dominate their thoughts and form their characters.… Had not someone called it the Black Wood?—Yes, they had spoken of it that afternoon. Mr Muirhead had admitted that it must be queer to live so near it, and Mr Fordyce had shaken his head solemnly and hinted at tales that could be told if the trees would speak. … Did the Devil use the place as a stronghold and seduce the foolish into its shadows? Could it be said of a lost soul, Itur in antiquam silvam?
David was less superstitious than most men, but he had too ready a fancy and a mind too well stored with learning to be easy at the thought. Already he felt that he had found an antagonist. Was Woodilee to prove a frontier-post for God’s servant against the horrid mysteries of heathendom? … He gave a sudden start, for a voice had sounded behind him.
The voice was singing—a charm against bogles which he remembered himself using as a child:
Wearie, Ovie, gang awa,
Haste ye furth o ‘house an’ ha’,
Ower the muir and down the burn
Wearie, Ovie, ne’er return.
A grotesque figure emerged from the dusk. It was a tall fellow, who seemed to have been broken in the middle, for he walked almost doubled up. His face, seen in the half-light, was that of a man of thirty or so, with a full black beard and red protuberant lips. His clothes were ruinous, an old leather jerkin which gaped at every seam, ragged small-clothes of frieze, and for hosen a wrapping of dirty clouts. There were no shoes on his feet, and his unwashed face was dark as a berry. In his hand he had a long ash pole, and on his head a blue cowl so tight that it was almost a skull-cap.
David recognised the figure for Daft Gibbie, the village natural, who had greeted him with mewing and shouting at his ordination. In the clachan street he had seemed an ordinary deformed idiot—what was known locally as an ‘object’—but up on this twilight hilltop he was like an uncouth revenant from an older world. The minister instinctively gripped his staff tighter, but Gibbie’s intention was of the friendliest.
‘A braw guid e’en to ye, Mr Sempill, sir. I saw ye tak’ the hill and I bode to follow, for I was wantin’ to bid ye welcome to Woodilee. Man, ye gang up the brae-face like a maukin. Οwer fast, I says to mysel’, ower fast for a man o’ God, for what saith the Word, “He that believeth shall not make haste!”’
The creature spoke in a voice of great beauty and softness—the voice rather of a woman than of a man. And as he spoke he bowed, and patted the minister’s arm, and peered into his face with bright wild eyes. Then he clutched David and forced him round till again he was looking over the Wood.
‘The Hill o’ Deer’s a grand bit for a prospect, sir, for is it no like the Hill o’ Pisgah from which ye can spy the Promised Land? Ye can lift up your eyes to the hills, and ye can feast them on the bonny haughs o’ the Aller, or on the douce wee clachan o’ Woodilee, wi’ the cots sittin’ as canty round the kirk as kittlins round an auld cat.’
‘I was looking at the Wood,’ said David.
The man laughed shrilly. ‘And a braw sicht it is in the gloamin’ frae the Hill o’ Deer. For ye can see the size o’ the muckle spider’s wab, but doun in the glen ye’re that clamjamphried wi’ michty trees that your heid spins like a peery and your e’en are dozened. It’s a unco thing the Wud, Mr Sempill, sir?’
‘Do you know your ways in it, Gibbie?’
‘Me! I daurna enter it. I keep the road, for I’m feared o’ yon dark howes.’ Then he laughed again, and put his mouth close to the minister’s ear. ‘Not but what I’ll tak’ the Wud at the proper season. Tak’ the Wud, Mr Sempill, like other folk in Woodilee.’
He peered in the minister’s face to see if he were understood. Satisfied that he was not, he laughed again.
‘Tak’ Gibbie’s advice, sir, and no gang near the Wud. It’s nae place for men o’ God, like yoursel’, sir, and puir Gibbie.’
‘Do they call it the Black Wood?’
Gibbie spat. ‘Incomin’ bodies, nae doot,’ he said in contempt. ‘But ken ye the name that auld folk gie’d it?’ He became confidential again. ‘They ca’d it Melanudrigill,’ he whispered.
David repeated the word. His mind had been running on heathen learning and he wondered if the name were Greek.
‘That might mean the “place of dark waters”,’ he said.
‘Na, na. Ye’re wrong there, Mr Sempill. There’s nae dark waters in Melanudrigill. There’s the seven burns that rin south, but they’re a’ as clear as Aller. But dinna speak that name to ither folk, Mr Sempill, and dinna let on that Gibbie telled ye. It’s a wanchancy name. Ye can cry it in a safe bit like the Hill o’ Deer, but if ye was to breathe it in the Wud unco things might happen. I daurna speak my ain name among the trees.’
‘Your name is Gibbie. Gibbie what?’
The man’s face seemed to narrow in fear and then to expand in confidence. ‘I can tell it to a minister o’ the Word. It’s Gilbert Niven. Ken ye where I got that name? In the Wud, sir. Ken ye wha gie’d it me? The Guid Folk. Ye’ll no let on that I telled ye.’
The night was now fallen, and David turned for home, after one last look at the pit of blackness beneath him. The idiot hobbled beside him, covering the ground at a pace which tried even his young legs, and as he went he babbled.
‘Tak’ Gibbie’s advice and keep far frae the Wud, Mr Sempill, and if ye’re for Roodfoot or Calidon haud by the guid road. I’ve heard tell that in the auld days, when there was monks at the kirkton, they bode to gang out every year wi’ bells and candles and bless the road to keep it free o’ bogles. But they never ventured into the Wud, honest men. I’ll no say but what a minister is mair powerfu’ than a monk, but an eident body will run nae risks. Keep to fine caller bits like this Hill o’ Deer, and if ye want to traivel gang west by Chasehope or east by Kirk Aller. There’s nocht for a man o’ God in the Wud.’
‘Are there none of my folk there?’
For a second Gibbie stopped as if thunderstruck. ‘Your folk!’ he cried. ‘In the Wud!’ Then he perceived David’s meaning. ‘Na, na. There’s nae dwallin’ there. Nether Fennan is no far off and Reiverslaw is a bowshot from the trees, but to bide in the Wud!—Na, na, a man would be sair left to himsel’ ere he ventured that! There’s nae hoose biggit by human hand that wadna be clawed doun by bogles afore the wa’ rase a span frae the grund.’
At the outfield of Mirehope Gibbie fled abruptly, chanting like a night bird.
The minister sat at his supper of porridge and buttermilk when Isobel broke in on him, her apple-hued face solemn and tearful.
‘There’s ill news frae up the water, Mr Sempill. It’s Marion Simpson, her that’s wife to Richie Smail, the herd o’ the Greenshiel. Marion, puir body, has been ill wi’ a wastin’ the past twalmonth, and
