"O father!" said his granddaughter Barbara, "ye surely wrong poor old
Mary Moray; what use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no
wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to
seek of enjoyment save a canny hour and a quiet grave--what use could the
fellowship of fiends and the communion of evil spirits be to her? I know
Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the door-head when she sees old Mary
coming; I know the good-wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in
the headband of her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the
unsonsie glance of Mary's right ee; and I know that the auld Laird of
Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand of
witch-tree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has all that to do
with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless boats? I have
heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships and their
unworldly crews as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It
was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on
Arbigland-bank: the lad intended a sort of love meeting; but all that he
could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep, and of the
wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle
Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it
to me.

"Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peatmoss,
two kale gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of
horses, and six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest women
in seven parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided; and a
Nithsdale laird and two Annandale moorland farmers drank themselves to
their last linen, as well as their last shilling, through sorrow for her
loss. But married was the dame; and home she was carried, to bear rule
over her home and her husband, as an honest woman should. Now ye maun
ken that though the flesh-and-blood lovers of Alexander's bonnie wife all