Part 5

“Mr Herbert went on to say that two days before, while he was asleep, he dreamt vividly that he was at Lausdree; that he crossed the lawn to the window of the dining hall, and, looking in, saw my master and the butler (that’s me) in the room. He was going round to the front door when he awoke. Now that was his _astral body_ that Master and I saw. He loved Lausdree, and during sleep he came and paid us that visit. Queer, isn’t it? Ten days after, he died. He wanted to see the old castle before he died, and his force of will power brought his double self, or astral body, to visit us. _It is not so uncommon_ as people think.

“Numbers of people are seen in two places at once far apart. Look at Archbishop Sharpe of St Andrews. He was in Edinburgh, at Holyrood I think, and sent his servant over post haste to St Andrews to bring back some papers he had forgotten there. When his trusty servant went up to his study in the Novum Hospitium to get the papers from the desk, lo! there was the Archbishop sitting in his usual chair and scowling at him. He told the Archbishop this when he returned with the papers to Edinburgh, but his Grace sternly bade him be silent and mention the matter to no one on pain of death.

“Now, sir, it seems that my master is able to see astral bodies, for he saw Mr Jack Herbert, but I doubt if he could see a _real spirit_. Perhaps, sir,” suggested Anklebone, politely, “you might be able to see astral bodies?”

“Thank you very much indeed,” I replied, “but I’m ⸺ if I want to see anything of the sort; but I have heard a tale of an eminent man in London who took a nap in his armchair every afternoon, and while asleep appeared to his friends in different parts of the country, but I doubt the fact very much.”

“Ah!” said the butler, very solemnly, “only about one in a thousand has the power of visualising real spirits. Many ordinary persons have _long_ sight, and some have _short_ sight, but most people are short-sighted when ghosts are visible. The ghosts are really there all the time. Some people cannot see them, but can feel their presence or touch only. Most animals can see spirits; sometimes they are killed with terror when they see the spirits.”

I pulled the bell rope and ordered some spirits for the butler. “I don’t think that will kill you with terror,” I said when it arrived.

He looked grateful, and remarked that talking was dry work, however interesting the subject might be.

“Now, look here, Mr Anklebone,” I said, “you know, I daresay, the stories about the Cathedral, the Haunted Tower, and all that. Please tell me what your experiences have been there.”

Anklebone’s whole appearance suddenly changed; he gripped my arm violently, shivered and shuddered, and turned ghastly pale. I thought he was going to have a fit.

“For pity’s sake, sir,” he said, trembling, “ask me nothing about that. There is something _too terrible_ there, but I dare not reveal what I know and have seen to anyone. Do not allude to it again or it will drive me mad.”

He lay back in his chair for a few moments with his eyes closed and shaking all over, but he gradually recovered his usual appearance.

“I wish to tell you about the Castle Spectre,” he said, weakly.

I must confess that I felt nonplussed and disappointed at the turn the conversation had taken, as whatever my private opinion was regarding the worthy Jeremiah’s curious statements, still I felt anxious to find out his experiences at the Cathedral particularly. However, I swallowed my disappointment like a Trojan, and begged him to proceed.

He gulped down his spirits and informed me he felt better again, but he did not seem quite himself for some time.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I often used to climb over the Castle wall after dusk, and smoke my pipe and meditate on all the grand folk that must have been there in bygone days before the smash-up. I thought of lovely young Queen Mary, of Mary Hamilton, and her other Maries, of Lord Darnley, of the poet Castelar, of Lord Arran, and the Duke of Rothesay, and all the Stuart Kings that used to be there. Then I thought of Prior Hepburn and poor murdered Cardinal Beaton, and of monks, knights, and lovely wenches that used to frequent the old place. I loved it, for I have read history a lot. One could not help thinking of the feasting, revelry, and pageants of those interesting old times, and the grand services in the churches, and what fine dresses everybody wore.”

I saw he was going bang off the subject again, and when he began to tell me there were lots of Anklebones in Norman times about Fifeshire, I had to pull him back with a jerk to his ghost at the Castle.

“Very well, sir, I was in the Castle one evening, and I was sitting on the parapet of the old wall when I saw a head appearing up the old broken steps on the east side of the Castle that once led down to the great dining hall. I knew no one could _now_ come up that way without a ladder from the sea beach, and when the figure got to the level ground it came right through the iron railing just as if no obstruction were there. I stared hard and watched the advancing figure. It looked like a woman. I had heard of the Cardinal’s ghost, and wondered if it could be his Eminence himself. Nearer and nearer it came, and although it was a gusty evening, I noticed the flowing garments of the approaching figure were quite still and unruffled by the wind. It was like a moving statue. As it passed me slowly a few yards away, I saw they were not the robes of a Cardinal, but those of an Archbishop. I am a Churchman, and know the garments quite well. I saw all his vestments clearly, and I shall never forget the pale, ashen set face, and the thin determined mouth. Then I noticed one _very very_ strange thing—the statuesque tall figure had a thick rope round the neck, and the end of the rope was trailing along the grass behind it, but there was no sound whatever. On it went and began to climb the stairs to the upper apartments. I tried to follow, but could not move for a bit. I felt as if I was mesmerised or paralysed. I was all in a cold sweat, too, and I was glad to get away from the Castle at last and hurry home. I haven’t gone so fast for many years. When I went next day to Lausdree I made a clean breast of the whole affair to Master.

“‘Would you know him again?’ he asked me.

“‘Aye,’ I replied, ‘I would know that face and figure among a thousand.’

“‘Come to the study,’ said the master, ‘and I will show you some pictures.’

“We went, and I looked over a number of them. At last I came to one that fairly transfixed me. There was no mistaking the face. Before me was the picture of the spectre I had seen the previous night in the ruined Castle of Saint Andrews.

“‘Well, Anklebone,’ said the master, ‘this is _really wonderful_, and you actually saw the rope round the neck?’

“‘I did,’ I said, ‘as I am a living man, but who is it? It is not the Cardinal?’

“‘No,’ said the master very gravely, ‘_this man_ was publicly hanged by his enemies on a gibbet at the Market Cross of Stirling on April 1st, 1571.’

“‘But who was he?’ I asked, imploringly.

“‘The man, or ghost, you saw,’ said master, ‘was Archbishop John Hamilton of St Andrews—in his own Castle grounds where he once reigned supreme.’”

I said farewell to Mr Anklebone, and as I thought over his extraordinary story journeying home in the train, I could not help repeating over and over again to myself that very curious name that seemed to rhyme with the motion of the train—Concrikketty Anklebone.

The Smothered Piper of the West Cliffs.

“_Hush! hush! hush! Here comes the Bogie Man._”

This was shouted out to me very loudly by a cheery golfing “Johnny,” as I entered the merry smoking-room of the old ’Varsity Golf Club at Coldham Common, Cambridge, some years ago. “Draw in your armchair, light a cigar or a pipe, and tell us all [many celebrated actors were present] some of those wonderful bogie stories about dear St Andrews. It is the bogie time of the year, and you must remember I played the ‘Bogie Man’ for you in one of your big burlesques at St Andrews and Cupar some years ago, so fire away with the bogies, please, and be quick.”

Then I reeled off a big lot of yarns: of the ghost, Thomas Plater, who murdered Prior Robert of Montrose on the dormitory staircase before vespers; of the nigger in a Fifeshire house, who is invisible himself, but maps out his bare footmarks on the floor of the painted gallery; of Sharpe’s coach, which, being heard, betokens a death; of haunted old Balcomie ruined castle; of the murdered pedlar in our own South Street, who sweeps down with a chilly hand the cheeks of invaders to his haunted cellar; of the ghost that appeared in the house of Archbishop Ross, mentioned in Lyon’s History; and of the terrible ghost in the Novum Hospitium, which so alarmed people that its dwelling had to be pulled down, and only a fragment of the building now remains. But they wanted to hear the tale of the “Ghostly Piper of the West Cliffs”; so I told them the legend as I had heard it years ago.

It seems that in the old days no houses existed on the Cliffs from the old Castle of Hamilton to the modern monument near the Witch Hill. It was all meadow land, much used for the grazing of cattle and sheep, and also much frequented as a playground for bygone children. On and over the face of the cliffs, slightly to the westward of Butts Wynd, existed then the entrance to a fearsome cave, or old ecclesiastical passage, which was a terror to many, and most people shunned it. It had many names, among them the “Jingling Cove,” “The Jingling Man’s Hole,” “John’s Coal Hole,” and later “The Piper’s Cave, or Grave.” A few of the oldest inhabitants still remember it. A few knew a portion of it; none dared venture beyond this well-known portion. Like the interior of an old ice-house, it was dark, chilly, and clammy; its walls ran with cold sweat. It was partly natural, but mostly artificial—a most dark, creepy, and fearsome place.

In a description which I got of it many years ago, and which appeared in the _St Andrews Citizen_, I learn that “the opening of this cliff passage was small and triangular; it was situated on a projecting ledge of rock, and it was high enough, after entering, to enable a full-sized man to stand upright. From the opening it was a steep incline down for a distance of 49 feet, thereafter it proceeded in a level direction for over 70 feet, when it descended into a chamber. At the further end of this chamber were two, if not more, passages branching off from it. Between the passages was cut out in the rock a Latin cross.” This would seem to point to an ecclesiastical connection, and had nothing whatever to do with the more modern smugglers’ cave near the ladies’ bathing place.

But enough of description. In bygone days, in a small cottage, little better than a hovel, situated in Argyle, lived an old dame named Goodman. She occupied one room, and her son and his young wife tenanted the other little chamber. He was a merry, dare-devil, happy-go-lucky lad, and he was famed as one of the best players on the bagpipes in all Fife; he would have pleased even Maggie Lauder. Of nights at all hours he would make the old grass-grown streets lively with his music. “Jock the Piper,” was a favourite among both young and old. He was much interested in the tale of the old West Cliff cave, and took a bet on with some cronies that on a New Year’s night he would investigate the mysteries of the place, and play his pipes up it as far as he could go. His old mother, his wife, and many of his friends tried hard to dissuade him from doing so foolish and so foolhardy a thing; but he remained obdurate, and firmly stuck to his bet. On a dark New Year’s night he started up the mysterious cavern with his pipes playing merrily; and they were heard, it is said, passing beneath Market Street, then they died away. They suddenly ceased, and were never more heard. He and his well-known pipes were never seen again.

Somewhere beneath St Andrews lies the whitened bones of that bygone piper lad, with his famous pipes beside him. Attempts were made to find him, but without avail; no one, not even the bravest, dared to venture into that passage full of damp foul air. His mother and wife were distracted, and the young wife used to sit for hours at the mouth of that death-trap cave. Finally, her mind gave way, and she used to wander at all hours down to the mouth of the cave where her husband had vanished. The following New Year’s night she left the little cottage in Argyle, and putting a shawl over her wasted shoulders, turned to the old woman and said, “I’m going to my Jock.” Morning came, but she never returned home. She had, indeed, gone to her lost “Jock.” For years after, the small crouching figure of a woman could be seen on moonlight nights perched on the rock balcony of the fatal cave, dim, shadowy, and transparent. Wild shrieks and sounds of weird pipe music were constantly heard coming from out of that entrance.

In after years, when the houses were built, the mouth of this place was either built or covered up, and its memory only remains to us.

But what of “Piper Jock?” He, it is said, still walks the edge of the old cliffs; and his presence is heralded by an icy breath of cold air, and ill be it for anyone who meets or sees his phantom form or hears his pipe music. He seems to have the same effect as the ghost of “Nell Cook” in the dark entry at Canterbury, mentioned in the “Ingoldsby Legends,” from which I must quote a few verses—

“And tho’ two hundred years have flown, Nell Cook doth still pursue Her weary walk, and they who cross her path The deed may rue.

Her fatal breath is fell as death! The simoon’s blast is not More dire (a wind in Africa That blows uncommon hot).

But all unlike the simoon’s blast, Her breath is deadly cold, Delivering quivering, shivering shocks Upon both young and old.

And whoso in the entry dark Doth feel that fatal breath, He ever dies within the year Some dire untimely death.”

So it is with him who meets “Piper Jock.”

“By Jove,” interrupted the golfing “Johnny,” “has anyone seen him lately?”

“I only know of one man,” I said, “who told me that one awful night in a heavy thunderstorm he had heard wild pipe music, and seen the figure of a curiously dressed piper walking along the cliff edge, _where no mortal could walk_, at a furious speed.”

“What do you think of it all?” asked my golfing friend.

“I don’t know, I’m sure; I am not receptive and don’t see ghosts, but if I could only find _now_ the mouth of that place, I bet another ‘Jock’ and I would get along it and find out the whereabouts of ‘Jock the Piper’ and his poor little wife. Here is my hansom. Good night, don’t forget the Piper.”

And they haven’t.

The Beautiful White Lady of the Haunted Tower.

“How very, very lovely she was to be sure!”

“Of whom are you speaking?” I asked. “Of some of the Orchid or Veronique people, or of some of your own company? I did not know you were hard hit old chap.” I was sitting in the smoking-room of the Great Northern Hotel, King’s Cross, talking to an old friend, an Oxford man, but now the manager of a big theatrical company, when he suddenly made the above remark.

“No, no! Of none of those people,” he replied; “but our talking of St Andrews reminded me of a ghost, a phantom, or a spectre—call it what you choose—I saw in that ancient city several years ago—no horrid bogie, but a very lovely girl, indeed.”

“By Jove,” I said, “tell me about it; I want a new ghost tale very badly indeed. I know a lot of them, but perhaps this is something new and spicy.”

“I am sure I do not know if it be new,” he replied. “I have never seen anything spectral before or since, but I saw that lovely woman three different times. It must be fully ten years ago. I saw her twice on the Scores and once in an old house.”

“Well, I must really hear all about it,” I said. “Please fire away.”

“All right, all right!” he said. “Now for her _first_ appearance. I was living in St Andrews at the time. It must have been the end of January or beginning of February, and I was strolling along to the Kirkhill after dinner and enjoying the fine evening and the keen sea breeze, and thinking about the old, old days of the Castle and Cathedral, of Beaton’s ghost, and many other queer tales, when a female figure glided past me. She was in a long, flowing white dress, and had her beautiful dark hair hanging down past her waist. I was very much astonished to see a girl dressed in such a manner wandering about alone at such an hour, and I followed her along for several yards, when lo! just after she had passed the turret light she completely vanished near the square tower, which I was afterwards informed was known as the ‘Haunted Tower.’ I hunted all round the place carefully, but saw nothing more that night. Queer, wasn’t it?”

“Certainly it was,” I remarked; “but I know dozens of weird stories connected with that old tower. But what more have you to tell me?”

“Well,” he continued, “as you may imagine, the whole affair worried and puzzled me considerably, but it was gradually vanishing from my mind when near the same place I saw her again. I had my sister with me this time, and we both can swear to it. It was a lovely night with a faint moon, and as the white lady swept past quite silently we saw the soft trailing dress and the long, black wavy hair. There was something like a rosary hanging from her waist, and a cross or a locket hanging round her throat. As she passed she turned her head towards us, and we both noticed her beautiful features, especially her brilliant eyes. She vanished, as before, near that old tower. My sister was so awfully frightened that I had to hurry her off home. We were both absolutely convinced we had seen a being not of this world—a face never to be forgotten.”

“How strange,” I said. “You know, several people saw a girl in that built-up old turret lying in her coffin. A former priest of the Episcopal Church here saw some masons repairing the wall of that tower, and their chisel fell into the turret through a chink. On removing a stone, they came upon a chamber within, and they saw a girl dressed in white, with long hair, lying in a coffin, wanting the lid. The hole was built up again at once. I know, and have often talked to persons who saw her there. One of them was a mason employed at the work. The doorway of the tower is opened up now, and a grill put in, but there is no sign of the girl. Queer stories arose. Some said it was the remains of Princess Muren, daughter of Constantine. Others said it was the embalmed body of some sweet girl Saint concealed there in times of trouble, and so on; but finish your story.”

“I have little more to tell,” he answered. “Some months afterwards I was a guest in an old house in Fifeshire, and was given the turret room. On the second night I went to bed early, as I had been at golf all day and felt awfully dead beat. I must have fallen asleep suddenly, as I left my candle burning on the table. All of a sudden I woke up with a start to find the now familiar figure of the ‘White Lady’ at the foot of my bed. She was gazing at me intently. When I sat up she glided away behind the screen at the door. I jumped up, put on my dressing-gown, seized the candle, and made for the door. The lady was gone, and the door was as I left it when I went to bed—_locked_. I unlocked it, flung it open, and looked into the passage. There she was, I saw the white dress, the splendid hair, the rosary, and the gold locket quite plainly. She turned her lovely face to me and smiled a sweet, pathetic smile; gently raised her hand, and floated away towards the picture gallery. Now for the end. Next day my kind hostess took me through the old gallery. I saw pictures of all ages, sorts, and sizes; but imagine my amazement when I saw ‘_The White Lady_’—the same white dress, the lovely sweet face and splendid eyes, the rosary, and a locket, which I now saw had on it the arms of Queen Mary and Lord Darnley. ‘Who on earth is that?’ I asked.

“‘You seem interested in that painting,’ said Mrs ⸺. ‘Well, that is a portrait of one of the lovely Mary Stuart’s Maries. She was madly in love with Castelar, the French minstrel, and after he was beheaded at St Andrews she became a nun, and it is said died of grief in her nunnery.’

“That is all, old boy,” he said, “and it is late. I think it seems right; _that_ girl I and my sister saw _must_ have been the spirit of Marie ⸺; and perhaps it was she who was the occupant of that haunted tower—who knows? but I shall never, never see such a divinely beautiful face on this earth again.”

Concerning More Appearances of the White Lady.

I had been invited, and was sitting at tea with a very dear old lady friend of mine not long ago. It may seem strange, but tea is, I consider, an extra and an unnecessary meal. It does not appeal to me in the least, and only spoils one’s dinner and digestion. The reason I went to tea was because in her note to me the lady mentioned that she had read my book of ghost tales, and that she was interested in ghosts in general and St Andrews ghosts in particular, and that she knew lots of such stories in the days of her girlhood in St Andrews, now about 85 years ago. That is why I went to eat cakes with sugar, hot buttered toast, and drink tea as black as senna or a black draught. She had also informed me in the note that she could tell me a lot about the Haunted Tower and the Beautiful White Lady.

It took some time to get her to that point. She would talk about Archbishop Sharpe and his haunted house in the Pends Road, of the ghost seen by Archbishop Ross, of my friend the Veiled Nun, of the Cathedral and Mr John Knox, of Hungus, King of the Picts, of Constantine, Thomas Plater, and various others. She told me a long tale of the Rainham Ghost in Norfolk, known as “The Brown Lady of Rainham,” whom her father and Captain Marryat both saw, and so on.

At last we got near the subject I wished information on.

“In my young days,” she said, “St Andrews was quite a wee bit place with grass-grown streets, red-tiled houses, outside stairs, queer narrow wynds, not over clean, only a few lights at night—here and there, an old bowet or oil lamp hanging at street corners. Every one believed in Sharpe’s Phantom Coach in those good old days.”

“Did you ever see it?” I queried.

“No,” she said, “but I have heard it rumble past, and I know those who have seen it, and many other things too.”

“But tell me about the White Lady, please,” I said.

“I will. Few people in those days cared to pass that haunted tower after nightfall. If they did they ran past it and also the Castle. Those new-fangled incandescent gas lamps have spoiled it all now. The White Lady was one of the _Maries_, one of the maids of honour to poor martyred Mary of Scotland, they said then. She was madly in love with the French poet and minstrel, ‘Castelar,’ and he was hopelessly in love, like many others, with Marie’s lovely mistress, ‘the Queen of Scots.’”

“Was she supposed to be the girl seen in the built-up haunted tower?” I asked.

“That I really can’t say,” she said. “There was a story often told in the old days that a beautiful embalmed girl in white lay in that tower, and it was there and near the Castle that she used to appear to the people. You know poor Castelar, the handsome minstrel, said and did some stupid things, and was beheaded at the Castle, and was probably buried near there. Get me from that shelf Whyte Melville’s novel, ‘The Queen’s Maries.’”

I did as she bade me.