“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. ............