the ghostly captain of lundertson bay...
Many a good tale is told round the fire at this time of year. Who has not heard the tale of Auld Dunrod, the stories of the Inverkip witches, or the haunting Bogle of Boglestone? But who among you has heard the tale of the Ghostly Captain of Lunderston Bay? Our tale begins in 1588, when King Phillip of Spain raised an Armada and sailed against England. After a disastrous defeat at the battle of the Gravelines, the Armada found itself blown off course and scattered along the Northern coast of Britain. Only a few brave or foolhardy Captains were able to steer their ships through the dark nights and harsh storms of the North-western coast of Scotland. Among those few left was Captain Mordoba, whose ship the Salamanca became the scourge of Ports and villages along the West Coast of Scotland. The bowels of his ship became stuffed with the gold of the Scots.
Then one night, late in October, a fierce storm, much like the ones we still see this time of year, tore the sails from the Salamanca, and threw her into the Firth of the Clyde. As the wind howled and the rain battered down, Mordoba’s men scrambled overboard. But the Captain himself would not be separated from his gold. It was to be the death of him. And so it was the Captain met his fate on the rocks of the Gantocks, his ship lost the waves. Some say that the Captain himself was laid to rest in the old cemetery of Inverkip, and to this day, if you look hard enough amoung the overgrown stones, you will find a small grave marked with a simple skull and cross bones.
But what of Mordoba’s treasure, you may ask? Well it is said that in the days after the storms a young farm hand named John Carswell came across a black chest while walking along the beach at Lunderston bay. He thought fortune had smiled on him that day. With Mordoba’s gold, Carswell was a rich man. But never a happy one. For the tale goes hat wherever he went, a shadow was always at his back. He became convinced that the Captains Ghost had returned for his gold, following him at everyturn, unresting and unyielding in his haunting. And so, driven mad by the spectre, Carswell resolved to bury what little remained of the gold, and leave the cursed wealth behind. He died a penniless and miserable man, and as he went to his grave, he still muttered of the Ghostly Captain. Just a yarn you might say.
But there is a strange twist to this tale. In the 1950’s two workmen discovered a cow horn containing sixty coins while digging in Burns Road. The coins were dated to around 1580, and to this day reside in the National Museum of Scotland and the McLean Museum. The last of Mordoba’s gold? Perhaps. Or perhaps it still lies waiting to be found. Certainly there are still those today who swear they have seen the haunting spectre of the Ghost Captain stalking along the beach at Lunderston Bay, searching for his treasure.
The Bogle of Boglestone
Coming by the backroad from Kilmalcolm, we come at last to the "Rest and be Thankfu'" and the Bogle Stone, a large quadrangular block of whin eight or nine feet high that stands in the corner of a field, close by the wayside. It has a grassy top, to which we mount, and find it could accomodate half-a-score of persons on it. This far-famed stone stands on the farm of Laigh Auchinleck, and was once larger than it is now, and thereby hangs a tale.
This large block was famed for a bogle, a sort of impish sprite, that used to haunt it in days of yore. When folks had been visiting the Port, as Burns says;
"When we sit bousing at the nappy,
And getting fou' unto happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame."
When the deliquent had clomb up the brae, and had got out of sight of the lights of the town, and was just entering on the wild and dreary moor that seperates Kilmalcolm from the outer world, the Bogle was frequently seen about this stone, and sent the belated worthy onward at an accelerated speed, while he fancied he heard a something following at his heels. The good wives of Kilmalcolm used to say that, whether it were a ghaist or a deil, it was a god-send to the kintra, for it sent home Kilmalcolm folks at a richt like time o'nicht.
It came to pass, however, some time not yet very remote, that a clergyman, whether talking a dislike at vexatious folks holding picnics, junketings, and frolics upon the Stone, or being in want of whin to build his dykes, or wishing to abolish what he regarded as a relic of superstition, we know not, but he resolved to have the stane destroyed. Accordingly much of it was blasted: some built into dykes, and some used otherwise. "Mony a guid curling-stane cam oot o't" as we were tol, "for, ye see it polishes weel." But this deed of his reverence roused a nest of hornets about his ears; the act was denounced, and the vandalism of it shown up. Ultimately, on a new proprietor coming into possession, the pieces were re-united, and now the Bogle Stane looks "amaist as guid as new." A local poet wrote the following verses on the occassion, which were at one time inscribed on the side of the stone, but are now rubbed off:
"Ye weary travellers passing by,
Rest and be thankfu' here,
And should your lips be parch'd and dry,
Drink of my waters clear.
I am that far-famed Bogle Stane,
By worldly priest abhorr'd,
But now I am myself again,
By Auchinleck restored."
From Alexander Gibb's Much About Kilmalcolm, 1872 |
