BRAM STOKER’S FIRST CRUDEN BAY NOVEL – THE WATTER’S MOU’

Bram Stoker wrote two novels based in Cruden Bay. The first of these was The Watter’s Mou’ which was published in 1895, two years before Dracula came out in 1897.

The plot concerns a conflict of duty between the local coastguard Sailor Willie and his lover Maggie McWhirter, the daughter of a fisherman in the village. Maggie’s father is involved in smuggling and her lover has a duty as a coastguard to stop it. Sailor Willie is invited to a wedding held at the grain store essentially to get him out of the way while the smuggled goods are brought into Port Erroll harbour. He rumbles this scheme and returns to his coastguard hut to keep watch. Maggie meets him nearby and pleads with him to let this one go, but no he can’t. She then takes a great risk sailing out during a rising storm from the Watter’s Mou, a coastal inlet near Slains Castle (see the photo above).  She intercepts the boat and warns her father that the smuggling run has been discovered. On returning to the Watter’s Mou’ the boat is wrecked and Maggie drowns. Sailor Willie discovers her body and he too is drowned while attempting to recover it.

What’s curious about the novel is that it’s mostly written in the local Aberdeenshire dialect, commonly known as the Doric dialect. It can be difficult for outsiders to understand the Doric due to its numerous dialect words and the vowels are often shifted in normal English words, none becomes nane for instance. The wh syllable at the start of a word is replaced with f. For instance, the word who becomes fa in Doric.

Another curiosity is that Bram Stoker uses real places and real people in the novel. So I'll show some photographs of the places he mentions.

The Grain Store where the wedding took place and now the local garage. 

What's left of the Coastguard hut on Ward Hill. 

The road leading to Port Erroll harbour. The Rocket House (on the left) and the Salmon Station (on the right) are also mentioned in the novel. 

The Water of Cruden estuary and a view of the old part of Cruden Bay.

The Bram Stoker estate has published Bram Stoker's novels online. The Watter's Mou can be read here:

http://www.bramstoker.org/novels/03mou.html

DRACULA ON THE BEACH

Cruden Bay beach

Bram Stoker wrote a large part of his novel Dracula  in the village of Cruden Bay (then called Port Erroll). The Irish author wrote part-time and his annual visits to the Scottish village were when he did most of his writing. The novel was written in the years 1895 and 1896, although it had been about five years in the planning.  

This week’s blog traces the unlikely connection between Dracula and Cruden Bay beach. Bram Stoker walked along the two-mile long beach every morning before breakfast during his summer visits. One of the local residents described his walking gear as a tweed suit, a round beret and a stout stick.

It may have been when he was writing Dracula that he noticed something unusual about the beach. Here’s his description from his 1902 novel The Mystery of the Sea: ‘If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks which work the extremities are its teeth.’

As a local resident living in near Cruden Bay beach I look at the same scene and see the rocky headlands bordering the beach on either side as arms reaching out to embrace the sea. But of course it’s the author of Dracula who wrote the above.

Cruden Bay beach and its 'teeth' - looking north and looking south.

He also described some of the rocks in the bay as resembling ‘fangs’ and it’s an apt description. One rock with the rather odd name of Craig Headock is particularly fang-like.

He may have been inspired to write a famous scene in Dracula from something he saw on Cruden Bay beach. Jonathan Harker is in Castle Dracula and receives a visit from three vampire sisters who get a bit too close for comfort.  How they arrive is described in the novel:

‘Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating moats of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight... Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes... The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.’

Now here’s what happens on windy days, a phenomenon called sand-devils comes about when the dry sand from the high-tide mark blows over the darker-coloured wet sand close to the sea. Snake-like and spooky they are!

Here's some more photos of the beach. You can see why Bram Stoker came back to Cruden Bay every year. 

BRAM STOKER AND SLAINS CASTLE

Bram Stoker wrote large parts of Dracula in the Scottish village of Cruden Bay. Now it just so happens that Cruden Bay can boast a gothic-looking castle that looks the part. This is Slains Castle, located in a dramatic cliff-top setting overlooking the North Sea. The connection has led to many uninformed comments that Slains Castle inspired Dracula. It didn’t.

Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula have survived and the earliest are dated from 1890.[1] The plot is outlined in the notes and already at this stage the author has identified a castle location as part of the story. He was planning a gothic horror story and a castle is almost obligatory in these tales; it was castle in the abstract and I would bet he didn’t have any specific castle in mind. This was three years before he ever set foot in Cruden Bay.

Nevertheless, it took years for Bram Stoker to get around to actually writing his famous novel and when he did he was in Cruden Bay. It’s no coincidence, I would argue, that the description of Castle Dracula in the novel resembles parts of the floor plan of Slains Castle. As pointed out by Margaret Aitken, the small octagonal room in the castle turns up in the novel.

Compare these two descriptions:

Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897:  ‘The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort.’

The 1922 sales document for Slains Castle: ‘On the Principle Floor: Entrance Hall (heated with stove) leading to Central Octagonal Interior Hall (heated with stove and lighted from above)...’

Slains Castle is now ruined (it wasn’t in Bram Stoker’s day) although the octagonal room has survived.

The Octagonal room in Slains Castle.

Bram Stoker was obviously impressed with Slains Castle as it appears in no less than six of his novels either as the castle itself (twice) or in disguised form. For instance, here is the description of Kyllion, the mansion where a spirit of ancient Egypt is revived in The Jewel of Seven Stars, the novel that inspired all the mummy movies: ‘A great grey stone mansion of the Jacobean period; vast and spacious, standing high over the sea on the very verge of a high cliff.’ And like Slains Castle, one could hear, ‘the crash and murmur of waves breaking against rock far below...’ No prizes for guessing this novel was also written in Cruden Bay.

The great shame is that nothing is being done with Slains Castle. There are plans to turn it into holiday homes but nothing has come to fruition yet. Meanwhile, it’s not even listed as a site of historical interest. Some obvious tourism potential exists here, especially when you see what has been done to promote the Bram Stoker connection in Whitby, not to mention Transylvania.



Slains Castle in its gorgeous setting  is highly photogenic as you can see....

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[1] Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula A Facsimile Edition Bram Stoker, annotated and Transcribed by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller. McFarland & Company. Jefferson, North Carolina and London.

1. ‘When first I saw the place I fell in love with it’

Bram Stoker wrote a large part of Dracula in my home village of Cruden Bay. It’s located on the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland facing the North Sea. Bram was for most of his life a part-time author; his main job was as business manager for the Lyceum Theatre in London. From 1893 he would spend a month in the village every summer and would do so most years up until 1910. Most of his books were written in Cruden Bay.

I’m fascinated by the local association with Cruden Bay and I’ve been researching his time here for a book of my own. The blog will focus mostly on photographs, more details will be found in my book if and when it gets published.

Bram Stoker’s Cruden Bay is recognisable today - most of the buildings he knew are still around. The village was known as Port Erroll back then only becoming Cruden Bay in 1923. It was primarily a fishing village with about 300 out of the 500 inhabitants involved in fishing.

Fishing boat near Port Erroll Harbour.

Port Erroll in 1896 as Bram Stoker would have recognised it.

A similar view from a recent photograph. 

Bram Stoker came for the coastal scenery. He walked across Cruden Bay beach every morning before breakfast. His visits to the village gave him a regular slot to devote to his writing. And if there were any problems he could head off for a walk along the coast to think things over.

Cruden Bay beach

No wonder that Bram Stoker wrote in one of his novels based in Cruden Bay: ‘When first I saw the place I fell in love with it.’