The Lore of Scotland by Sophia Kingshill

Author:Sophia Kingshill
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409061717
Publisher: Random House

ST BOSWELLS, ROXBURGHSHIRE

The manuscript collection of Border customs, legends, and superstitions compiled for Sir Walter Scott by Thomas Wilkie in the early nineteenth century records a death portent. Wilkie says that about seven years earlier a farmer’s wife who lived on the banks of the River Ale, near St Boswells, was looking out of the window when she thought she saw a funeral party approaching. She at once mentioned this to some neighbours who were with her in the house:

They ran out to look, but came back, and sat down again, saying she must be mistaken, for there was nothing of the kind to be seen; the woman felt restless, however, and out of spirits; she could not help going to the window again, and again she saw the funeral moving on. Her friends ran out-of-doors and looked along the road, but still could perceive nothing; a third time she went to the window, and exclaimed, ‘It is fast coming on, and will soon be at the door.’ No other person could discern anything; but within half an hour a confused noise was heard outside, and the farm-servants entered, bearing her husband’s lifeless body. He had died suddenly, by a fall from his cart.

The travel writer Augustus Hare, always intrigued by supernatural phenomena, tells a similar story in his memoirs for 1874:

When Mr Macpherson of Glen Truim was dying, his wife had gone to rest in a room looking out over the park, and sat near the window. Suddenly she saw lights as of a carriage coming in at the distant lodge-gate, and calling to one of the servants, said, ‘Do go down; some one is coming who does not know of all this grief.’

The servant, however, stayed by Mrs Macpherson’s side, and as the carriage came nearer the house they saw it was a hearse drawn by four horses. Many figures sat on the carriage.

As it stopped at the porch door, the figures looked up at her, and their eyes glared with light; then they scrambled down and seemed to disappear into the house. Soon they reappeared and seemed to lift some heavy weight into the hearse, which then drove off at full speed, causing all the stones and gravel to fly up at the windows. Mrs Macpherson and the butler had not rallied from their horror and astonishment, when the nurse watching in the next room came in to tell her that the Colonel was dead.

Tales of the ‘death-coach’ are widely known throughout Britain: another example is told at BALLATER (North East).

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