The “Bodach Glas.” This is the earliest of not a few apparitions in the Waverley Novels, and may be made the text of a few remarks on Scott’s attitude towards ghosts and ghost stories. In Lockhart, IX 249, Mr. Adolphus probably states the case correctly.
“On the subjects commonly designated as ‘the marvellous,’ his mind was susceptible, and it was delicate. He loved to handle then in his own manner and at his own season; not to be pressed with them, or brought to anything like a test of belief or disbelief respecting them. There is, perhaps, in most minds a point more or less advanced, at which incredulity on these subjects may be found to waver. Sir Walter Scott, as it seemed to me, never cared to ascertain very precisely where this point lay in his own mental constitution. …”
The night he spent at haunted Glammis in was, he says, “one of the two periods, distant from each other,” at which he could recollect experiencing “that degree of superstitious awe which his countrymen call eerie.” It may be noted (Lockhart, I 295, 296) that Scott mentions the famed Secret Chamber, but gives no hint of any legend connected with it. Hence we may almost conclude that the modern story of some horror in the chamber is later than the visit paid by Scott. But what was the other time when he felt superstitious awe? Apparently (see Lockhart, IX 140) it was not when he thought he beheld the dead Byron at Abbotsford, though he certainly did not care for trifling on that topic. Mr. Gillies (Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, p. 170) gives a ghost-story of Scott’s which Lockhart does not repeat. Sir Walter said, “Very many persons have either seen a ghost, or something very like one; and I am myself among the number.” He added, “The good stories are sadly devoid of evidence—the stupid ones only are authentic.” The ghost was merely a figure in dark brown with a long staff, which alternately appeared, and, when approached, disappeared, on the green open hillside near Ashiesteil. Scott rode “within a few yards,” it vanished; he returned, saw it again, and again “he vanished instantaneously. I must candidly confess I had now got enough of the phantasmagoria; and whether it were from a love of home, or a participation in my dislike of this very stupid ghost, Finella [his mare] did her best to run away. I will not deny that I felt somewhat uncomfortable.”
“The state of the atmosphere and outline of the scenery” supplied no explanation. The nocturnal disturbances at Abbotsford which roused Scott, “as nearly as could be ascertained, at the very hour” when Mr. Bullock, who superintended the farnishing, died in London, produced no “eerie” feeling. But the event “made a much stronger impression on his mind” than he cared to confess in alluding to the matter. (Lockhart, V 309–315.) “I protest to you [Terry] the noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up beards and furniture; and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time. With a few additional touches, the story would figure in Glanville or Aubrey’s collection.” He connected the affair with a less interesting “coincidence” in the last days of President Blair, “the patriot statesman” of an earlier Note (Lockhart, III 7 318).
Scott got as much interest and pleasure out of the “supernatural” as it could safely yield him; but he had a fair dose of scepticism. “Tom Erskine was positively mad. I have heard him tell a cock-and-a-bull story of having seen the ghost of his father’s servant, John Burnet, with as much gravity as if he believed every word he was saying” (Lockhart, IX 318).
The “Bodach Glas” himself is supposed by Mr. Robert Chambers to have been suggested by the family spectre of Maclaine of Lochbuy, “Hugh of the Little Head” (Illustrations of the Author of ‘Waverley,’ p. 31, ). But Hugh was an equestrian ghost. The “Bodach-an-dun” of Grant of Rothiemurans is more akin to the “Bodach Glas.” See Lady of the Lake, canto III, note 6.
For a touching story of Scott’s own appearance to Mr. Skene of Rubislaw in , see the Journal, II 456, note. “One evening his daughter found him [Mr. Skene] with a look of inexpressible delight on his face, when he said to her, ‘I have had such a great pleasure! Scott has been here—he came from a long distance to see me; he bas been sitting with me at the fireside talking over our happy recollections of the past.’ ” Two or three days later, Mr. Skene died, in his ninetieth year. —Editor ↩
The following account of the skirmish at Clifton is extracted from the manuscript Memoirs of Evan MacPherson of Cluny, Chief of the clan MacPherson, who had the merit of supporting the principal brunt of that spirited affair. The Memoirs appear to have been composed about , only ten years after the action had taken place. They were written in France, where that gallant chief resided in exile, which accounts for some Gallicisms which occur in the narrative.
“In the Prince’s return from Derby back towards Scotland, my Lord George Murray, Lieutenant-General, cheerfully charg’d himself with the command
