The Man Who Missed the
Tay Bridge Train

MANY a queer tale is told about ghosts and witches and demons and suchlike things, and what truth there is in them only the folk who tell them know. But there is one tale about a happening that was not ordinary at all, and the old man who tells it can vouch for it because he was acquainted with the two men it happened to, and when he was a lad, it was one of them who himself told the old man how it came about.

There were two crofts lying side by side on a Scottish hillside, and the families who lived upon each croft were not only neighbors to each other but very close friends, being cousins two or three times removed.

Upon a frosty autumn night there was a bairn born to each crofter and his wife at each of these crofts, and a messenger was sent out from each house to inform their neighbor of the event. The two messengers met each other halfway in their journey across the fields and, upon comparing notes, discovered that the two babes were not only born upon the same day, but at the selfsame minute of the selfsame hour. And that was a strange thing, to be sure.

The two bairns thrived and were duly christened Robert and Thomas, for the two great Scots, Robert Bruce and Thomas Randolph, heroes of Bannockburn, but Rab and Tam were the names folk always called them by. Whether it was because of the coincidence of the time of their births or because of some special affinity between them, as soon as they were of an age to play about they were always to be found together. Own brothers could not have been closer to each other in affection than wee Rab and wee Tam.

When they grew a bit older they went to the village school together, with their pieces to eat at midday in their pockets and their satchels holding their school books hung over their shoulders. From the village school they passed on to the grammar school in the market town beyond the village, traveling the miles there and back on their shaggy moorland ponies, side by side.

Rab was the first son in a family otherwise all lassies, and Tam the least one a family of seven sons. For those reasons the two laddies were maybe indulged more than they might have been in any other case. They both were let follow their own inclinations as far as the spending of their time was concerned, so after school and on holidays they roamed together over the hills and moors and through the glens and corries. They tickled the laird’s salmon and snared his hares and baited his gamekeeper. They were an annoyance to the gentry for miles around, raiding their orchards and coaxing their dogs away to join them in their fun. They kept the sedate and sober villagers’ heads shaking in reproof at their antics. But there was no harm in the two lads at all, and if their goings-on now and then gave a bit of bother to their parents, it was never serious enough to keep the old folk from sleeping sound of nights.

Their parents, though thrifty, were far from poor, so when Rab and Tam told them at the end of their grammar school days that they had it in mind to go to the high school at Aberdeen, there was no great objection made.

“Education never hurt any man who was willing to take it,” Rab’s father said. “Even if it is Rab’s lot to be a crofter like me, it will help him later if he learns to keep his brain exercising itself as well as his brawn.”

Tam’s father was willing enough, for with six sons older than Tam to help him, his youngest could well be spared to take up any profession he chose.

So, still together, the lads went off to the high school where they spent the next four years, sharing the same classes, the same books, the same studies, and the same rooms, and in the course of time grew up to be well-behaved and reliable young men. When they had finished at the high school, they went back to their homes, and to the hills and moors and glens again.

But there was a difference in these holidays for, at the end of them, they would part. Rab being the only son of the family would stay behind to prepare himself to take over the croft when his father laid his work aside, while Tam, who was not needed at home with a raft of older brothers, would go to the university to study law.

It was the first parting the two lads had known since they were babes in their mothers’ arms. In all the years they had never been away from each other longer than the space of a night’s sleep. Being Highland men, they were not prone to make a show of their feelings, but their hearts were sore when the time came to say good-bye. Rab, who had come to the town to see Tam off, stood with him, waiting for the train.

“A-weel, Rab,” Tam said, “the train will be coming soon, now.”

“And so it will,” said Rab. “It’s whistlin’ up beyond the bend.”

“Och, well, I’ll come home for the Hogmanay, and happen I’ll write now and then,” said Tam, taking the hand his friend offered.

“So do,” said Rab.

Then as the train came down the line and Tam picked up his bag, Rab said, “Tam!”

“Aye?” said Tam.

“Look ye now,” Rab said. “If you’re needin’ me, dinna fash yourself. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“That I know well, Rab,” said Tam. “Och, aye! And if I’m needing you I’ll send word.”

“Even without it,” Rab said, “I’ll come.”

Then the train arrived, huffing and panting, and what with the hurry and flurry of finding a place in a carriage and getting himself aboard with his luggage, Tam had time for no more than a hurried farewell.

So Tam was whirled off on the first lap of his journey toward the university, and Rab walked back to the inn and got the wee pony and cart that had carried them to the town and drove back home alone. But both of the lads were thinking alike: “A-weel, we’ll be meeting again at Hogmanay.”

Hogmanay, as the Scots call the New Year celebration, is the greatest festival of the Scotsman’s year. All the other days in the whole twelve months are colorless beside the joys of Hogmanay with all its feasting and fun. King Charles II made an attempt to bring Christmas into favor again in the land of his forbears but met with no success. The Scots would have naught to do with Christmas and held fast to their Hogmanay.

So the thought of it was in the mind of each lad as miles lengthened between them, and it helped a bit. The parting was not forever. Only till Hogmanay.

Even at that it was cold comfort, because Tam left at the end of August and there were four months to get over before they would meet again. But the months would be busy for both of them and that would help to make them pass.

The work of a crofter begins at the first crack of dawn and ends with the gloaming, and when he has cleaned himself of the soil of the day and eaten his supper, he is ready for bed and sleep. Rab was often lonely but he was not one to slack his work and use the time for brooding. He pitched in and worked all the harder to drive his cares away.

“Look ye!” said his father one day to the plowman. “Our Rab is going to make the best master the croft has e’er had yet.”

Tam was busy enough. His studies filled much of his time and gave him little leisure. But, in a way, he had it worse than Rab. Tam was in a strange place, with strangers all about him, while Rab was at home amongst his own folk. But since there was no cure for homesickness but a large dose of home and that he could not get, Tam howked into his books with such a right good will that those wise men set over him to keep an eye on his progress, told each other: “That lad is not a dullard!”

“He is not, indeed. Mark my words, the world will hear of him one day.”

September passed at last, and then October, and November, too, and at the end of the first week in December, Tam wrote to his mother and to Rab to tell them that it would not be long before they’d see each other again for he would be coming home for Hogmanay, according to his promise.

“I’ll be home a day or two before, maybe,” he wrote to Rab. “The weather is mischancy at this season of the year, so I’m leaving a few days early to give myself plenty of time in case bad roads hold me back on my way.”

He was not surprised to have no answer to his letters. After all, in little more than a fortnight he’d be starting home. But as the chill December days went by he had an urgent feeling that he should put everything else aside and go home at once. It was all he could do to keep himself from packing his bag and taking the first train he could get. He put it down to being homesick.

“Och, I’m daft,” he said to himself. “I’ve put up with it for four months, as it is. Can I not bear it for the ten days that are left?”

So for ten days he bore it, fighting against an instinct that urged him to go home. The day of his departure came at last. It was a dark and drizzly day, with clouds hanging low and the western sky showing a queer dull shade of yellow slashed with streaks of green.

Tam came home in the afternoon to pack his bag for his journey. As he walked up the hill to his lodgings he could hear the wind whistling high above his head. Now and then a gust of it would come down to earth, setting the dustbin lids a-rattling, buffeting folk who were hurrying toward the shelter of their homes and pulling their clothes about, then darting off high into the sky again.

Tam turned in to his own front door, and just as he stepped into the hall the rain came down on the trail of the wind, falling in sheets that seemed to stack against each other like panes of glass.

“Whew! What a night!” he said to his landlady, who had come into the hall to set a lamp upon the table by the wall.

“’Tis that,” she agreed. “Run along upstairs, now, and get your wet things off, and I’ll bring you a good hot cup of tea.”

Tam went up to his room and, having got himself ready for his tea, he drew out his bag and began to pack it.

His landlady came into the room with the tea tray in her hands just as he finished packing. “Och, now,” said she. “I was just saying today to Mrs. McNeil next door that my lodger would soon be going to his hame for the Hogmanay.”

“That I am,” said Tam, smiling at her as he shut and strapped the bag. “I’ve been wanting to go so much for the past two weeks that it’s been all I could do to keep myself from leaving any minute. But now that the time has come for me to go, I do not feel something at me, trying to force me to go the way I did. I’m just glad I’m going, of course. But that’s all. Is that not strange?”

“You’re young yet,” his landlady said, “and not used to being from home. I was brought up in the Islands and married a mainland man. I mind how I used to wish sometimes at first that I was a sea gull, to have wings to take me home again, but after a while I got used to the town here, and I did get home for a visit now and again. To tell the truth, when my husband died, I was so used to the mainland that I did not go home to stay, although there was naught to stop me. I go home to see my own folk now and then, but only to visit. I would not like to stay. Happen it will be the same for you.”

“Maybe it will,” said Tam, finishing his tea and laying his napkin on the tray.

His landlady picked up the tray to carry it downstairs again. “Have you coals enough for your fire?” she asked. “’Tis growing cold outside, and you’ll need a good fire if you’re minded to work late over your books.”

“Not tonight,” Tam told her happily. “I’ll need no fire at all. I’m leaving tonight for home.”

“Mercy on me!” cried the landlady, nearly dropping her tray. “I did not think it was tonight you were going! Why, you’ll never be going out in such weather, what with the wind and the rain and all!”

“I will,” said Tam. “I’m taking the Tay Bridge Train tonight. I dare not wait over until tomorrow because the roads will be bad at the other end of my journey, and if I leave myself short of time I might not get home for Hogmanay.”

The landlady shook her head. “I do not like it at all,” she said as she carried the tray away.

Tam put on his hat and his overcoat that had been drying before the fire. He came down the stairs, dressed to brave the weather, with his bag in his hand. His landlady was waiting in the hall.

“Are you well-wrapped?” she asked anxiously.

“Och, I’m fine,” Tam said.

“A-weel, turn up your collar against the rain’s running down your neck,” she said, eyeing him with concern. “Och, now! Did I not know it! Bide you here a bit,” she said to him.

Tam, although fretting himself to be on his way, waited patiently, and soon she was back with a tartan scarf in her hands. “I said to myself you’d not be wearing a scarf, so I hunted this one out. Are ye daft to be going out on a night like this with your throat bare? Och, it’s a mother you’re needing, to keep an eye on you, lad.”

Tam stood meekly while she wrapped the scarf around his neck and with her own hands adjusted the folds.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s good of you.”

“’Tis naught,” said she. “Ye need not mind the plaid,” she told him. “My husband was a MacDonald, too, so the tartan’s your own.”

She opened the door, and Tam picked up his bag and stepped out into the storm. “Haste ye back,” she said.

The rain had lessened slightly, but it came slantwise on gusts of wind, stinging the face. The sky was filled with scurrying masses of puffy black clouds, and the streaks of green in the west had merged and become one long wide band of pale yellowish green across the distant horizon. As Tam battled his way down the hill, fighting his way against the rain, he heard the bell of the clock in the church tower strike out the hour. He hastened his step. He wanted to reach the station in plenty of time before the guard called the train.

He was hurrying along with his head down, picking his way along the street as best he could, when he became aware of another wayfarer who seemed to have started up directly before him. The other appeared so suddenly that Tam had to stop dead in his tracks to avoid running into him.

There was a tavern by the way and Tam thought the fellow might have just come from there. But as he looked the stranger in the face someone inside the tavern pushed the curtains of the window aside and light shone out into the street. The man Tam had taken for a stranger was his friend Rab!

“Rab!” exclaimed Tam. “What brings you here?”

“I was looking for you, Tam,” said Rab.

“Well, you’ve found me then,” Tam told him. “But had you been a few minutes later you would not have done. I’m away to the station to take the train home, and I must make haste.”

“It was in my mind that you would be,” said Rab. “I feared you’d be gone, Tam. Do not take the train tonight.” Tam pulled his friend into the shelter of a doorway of an empty house beside the tavern, out of the wind and rain.

“Not take the train?” he asked. “Why, I’d be missing a whole day at home if I did not. Why do you not come with me now? We’ll both take the train.”

“I cannot,” Rab said. “I must leave you soon. But hear me, Tam. Go back to your lodgings, now, and bide there until the morrow.”

Tam thought it over. Maybe the loss of a day of his holiday would not matter, after all, if he and Rab could be traveling home together the next day.

“Are you listening to me, Tam?” Rab asked impatiently. “Will ye not go back to your rooms and bide there till the morn?”

“Och, well—I will then,” Tam said, giving in. He turned to pick up his bag, which he had set down behind him in the entry when they came in. Tam thought he heard Rab give a great sigh of relief, but when he turned back to speak to him again, Rab had slipped off and was gone.

Tam looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Rab at all. He must have gone down the lane by the tavern, Tam thought, as he started up the hill again. The storm was growing wilder and the wind was blowing a terrible gale. Tam found it was all he could do to keep his footing as he climbed the hill. Branches broken from trees, chimney pots and bricks blown down by the wind filled the air and littered the street, and once a great flat piece of something that looked as if it might be the wall of a shed flew, too close for comfort, above his head. Tam was well-accustomed to the wild storms of the Highlands, but in all his life he’d never seen one to compare with this. As he slowly struggled on up the hill there were times that he was all but moving on hands and knees, and he was convinced that only the weight of the bag he carried kept him from flying away on the wind.

Tam was weary, rain-drenched, and chilled to the bone when he reached the house at last and went in. Shutting the door behind him, he seemed to be in a haven after the wild rioting of the storm outside. He leaned against the wall for a minute to get his breath. The house was dark and silent, with no sight nor sound of life other than himself. The landlady, no doubt, was sitting snugly by the fire in her tidy wee room at the end of the hall, with a nice cup of tea on the stand beside her and one of the pleasant romances she liked to read in her spare time in her hand.

Tam decided that he’d not disturb her to tell her of his return so he went on up the stairs to his rooms. The fire in his sitting room was low but it had not gone out and the room was still warm. Tam put fresh coal upon the fire and stirred it up into a cheerful blaze. Then he got out of his wet clothes and into dry ones. After spreading his rain-soaked garments on the warming rack before the hearth, he mixed himself a good hot toddy to take the chill out of his bones and sat down before the fire himself. It was the first time he had had an opportunity to think about his meeting with Rab. What in the world would be bringing Rab so far from home? And now that he remembered, Rab had not looked himself at all. Thin he was, and very white, and quite unlike the Rab he had left behind him in August, hearty and hale and with the fresh color of a country lad. Had Rab been sick, he wondered? Well, he could ask Rab about it when he saw him on the morrow, but now, what with the hot drink and the heat of the fire, he was too sleepy to think, so he put up the fire guard and went to bed. For a few minutes he lay, warm and drowsy under his blankets, listening to the tumult of the storm without. But, soon, he slept.

When Tam awoke in the morning he could tell as soon as he opened his eyes that the day was already well begun. A pale yellow sunlight came creeping through the windows, as if meekly apologizing for the havoc of the storm during the night. One look at his watch told him that it was past nine o’clock, and he wondered for a moment why his landlady had not brought up his breakfast to him long ago. She was punctual as a rule, arriving on the stroke of half past seven. Surely she would have waked him up, if she had come. Then he remembered that he had not informed her of his return. She would be thinking he was still on his way home, if not already there.

It did not matter, after all. He would dress and go downstairs and ask her to give him a cup of tea and something to go with it for his breakfast. He knew she’d not be minding it at all. He could have gone into the town for his breakfast, of course, but he did not like to leave the house lest Rab should come while he was gone.

As he came down the last steps into the hallway he saw the front door standing open. He heard a babble of voices talking all at once so that a body could not make out a word they said. Above the clatter a woman’s voice rose, lamenting like the voice of a Hebridian keen. His landlady stood in the midst of a small group of people, of whom Tam recognized the postman, the milkboy, the constable, Mrs. McNeil the neighbor next door, and half a dozen other persons who lived close by. They were all clustered together upon the steps and at the open door.

Tam stopped on the landing to listen, trying to make out what the folk were so excited about. The first thing he was able to make out was his landlady’s saying, “Och, and such a lovely dear lad he was. I’d never find a finer—not if I looked for a year.”

“That ye’d not, madam,” said the constable. “He always had a cheery smile and a pleasant word when he passed by.”

“Aye, so he had,” said a neighbor. “He’ll be sorely missed, the fine young gentleman.”

Tam was intrigued. He wondered what calamity had befallen the unknown young man, and who he was, anyway, to be raising such a ruckus among the folk. He hurried out the front door and onto the top of the front steps to join the group and find out what their clatter was all about.

Tam’s landlady, wiping a tear from her cheek, looked up and spied Tam at the top of the steps. He expected her usual smile and greeting, but instead she merely pointed a shaking finger at him and screamed. Every head turned. Postman, milkboy, constable, landlady, and all the neighbors stared in shocked silence at Tam.

“What’s amiss?” asked the bewildered Tam.

Then suddenly they were all about him, clutching at him and crying, “You’re not dead?” Each of them grabbed at Tam’s arms, legs, shoulders, face, to see if he was real.

“Dead?” said Tam. “I am not, then. Why would you be thinking I was dead?”

“Have ye not heard the news, man?” asked the postman.

“News? What news?” asked Tam.

So the constable told him: “The train—the Tay Bridge Train! In the great windstorm last night, the middle span blew out, wi’ the train just passing over it—and down it tumbled, train and people and all, into the Tay below.”

The landlady added, “All those poor folk on the train, drowned dead. And me thinking you were on it, too, it being the train you said you’d be taking.” She wiped another tear from her eye, just at the thought.

“And so I would have done,” Tam explained. “But I ran into a friend in the town. It was he that persuaded me to wait over until today.”

“It was the Lord’s mercy, and a miracle, that’s what it was,” concluded the landlady.

It was the way of life, they said. So many taken, and one spared. They went on about it for a long time.

Needless to say, Tam’s spirits were subdued at the thought of such a narrow escape. Only to think—if he’d not met Rab! He’d have gone along to the station, taken the train, and gone into the Tay with the other poor souls who drowned there. And where was Rab?

Tam waited all day. Rab did not come. Toward evening he walked down the hill, inquired at hotels and other likely places where Rab might be, but he found no trace of his friend.

The next day, when Rab had still not come, Tam made up his mind that he must have misunderstood his friend. He decided to waste no more of his holiday with waiting, so he set out again on his journey home for Hogmanay. He had a funny feeling that Rab had gone on without him and would be at home when he got there.

Because of the broken bridge, Tam had to go the long way around. Folk were saying it would never be mended. By ferry, by branch line, and by coach, he finally came home on the last day of the year.

Tam’s whole family was overjoyed at his arrival. They really had not expected him, since news of the hurricane had already reached them. Knowing of the disaster of the great Tay Bridge, they had felt sure he would not attempt the journey.

After the usual warm family greetings all around, Tam asked them how Rab was. He had looked ill when last Tam had seen him, he told them.

“Aye,” said Tam’s mother. “The lad had a bad spell o’t. He’s been long ill, but is mending now. A look at you, Tam, would make him feel all the better, I’m sure.”

“So he came home safe, did he?” Tam said. “Och, I owe him my life, that I do! Had it not been that I met up with him on the street on my way to the station, I myself would have been on the Tay Bridge Train, and lost with all the rest. It was Rab that made me hold over till the next day.”

“You met Rab?” asked Tam’s father sharply. “When was this?”

“When was it?” Tam told him. “When would it be but the night of the great windstorm? December 27th, it was. Och, the wind was rising already when we met. ’Twas all a body could do to keep his footing climbing back up the hill to my lodgings.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this, Tam,” answered his father. “You did not meet Rab that night.”

“I did, indeed. I stood for fifteen or twenty minutes and talked with Rab, while he argued that I must go back and wait until the mom. I thought he meant to travel back with me. And then I waited, but he never came.”

Said his mother, “Tam, lad, ye couldna have talked to Rab. He’s been lying in his bed for the past fortnight.”

“He got out of it, then,” Tam insisted. “For I myself saw him. Go ask his folk if he was not away.”

“I do not need to,” said his father. “That night was one I’ll not forget. Along about sundown Rab’s mother came running to us for help. The lad was bound he’d get up from his bed. Out of his mind with fever, he was, and calling out ‘Tam! Tam!’ It took me and his father and the cowman to hold him down in his bed, and when he gave up of a sudden, he lay there as white and spent as if he were dead. We did not leave his side until morn, and then we sent for the doctor. But he was only sleeping after all.”

Tam was perplexed at this tale. “Well, then, who was it I met then, if not Rab?” he wanted to know.

Tam’s grandmother, who had so far not said a word, spoke up tartly. “What would it be but his fetch?”

“Havers!” exclaimed the father. “Auld wives’ tales and superstitions!”

The grandmother spoke quietly now, but firmly. “Aye, ’twas the lad’s fetch—his living spirit. Rab got the warning that Tam was in danger, and when he could not go himself with the illness on him, and himself held down in his bed, he sent his fetch to hold Tam back from taking the train.”

“I believe you,” Tam said. “For if it was not Rab, it must have been as you say. Fetch or spirit, whatever it was, it had Rab’s look about it, and it had Rab’s voice, and it kept me from taking the Tay Bridge Train.”

Tam’s father scoffed and blustered, but it was in Tam’s mind that he believed in it as much as Tam’s grandmother, and Tam’s mother and Tam himself did, only he wasn’t going to tell them that he did.

As for Rab, all that he remembered was that he had been taken with a terrible fear that some evil hung over Tam’s head, and he had fought to go and warn his friend. When they held him down he thought he fell asleep and dreamed that he went and found Tam and put him out of danger. When Rab woke in the morning the fear had left him, and his mind was at rest. He was sure then that Tam was safe.

“I would not know, Tam,” said Rab. “But your grandmother could well be right. Maybe my spirit left me and went to warn you, and if so, it must have been my fetch, for, to be sure, it was not my ghost, for I’m not dead.”

“Nor I!” Tam said. “Thanks to you.”

It was the talk of the countryside for a very long time, and old folk to this day still talk sometimes about the fetch of Rab MacDonald that went to stop his friend Tam on the night of the great windstorm and made him miss the Tay Bridge Train.