The Botathen Ghost

The Botathen Ghost by R.S. Hawker

The Botathen Ghost is a thrilling tale of mystery and suspense set in the wilds of Cornwall. It follows the story of a young man, John Tregellas, who is sent to the isolated village of Botathen to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a local girl. As he delves deeper into the mystery, he discovers a dark secret that has been hidden for centuries. With the help of a mysterious old woman, he must unravel the truth before it is too late. Along the way, he must confront the supernatural forces that haunt the village and the secrets that lurk in its shadows. Will John be able to uncover the truth and save the village from the evil that lurks within?

By R.S. Hawker · First published 1867 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Mystery, Romance · 3,857 words

First lines

There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the clergy in the west of England throughout the seventeenth century. The Church of those days was in a transitory state, and her ministers, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. Their wide severance also from the great metropolis of life and manners, the city of London (which in those times was civilized England, much as the Paris of our own day is France), divested the Cornish clergy in particular of all personal access to the master-minds of their age and body. Then, too, the barrier interposed by the rude rough roads of their country, and by their abode in wilds that were almost inaccessible, rendered the existence of a bishop rather a doctrine suggested to their belief than a fact revealed to the actual vision of each in his generation. Hence it came to pass that the Cornish clergyman, insulated within his own limited sphere, often without even the presence of a country squire (and unchecked by the influence of the Fourth Estate--for until the beginning of this nineteenth century, _Flindell's Weekly Miscellany_, distributed from house to house from the pannier of a mule, was the only light of the West), became developed about middle life into an original mind and man, sole and absolute within his parish boundary, eccentric when compared with his brethren in civilized regions, and yet, in German phrase, 'a whole and seldom man' in his dominion of souls. He was 'the parson', in canonical phrase--that is to say, The Person, the somebody of consequence among his own people. These men were not, however, smoothed down into a monotonous aspect of life and manners by this remote and secluded existence. They imbibed, each in his own peculiar circle, the hue of surrounding objects, and were tinged into a distinctive colouring and character by many a contrast of scenery and people. There was the 'light of other days', the curate by the sea-shore, who professed to check the turbulence of the 'smugglers' landing by his presence on the sands, and who 'held the lantern' for the guidance of his flock when the nights were dark, as the only proper ecclesiastical part he could take in the proceedings. He was soothed and silenced by the gift of a keg of hollands or a chest of tea. There was the merry minister of the mines, whose cure was honeycombed by the underground men. He must needs have been artist and poet in his way, for he had to enliven his people three or four times a-year, by mastering the arrangements of a 'guary. ', or religious mystery, which was duly performed in the topmost hollow of a green barrow or hill, of which many survive, scooped out into vast amphitheatres and surrounded by benches of turf which held two thousand spectators. Such were the historic plays, 'The Creation' and 'Noe's Flood', which still exist in the original Celtic as well as the English text, and suggest what critics and antiquaries these Cornish curates, masters of such revels, must have been--for the native language of Cornwall did not lapse into silence until the end of the seventeenth century. Then, moreover, here and there would be one parson more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man so highly honoured at college for natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that when he 'took his second orders' the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in church, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson had it rightly on, he could 'govern any ghost or evil spirit', and even 'stop an earthquake'.

What this Textopian page supports

The Botathen Ghost is listed on Textopian as a novel by R.S. Hawker, dated 1867 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Discussion starters

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

ghost · mystery · supernatural · fiction · adventure · suspense · paranormal · thriller · historical · haunting · local folklore · narrative

More by R.S. Hawker