Castle Rock and the Black Monk - Part 2

Castle Rock - © Copyright Paul Jennings and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

"...The baron's cries summoned the affrighted servants, but when they reached his room they found their lord lying on the floor a blackened corpse. His only son, solemnly impressed by his father's fate, went on the Crusades and did many acts of valour against the infidels. But even to the Holy Land the black monk followed him, and never left him day or night. The unhappy man, driven nearly mad, sought to bury his trouble in drink. He grew a wild, dissolute gallant, and the mother and sister that he had left in the castle on the rock wept bitter tears over his fall, and were glad when death summoned them to the land where "the wicked cease from troubling."

Years afterwards the knight returned to his Devonshire home, and one Sunday morning, as he rode through the valley, he heard the church bells calling men to prayer. They reminded him of the days of his innocent childhood; of his mother's teachings, and lured him towards the house of prayer. The black monk sought to draw him back, with the whisper of false pleasures awaiting him; but as the sinner hesitated, scarcely able to wrest himself away from his evil associate, he saw in the church porch the forms of his mother and sister, clad in garments of light, and beckoning to him with their spirit hands. He tore himself from the grasp of the monk, rushed to the porch, and darting into the church, threw himself before the altar.

The black monk developed into a fiend, and stamping his foot there was an earthquake; the castle on the rock shook to its foundations and fell crashing into the valley; the rocks rolled over, the Ring was formed, and where a smiling vale had been there remained the Valley of Rocks. Was this an allegory? Did the black monk personify an evil habit, so difficult to break?"

Valentine (undated)

Map - Castle Rock