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The bell was put there and maintained by the abbot of Aberbrothok, but being taken down by a sea-pirate, a yeare thereafter he perished upon the same rocke, with ship and goodes, in the righteous judgment of God." A lighthouse, built with the greatest difficulty, has stood on the rock since 1810.
A little one, you know, and the Merrows will help." "Of course," said Berry. "Some telling trifle or other. Can't we dramatize 'The Inchcape Rock'?" "Excellent," said I. "I should like to play the abbot. It would be rather suitable, too. If you remember, 'they blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok." "Why not?" said Berry. "We could have a very fervent little scene with them all blessing you."
At Arbroath are the ruins of the most extensive of the Scotch abbeys, scanty indeed, but still enough to show its state and importance in the "days of faith." Here once reigned the good abbott celebrated by Southey in his ballad of Ralph the Rover, familiar to every schoolboy. Ten miles off the coast is the reef where "The abbott of Aberbrothok Had placed a bell on the Inchcape rock.
Like a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung." And where the pirate, out of pure malice, "To vex the abbott of Aberbrothok," cut the bell from its buoy only to be lost himself on the reef a year later. The abbey was founded by William the Lion in 1178, but war, fire and fanaticism have left it sadly fragmentary.
The story of the forethought of the abbot of Aberbrothok in placing the bell on the buoy as a warning to sailors is an ancient one, and one old writer thus gives the tradition made use of by Southey in this poem: "In old times upon the said rocke there was a bell fixed upon a timber, which rang continually, being moved by the sea, giving notice to saylers of the danger.
One fine day, as the story goes, when the bell was ringing gently, the pirate put out to the rock, saying, "I'll sink that bell and plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok." So he cut the rope, and down went the bell "with a gurgling sound; the bubbles rose and burst around," etc.
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