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Various

"Stories of Mystery"


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THE HAUNTED SHIPS.
BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its
woodlands, its bays, its cliffs, and headlands,--and interesting on
the English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on
the water, rich pastures, safe harbors, and numerous ships,--there still
linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them
connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the curious
these tales afford a rich fund of entertainment, from the many
diversities of the same story; some dry and barren, and stripped of all
the embellishments of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of a
superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they resemble
the inland traditions of the peasants; but many of the oral treasures
of the Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast have the stamp of the Dane and
the Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or faint affinity with
the legitimate legends of Caledonia.


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