Haunted Scotland (8 page)

On 28 November 1666, a bloody battle was fought at Rullion Green on the southern slopes of the Pentland Hills. Some 900 Covenanters, men and boys, had been challenged by a Government army led by
the notorious General ‘Black’ Tam Dalyell. It was a rout. Fifty Covenanters were killed outright. The remainder scattered into the surrounding hillsides.

Although badly wounded, young John Carphin, an Ayrshire lad, was among those who escaped, but by midnight his strength had failed him. He therefore sought help at the remote farmhouse of
Blackhill where Adam Sanderson, a shepherd, invited him in. Knowing that this would place Sanderson in danger, Carphin declined and asked only that he help him make his way up the valley of the
West Water.

Sanderson obliged, leading him in the right direction, but as dawn broke the younger man collapsed and died in his arms, his last words a plea to be buried within sight of his beloved Ayrshire
hills. It was a big favour to ask of a complete stranger, especially as it put his companion at considerable personal risk should his actions become known. However, Adam Sanderson was a decent man,
unimpressed by religious bigotry.

So he carried the body of John Carphin to the summit of the Black Law, where the far-off Ayrshire hills could clearly be seen
in the far distance. There he buried him and
erected a cairn of stones in his memory.

‘It doesn’t seem possible, but I wonder?’ speculated Emma.

A few weeks later, she and Richard, Jamie and Pete made a return visit to Blackhill. This time they climbed to the top of Black Law, where a gravestone erected two centuries after the interment
marks the spot of John Carphin’s final resting place. By the time the gravestone was erected the covenanting cause had long been resolved, but its martyrs are not forgotten.

The day was bright and clear. To the west, through the gap between Black Law and the Pike, the Dutton family could clearly make out the distant, silken hills of Ayrshire. ‘He’d have
liked that,’ said Emma with a sigh.

Another chapter in the turbulent advance of Scotland’s story concerns the relentless thieving of cattle the length of the ‘Debatable Land’, the Border with
England. From the thirteenth until seventeenth centuries, the practice was commonplace, becoming a way of life for the lawless ‘riding’ clans who dominated this territory and regularly
turned against each other in their struggle to survive. As a result, the Borders region is littered with medieval keeps and peel towers, each and every one of them with blood on its stones. As
darkness falls, who knows whose eyes are keeping watch on their cold stone battlements?

On the summit of Minto Crags, near Denholm, are the remains of Fatlips Castle, so named to commemorate the swollen jowls and mouth of the notorious Turnbull of Barnhill, who never passed up a
chance to kiss a pretty girl. Standing three storeys high and towering above the surrounding countryside, this formidable stronghold occupies a spectacular vantage point. From its clifftop
platform, known as Barnhill’s Bed, approaching
trouble was easily spotted and, in the relentless days of reiving and English invasion, this proved invaluable.

The crunch for the Turnbulls came in the early sixteenth century, when King James IV, despairing of the lawlessness of his Border subjects, held a mass hanging beside the Rule Water, two miles
from Denholm. Fatlips Castle passed to their neighbours and rivals, the Elliotts, who were elevated to the Scottish peerage as earls of Minto.

From then on, the fortified tower on the hill became little more than a garden folly for the Elliotts until 1897, when it was restored as a sporting lodge. It then became a museum, but after a
spate of vandalism which culminated in a fire, it was abandoned.

That was back in the 1970s, and since then those who live nearby in the area have looked on in dismay as the building has deteriorated. ‘I often go for a wee walk up there on a
weekend,’ Sandy Lochie informed me, ‘But never at night.’

Although he and his friends played as children in and around the tower, he claims to be baffled as to why it was abandoned by its owners. ‘It’s perfectly habitable,’ he
insists, and, to some extent, this is what prompted him to stop one night as he was driving past and noticed lights flickering in the windows.

‘There was only just a dull glow, but I knew there shouldn’t have been anybody up there,’ he recalled.

Besides, he knew that access from ground level had been bricked up. ‘I had three options,’ he went on. ‘I could have gone home and forgotten about it, or I could have reported
it to the police, or, instead, I could go and have a look for myself – which is what I did.’

Pulling his car into the side of the road, Sandy extracted a torch from the car’s glove compartment and cautiously made his way up the overgrown track. ‘I must have been daft,’
he said. ‘But it was a warmish night and I didn’t really think much of it at the time.’

As he came closer to the castle walls, he says he clearly heard the sounds of a harp or clarsach being played. ‘There was a great roar of shouting, joviality and
laughter, as if the occupants were throwing a party.’

By then he was within twenty feet of the castle walls. Increasingly breathless from the ascent, he had momentarily paused when a loud explosion rocked the ground and everything became quiet.
Looking up, he saw the lights in the tower windows had been turned off.

‘There was a pungent smell of damp smoke, even though it hadn’t rained all week,’ he recalled with a shudder. ‘Everything was eerily still. I said to myself
“you’re a daft laddie”, and turned on my heels to go home.’

Sandy returned the following morning to have another look at the castle by daylight. As he might have expected, he found the entrance was sealed up and there were no apparent signs of a
break-in.

‘I took the dog along with me this time,’ he said. ‘Poor old chap, he started off by running away ahead of me, but as we got closer he stopped dead in his tracks and started to
whimper.

‘From there on, he wouldn’t go any further. I reckon he knew something was going on there. If only animals could speak.’

9

Nowhere is the past more pervasive than on the Orkney Islands, where everyday survival is governed by 100-mile-per-hour winds off the Atlantic Ocean. In one of his more
memorable essays published in the
Orkney Herald
, the Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown recalled a childhood visit to two adjoining crofts named Hell and Purgatory. Around thirty years ago I
noticed an advertisement offering these two crofts with their six acres of land for sale for what appeared to be an extremely modest sum. At the time I thought how splendid it would be to have such
an address on my headed notepaper.

But then I asked myself why they were so named? And why so inexpensive?

So I consulted a map and immediately saw the reason. Perched on the very edge of the far north-east coast and no doubt glorious during the warm summer months, during winter they are
exposed to everything the North Atlantic chooses to throw at them. Hell and Purgatory, indeed!

Such weather conditions are at the core of a thousand Orcadian and Shetland folktales, where the spirits of all of the forces of land, sea and sky become one. Added to which, there is no more
evocative a stretch of water, where the rain clouds thicken, and the ocean clamours for attention, than Scapa Flow. Even on a fair day with a light head wind, the mood remains solemn; the great
mass of water looms in front of you like a solemn sheet of steel.

Here, seventy-four ships of the German High Seas fleet were deliberately scuttled by their crews in the last century. Moreover, on a chill October night in 1939, 833 seamen lost their lives when
a German U-Boat torpedoed the HMS
Royal Oak
, a battleship employed as temporary accommodation for sailors.

In 2006, Rick Moston and Gus Purdy, both experienced scuba divers, arrived in Stromness to join a team of naval history enthusiasts exploring the basin of Scapa Flow. On 21 June 1919, Admiral
von Reuter, the German commander, had issued the order for his entire fleet to be sunk. Although many of the boats have since been salvaged, the bottom of the sea is still littered with remnants:
three 25,000-ton battleships, four cruisers, five torpedo boats and two submarines, not to mention a handful of other more domestic wrecks.

Rick and Gus had been on similar excursions before, but never one with such sinister associations. Only too well did Gus remember his grandfather reminiscing about a friend who had gone down on
the
Royal Oak
. Today, it lies in a protected war grave, keeping company with HMS
Vanguard
, another battleship which was blown up in 1917, condemning her crew to a watery tomb. Diving
in this vicinity is strictly forbidden, but elsewhere in Scapa Flow it has been actively encouraged.

Starting off with the big ships, SMS
König
and SMS
Kronprinz Wilhelm
, Rick and Gus moved on to SMS
Köln
and SMS
Dresden
, taking time
off to swim with some seals off the so-called Barrel of Butter.

It was on the fourth day of their adventure that Gus dived close to where the SMS
Karlsruhe
lay, surrounded by debris. Reaching the bottom, he was preoccupied with the scallops, queenies,
plume anemones and dead men’s fingers clinging to its sides, when his attention was diverted to a similar vessel lying on its starboard side.

‘I’d started to encircle the hull, when I noticed a yellow light coming from inside one of the portholes on the bridge. I thought it was odd and when I paused beside it to have a
look, I saw this bloated face of a middle-aged man staring back at me.’

Gus shuddered. ‘I can’t tell you what a shock it gave me. I’ll never forget those watery eyes. He didn’t have a mask on or a wet suit, which naturally alarmed me. Then I
realised he was trying to say something to me.

‘His situation looked desperate. All of the time, he was scrabbling frantically at the porthole surrounds with his hands. The water was swirling all over him. He looked absolutely
terrified.’

Unnerved, Gus broke surface to summon help and was quickly joined by Rick. ‘When we dived, I tried to locate the sunken boat, but it was no longer there,’ said Gus incredulously.
‘Rick thought I was winding him up. He didn’t think it at all funny. But I wouldn’t have made something like that up,’ he told me afterwards. ‘I’m not that sick.
It was far too dreadful to be a joke, a really bad dream. It still haunts me. I just hope I was having a bad turn and that there isn’t somebody still down there.’

There are a few places on earth where there is a real sense of being where time began, and the Orkney Islands rank high in this category. Remote as they might seem to some of us, a lasting
impression has been left by the two World Wars. Gus Purdy is unlikely ever to forget his diving exploit in Scapa Flow, but even more recently yet another equally disturbing
experience was shared by two young Norwegians on a walking holiday.

Off the west coast of Mainland at eight o’clock in the evening of 5 June 1916, the HMS
Hampshire
on its way to Russia was sunk by either a mine or a German
torpedo. Now, most of us still recognise the famous moustache and pointing figure of the First World War’s most iconic recruitment poster. Herbert Kitchener, Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, was
the British Government’s Secretary of State for War, but how many of us know that he was on board HMS
Hampshire
on the fateful night it disappeared under the waves?

Conspiracy theories abound. To this day nobody can be certain if it was a German mine or torpedo, or an internal explosion that was responsible. Watching from Marwick Head, Joe Angus, a gunner
with the Orkney Territorial Forces, reported seeing the ship on fire two miles offshore. Within fifteen minutes it had disappeared from sight. There were 200 survivors who clung to rafts and pieces
of wreckage in the raging sea, but 656 perished, including the Secretary of State for War.

Only twelve members of the crew made land, and it was reported that Lord Kitchener had last been seen on the quarter-deck. His mission to Russia was top secret, but it was later revealed that he
was carrying a number of critically important official documents. When the sinking was confirmed, the Admiralty hastily ordered precautions to prevent any wreckage falling into enemy hands.

Lord Kitchener’s body was never found. A recommended read on the subject is Donald McCormick’s
The Mystery of Lord Kitchener’s Death
published in 1958, but the contents
of this fascinating book have little to do with what took place when
my Scandinavian friends found themselves looking for accommodation in the coastal village of Birsay. Or do
they?

Birgitta and Per, both keen bird-watchers, had flown across to Kirkwall from Oslo, and, while on an evening stroll on the cliffs beside the Brough Lighthouse, came across a small group of men
who appeared lost. In their midst was a stout, medium height figure wrapped in a soiled trench coat.

‘They all looked as if they were soaked to the skin,’ said Per. ‘Yet it hadn’t been raining. In fact, it was a very pleasant evening. I thought that was very odd.
Birgitta said they looked as if they had been in the sea, but under the circumstances it seemed very unlikely.’

‘The man we spoke to was definitely confused,’ added Birgitta. ‘When I asked him if they needed help, he just turned away and walked off without saying a word.’

Nearby was a stone tower which Per and Birgitta were later informed was a memorial to a famous British soldier who had died in the First World War. When Per mentioned their experience to their
landlady, she laughed out loud.

‘That’ll be himself,’ she said. ‘Lord Kitchener. You’re not the first to have seen him.’