PREFACE.
Among the multifarious absurdities and chicaneries, which at differentepochaof society have clung to, and engaged the attention of man, absorbing, as it were, his more active intelligence, the marvellous and the ridiculous have alternately and conjointly had to contend for pre-eminence; that, whether it were a mountain in the moon or a bottle conjuror; a live lion stuffed with straw or a mermaid; a Cocklane ghost or a living skeleton; a giant or a pigmy; the delusive bait has invariably been swallowed with avidity, and credited with all the solemnity of absolute devotion.
If we look back towards what are called the dark ages of the worlds that is, at times when men were mereyokels, and when the reins of tyranny, superstition and idolatry, were controlled by a few knowing ones, we shall see the human mind at its lowest ebb of debasement, grovelling either under the lashof despotism, or sunk beneath the scale of human nature by the influence of priestcraft,—a time, when the feelings of men were galloped over, rough shod, and the dignity of the creation trampled under foot with impunity and exultation, by a state of the most passive and degenerate servility: how much must it now excite our wonder and admiration of that supreme Providence, who, in his merciful consideration for the frailest of mortals, by a variety of ways and means best suited to his omnipotent ends, has dragged us gradually, and, as it were, reluctantly to ourselves, from darkness to daylight, by extinguishing the stench and vapour of the train oil of ignorance and superstition, lighting us up with the brilliant gas of reason and comparative understanding, while, under less despotic and more tolerant times, we are permitted the rational exercise of those faculties which formerly were rivetted to the floor of tyranny by the most humiliating oppression!
The pranks of popes and priests, conjurors and fire-eaters, have comparatively fled before the piercings of the intellectual ray. Witches no longer untie the winds tocapsise church-steeples, and “topple” down castles,—they no longer dance round the enchanted cauldron, invoking the “ould one” to propitiate their cantrip vows:—Beelzebub himself with his cloven foot is seldom if ever seen above the “bottom of the bottomless pit;” ghosts and apparitions are “jammed hard and fast” in the Red sea; demons of every cast and colour are eternally spellbound; legends are consigned to the chimney-corner of long winter-nights; miracles to the “presto, quick, change and begone!” of the nimble-fingered conjuror; and holy relics to the rosary of the bigot. Amulets and charms have lost their influence; saints are uncanonized, and St. Patrick, St. Dennis, & Co. are flesh and blood like ourselves; monks and holy friars no longer revel in the debauches of the cloister; the hermit returns unsolicited from the solitude of the desert, to encounter with his fellow-men; the pilgrim lays by his staff, leaves the Holy Land to its legitimate possessors, and the tomb of St. Thomas-à-Becket, to enjoy, unmolested, the sombre tranquillity of the grave. Quacks and mountebanks begin also to caper within a narrower sphere; to be brief, the word of command, to use a nautical phrase,has long been given, “every man to his station, and the cook to the fore-sheet,”—worldly occupations have superseded ultramundane speculations. Astrologers themselves, who once ruled the physical world, have long ago been virtually consigned to the grave of the Partridges; and floods and storms are found to be phenomena perfectly consistent with the natural world. We also know that the sun is stationary, that the moon is not made of green cheese, and that there are stars yet in the firmament which the centifold powers of the telescope of a Herschell will never be able to explore.
The Reformation, which originated in the trammels of vice itself, gave the Devil in hell and his agents on earth, such a “belly-go-fister,” that they have never since been able to come to the scratch, but in such a petty larceny-like manner, as to set all their demonological efforts at defiance. This is the first time “old Nick” was ever completely floored; though, it would appear, from the recent number of new churches, built no doubt with the pious intention of keeping him in abeyance, that he has latterly been making a little head-way;—these, however, with the “Holy alliance,” like stern-chasers on a newconstruction, should the “ould one” attempt to board us again in the smoke of superstition, will, without much injury to the hull of the church, pitch him back to Pandemonium, there to exhaust his demonological rage in the sulphuretted hydrogen of his own hell; while the lights of revealed religion, emanating from these soul-saving foundations, like Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety-lamp, will give us timely warning of the choke-damp of damnation before it have time to explode about our ears.
It behoves us, nevertheless, to pray that we may merit this protection, and to watch, for we know not at what hour thecracksmanmay pay us an unwelcome visit; for, whatever pampered hypocrites and mercenary prayer-mongers may pretend to the contrary, our worldly goods, although but of a temporary and perishable nature, are as essential to our existence and respectability here below, as our spiritual faith is necessary to our heavenly and eternal happiness above, however unequal the comparison.
Among the creatures of the Devil, no one has a more decent claim to his clemency, than the caterwauling canting hypocrite. The hypocrite is a genus to which a variety of species belong, the subdivisions of which are too numerousfor our present purpose; we shall only therefore offer a few remarks on one kind of these vampyres, drawn from daily observation. If not absolutely gluttons, although many of them aregourmandsin excess, hypocrites are invariably fond of their ungodly guts, for which they are at all times ready to sacrifice their God, their King, their country and their friends. They have a stomach like a horse, and a reservoir like a brewer’s vat. The hypocrite of circumstances prays, or pretends to pray, in adversity, and swears in good earnest, like a trooper, in prosperity,—he is either a roaring bedlamite or a whining calf, a peevish idiot, a buffoon, or a disgusting bacchanal;—in short, he is capable of such derogatory pranks and extremes, that, as the occasion serves, he with equal facility rises from the bended knee of supplication to extend the hand of venality, aye, and of sensuality too, to the object of his latent and ungovernable concupiscence. His bloated chops, at one time, resemble a passive pair of bagpipes, while, at another, they are inflated with all the arrogance of beggarly pride and momentary superfluity. He is never ashamed to beg, and only afraid to steal—although equally adapted for the one as the other.A consummate, a brawling, and a suspicious egotist—he will hear no one but himself, no opinion but his own. In his own house he is a bear; in the house of another, a nuisance; and every where anil desideratum. Self-eulogy is his most constant theme; and his loathsome flattery, either applied to himself or others, is invariably bespattered with the mostimpiousinvocations of the Deity, to witness his rebellious professions of patience, submission, abstinence, and every other exotic virtue, which he knows only by name. His cant is of the basest and most servile description; and for the attainment of some object, however pitiful or paltry, important or consequential, he is the same venal wretch all over. Where his expectations are defeated, and the yearnings of his bowels unappeased, his sycophancy is succeeded by slander, impertinence, insult, and the most unfounded suspicion. The cringing, wriggling wretch, at length, having wormed himself through a world of unpitied degradation, filth, and obscenity, attempts, at the end of his career, to offer up to his God, what has been indignantly rejected by the Devil—he dies as he lived, apauper, equally to fortune and fame—without one redeeming qualification to keep alive even his name, which is never mentioned unless mingled with that kindred contempt and insignificance to which it was by nature and existence so closely allied.
Popular traditions are always worth recording; they illustrate traditions and exemplify manners: they tend to throw off the thraldom of the intellect of man, and stimulate him to exertions compatible with the intentions of his existence. It is with this view that the materials of which the following pages are composed, have been collected. Priestcraft, the foster-mother of superstition, is now sunk too far below the horizon ever to set again in our illumined hemisphere. The history of their former influence may, nevertheless, enlighten and amuse, as well as guard the tender ideas from receiving impressions calculated to stupify the reason and riper judgment; thus withdrawing the flimsy veil of error and credulity, by an exposure of those fallacies too often credited, because frequently passed over without the aid of investigation through the more refined medium of moral and physical research.