled ocean straight above his head and above mine. Its colour was as dark as pitch, but there was now and then a shade of a dead white colour rolled out, and as suddenly again swallowed up in the darkness. I never saw ought so awfully sublime. It had now descended so low, that it hid the polar giants entirely from my view, and the Master kept waving his rod towards it, and clapping his left hand always on the black book, till at length, with the motion of a whirlpool, the cloud came and settled all round him. The fiend and his firebrands perceiving this, darted with the utmost fury into the middle of it, and the most tremendous crash of thunder ensued that ever shook heaven and earth. My eyes were dazzled so that I could not see ought distinctly, but I perceived these flaming meteors glancing and quivering round the verges of the darkness, and ever and anon darting again into it. Seven of these peals of thunder succeeded one another, and then I saw the spirits of flame would overcome, for the darkness began to scatter, and I saw the Master hard bested, defending himself with his rod against a multitude. He then cried with a loud voice, and waved his rod toward the north, and that moment the giant warriors of the polar regions loosed all their quivers at once, and with such effect, that they tossed the opposing legions before them like chaff. The hailstones, the snow, and the sleet, poured upon them thicker and faster, and the wind roared louder than their thunders had done before. There was no more power in their foes to stand before them; they were scattered, driven away, and extinguished. When the Master saw this, he shouted aloud for joy, calling out ‘Victory!’ and leaping from the ground in ecstacy. But when he was in the very paroxysm of exultation, the great dragon came round with a circular motion behind the castle, and approaching behind the wizard’s back before he was aware, seized him by the hair with one paw, and by the iron belt with the other, and bore him off into the air straight upward. The Master struggled and writhed very hard, but never opened his lips. At length, after great exertion, he struck the monster a blow with his rod that made him quit his hold, and fly away yelling after his discomfited legions.

The Master fell to the ground from a great height, and lay still, and when I saw no one to come near him, I left the corner where I had hid myself, and ran to his assistance; but he was quite dead. His teeth had severed his tongue in two, and were clenched close together; his eyes were open, and every bone of his body was broken. Having witnessed the unspeakable value of the golden rod, I put out my hand and took hold of it, wanting to bring it away with me, but I might as well have tried to have heaved the castle from its foundations. Besides, when I tugged at it, the dead man turned his eyes toward me with a fierceness that chilled me to the heart, so I fled and came hitherward with all my might. He is lying in a little hidden valley, at the side of the burn, immediately above the castle, with the book of fate locked in his bosom, his rod in his hand, and his eyes open. I have now described to your Majesties this scene exactly as I saw it; but I must also tell you, that when I came to the mill, both the miller and his man, neither of whom knew me, said it had been an awful storm of thunder and lightning. I asked if they perceived nothing about it but a common storm of thunder and lightning? And they said, nothing, save that it was exceedingly violent, and rather uncommon at such a season of the year. I have, therefore, some suspicions that there might be magical delusion operating on my sight; but of this I am certain, that the great enchanter was carried up into the middle space between heaven and earth, fell down, and was killed.

‘I think there can be no doubt,’ said the King, ‘that what you have told us is the plain and unvarnished truth, though, perhaps, the rod of divination might open your eyes to see the storm in a different light from that seen by the eyes of common men. Of this there can be no doubt, that the greatest man, and the most profound scholar of the age, has perished in this conflict of the elements. He has not only kept the world in awe, but in dreadful agitation for the space of thirty years; let us, therefore, all go to-morrow and see him honourably interred. I ask no rites of sepulture to be performed over his remains, which, if living, he would have deprecated, only let us all go and see his body reverendly deposited in the tomb, lest it be left to consume in the open fields.’

They went, and found him lying as stated, only that his eyes were shut, some of his attendant elves having closed them over night. His book was in his bosom, and his rod in his hand, from either of which no force of man could sever them, although when they lifted the body and these together, there was no difference in weight from the body of another man. The King then caused these dangerous relics to be deposited along with the body in an iron chest, which they buried in a vaulted aisle of the abbey of Melrose; and the castle of Aikwood has never more been inhabited by mortal man.