Mrs Willoughby's Poem

Hon. Mrs Willoughby's Poem

The story of Kinnaird of Culbin making a pact with the Devil to play cards was well known in the years after the sand storm, and the legend grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Eliza Gordon Cumming was the daughter of a local laird, Sir Alexander Penrose Gordon-Cumming of Altyre. She was born in 1847 and grew up at Altyre House to the south of Forres. In 1869, she married the Hon. Digby Willoughby, later Lord Middleton, and lived with him at Birdsall in Yorkshire.

Eliza clearly knew of the stories of Culbin well and, in the early 1870s, she penned her poem about the Culbin Sandhills. It is an interesting account, not least because Eliza used good Scots Doric vocabulary, something that is relatively uncommon for a woman of her class at this time. Eliza later became Lady Middleton and died in 1922.

She verses the story of the pact between Kinnaird of Culbin with the Devil, and how the two are still playing their game of cards in the heart of the largest mound.

Eliza Gordon Cumming (later Hon. Mrs Willoughby and finally Lady Middleton) (1847-1922). Picture courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

The Culbin Sandhills by Eliza Willoughby

The Sabbath morn was fair, was fair;
And the sky was clear and blue,
And the small waves glinted in the sun
As the moonlight o’er them flew.

The lads and lasses all around
Were deckit in their best,
And a’ the folk right joyful hailed
Their weekly Sabbath rest.

Fair Culbin lay beneath the sun,
The sweetest spot of all.
And the gardens bloomed wi blossoms big
Down to the deep sea wall.

The barns and sheds were burstin fu’,
For the fields were cleared of corn,
And the wee birds sangs a hymn of praise
To the bonnie Sabbath morn.

Oh! Culbin’s Laird a fearsome chiel,
And no mortal soul fears he;
He scoffs at the word of heaven’s Lord,
And will mak’s richt free.

“Oh” can ye leave the cards and dice;
And leave the blind red wine,
An’ come to the kirk wi me, Kinnaird,
To pray for my sins and thine?”

“Get oot! Get oot” ye silly wife.
What care I for the kirk or thee;
An even till the Monday morn
We’ll play, my grieve and me”.

“Your grieve he’s going to the kirk,
Where his wife’s already gane,
An’ if ye’ll play to-day, Kinnaird,
It’s sure ye’ll play yer lane.”

There cam’ a clap o’ thunder loud
And a clappin at the door,
And ere they turned, a black, black man
Stood out upon the door.

The grieve he ran frae oot the hoose,
And the servants followed fast;
But the guidwife she went and prayed
Mid the ragin’ northern blast.

Oh! Where is now the bright blue lift?
Dark is the sky and the land”!
And where are now the gardens fine?
Shrouded in drifted sand!

The wind is blowing loud, guidman,
An’ the sand drifts fae the shore;
I’ve called thee twice and thrice guidman
An’ I’ll call thee now once more.”

“Ye call again in vain, auld wife,
For I’m winnin’ the red, red gold;
An’ though my hands are hard and strong
It’s burnin’ in my hold.”

Then louder and fiercer blew the wind,
And the sand was to the door;
And the woman rushed frae out the house
And wept and cried full sore.

The wind it blew and the sand it flew
All through the mirk, mirk night;
But the darksome guest he played the best
For a soul by the tapers’ light.

The morning dawning, the wind went down,
And the sand it blew no more;
And a’ the country round about
Was like a vast seashore.

Oh then Kinnaird lauch’d loud and long:
“Ye fule, wife, say your say,
For I would play wi’ the deil himsel’
Until the judgment day.”

And ‘neath the sand that fearfu’ game
Is played and played away;
For the deil and Culbin are sitting there
Until the judgment day.