The Dropping-Cave ninety years ago was a place of considerable interest; but the continuous shower which converted into stone the plants and mosses on which it fell, and the dark recess which no one had attempted to penetrate, and of whose extent imagination had formed a thousand surmises, constituted some of merely the minor circumstances that had rendered it such. Superstition had busied herself for ages before in making it a scene of wonders. Boatmen, when sailing along the shore in the night-time, had been startled by the apparition of a faint blue light, which seemed glimmering from its entrance: on other occasions than the one referred to in a former chapter, the mermaid had been seen sitting on a rock a few yards before it, singing a low melancholy song, and combing her long yellow hair with her fingers; and a man who had been engaged in fishing crabs among the rocks, and was returning late in the evening by the way of the cave, almost shared the fate of its moss and lichens, when, on looking up, he saw an old greyheaded man, with a beard that descended to his girdle, sitting in the opening, and gazing wistfully on the sea. I find some of these circumstances of terror embodied in verse by the provincial poet whom I have quoted in an early chapter as an authority regarding the Cromarty tradition of Wallace; and now, as then, I will avail myself of his description:-- ----“When round the lonely shore The vex’d waves toil’d with deaf’ning roar, And Midnight, from her lazy wain, Heard wild winds roar and tides complain, And groaning woods and shrieking sprites;-- Strange sounds from thence, and fearful lights, Had caught the sailor’s ear and eye, As drove his storm-press’d vessel by. More fearful still, Tradition told Of that dread cave a story old-- So very old, ages had pass’d Since he who made had told it last. ’Twas thus it ran:--Of strange array An aged man, whose locks of grey, Like hill stream, flow’d his shoulders o’er, For three long days on that lone shore Sat moveless as the rocks around, Moaning in low unearthly sound; But whence he came, or why he stay’d, None knew, and none to ask essay’d. At length a lad drew near and spoke, Craving reply. The figure shook Like mirror’d shape on dimpling brook, Or shadow flung on eddying smoke-- And the boy fled. The third day pass’d-- Fierce howl’d at night the angry blast Brushing the waves; wild shrieks of death Were heard these bristling cliffs beneath, And cries for aid. The morning light Gleam’d on a scene of wild affright. Where yawns the cave, the rugged shore With many a corse lay cover’d o’er, And many a gorgeous fragment show’d How fair the bark the storm subdued.”