A ghostly Christmas story from Moray

In these days of Christmas; a warning best heeded

by Steve Storey

Author’s Notes:

i) The modern appeal of ghostly tales, set and spoken of around Christmas time, goes back to ancient celebrations of the winter solstice. Recounting tales of the supernatural became a midwinter tradition, and shadowy ghostly stories were told to entertain on dark chilly nights.

We have the Victorians to thank for many familiar Christmas traditions such as Christmas trees, cards, crackers and roast turkey. They also developed the winter ghost story, relating it specifically to the festive season – the idea of something sinister lurking in the midst of merriment.

ii) The Scottish ‘skaffie’ double-ender open fishing boat was widely used on the Moray Firth up until the 1850s. This vessel was popular, because its great beam allowed plenty of room for handling the fishing lines, and the hull design was well suited for either mooring or beaching. For propulsion the boat utilised oars and featured typically two masts; the foremast carried a dipping lugsail while the aft a mizzen.

However, for all the popularity of the skaffie, it was well-known that the boat required a great deal of skill to handle when close-reefed (that is when having the sail area reduced as much as possible) in poor weather.

Forward

This tale was one recently told me by a raggle-taggle man of middle age and near blindness, who described himself as, ‘A travelling teller of tales’. His account was based on a real happening that occurred some twenty-years past, befalling the small settlement of Stotfield beside the Moray Firth in Scotland’s Elginshire; Christmas Day in the year 1806.

I humbly counsel the reader to accept the twistings and turnings of this conjured three-part narrative, woven with a wordsmith’s skill into the fabric of those actual events – for as the traveller himself advised, ‘A tale is best told when truth is much embellished.’

[Joshua McGibney: May, 1828]

I

An introduction to ‘Stotfield’

The village of Stotfield sits on the wild water’s edge; a small coastal community consisting a few rows of cottages in the parish of Drainie. Stretched to the south, across the Laich and on toward the high mountains, are the fertile farming lands of Elginshire; and to the north, beyond the rocky sea-washed skerries, lie the rich fishing waters of the Moray Firth.

For many a year, the inhabitants of this marked settlement had existed, quiet, hard-working, upstanding and, with the kindest respect, unremarkable. That village reputation, however, was dealt a blow of such tragic ferocity on Christmas Day in the year 1806 – the events of which I will tell. For this incident alone, the name ‘Stotfield’ remains a sobering moral for the peoples of the Firth; reliant upon their wits and their own brave hearts’ to reap the harvest afforded from the churning salted waters; and upon their deep held beliefs to safeguard the keeping of their souls and ensure eventual salvation.

And so my tale begins...

The Stotfield fleet: Christmas Day, 1806

Before taking to the salted waters of the Firth, it was the superstitious obligation of every skipper of the Stotfield skaffie fleet to consult an elder fisherman of the village; a man well-practiced in the interpretation of the conditions of weather and variations of the sea.

That is how it was, and that is how it had always been. His counsel was essential; if he spoke of impending ill-storm or unnatural wind; of the risk from an enraged whale-fish or thick haar, it was certain that no crew would take to the dark depths, and the wide undecked boats would remain safely beached high on the sand and shingle, beyond the reach of even the harshest dragging tide.

In the early dawn of that Christmas the elder’s guidance was favourable; both weather and waters were calm – and, he suggested, would remain so during the short day’s toil. The order was given and the trusting fleet crews duly set about their task in good faith and, in acknowledgement of the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, to the sound of cheery hymn and song. The village’s three clinker-built fishing boats were made ready, then dragged down to the chilled waters of the Firth by many helping hands, leaving a trail of three deep keel-scores in the beach to mark their progress. Those small two-masted boats – the entire fleet of the village – with their rounded stems and raked sterns entered the water, before the crews of heavily clothed men and older boys, carried aloft by the women folk to keep them dry, clambered aboard and took their places. In all, the three boats carried the entire working male population of the village.

And so it was that in the quiet conditions of that Christmas morning the dark-hulled fleet made its slow passage under oar to the winter fishing grounds beyond the Halliman Skerries, before hoisting tan coloured canvas a short way out to the north-east; unaware – as were those village folk who remained ashore – of the awful calamity that would soon be visited upon them.

My friend, know you now that each brave fisher who took to the waters that day would not return at the appointed time to the shelter of the natural harbour offered by the Hythe Rock; never to see family or home again, after the Firth was struck by a sudden and ferocious storm. With lines cast, and within sight of land around mid-day, the crews’ were likely surprised by the sudden violent change of conditions, and their vessels pushed by wild winds that rose from the south-west. Out in the deeper turbulent waters of the Firth they floundered as an angry swell broke over their open boats.

There was, of course, the possibility that the fleet had found itself safe shelter further along the coast. However, the days that followed; with no word nor sign of the fishers, extinguished this hope. The settlement of Stotfield had surely lost its fine skaffie fleet, and along with their boats, all their able-bodied men to the harsh sea.

II

Of religion and superstition

I’ve hinted at the beliefs those fishers held firm. While God’s church was always well attended, the ‘wise’ fisherman chose to moderate his risk. Adherence to the ‘old ways’ as well as devotion to the holy trinity was widely trusted to provide the reassuring hope of a long life and eventual salvation.

Now the catalogue of superstitious lore common to the Firth’s fisher folk was, and remains, truly vast. Beliefs include the acceptable persecution of the sole survivor of a wrecking; the grasping fast of iron should a crewman take the name of God in vain; and the calling of the wind with a shrill trembling whistle to aid the becalmed boat. All were well known to the Stotfield fishers – as was one particular superstition, poignant to the telling of my tale: Importantly, when on his way to join his crew-mates, a fisherman was to avoid any man of the clergy. Should a crewman pass such a man on his way down to the fleet, he – for the preservation of his soul – should not think of putting to sea that day, but return home.

The skaffie crewman Malcolm Johnson

An odd occurrence went unwitnessed that Christmas morn upon the path which led from the house of the young Malcolm Johnson, down to the sea-going boats of the fleet raised high on the beach. Johnson – the son of a widowed fisher-wife, was known to be an impetuous loon. Perhaps his character would have been different with a father’s guidance and firm hand in his raising – but that good man, alas, was lost to the sea-in-turmoil when Malcolm was but a child.

As a young fisher the wayward Malcolm could, at best, be considered a novice linesman; baiting the long fishing lines, or ‘scantachs’, with mussels and unhooking captured white fish. Often the boat’s skipper had to chastise the lad for his shortcomings – slow to lend a hand, and all too ready to curse and voice an opinion. It was reasonable to suspect that in short time his cautious fellow crew might well refuse to sail with him, and the young fool would be banished to a life ashore.

The path Johnson took that morning led him to pass the village clergyman’s house. He had often been told to beware a meeting with the churchman on his way to the boats – as such an encounter would result in ill luck. The fishers of the village had told him that if his path crossed with a holy man then he should return home and not put to sea that day.

This Christmas morn, Johnson actually planned to meet the clergyman, and finding him in a seasonally affable mood, he intended to request permission to marry the man’s daughter; a pleasant enough, attractive young girl, he had been courting for some time and who was beguiled by his shallow wit.

Whether such permission was granted or not is neither here nor there, but the loon had certainly met the churchman and foolishly gone down to take to the waters of the Firth that day. In doing so he had broken with the old lore, and Malcolm Johnson had put himself and his fellow crew at mortal risk.

The clergyman and his daughter

This contribution to my story that I must now relate is of whispered conversations told about the village. They spoke of the clergyman, who when confronted by the lost crews’ loved-ones and their questioning of God’s wilful act of destruction of both the fleet and of their men folk, relayed the well-trod doctrine, that, ‘It is not for us mere mortals to understand the deep mystery of God plan. Whatever His intent, we must believe it to be for the good of His creation.’

Few locals were satisfied, and many looked for answers in the ‘old ways’ – in their long deep held belief in myth and superstition to which the majority of the northern fisher folk openly relied.

As the fleet’s loss shook the bewildered village, it also disturbed the clergyman. His faith had been sorely tested and despite his anguished prayers no heavenly comfort was forthcoming. In short time his religious conviction was undermined. He became weak in his faith and was heard to insult God and all His hosts – even before the holy altar – for this vicious act. The story tells that shortly after Candlemas the clergyman took his own life. His rock-torn body found washed up on the tide along the coast by Covesea.

The grim tally of death’s spectre had yet one more mortal soul to acquire; that of the clergyman’s pretty daughter, secretly betrothed to a young man of the village responsible for casting lines from the fleet. One chilled dark evening she left the village never to return... at least ‘never’ in mortal form.

The apparition

Now, since the tragic loss of boat and men near twenty years past there has been word of sightings of an apparition. Always in the same place, a young woman seen only on Christmas Day, standing on the beach at Stotfield before the surf and looking out to sea beyond the dark skerries. I’m told that running down to the waves behind her are three long deep scores in the sand – marks which match the keel gouges of the village skaffies that at one time were hauled willingly down to the water.

Behind the closed doors of the village cottages, it is whispered that the ghostly figure is that of a troubled young woman who in life was the clergyman’s daughter, and that the years of acid tears have left her face grotesquely disfigured; unrecognisable to those who may have once counted themselves close neighbours or good friends. It is further said by some that she had been secretly betrothed to a young man of the fishing fleet, and that she watches for his safe return – yet as I’ve told, these crews were doomed souls due to the foolhardy action of Malcolm Johnson, and they will never be returning.

I have been advised that no man should look upon the face of this apparition – for she carries such a sad weight of crippling sorrow, that to do so will certainly result in the unfortunate being maddened by a share of her burden that takes refuge in the hidden realms of even the sanest mind; so much so, that their demise will be quick and their mortal body delivered into the grasp of the jealous lord of the sea.

Now, I have never laid my better eye on this distressed phantom – although I have met some who have. Granted they did not look upon her face; perhaps, as foretold, the only reason they exist to walk this troubled earth today. But each witnessed the three deep keel marks left by the phantom fleet; there to disappear with the action of the new tide.

III

A warning best heeded

And so my friend, this is where my account ends. But I would fail you were I not to issue a solemn warning: If you find yourself on Stotfield’s waterfront on a Christmas morn in procession of a curious mind, I pray you best avoid the pitiful apparition of a woman who stands beside the three deep gouges in the shallows of the frothing waters. I beseech you not to approach her, nor attempt to take hold; and certainly, do not look upon her face.

If it be that she should look upon you, and as a result, you find you share her burden of sorrow, then I implore two courses of urgent action: That you make your way with all haste to Stotfield’s holy church of St. Mary; there, to light a candle and call fervently to all the saints and angels for Heaven’s protection. This done, that you next find and tie strands of tarred oakum around a stick; set the rope alight and swing a protective circle of flame about you three times if you are to banish the harmful curse from your presence. With these tasks complete, in the fishers’ tradition of faith in God and myth, you may yet lead a long safeguarded life.

THE END

Copyright © 2021 [Stephen Storey]. All Rights Reserved.

Enquiries, comments and feedback welcome. Email: sstorey.author@outlook.com

Some other stories by Steve:

• The Harmful Heirloom

• The Cat an' the Pot

• The Harewitch and the Bottle

• Out of the Cold

• The Creelman