A Scotch friend once told me of a curse that had been laid upon her own family by three Highlanders. These men were implicated in the '45 Rebellion, and were handed over to the Duke of Cumberland by an ancestor of my friend, a man whose sympathies were Hanoverian, and the owner of considerable property. The Highlanders were duly condemned and executed, but before they died they solemnly cursed their enemy, prophesying that his descendants in the third generation should not possess an acre of land. This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter; and my friend tells me that a relation of hers has talked with a very old woman who came from the same part of the country, and who spoke of the curse and its origin as well-known facts.
Connected with this subject of family curses is a story I heard not long ago, of a certain country house in one of the Eastern Counties. On the landing of the principal staircase of this house there might be seen, a few years since, a glass case covered by a curtain, which, if drawn, revealed the waxen effigy of a child, terribly wasted and emaciated, lying on her side as if asleep. It was described to me as so realistic as to be quite horrible, and it is apparent that some very strong reason must have existed for keeping so unpleasant an object in such a thoroughfare of the house. Its history is this. Some generations ago, the wife of the owner of the place died, leaving motherless a little girl. The father soon married again, giving his child a cruel stepmother, who, in her husband's absence from home, so ill-treated and starved the poor little girl that very soon after her father's return she died. It is said that the facts of his wife's cruelty reached the father's ears, and in order that he might punish her with perpetual remorse, he had a wax model made of his child exactly as she appeared in death, and placed it conspicuously on the staircase landing, where his wife must see it whenever she went up or down stairs. He further directed in his will that the model should never be removed from its place, adding that if it were, _a curse_ should fall on house and family. So, covered in later years by a curtain, the effigy remained until a day arrived in quite recent times, when the family then in possession were giving a dance, and for some reason had the case containing the wax-work carried downstairs and put in an outhouse. But mark what happened. That very night occurred a shock of earthquake violent enough to cause part of the house to fall down! Very likely mere coincidence; but as it _might_ have been the working of the curse consequent on the removal of the case, it was thought advisable to restore the grisly relic to its former position, where, as far as my informant knew, it may be seen to this day.