“The Daemon Lover” sometimes called “House Carpenter” is a classic Scottish folk ballad. The oldest version of it I’ve found is from Ballads Weird and Wonderful (Chope, 1912), though the ballad is far older. Lots of musicians have re-told this story. My favorite three retellings belong to Myrkur, Doc Watson, and especially Nickel Creek. A few misheard lyrics were the inspiration for this alternate tale.
“Well met,” she smirked as she strolled up the lane. The green hills beyond her fell into a hungry sea. Gulls were high, squawking. The wind whipped. The air grayed. Out in the bay half a dozen ships loitered like lads. Her clothes were worn. She smelled of wide air and fumed of salt, like always. Her black braids had reddened with eleven months in the sun.
The whelp bobbed on Ian’s hip.
“I’ve returned,” she said lamely, stopping halfway up the lane. The gray sky spat down on them both. “For you.”
“Come in,” Ian said, though he didn’t know why. He turned and went in, left the door yawning open. His heart rattled like a penned up dog.
She followed.
“Have a seat,” he patted the chair beside his at the table he’d made for Alice. A wedding gift. He was a fair carpenter. Alice was a fairer shipwright.
Maeve remained in the door.
“It’s been a time,” Ian said, minding the fussing babe at his hip.
“More’n three-fourths of a long, long year,” she breathed. “I can’t come in. Can’t sit. I’ve only a few days’ time. But I… I had to see you, Ian.” Her gray eyes sparked on the babe. Alice’s whelp. Maeve cleared her foggy throat, “there was a storm, did something to the hull. The new shipwright’s looking at her. Doesn’t think it’ll take much. Near sank on our way in. But I made it.”
“Aye,” was all Ian said. Maeve flinched a little and good for it. She left him here for that damn ship in dead winter when she shoulda been on land keeping with him. He’d wished half a hundred times for that ship to sink. It almost worked.
Alice’s whelp hiccoughed and Maeve looked at it again.
“Not yours,” Ian said.
“No,” she half-smiled.
“I am married to–”
“I gathered,” she said. She sniffed. “You know, I came back. All for–” she stammered. “All for you.”
Ian set his teeth and grumbled, “I thought the ship was sinking.” Maeve only had one lover, and that ship didn’t share well.
Maeve shrugged. “I coulda married the king’s son, did you hear? But I didn’t. I came back for you.”
Ian snorted, “if you coulda married the king’s son, dear, you’ve only yourself to blame. I’ve a good life here. The boy’s ma’s a good steady woman. Doesn’t go off to sea after she whispers promises.”
“Promises I meant,” Maeve said, intruding just a stride.
“Oh?” he scoffed. “Well it’s too–”
“Would you forsake her?” her voice crackled. She was pleading. Never one with words was Maeve, but for heart there wasn’t never none in Denning better. “Go along with me–I’ll take you out across the sea. I love you.”
He laughed and stood, still rocking Alice’s whelp on a hip. It made a heavy anchor. He brushed past Maeve and out into the air. The wind had risen, the spitting not stopped.
“My wife,” he articulated, “will be coming up that same road any moment. And if she saw you here–”
“Aye,” Maeve said, exiting his house after him. She strolled back down the lane. At its end she paused and turned toward him. Her broad lips parted, but said naught. She turned down the way, back toward the shipyard.
Alice came before long. She smelled of sweat and tired and pine and oakum.
Ian held her in their bed that night, his arms wrapped tightly round her. She was a good woman, Alice. A good, steady woman. They had a whelp together. They’d done it right when he’d got her with it.
It didn’t squawk all that night.
In winter he’d been unpleasable, the weeks after Maeve told him. He ought have known she’d go off like that, and only after ensnaring his heart. More charming than any devil, and twice as sharp was Maeve. Broke him to pieces when she told him. Alice’d been there, hardly new to town. A good, steady woman. She’d done the good thing.
Come morning more ships stared at the coast from the bay. Had to be near a dozen of them, bobbing under the same gray sky, all loitering. Alice went off again just after dawn with a kiss for her screaming whelp.
Ian was minding the garden, the whelp sunning in the lane beside him, when Maeve called again from the road a few hours later.
“Well met,” she cried from the far side of the gate.
He looked up at her. A stone gnawed into his knee through his pants.
“Have ye thought on me?” she asked, flowing up the lane. She ebbed before the whelp, cooed at it, tickled its cheek.
“Aye,” he said from the turnips. He didn’t know why. “If I should forsake her for you, what have you? Where shall I go to watch the horizon for my sailor’s ship? For I can’t stay here.”
“You’ll have not far to look,” she chuckled. The wind met Maeve in the face, stewed back her disheveled, reddening curls, undusted her sanguine grin. She’d turned, was looking out over the water. Had to be a dozen and more ships there, furloughed and waiting. “There’s plenty of them to see.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
Ian dropped a turnip. “All of them?” The whelp woke, cried. He reflexively grabbed it, set it against his chest.
“You’ll be on mine with me,” she grinned.
“On yours?”
“Aye,” she said through proud teeth. “They’re all mine.”
Ian gaped out at the fleet of ships bobbing on the water.
“I forsook a crown of gold,” she whispered, “all for my love of you.” She reached out a hand for his and Ian almost let her take it. But he snapped his arm away. He needed both for the sinking weight of Alice’s whelp.
He turned back to the house he kept for Alice. A little leansome home with a leaky roof and sinking floors. He might never see it the same again. “When do you set off?” he breathed. He once loved Maeve–he still did, didn’t he? He always knew he’d carry that love with him past the grave. Alice was a good woman. She was steady, she was kind, she was modest.
But she wasn’t Mae.
He looked down at the whelp. He’d tried–Lord save him he’d tried–when Mae came stamping up that lane yesterday to harden his heart, to tell her off, to curse her, to chase her away with a broom if he had to. He’d vowed in his heart he would, ten-hundred times rehearsing it. He’d known it was coming, one of these late autumn days. Had to be coming, like a storm. But when Mae called, when she jaunted into Alice’s house, when she lingered at the end of the lane…
He couldn’t do none of it.
“The shipwright said two days.” Mae rose. Her soft eyes drew him up beside her. “She’s a good woman, that shipwright.” Was she studying his reaction?
“She is,” he creaked, uncertain what Mae knew.
“Think on it, Ian,” she croaked and turned down the lane. She lingered at the gate, fiddling with the post, like she had more to say. “Think on it.”
“I can’t,” he breathed after her. Alice’s whelp felt heavy in his arms.
“What’s this?” Alice asked as she stepped into the house. Her voice pulled his navel to the bottom of the sea. Turnip stew was on and near done. She smelled like wood and even sweatier today. He took her shirt aside to wash it tomorrow. A good, steady woman was Alice. She proffered a daisy, set it playfully behind Ian’s ear. “Found it in the fence post.”
“Oh,” Ian whispered, caressing it guiltily. Had Mae left it for him?
Alice took him that night, once the whelp finally settled. She took him well and good. She was a good, steady woman, Alice. A good mother, a good wife, a good shipwright.
She didn’t come the next day, Mae. At the beckon of every footstep, the passage of every shadow, the whisper of any word on the wind, Ian’s eye jumped down the lane, down the road, toward town. But she didn’t come. He mended Alice’s work clothes, tried to get the smears of pine tar out of them. They smelled like earth and wounded ships and like his wife. He breathed deeply of them, but smelled only salt and wide sky.
Alice was chuckling when she came through the door that evening. She held a bouquet of plucked daisies this time. She knelt playfully and presented them to him like he were the king’s son. “They were at the end of the lane,” she explained when he asked.
Waves crashed over Ian’s decks. He darted to the window, as though he could still snag the shadow of Mae dodging away back down the way. How had he missed her? It must’ve been while he was feeding the whelp.
“Have you got an admirer?” she smiled. She meant it as a jape, but Ian smiled like he was drowning.
The turnips tasted like seaweed. The broth tasted like ocean. The whelp squawked like a gull.
He was exhausted that night. Alice poured over him, her body warm against the creaky autumn air. But he couldn’t sleep. He was too resolved. He slipped out from under Alice’s arms and dressed himself in their best wools.
He kissed the whelp three times, on each cheek and the forehead too. “Stay right here,” he whispered in its ear. “Keep your ma company.”
The blameful gate squealed at the end of the lane, but he pressed on, down the road into the dark, looking only forward.
He knew, of course, where in town to find the shipwright’s, and there, hoisted, towered a ship. Her mast reached taller than the kirk steeple. Mae stood on deck, staring up into the hills. It was a clear, fair night and starlight dappled her silhouette.
“Sailor,” he called. In his hand he held a bouquet he’d plucked from alongside the road. He waved it up at her.
The shipwright declared her fit to fly the day after Ian slipped aboard. He insisted on stowing away in Maeve’s cabin all the night, and wouldn’t come out until they were well away from shore. This bothered Maeve none, and she kept him good company well into the morning.
The new shipwright of Denning was a good, steady woman, Maeve thought. New to the place, must be. Not often you met a woman who could mend a ship. Not often you met a woman who captained a fleet neither, though.
Once, Maeve knew everyone in Denning. But that shipwright couldn’ta been there long. Her work was good. Married woman just out of the birthing bed too. Maeve admired that. They talked often of men. Maeve’d told the shipwright of her darling, complicated Ian while the woman fixed Maeve’s lady.
What was the shipwright’s name? Shame Maeve couldn’t remember.
Her darling sailed well. She cut ahead, maybe even faster than before the storm, outpacing the rest of Maeve’s fleet til they were no taller than distant mountains. She let the beauty ride, stretch her convalescent wings.
She shouldn’ta.
It was three weeks at sea before her darling gave any signs of trouble. She was faltering in a good, steady wind and Maeve woulda noticed it sooner had she not been distracted. Foul luck, bringing a lover on board, and now she knew why.
The mate banged on her cabin door, barking, “taking on water. Fast.”
Ian gave a soft yell beside her in bed. He scrambled for a window but Maeve knew all that he’d find: open black ocean and open black sky, like lips swallowing them. The other ships of her fleet surfed arrogant leagues behind.
She flooded out the cabin door. A crewman was signalling to those other ships, but it was night and they were well too far off. The wind had died even if they were keen with the sails. God would be no help tonight. They were alone.
Her men screamed belowdecks, bailing fast as they could.
“She just failed,” her mate gargled, grabbing her bare shoulder. “It’s as though she was made to sink. God wants us underneath.”
“Not god,” Ian appeared like a wraith beside Maeve.
It wasn’t long before she called abandon ship. In just meager breaths the ocean had taken them into its throat. Let the crewmen go free. Swim if they could.
“Go with them,” she whispered to Ian. He stood beside her amid the deathly chaos. He was a good man. Steady.
“And go where?” he croaked. “To the bawling whelp? To the shipwright wife?”
She didn’t have a good answer, just clasped his hand.
The vessel lurched.
Desperate bells rang deaf.
Into silent black water they fell.