“The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the
moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old
man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without
relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under
the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was
wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the
future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of
time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare
themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected
by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a roaring
lion,' on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed
to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter
and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into
fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day,
full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by
the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the
one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising towards the sky,
had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in
the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen
sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of
passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more
particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the
high road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towards the
kirk-town of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden,
hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The house
was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on
the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one
hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on
the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young
parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there
often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken
prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more
daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to 'follow my leader' across
that legendary spot.”—Scottish fiction writer, poet, essayist, and travel
writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), “Thrawn Janet,” in
The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by Charles
Neider (1969)
Some readers are likely to have encountered Robert Louis Stevenson in their childhood, as a poet. Far more people will
experience him secondhand, through the many Hollywood adaptations over the
years of his adventure novels like Treasure Island, Kidnapped and
The Master of Ballantrae.
But I was delighted to find, in adulthood, that he was
also a master of short fiction, especially in the horror genre. I blogged
previously on “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Body Snatcher.” Equally remarkable in its way is a story I discovered only
recently, “Thrawn Janet.”
The quote leading off this post also begins Stevenson’s
tale. In its tense sense of atmosphere, it is as powerfully foreboding as
anything to be found in the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
It is also, in a sense, a trick—written, unlike the
rest of the story, written in conventional English. But the atmosphere of evil
is so densely concentrated that readers are dying to know what will occur next.
For the majority of readers unfamiliar with Scottish
dialect, much of the ensuing tale requires patient, intense concentration. Some
translations exist, but I read it slowly—an experience that reminded me of encountering
Canterbury Tales in Chaucer’s original Middle English. But dispensing
with a translation can be done and is worth the effort.
The unfamiliar verbiage in this short story starts
with the first word of the title, a strong but necessary hint about the nature
of this tale. “Thrawn” is Scottish for “twisted,” indicating the sinister force
in this story.
Just as Stevenson produces a change in narrative
direction after the opening, he also effects a change—a “twist,” if you will—in
characterization and voice.
The Rev. Soulis, who sounds initially like a Scottish
fire-and-brimstone counterpart to one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan divines,
was, we learn shortly, a rationalist of Enlightenment bent in his younger days,
disbelieving the belief of his congregants that the woman he wants to hire as
his housekeeper, Janet, could be a witch.
Horror is about altered mental states after an
encounter with the inexplicable. By this standard, the horror of “Thrawn Janet”
lies less in Satanic possession of Janet than in the haunted, demon-obsessed
minister that Rev. Soulis becomes through his encounter with her.
The image accompanying this post, illustrating Stevenson’s
story, is an 1899 etching by the Scottish painter and printmaker William Strang
(1859-1921).
