Cam’ Ye O’er The Waves to Me

“… and every road I walk will take me down to the Sea
with every broken promise in my sack,
and every love will always send the ship of my heart
over the rolling Sea…”

A community of people who live out their lives beside the sea is nothing short of a family. As with all families, its members will do almost anything to protect each other from harm or from the intrusion of outsiders on the relationships that generations of sea-going habits have forged. Like all families, a community of seafarers will keep secrets well, hiding them like pirate treasure in the watery caves of the passing years. But on occasion no amount of careful concealment will keep a secret that the Sea wishes to tell.

Such was the case some years ago along the rough and ragged coasts of Cornwall where in a village whose name is now forgotten there lived such a caste of seafaring folk. Through all the seasons of the year the men fished the rough waters of the Channel, far into the Atlantic; their women stayed to home, waiting and worrying until all were safe on land again. Everyone knew one another; everyone looked out for one another.

Into their midst, one January day, there came a stranger in the form of a dark, mysterious woman. She was nothing like the other women in the village. Widowed, or so it was put out, she lived alone in a small, wind-blown cottage overlooking the gale-swept headlands of the Cornish coast. Once or twice a week she would come down into the village to purchase some minor commodities; each time, her appearance would create a stir. For unlike the stout and dour seamen’s wives, she was dark and beautiful, with hair as black as midnight and eyes that glowed with a smoldering fire. She never spoke, except to obtain those things she needed, but always nodded politely to the gaping sailors she seemed always to attract on her brief forays. Unaware of the growing resentment she was causing among their wives, the dark woman went about her errands silently and alone. Silent and alone she tread the long, dark path back to her lonely abode.

Within a short time, the gossip began. “She’s a witch!” was the worst of it. “Living out there all alone, who knows what she is up to?” Others said she was a danger to the village, that her presence would bring bad luck – but some were quick to point out that the fishing had been unusually good since the arrival of the dark woman in their midst. They did not know what to make of it.

As the winter ended and the world gave way to the onset of spring, the dark woman was seen more frequently along the road between the headlands and the village. Sometimes she was accompanied by her black dog – her only protection in the remote area where she lived. On one occasion she brought the pet with her into town and as she was going about her business the dog suddenly bolted and ran off. The dark woman was distraught, even more so when no one would offer to help find the animal.

Despondent and alone she took the road home. Evening was passing and night was drawing on and with it the last of the winter chill would return. Suddenly from behind she heard the familiar barking of her beloved pet. She stopped to see her dog running toward her followed by a man. The dog happily jumped at his mistress, knocking her down in his enthusiasm. Just as quickly, the man was over her, his hand extended.

Thanking him, she rose to her feet. They stared at each other for a long moment, still holding hands. Suddenly the man let go. “Will you be alright, then?” he asked her.
“Aye,” she replied and to him her voice seemed as fine and smooth as June honey. “It’s but a short way now. Thank ye, for bringing back my Shuck.”

The man started. “That’s a bold name for a dog!” he laughed, nervously eyeing the animal as it loped along the headland slopes.

The dark woman only smiled. She nodded and then turned in silence and began to walk away. The man didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps she was “strange” as the women in the village were saying – maybe she was a witch and he was safer out of there. With these thoughts in his mind, he turned and began to walk briskly away. Suddenly, he heard the honey voice of the mysterious woman call him by his given name, which he had not mentioned: “Come ye back this way soon, Owain Gwithian! And I’ll be waiting.”

A rainy spring came in that year and turned to a golden summer and Owain Gwithian was a changed man. Between his hitches at sea and his clandestine visits to the dark lady of the headlands, his family and other villagers barely saw him. No one knew, of course, what kept him away; most assumed he was crewing more than one vessel, but his pockets were not full enough for this to be so. At last some began to consider the unthinkable and one night a group of his shipmates, at the behest of his close family, followed Owain on his secret journey, all the way from the quayside and the briny docks up the headland road to the little cottage where he fell into the waiting arms of his secret love.

In considerable fear and confusion the seamen returned to where their wives and Owain’s wife waited. All listened aghast as they related their tale. The wife of Owain Gwithian sat in stunned silence, but soon her mother sidled up to her.

“Ye have these boys to consider,” she said, hissing like a snake in her ear. “Ye will make him give her up and together we will put the fear in him! He will be cut off from all of us if he does anything but! And we shall drive her away from our midst!”

Owain Gwithian returned to a dark and cold house and these were the conditions he was met with. He looked at the angelic faces of his sleeping sons and peered into the cold eyes of his wife and mother-in-law. What could he do? He must end it for in every respect it appeared that he was wrong.

In the days that followed, as summer gave way to autumn, Owain’s mother-in-law used her influence and money to secure him a place as waterman on a schooner that sailed out of Polgrain for the Java Islands. He would be away long months, and in those months his dark lover could learn nothing of his whereabouts, for the whole village, like a family in a crisis, shunned her in silence. Alone and forlorn, she would wander the headlands with her black dog as her only company, looking out to Sea and pondering the fate of her lover and the future for herself. Distraught and alone, there seemed only one thing left to do.

In the dreaded middle watch on a starry night off the reefs of Java, Owain Gwithian continued to fret and ever his thoughts turned to the woman of his dreams whom he had left behind. The tradewinds blew her scent to him, the ripples of the sea about the ship’s hull looked to him like the black tresses of her long hair, the stars shimmered like the gleam of her eyes or were lost altogether in an image of her face. This night, lost in his musings, he did not at first sense the complete stillness that surrounded him. The lapping of the waves against the vessel’s hull had ceased, the tapping of the rigging in the soft breezes had stopped completely. Nothing stirred. The night seemed to hold its breath around him.

Suddenly, in the ship’s bow, there appeared a mist, and as Owain watched it took on the form of a woman. Grey, grainy, like a charcoal rendering of some artist’s vision, the vision took shape before him and suddenly he recognized it: He was seeing the very image of his lover before him. She held out her arms and spoke to him in a voice like June honey: ““Come ye back this way soon, Owain Gwithian! And I’ll be waiting.”

Owain’s eyes filled with tears as the image began to fade. “I’m here!” he called after her. “Don’t leave me!”

The men sleeping below were roused from their beds by the strangest sounds. All agreed later, as they told their fantastic tale, that they had been awakened by the wild barking of a dog, and in the midst of this strange event they heard the heavy footsteps of the watch – in this case Owain Gwithian – running across the deck in the direction of the animal’s bark. After this, they recounted, there was a loud splash. By the time the crew and officers made it to the deck, Owain had already cast himself overboard. The strange thing was that he had disappeared entirely in a slick, calm sea.

Back in the little village beside the sea, the sailor’s family had found the cottage of his paramour empty. No trace of the dark woman or her black dog could be found. Most assumed that she had lost her footing along the headland path and had fallen to her death in the waves below; the dog, had it not run off into the woods, may have followed its mistress over the edge, into the pounding surf. But no bodies were ever found, not of mistress, or of pet.

Nor did Owain Gwithian return with his shipmates from that strange voyage to the Java waters. Though his loss overboard was obvious, the circumstances were never explained to everyone’s satisfaction, least of all his mean-hearted mother-in-law who insisted that somehow he had managed to rendezvous with the hated adulteress and together they had disappeared to parts unknown.

Most would have accepted her theory as fact, except that many have said, that as the autumn breezes fall to a hush among the dying sea oats, and the winter winds begin to howl over the headlands, the image of the two lovers returns and they are seen walking hand in hand, her dark hair about both their faces. Framed against the steel grey of the winter sky where it meets the tumultuous sea, they are seen locked forever in a long embrace, with the ghostly black dog playing about their feet. And they are waiting no more.

Based upon an old Cornish sea legend. Copyright © 2006 Haunted America Tours.