Haunted Mill, The (Two Versions)

NEXT morning we woke to find Anders' words too true; the wind still howled, and the rain still poured, deerstalking was out of the question, nor could the girls stir out of the doors to look after the kine. There we were, all house-bound. What was to be done? After breakfast we smoked, and the girls knitted stockings. Anders, for want of something better to do, cleaned our guns and admired their make and locks. But all this was not much towards killing time on the Fjeld, and we had no books.

                At last Edward, who was rather afraid of Anders and his jokes on his sportsmanship, whispered to me,

                "Can't you make him tell us some more stories? I'll be bound Osborn's Pipe is not the only tale he has in his scrip."

                Not a bad thought, but Anders was one of those free spirits who must be stalked as warily as a reindeer. I felt that if I asked him outright he might betake him to his Norse pride and say he was no story-teller. "If I wanted stories I had better ask some of the old women down in the dales." It was not the first time I had unsealed unwilling lips, and I knew the way.

                "That was a good story about Osborn's Pipe, and I owe you one for it, Anders. Come listen to one of mine, and let the lassies listen to it too. It's not long."

The Haunted Mill

"ONCE on a time, there was a man who had a mill by the side of a force, and in the mill there was a brownie. Whether the man, as is the custom in most places, gave the brownie porridge and ale at Yule to bring grist to the mill, I can't say, but I don't think he did, for every time he turned the water on the mill, the brownie took hold of the spindle and stopped the mill, so that he couldn't grind a sack.

                "The man know well enough it was all the brownie's work, and at last one evening, when he went into the mill, he took a pot full of pitch and tar, and lit a fire under it. Well! when he turned the water on the wheel, it went round awhile, but soon after it made a dead stop. So he turned, and twisted, and put his shoulder to the top of the wheel, but it was all no good. By this time the pot of pitch was boiling hot, and then he opened the trap-door which opened on to the ladder that went down into the wheel, and if he didn't see the brownie standing on the steps of the ladder with his jaws all a-gape, and he gaped so wide that his mouth filled up the whole trap-door.

                "'Did you ever see such a wide mouth?' said the brownie.

                "But the man was handy with his pitch. He caught up the pot and threw it, pitch and all, into the gaping jaws.

                "'Did you ever feel such hot pitch?'

                "Then the brownie let the wheel go, and yelled and howled frightfully. Since then he has been never known to stop the wheel in that mill, and there they ground in peace."

*       *       *       *       *

                Yes! Anders had heard a story something like that, only it was about a water kelpy, not a brownie. Brownies, he declared, never did folk much harm, except lazy maids and idle grooms, but kelpies were spiteful, and hated men. Besides, brownies hated water, they couldn't bear to cross a running stream; then how could they live in a mill? No, it was a kelpy, and his grandmother had told him so.

                Then, after a pause, he went on, "But I know another story of a mill which was not canny, and I'll tell it if you like."

                We were all ears, and Anders began:--

The Haunted Mill

"THIS story, too, I heard of my grandmother, who knew stories without end, and more, she believed them. This mill was not in these parts, it was somewhere up the country; but wherever it was, north of the Fells, or south of the Fells, it was not canny. No one could grind a grain of corn in it for weeks together, when something came and haunted it. But the worst was that, besides haunting it, the trolls, or whatever they were, took to burning the mill down. Two Whitsun-eves running it had caught fire and burned to the ground.

                "Well, the third year, as Whitsuntide was drawing on, the man had a tailor in his house hard by the mill, who was making Sunday clothes for the miller.

                "'I wonder, now,' said the man on Whitsun-eve, 'whether the mill will burn down this Whitsuntide, too?'

                "'No, it shan't,' said the tailor. 'Why should it? Give me the keys: I'll watch the mill.'

                "Well, the man thought that brave, and so, as the evening drew on, he gave the tailor the keys, and showed him into the mill. It was empty, you know, for it was just new-built, and so the tailor sat down in the middle of the floor, and took out his chalk and chalked a great circle round about him, and outside the ring all round he wrote the Lord's Prayer, and when he had done that he wasn't afraid--no, not if Old Nick himself came.

                "So at dead of night the door flew open with a bang, and there came in such a swarm of black cats you couldn't count them, they were as thick as ants. They were not long before they had put a big pot on the fireplace and set light under it, and the pot began to boil and bubble and as for the broth, it was for all the world like pitch and tar.

                "'Ha! ha!' thought the tailor, 'that's your game, is it!'

                "And he had hardly thought this before one of the cats thrust her paw under the pot and tried to upset it.

                "'Paws off, pussy,' said the tailor, 'you'll burn your whiskers.'

                "'Hark to the tailor, who says "Paws off, pussy," to me,' said the cat to the other cats, and in a trice they all ran away from the fireplace, and began to dance and jump round the circle; and then all at once the same cat stole off to the fireplace and tried to upset the pot.

                "'Paws off, pussy, you'll burn your whiskers,' bawled out the tailor again, and again he scared them from the fireplace.

                "'Hark to the tailor, who says "Paws off, pussy"' said the cat to the others, and again they all began to dance and jump round the circle, and then all at once they were off again to the pot, trying to upset it.

                "'Paws off, pussy, you'll burn your whiskers,' screamed out the tailor the third time, and this time he gave them such a fright that they tumbled head over heels on the floor, and began dancing and jumping as before.

                "Then they closed round the circle, and danced faster and faster: so fast at last that the tailor's head began to turn round, and they glared at him with such big ugly eyes, as though they would swallow him up alive.

                "Now just as they were at the fastest, the same cat which had tried so often to upset the pot, stuck her paw inside the circle, as though she meant to claw the tailor. But as soon as the tailor saw that, he drew his knife out of the sheath and held it ready; just then the cat thrust her paw in again, and in a trice the tailor chopped it off, and then, pop! all the cats took to their heels as fast as they could, with yells and caterwauls, right out at the door.

                "But the tailor lay down inside his circle, and slept till the sun shone bright in upon the floor. Then he rose, locked the mill, and went away to the miller's house.

                "When he got there, both the miller and his wife were still abed, for you know it was Whitsunday morning.

                "'Good morning,' said the tailor, as he went to the bedside, and held out his hand to the miller.

                "'Good morning,' said the miller, who was both glad and astonished to see the tailor safe and sound, you must know.

                "'Good morning, mother!' said the tailor, and held out his hand to the wife.

                "'Good morning,' said she; but she looked so wan and worried; and as for her hand, she hid it under the quilt; but at last she stuck out the left. Then the tailor saw plainly how things stood, but what he said to the man and what was done to the wife, I never heard."

*       *       *       *       *

                "But I can tell you, Anders," I broke in: "she was burnt for a witch, and, do you know, over in Scotland we have the same story; only we have the end. She tried on the Boot till her feet were crushed, and Morton's Maiden hugged her till her ribs cracked, and her fingers were fitted to the thumbscrews till they were all jelly. All this to make her own that she was a witch, and at last, when she owned it, she was burnt at Edinburgh, in the days of King James the Sixth, and seven other carlines with her."

                Having unsealed Anders' lips, I was not going to let him stop, so I told the story of Whittington and his Cat, and I even got him and the lassies to understand the awful importance of the Lord Mayor of London. After Anders and the lassies had crossed and blessed themselves over and over again at that wonderful story, Anders said,--

                "Heaven help us, we have no Lord Mayors in Norway; the sheriff is good enough for us, and trouble enough he gives us sometimes; but we have a story, the end of which is as like your Lord Mayor's story as one pea is like another, and here it is, only we call it [The Honest Penny].