The Smothered Piper of the West Cliffs.

“Hush! hush! hush! Here comes the Bogie Man.”

This was shouted out to me very loudly by a cheery golfing “Johnny,” as I entered the merry smoking-room of the old ’Varsity Golf Club at Coldham Common, Cambridge, some years ago. “Draw in your armchair, light a cigar or a pipe, and tell us all [many celebrated actors were present] some of those wonderful bogie stories about dear St Andrews. It is the bogie time of the year, and you must remember I played the ‘Bogie Man’ for you in one of your big burlesques at St Andrews and Cupar some years ago, so fire away with the bogies, please, and be quick.”

Then I reeled off a big lot of yarns: of the ghost, Thomas Plater, who murdered Prior Robert of Montrose on the dormitory staircase before vespers; of the nigger in a Fifeshire house, who is invisible himself, but maps out his bare footmarks on the floor of the painted gallery; of Sharpe’s coach, which, being heard, betokens a death; of haunted old Balcomie ruined castle; of the murdered pedlar in our own South Street, who sweeps down with a chilly hand the cheeks of invaders to his haunted cellar; of the ghost that appeared in the house of Archbishop Ross, mentioned in Lyon’s History; and of the terrible ghost in the Novum Hospitium, which so alarmed people that its dwelling had to be pulled down, and only a fragment of the building now remains. But they wanted to hear the tale of the “Ghostly Piper of the West Cliffs”; so I told them the legend as I had heard it years ago.

It seems that in the old days no houses existed on the Cliffs[56] from the old Castle of Hamilton to the modern monument near the Witch Hill. It was all meadow land, much used for the grazing of cattle and sheep, and also much frequented as a playground for bygone children. On and over the face of the cliffs, slightly to the westward of Butts Wynd, existed then the entrance to a fearsome cave, or old ecclesiastical passage, which was a terror to many, and most people shunned it. It had many names, among them the “Jingling Cove,” “The Jingling Man’s Hole,” “John’s Coal Hole,” and later “The Piper’s Cave, or Grave.” A few of the oldest inhabitants still remember it. A few knew a portion of it; none dared venture beyond this well-known portion. Like the interior of an old ice-house, it was dark, chilly, and clammy; its walls ran with cold sweat. It was partly natural, but mostly artificial—a most dark, creepy, and fearsome place.

In a description which I got of it many years ago, and which appeared in the St Andrews Citizen, I learn that “the opening of this cliff passage was small and triangular; it was situated on a projecting ledge of rock, and it was high enough, after entering, to enable a full-sized man to stand upright. From the opening it was a steep incline down for a distance of 49 feet, thereafter it proceeded in a level direction for over 70 feet, when it descended into a chamber. At the further end of this chamber were two, if not more, passages branching off from it. Between the passages was cut out in the rock a Latin cross.” This would seem to point to an ecclesiastical connection, and had nothing whatever to do with the more modern smugglers’ cave near the ladies’ bathing place.

But enough of description. In bygone days, in a small cottage, little better than a hovel, situated in Argyle, lived an old dame named Goodman. She occupied one room, and her son and his young wife tenanted the other little chamber. He was a merry, dare-devil, happy-go-lucky lad, and he was famed as one of the best players on the bagpipes in all Fife; he would have pleased even Maggie Lauder. Of nights at all hours he would make the old grass-grown streets lively with his music. “Jock the Piper,” was a favourite among both young and old. He was much interested in the tale of the old West Cliff cave, and took a[57] bet on with some cronies that on a New Year’s night he would investigate the mysteries of the place, and play his pipes up it as far as he could go. His old mother, his wife, and many of his friends tried hard to dissuade him from doing so foolish and so foolhardy a thing; but he remained obdurate, and firmly stuck to his bet. On a dark New Year’s night he started up the mysterious cavern with his pipes playing merrily; and they were heard, it is said, passing beneath Market Street, then they died away. They suddenly ceased, and were never more heard. He and his well-known pipes were never seen again.

Somewhere beneath St Andrews lies the whitened bones of that bygone piper lad, with his famous pipes beside him. Attempts were made to find him, but without avail; no one, not even the bravest, dared to venture into that passage full of damp foul air. His mother and wife were distracted, and the young wife used to sit for hours at the mouth of that death-trap cave. Finally, her mind gave way, and she used to wander at all hours down to the mouth of the cave where her husband had vanished. The following New Year’s night she left the little cottage in Argyle, and putting a shawl over her wasted shoulders, turned to the old woman and said, “I’m going to my Jock.” Morning came, but she never returned home. She had, indeed, gone to her lost “Jock.” For years after, the small crouching figure of a woman could be seen on moonlight nights perched on the rock balcony of the fatal cave, dim, shadowy, and transparent. Wild shrieks and sounds of weird pipe music were constantly heard coming from out of that entrance.

In after years, when the houses were built, the mouth of this place was either built or covered up, and its memory only remains to us.

But what of “Piper Jock?” He, it is said, still walks the edge of the old cliffs; and his presence is heralded by an icy breath of cold air, and ill be it for anyone who meets or sees his phantom form or hears his pipe music. He seems to have the same effect as the ghost of “Nell Cook” in the dark entry at Canterbury, mentioned in the “Ingoldsby Legends,” from which I must quote a few verses—

[58]
“And tho’ two hundred years have flown,
Nell Cook doth still pursue
Her weary walk, and they who cross her path
The deed may rue.
Her fatal breath is fell as death!
The simoon’s blast is not
More dire (a wind in Africa
That blows uncommon hot).
But all unlike the simoon’s blast,
Her breath is deadly cold,
Delivering quivering, shivering shocks
Upon both young and old.
And whoso in the entry dark
Doth feel that fatal breath,
He ever dies within the year
Some dire untimely death.”

So it is with him who meets “Piper Jock.”

“By Jove,” interrupted the golfing “Johnny,” “has anyone seen him lately?”

“I only know of one man,” I said, “who told me that one awful night in a heavy thunderstorm he had heard wild pipe music, and seen the figure of a curiously dressed piper walking along the cliff edge, where no mortal could walk, at a furious speed.”

“What do you think of it all?” asked my golfing friend.

“I don’t know, I’m sure; I am not receptive and don’t see ghosts, but if I could only find now the mouth of that place, I bet another ‘Jock’ and I would get along it and find out the whereabouts of ‘Jock the Piper’ and his poor little wife. Here is my hansom. Good night, don’t forget the Piper.”

And they haven’t.