250 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



reference to an insulated sea-stack ; and it is connected alto- 

 gether, though I cannot fix its special locality, with this part 

 of the coast. The story had been long in my mother's family, 

 into which it had been originally brought by a great-grand- 

 father of the writer, who quitted some of the seaport villages 

 of Banffshire for the northern side of the Moray Frith, about 

 the year 1718 ; and, when pushing on in the darkness, strain- 

 ing, as I best could, to maintain a sorely-tried umbrella 

 against the capricious struggles of the tempest, that now ta- 

 tooed furiously upon its back as if it were a kettle-drum, and 

 now got underneath its stout ribs, and threatened to send it 

 up aloft like a balloon, and anon twisted it from side to side, 

 and strove to turn it inside out like a Kilmarnock nightcap, 

 I employed myself in arranging in my mind the details of 

 the narrative, as they had been communicated to me half an 

 age before by a female relative. 



The opening of the story, though it existed long ere the 

 times of Sir Walter Scott or the Waveiiey novels, bears some 

 resemblance to the opening, in the " Monastery," of the stoiy 

 of the White Lady of Avenel. The wife of a Banffshire pro- 

 prietor of the minor class had been about six months dead, 

 when one of her husband's ploughmen, returning on horse- 

 back from the smithy, in the twilight of an autumn evening, 

 was accosted, on the banks of a small stream, by a stranger 

 lady, tall and slim, and wholly attired in green, with her face 

 wrapped up in the hood of her mantle, who requested to be 

 taken up behind him on the horse, and carried across. There 

 was something in the tones of her voice that seemed to thrill 

 through his very bones, and to insinuate itself, in the form 

 of a chill fluid, between his skull and the scalp. The request, 

 too, appeared a strange one ; for the rivulet was small and 

 low, and could present no serious bar to the progress of the 

 .most timid traveller. But the man, unwilling ungallantly 

 to offend a lady, turned his horse to the bank, and she sprang 



