Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881
The magic trick:
A memorably terrifying visual
Happy Halloween 2023.
We’ve got a very scary story from Olde Scotland for you from Mr. RLS.
It’s a very famous story, brilliantly told in Scots – so get ready for your internal reading voice to develop an amazing accent.
I don’t want to ruin the specifics for anyone who hasn’t read it, so I will just say that the central ghoulish image here – and I consider the scare peak to happen about halfway through and not at the end – is an all-timer.
Sometimes that’s really all it takes to write a scary story: conjure a very specifically very scary image.
And that’s quite a trick on Stevenson’s part.
The selection:
Onyway, it behooved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for him an’ see to his bit denners; and he was recommended to an auld limmer,–Janet M’Clour, they ca’d her,–and sae far left to himsel’ as to be ower-persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar’, for Janet was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba’weary. Lang or that, she had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit for maybe thretty year; and bairns had seen her mumblin’ to hersel’ up on Key’s Loan in the gloamin’, whilk was an unco time an’ place for a God-fearin’ woman. Howsoever, it was the laird himsel’ that had first tauld the minister o’ Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a’ superstition by his way of it; and’ when they cast up the Bible to him, an’ the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a’ gane by, and the deil was mercifully restrained.
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