Graeme and the Devil

It is said that the babe born under a vulture’s watch belongs to the Devil.

This superstition did well to strike fear into the hearts of many; particularly peasants who lived in the vast countryside, where vultures were only too glad to pick a cottage as a roost.

When a woman is with child, she will have her entire family by her side to ward off these carrion eaters from coming near the home, ensuring that a healthy, Christian child be born.

However, there were some that had to do this task by themselves.

Thus was the fate of a peasant couple, who were expecting a child in the heart of autumn.

They had been shunned by both family and friend; they had nothing to their name.

Still, the two fixed up their little, worn cottage as best they could, and whistled as they worked, for joy is sometimes greater than riches.

Soon, the day came. As the sun cast its last glimpses to the earth, the peasant woman let out a cry of agony, the cry of childbirth.

“Stay by the window, my love,” she hissed through clenched teeth to her husband, watching anxiously on.

“Night is falling, keep watch, keep watch!” However, her face was so red, so twisted with pain, that the man could not restrain himself from rushing to her side as she was in the last throes of birthing.

And as he wiped the blood off of his son's brow, his wife looked past him, to the open window.

Her breath caught.

There, its head black, wrinkled and bare, hunched over on the sill, was a vulture, who stared at the three with shrewd, glittering eyes.

The woman let out a cry more terrible than those she had uttered before, and the vulture took off into the night sky, leaving the couple frightened and shaken. Then, the woman spoke, the love in her eyes dulling as she glanced at her newborn son.

“He is the devil’s child, now.”

They named him Graeme.

Graeme grew up to be a healthy boy, with bright, snapping black eyes that neither of his parents possessed.

He was only too glad to flash these eyes at his mother, who would stop her scolding and shrink back in fear, or at his father, who would settle into a stony silence at the sight of them.

Even the sheep in the pasture were cowed, and the birds would stop their singing, when the boy’s gaze fell upon them.

Man and beast feared him, and for this he was proud.

When Graeme was of age, his mother and father gave him what scanty savings they had, and begged him to find an honest trade.

Gladdened, he took the money, but a wicked intention stirred in his heart.

“To work a trade is terribly taxing,” he said to himself, “Nay, I shall be wise, and earn my money easily.”

So, he departed, having decided to gamble what little money he had been given.

On his way down the mountain path, however, he saw a lovely maiden. She bore no hat or gloves, but wore a loose, white frock, which rippled in the wind.

He ventured near her, as if in a trance, and she laughed, fleeing from him, leading him deeper and deeper into the wood, away from the mountain path.

Oddly, she would not falter under his gaze, and she only stopped her teasing once he had caught her.

As Graeme held her close, a triumphant glimmer came to his eye, but it faded away, replaced with terror as he truly beheld what he had caught.

For it was not a maiden in his arms now- but a large black ram, which grinned so terribly at him that he tried in vain to throw it from his arms.

“Do not trouble me,” Graeme cried out, “let me go about my honest way, trouble me no more!”

The ram laughed a hideous laugh, filled with nothing but dark mirth.

“There is no honesty in you,” it declared, “your eyes would not gleam so, if you were an honest man. I put the fire in your eyes when you were born, and now I must retrieve my coals.”

And with a thrust of his mighty head, the Devil skewered the young man’s eyes out, plunging him into a darkness that he would never escape from.