J.S. Le Fanu\'s Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 by J.S. Le Fanu
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J.S. Le Fanu >> J.S. Le Fanu\'s Ghostly Tales, Volume 5
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Nelly slept soundly on, but the little boy, whose hands were extended
close over the coals, turned and looked toward the bed, it seemed to
her, in fear, and she saw the glare of the embers reflected on his
thin cheek as he turned toward her. He rose and went, on tiptoe,
quickly to the door, in silence, and let himself out as softly as he
had come in.
After that, the little boy was never seen any more by any one of his
kindred.
"Fairy doctors," as the dealers in the preternatural, who in such
cases were called in, are termed, did all that in them lay--but in
vain. Father Tom came down, and tried what holier rites could do, but
equally without result. So little Billy was dead to mother, brother,
and sisters; but no grave received him. Others whom affection
cherished, lay in holy ground, in the old churchyard of Abington, with
headstone to mark the spot over which the survivor might kneel and say
a kind prayer for the peace of the departed soul. But there was no
landmark to show where little Billy was hidden from their loving eyes,
unless it was in the old hill of Lisnavoura, that cast its long shadow
at sunset before the cabin-door; or that, white and filmy in the
moonlight, in later years, would occupy his brother's gaze as he
returned from fair or market, and draw from him a sigh and a prayer
for the little brother he had lost so long ago, and was never to see
again.
STORIES OF LOUGH GUIR
When the present writer was a boy of twelve or thirteen, he first made
the acquaintance of Miss Anne Baily, of Lough Guir, in the county of
Limerick. She and her sister were the last representatives at that
place, of an extremely good old name in the county. They were both
what is termed "old maids," and at that time past sixty. But never
were old ladies more hospitable, lively, and kind, especially to young
people. They were both remarkably agreeable and clever. Like all old
county ladies of their time, they were great genealogists, and could
recount the origin, generations, and intermarriages, of every county
family of note.
These ladies were visited at their house at Lough Guir by Mr. Crofton
Croker; and are, I think, mentioned, by name, in the second series of
his fairy legends; the series in which (probably communicated by Miss
Anne Baily), he recounts some of the picturesque traditions of those
beautiful lakes--lakes, I should no longer say, for the smaller and
prettier has since been drained, and gave up from its depths some long
lost and very interesting relics.
In their drawing-room stood a curious relic of another sort: old
enough, too, though belonging to a much more modern period. It was the
ancient stirrup cup of the hospitable house of Lough Guir. Crofton
Croker has preserved a sketch of this curious glass. I have often had
it in my hand. It had a short stem; and the cup part, having the
bottom rounded, rose cylindrically, and, being of a capacity to
contain a whole bottle of claret, and almost as narrow as an
old-fashioned ale glass, was tall to a degree that filled me with
wonder. As it obliged the rider to extend his arm as he raised the
glass, it must have tried a tipsy man, sitting in the saddle, pretty
severely. The wonder was that the marvellous tall glass had come down
to our times without a crack.
There was another glass worthy of remark in the same drawing-room. It
was gigantic, and shaped conically, like one of those old-fashioned
jelly glasses which used to be seen upon the shelves of confectioners.
It was engraved round the rim with the words, "The glorious, pious,
and immortal memory"; and on grand occasions, was filled to the brim,
and after the manner of a loving cup, made the circuit of the Whig
guests, who owed all to the hero whose memory its legend invoked.
It was now but the transparent phantom of those solemn convivialities
of a generation, who lived, as it were, within hearing of the cannon
and shoutings of those stirring times. When I saw it, this glass had
long retired from politics and carousals, and stood peacefully on a
little table in the drawing-room, where ladies' hands replenished it
with fair water, and crowned it daily with flowers from the garden.
Miss Anne Baily's conversation ran oftener than her sister's upon the
legendary and supernatural; she told her stories with the sympathy,
the colour, and the mysterious air which contribute so powerfully to
effect, and never wearied of answering questions about the old castle,
and amusing her young audience with fascinating little glimpses of old
adventure and bygone days. My memory retains the picture of my early
friend very distinctly. A slim straight figure, above the middle
height; a general likeness to the full-length portrait of that
delightful Countess d'Aulnois, to whom we all owe our earliest and
most brilliant glimpses of fairy-land; something of her
gravely-pleasant countenance, plain, but refined and ladylike, with
that kindly mystery in her side-long glance and uplifted finger, which
indicated the approaching climax of a tale of wonder.
Lough Guir is a kind of centre of the operations of the Munster
fairies. When a child is stolen by the "good people," Lough Guir is
conjectured to be the place of its unearthly transmutation from the
human to the fairy state. And beneath its waters lie enchanted, the
grand old castle of the Desmonds, the great earl himself, his
beautiful young countess, and all the retinue that surrounded him in
the years of his splendour, and at the moment of his catastrophe.
Here, too, are historic associations. The huge square tower that rises
at one side of the stable-yard close to the old house, to a height
that amazed my young eyes, though robbed of its battlements and one
story, was a stronghold of the last rebellious Earl of Desmond, and is
specially mentioned in that delightful old folio, the _Hibernia
Pacata_, as having, with its Irish garrison on the battlements, defied
the army of the lord deputy, then marching by upon the summits of the
overhanging hills. The house, built under shelter of this stronghold
of the once proud and turbulent Desmonds, is old, but snug, with a
multitude of small low rooms, such as I have seen in houses of the
same age in Shropshire and the neighbouring English counties.
The hills that overhang the lakes appeared to me, in my young days
(and I have not seen them since), to be clothed with a short soft
verdure, of a hue so dark and vivid as I had never seen before.
In one of the lakes is a small island, rocky and wooded, which is
believed by the peasantry to represent the top of the highest tower of
the castle which sank, under a spell, to the bottom. In certain states
of the atmosphere, I have heard educated people say, when in a boat
you have reached a certain distance, the island appears to rise some
feet from the water, its rocks assume the appearance of masonry, and
the whole circuit presents very much the effect of the battlements of
a castle rising above the surface of the lake.
This was Miss Anne Baily's story of the submersion of this lost
castle:
_The Magician Earl_
It is well known that the great Earl of Desmond, though history
pretends to dispose of him differently, lives to this hour enchanted
in his castle, with all his household, at the bottom of the lake.
There was not, in his day, in all the world, so accomplished a
magician as he. His fairest castle stood upon an island in the lake,
and to this he brought his young and beautiful bride, whom he loved
but too well; for she prevailed upon his folly to risk all to gratify
her imperious caprice.
They had not been long in this beautiful castle, when she one day
presented herself in the chamber in which her husband studied his
forbidden art, and there implored him to exhibit before her some of
the wonders of his evil science. He resisted long; but her entreaties,
tears, and wheedlings were at length too much for him and he
consented.
But before beginning those astonishing transformations with which he
was about to amaze her, he explained to her the awful conditions and
dangers of the experiment.
Alone in this vast apartment, the walls of which were lapped, far
below, by the lake whose dark waters lay waiting to swallow them, she
must witness a certain series of frightful phenomena, which once
commenced, he could neither abridge nor mitigate; and if throughout
their ghastly succession she spoke one word, or uttered one
exclamation, the castle and all that it contained would in one instant
subside to the bottom of the lake, there to remain, under the
servitude of a strong spell, for ages.
The dauntless curiosity of the lady having prevailed, and the oaken
door of the study being locked and barred, the fatal experiments
commenced.
Muttering a spell, as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly
over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a cadaverous smell
filled the air, and, with heavy winnowing wings, a gigantic vulture
rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room, as if on the
point of pouncing upon her.
The lady commanded herself through this trial, and instantly another
began.
The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed,
she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag: who, with
yellow skin hanging about her face and enormous eyes, swung herself on
crutches toward the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her
grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment,
till she rolled with a yell on the floor, in a horrible convulsion, at
the lady's feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, with crest
erect, and quivering tongue. Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of
darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before
her, and, with his finger on his lip, enforcing the continued
necessity of silence. He then placed himself at his length on the
floor, and began to stretch himself out and out, longer and longer,
until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room, and his
feet to the other.
This horror overcame her. The ill-starred lady uttered a wild scream,
whereupon the castle and all that was within it, sank in a moment to
the bottom of the lake.
But, once in every seven years, by night, the Earl of Desmond and his
retinue emerge, and cross the lake, in shadowy cavalcade. His white
horse is shod with silver. On that one night, the earl may ride till
daybreak, and it behoves him to make good use of his time; for, until
the silver shoes of his steed be worn through, the spell that holds
him and his beneath the lake, will retain its power.
When I (Miss Anne Baily) was a child, there was still living a man
named Teigue O'Neill, who had a strange story to tell.
He was a smith, and his forge stood on the brow of the hill,
overlooking the lake, on a lonely part of the road to Cahir Conlish.
One bright moonlight night, he was working very late, and quite alone.
The clink of his hammer, and the wavering glow reflected through the
open door on the bushes at the other side of the narrow road, were the
only tokens that told of life and vigil for miles around.
In one of the pauses of his work, he heard the ring of many hoofs
ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in this
doorway, he was just in time to see a gentleman, on a white horse, who
was dressed in a fashion the like of which the smith had never seen
before. This man was accompanied and followed by a mounted retinue, as
strangely dressed as he.
They seemed, by the clang and clatter that announced their approach,
to be riding up the hill at a hard hurry-scurry gallop; but the pace
abated as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse who, from
his grave and lordly air, he assumed to be a man of rank, and
accustomed to command, drew bridle and came to a halt before the
smith's door.
He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to
the smith, and pointed down to one of his horse's hoofs.
Teigue stooped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that
it was shod with a silver shoe; which, in one place, he said, was worn
as thin as a shilling. Instantaneously, his situation was made
apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer.
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck at him
suddenly, with something that whistled in the air like a whip; and an
icy streak seemed to traverse his body as if he had been cut through
with a leaf of steel. But he was without scathe or scar, as he
afterwards found. At the same moment he saw the whole cavalcade break
into a gallop and disappear down the hill, with a momentary hurtling
in the air, like the flight of a volley of cannon shot.
Here had been the earl himself. He had tried one of his accustomed
stratagems to lead the smith to speak to him. For it is well known
that either for the purpose of abridging or of mitigating his period
of enchantment, he seeks to lead people to accost him. But what, in
the event of his succeeding, would befall the person whom he had thus
ensnared, no one knows.
_Moll Rial's Adventure_
When Miss Anne Baily was a child, Moll Rial was an old woman. She had
lived all her days with the Bailys of Lough Guir; in and about whose
house, as was the Irish custom of those days, were a troop of
bare-footed country girls, scullery maids, or laundresses, or employed
about the poultry yard, or running of errands.
Among these was Moll Rial, then a stout good-humoured lass, with
little to think of, and nothing to fret about. She was once washing
clothes by the process known universally in Munster as beetling. The
washer stands up to her ankles in water, in which she has immersed the
clothes, which she lays in that state on a great flat stone, and
smacks with lusty strokes of an instrument which bears a rude
resemblance to a cricket bat, only shorter, broader, and light enough
to be wielded freely with one hand. Thus, they smack the dripping
clothes, turning them over and over, sousing them in the water, and
replacing them on the same stone, to undergo a repetition of the
process, until they are thoroughly washed.
Moll Rial was plying her "beetle" at the margin of the lake, close
under the old house and castle. It was between eight and nine o'clock
on a fine summer morning, everything looked bright and beautiful.
Though quite alone, and though she could not see even the windows of
the house (hidden from her view by the irregular ascent and some
interposing bushes), her loneliness was not depressing.
Standing up from her work, she saw a gentleman walking slowly down the
slope toward her. He was a "grand-looking" gentleman, arrayed in a
flowered silk dressing-gown, with a cap of velvet on his head; and as
he stepped toward her, in his slippered feet, he showed a very
handsome leg. He was smiling graciously as he approached, and drawing
a ring from his finger with an air of gracious meaning, which seemed
to imply that he wished to make her a present, he raised it in his
fingers with a pleased look, and placed it on the flat stones beside
the clothes she had been beetling so industriously.
He drew back a little, and continued to look at her with an
encouraging smile, which seemed to say: "You have earned your reward;
you must not be afraid to take it."
The girl fancied that this was some gentleman who had arrived, as
often happened in those hospitable and haphazard times, late and
unexpectedly the night before, and who was now taking a little
indolent ramble before breakfast.
Moll Rial was a little shy, and more so at having been discovered by
so grand a gentleman with her petticoats gathered a little high about
her bare shins. She looked down, therefore, upon the water at her
feet, and then she saw a ripple of blood, and then another, ring after
ring, coming and going to and from her feet. She cried out the sacred
name in horror, and, lifting her eyes, the courtly gentleman was gone,
but the blood-rings about her feet spread with the speed of light over
the surface of the lake, which for a moment glowed like one vast
estuary of blood.
Here was the earl once again, and Moll Rial declared that if it had
not been for that frightful transformation of the water she would have
spoken to him next minute, and would thus have passed under a spell,
perhaps as direful as his own.
_The Banshee_
So old a Munster family as the Bailys, of Lough Guir, could not fail
to have their attendant banshee. Everyone attached to the family knew
this well, and could cite evidences of that unearthly distinction. I
heard Miss Baily relate the only experience she had personally had of
that wild spiritual sympathy.
She said that, being then young, she and Miss Susan undertook a long
attendance upon the sick bed of their sister, Miss Kitty, whom I have
heard remembered among her contemporaries as the merriest and most
entertaining of human beings. This light-hearted young lady was dying
of consumption. The sad duties of such attendance being divided among
many sisters, as there then were, the night watches devolved upon the
two ladies I have named: I think, as being the eldest.
It is not improbable that these long and melancholy vigils, lowering
the spirits and exciting the nervous system, prepared them for
illusions. At all events, one night at dead of night, Miss Baily and
her sister, sitting in the dying lady's room, heard such sweet and
melancholy music as they had never heard before. It seemed to them
like distant cathedral music. The room of the dying girl had its
windows toward the yard, and the old castle stood near, and full in
sight. The music was not in the house, but seemed to come from the
yard, or beyond it. Miss Anne Baily took a candle, and went down the
back stairs. She opened the back door, and, standing there, heard the
same faint but solemn harmony, and could not tell whether it most
resembled the distant music of instruments, or a choir of voices. It
seemed to come through the windows of the old castle, high in the
air. But when she approached the tower, the music, she thought, came
from above the house, at the other side of the yard; and thus
perplexed, and at last frightened, she returned.
This aerial music both she and her sister, Miss Susan Baily, avowed
that they distinctly heard, and for a long time. Of the fact she was
clear, and she spoke of it with great awe.
_The Governess's Dream_
This lady, one morning, with a grave countenance that indicated
something weighty upon her mind, told her pupils that she had, on the
night before, had a very remarkable dream.
The first room you enter in the old castle, having reached the foot of
the spiral stone stair, is a large hall, dim and lofty, having only a
small window or two, set high in deep recesses in the wall. When I saw
the castle many years ago, a portion of this capacious chamber was
used as a store for the turf laid in to last the year.
Her dream placed her, alone, in this room, and there entered a
grave-looking man, having something very remarkable in his
countenance: which impressed her, as a fine portrait sometimes will,
with a haunting sense of character and individuality.
In his hand this man carried a wand, about the length of an ordinary
walking cane. He told her to observe and remember its length, and to
mark well the measurements he was about to make, the result of which
she was to communicate to Mr. Baily of Lough Guir.
From a certain point in the wall, with this wand, he measured along
the floor, at right angles with the wall, a certain number of its
lengths, which he counted aloud; and then, in the same way, from the
adjoining wall he measured a certain number of its lengths, which he
also counted distinctly. He then told her that at the point where
these two lines met, at a depth of a certain number of feet which he
also told her, treasure lay buried. And so the dream broke up, and her
remarkable visitant vanished.
She took the girls with her to the old castle, where, having cut a
switch to the length represented to her in her dream, she measured the
distances, and ascertained, as she supposed, the point on the floor
beneath which the treasure lay. The same day she related her dream to
Mr. Baily. But he treated it laughingly, and took no step in
consequence.
Some time after this, she again saw, in a dream, the same
remarkable-looking man, who repeated his message, and appeared
displeased. But the dream was treated by Mr. Baily as before.
The same dream occurred again, and the children became so clamorous to
have the castle floor explored, with pick and shovel, at the point
indicated by the thrice-seen messenger, that at length Mr. Baily
consented, and the floor was opened, and a trench was sunk at the spot
which the governess had pointed out.
Miss Anne Baily, and nearly all the members of the family, her father
included, were present at this operation. As the workmen approached
the depth described in the vision, the interest and suspense of all
increased; and when the iron implements met the solid resistance of a
broad flagstone, which returned a cavernous sound to the stroke, the
excitement of all present rose to its acme.
With some difficulty the flag was raised, and a chamber of stone work,
large enough to receive a moderately-sized crock or pit, was
disclosed. Alas! it was empty. But in the earth at the bottom of it,
Miss Baily said, she herself saw, as every other bystander plainly
did, the circular impression of a vessel: which had stood there, as
the mark seemed to indicate, for a very long time.
Both the Miss Bailys were strong in their belief hereafterwards, that
the treasure which they were convinced had actually been deposited
there, had been removed by some more trusting and active listener than
their father had proved.
This same governess remained with them to the time of her death, which
occurred some years later, under the following circumstances as
extraordinary as her dream.
_The Earl's Hall_
The good governess had a particular liking for the old castle, and
when lessons were over, would take her book or her work into a large
room in the ancient building, called the Earl's Hall. Here she caused
a table and chair to be placed for her use, and in the chiaroscuro
would so sit at her favourite occupations, with just a little ray of
subdued light, admitted through one of the glassless windows above
her, and falling upon her table.
The Earl's Hall is entered by a narrow-arched door, opening close to
the winding stair. It is a very large and gloomy room, pretty nearly
square, with a lofty vaulted ceiling, and a stone floor. Being
situated high in the castle, the walls of which are immensely thick,
and the windows very small and few, the silence that reigns here is
like that of a subterranean cavern. You hear nothing in this solitude,
except perhaps twice in a day, the twitter of a swallow in one of the
small windows high in the wall.
This good lady having one day retired to her accustomed solitude, was
missed from the house at her wonted hour of return. This in a country
house, such as Irish houses were in those days, excited little
surprise, and no harm. But when the dinner hour came, which was then,
in country houses, five o'clock, and the governess had not appeared,
some of her young friends, it being not yet winter, and sufficient
light remaining to guide them through the gloom of the dim ascent and
passages, mounted the old stone stair to the level of the Earl's Hall,
gaily calling to her as they approached.
There was no answer. On the stone floor, outside the door of the
Earl's Hall, to their horror, they found her lying insensible. By the
usual means she was restored to consciousness; but she continued very
ill, and was conveyed to the house, where she took to her bed.
It was there and then that she related what had occurred to her. She
had placed herself, as usual, at her little work table, and had been
either working or reading--I forget which--for some time, and felt in
her usual health and serene spirits. Raising her eyes, and looking
towards the door, she saw a horrible-looking little man enter. He was
dressed in red, was very short, had a singularly dark face, and a most
atrocious countenance. Having walked some steps into the room, with
his eyes fixed on her, he stopped, and beckoning to her to follow,
moved back toward the door. About half way, again he stopped once more
and turned. She was so terrified that she sat staring at the
apparition without moving or speaking. Seeing that she had not obeyed
him, his face became more frightful and menacing, and as it underwent
this change, he raised his hand and stamped on the floor. Gesture,
look, and all, expressed diabolical fury. Through sheer extremity of
terror she did rise, and, as he turned again, followed him a step or
two in the direction of the door. He again stopped, and with the same
mute menace, compelled her again to follow him.
She reached the narrow stone doorway of the Earl's Hall, through which
he had passed; from the threshold she saw him standing a little way
off, with his eyes still fixed on her. Again he signed to her, and
began to move along the short passage that leads to the winding stair.
But instead of following him further, she fell on the floor in a fit.
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