NORTHERN LEGENDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3018, 17 January 1912, Page 87

NORTHERN LEGENDS.

By Jessik Mackay. Do the dead indeed continue to care for the soul's discarded earthly wrappings ? Xot long ago the story" was revived that an Egyptian priestess or queen had contrived that her mummy should bring disaster or deatli to every person ■who touched or owned it. This Egyptian tale is »ever with us, like that of the sea serpent • we have met it in many Protean forms, some of which are so precise and definite, bringing chapter and verse to bear on the list of modern tragedies which are the result of the dark lady's curse, that wc lind it hard to believe such a chain of coincidence should bind together such a series of disasters In the North Highlands, long the land of magic and mystery, there still linger homely legends of happenings no less inexplicable, and now and again some antiquarian bodv takes up and spreads these artless records ; n an unbelieving world. The journal of the Viking Society, which has long been at work on the Norse elements in Orkney, the Shetlands, Caithness, and Sutherland, tells a less tragic but similar tale in a recent issue. In the Island of Westray, off the Caithness coast, there is a green mound in which many human bones were \ known to be buried. An old boatman, no ! longer alive, told one of the society a ' strange incident of his boyhood in con- ! nection with this prehiistbric place of i sepulchre. The mound pertained to the farm of Cleat, on which, at that time, a ! hard-headed autocratic Lowland Scot was j grieve or manager. One day this man ! gare the outrageous order that the ' mound should be' levelled and the bones ! broken up to fertilise the soil. The bov who afterwards told the tale, with a young companion, slept in the same room • as a farm servant, described as "a great coarse type." 'Tn the night the boys woke to see this man walkling round the j room in his sieep, and seemingly address- | ing some unseen person in an agitated way, while he stooped frequently as if to gather something off the floor and put it in a sack. The terrified boys heard 'him say repeatedly, "I'll put them back ; oh, ' I'll put them back." Next morning the j Lowland grieve was seen to be looking I haggard and anxious, and he at once : issued the order that all the bones should be taken back and reburied in the mound. ; Neither he nor the "tyke" gave any ! account of the evening's experiences, but ' tlie boys were convinced that they had seen the ghosts of the prehistoric war- i viors whose remains had been so rudely ' disturbed.

A creepy tale of second sight is also narrated by another correspondent of the same journal as happening to a. youngman who worked on the farm of the narrator's father about half a century ago. This youth, Ewen Macleod, was apparently cursed with the occult temperament in a high degree. He would never go out of the house after dark unless some person went with him; and he was for ever telling of funerals that he saw leaving one house and another in the district. The fire was a mirror of future events to him, as his wan and horrified looks often indicated as he peered into the ruddy blaze. One vision troubled him more often than any other. It was that of a large boat labouring in a heavy sea, and filled with persons he knew and sometimes named. But there was always one who sat with his bnck to the seer and so remained unrecognised. Some time after, Ewen Macleod was drowned in precisely the manner lie had so often described in his recurrent vision, and his hearers were convinced that the unknown shade was his own wraith. More direct, it will be remembered, was the somewhat similar vision of Fergus M'lvor, as narrated in " Waverlev.'' The young Jacobite chief was visited during his captivity by the " Bodach Glas." or Gray M>n. which never failed to anpri?« the chi fs cf M'lvor of approaching death. In the gloaming he saw a presentment ot himself, complete in everv feature and detail, and knew beyond doubt that his end was at hand. I

A contrast to th<=<«e primitive tales o? mystery in- these Hyperborean latitudes is another fragment which puts the Orcadians not only abreast of the mediaeval world in geographical knowledge, but ahead of it. According to this old document, the people of Orkney were aware of the existence of Greenland 98 years before Columbus landed in the West Indies. This piece of information, with the almost inevitable accompanying knowledge of the existene of th° American mainland, came to them m wbai should have been the most unimpeachable evidence—that of their bishop. At this time. Orkney and Shet'and were under the iur'sdiction of Norway, rot of Scotland. In 1394. we are here told, two bishops of the Norwegian Fstab ,: °h*rent exchanged sees. The v were Jon. Bishop of Orkney, and Henrek. Bishop of Oai'de, in Greenland. In that year the Venetian brothers Nicclo and Anton ; o Zeno ret out on a western voyage with a mysterious "Prince, Zichmni." who is argued to have been Henry St. Clair. Jarl of Orkney, who died about 1404. One would like to hear a little more about this Madoc of the before taking away yet another laurel leaf from the already sadlv plundered garland of Christopher Columbus, Tt is hinted by the Orcadian analyst that the groat Genoese: mav have obtained his information from Orkney in the first place. T ; at mav have been, and in any case the gem'us and perseverance of the famous navigator are not to be wherever he gained the idea of that new world he gave to Spain.