MEDIAEVAL CURSE WORKS OUT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3434, 27 January 1912, Page 3

MEDIAEVAL CURSE WORKS OUT.

RECALLED BY LORD TWEEDDALE’S DEATH. The late Marquis of Tweeddale was. tenth of. liis line, and a great magnate in. the south-east of Scotland. He had a fine face andi keen, blue eyes, and his long grey beard gave him : .a venerable appearance. He was Hereditary; Chamberlain of Dunfermline, and twice acted as Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland. A curious tale of the occult (which happens to be true) is connected with his elder brother, the late Earl of Gifford. In the dim past a certain Sir Hugh Gifford, an ancestor of the Hays, was wa master of the black art, and had the power of bringing good or ill to his friends and neighbors. The old castle, now in ruin, contained a large hall which had been erected in a magic manner by the aforesaid Hugh Gifford. And the wizard had uttered a curse that anyone who tampered with his building should meet with a death both sudden and violent. Xow it chanced that the late Lord Gifford ordered some repairs to be done which disturbed the stones of this enchanted hall, and the evil wish worked, for shortly afterwards a tree fell on him and crushed him to death in an instant. A touch of sadness is given to this tragic event by the fact that Lord Gifford! was then a happv bridegroom. He met bis death in December 1862, and. in October of the same year had married the widowed Helen Lady Dunferin, a beautiful and gifted woman who had been born a Sheridan.