CHAPTER IXPHANTOM LIGHTS

Which, though seemingly doomed in its breast to sustainA softened remembrance of sorrow and pain,Is spotless, and holy, and gentle, and bright,And glides o’er the earth like an angel of light.

So common in France are human ghosts in bestial form, ‘that M. D’Assier has invented a Darwinian way of accounting for the phenomena. M. D’Assier, a positivist, is a believer in ghosts, but not in the immortality of the soul. He suggests that the humanrevenantsin the guise of sheep, cows, and shadowy creatures may be accounted for by a kind of Atavism, or “throwing back,” on the side of the spirit to the lower animal forms out of which humanity was developed!’[111]

According to a German piece of folk-lore, the soul takes the form of a snake, a notion we find shared by the Zulus, who revere a certain kind of serpents as the ghosts of the dead; and the Northern Indians speak of a serpent coming out of the mouth of a woman at death. It is further related that out of the mouth of a sleeping person a snake creeps and goes a long distance, and that whatever it sees, or suffers, on its way,the sleeper dreams of. If it is prevented from returning, the person dies.[112]Another belief tells us that the soul occasionally escapes from the mouth in the shape of a weasel or a mouse, a superstition to which Goethe alludes in ‘Faust’:

Ah! in the midst of her song,A red mouseskin sprang out of her mouth.

Turning to similar beliefs current among distant nations, we are told that the Andaman Islanders had a notion that at death the soul vanished from the earth in the form of various animals and fishes; and in Guinea, monkeys found in the locality of a graveyard are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the dead. As Mr. Andrew Lang remarks:[113]‘Among savages who believe themselves to be descended from beasts, nothing can be more natural than the hypothesis that the souls revert to bestial shapes.’ Certain of the North American Indian tribes believe that the spirits of their dead enter into bears; and some of the Papuans in New Guinea ‘imagine they will reappear as certain of the animals in their ownisland. The cassowary and the emu are the most remarkable animals that they know of; they have lodged in them the shades of their ancestors, and hence the people abstain from eating them.’[114]Spiritualism, we are told, is very widely spread among the Esquimos, who maintain that all animals have their spirits, and that the spirits of men can enter into the bodies of animals.[115]In the Ladrone Islands it was supposed that the spirits of the dead animated the bodies of the fish, and ‘therefore to make better use of these precious spirits, they burnt the soft portions of the dead body, and swallowed the cinders which they let float on the top of their cocoa-nut wine.’[116]

In most parts of England there is a popular belief in a spectral dog, which is generally described as ‘large, shaggy, and black, with long ears and tail. It does not belong to any species of living dogs, but is severally said to represent a hound, a setter, a terrier, or a shepherd dog, though often larger than a Newfoundland.’[117]It is commonly supposed to be a bad spirit, hauntingplaces where evil deeds have been done, or where some calamity may be expected. In Lancashire, this spectre-dog is known as ‘Trash’ and ‘Striker,’[118]its former name having been applied to it from the peculiar noise made by its feet, which is supposed to resemble that of a person walking along a miry, sloppy road, with heavy shoes; and its latter appellation from its uttering a curious screech, which is thought to warn certain persons of the approaching death of some relative or friend. If followed, it retreats with its eyes fronting its pursuer, and either sinks into the ground with a frightful shriek, or in some mysterious manner disappears. When struck, the weapon passes through it as if it were a mere shadow. In Norfolk and Cambridgeshire this apparition is known to the peasantry by the name of ‘shuck’—the provincial word for ‘shag’—and is reported to haunt churchyards and other lonely places. A dreary lane in the parish of Overstrand is called from this spectral animal ‘Shuck’s Lane,’ and it is said that if the spot where it has been seen be examined after its disappearance, it will befound to be scorched, and strongly impregnated with the smell of brimstone. Mrs. Latham tells[119]how a man of notoriously bad character, who lived in a lonely spot at the foot of the South Downs, without any companion of either sex, was believed to be nightly haunted by evil spirits in the form of rats. Persons passing by his cottage late at night heard him cursing them, and desiring them to let him rest in peace. It was supposed they were sent to do judgment on him, and would carry him away some night. But he received his death-blow in a drunken brawl.

In the neighbourhood of Leeds there is the Padfoot, a weird apparition about the size of a small donkey, ‘with shaggy hair and large eyes like saucers.’ Mr. Baring-Gould relates[120]how a man in Horbury once saw ‘the Padfooit,’ which ‘in this neighbourhood is a white dog like a “flay-craw.”’ It goes sometimes on two legs, sometimes it runs on three, and to see it is a prognostication of death. He was going home by Jenkin, and he saw a white dog in the hedge. He struck at it, and the stickpassed through it. Then the white dog looked at him, and it had ‘great saucer e’en’; and he was so ‘flayed,’ that he ran home trembling and went to bed, when he fell ill and died. With this strange apparition may be compared the Barguest, Bahrgeist, or Boguest of Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, and the Boggart of Lancashire; an uncanine creature, which generally assumes the form of a large black dog with flaming eyes, and is supposed to be a presage of death. The word ‘barguest,’ according to Sir Walter Scott, is from the German ‘bahrgeist’—spirit of the bier; and, as it has been pointed out, the proverbial expression to ‘war like a Barguest,’ shows how deep a hold this apparition once had on the popular mind. There is a Barguest in a glen between Darlington and Houghton, near Throstlenest, and another haunted a piece of waste land above a spring called the Oxwells, between Wreghorn and Headingly Hill, near Leeds. On the death of any person of local importance in the neighbourhood the creature would come forth, followed by all the dogs barking and howling.[121]Another form of thisanimal spectre is the Capelthwaite, which, according to common report, had the power of appearing in the form of any quadruped, but usually chose that of a large black dog. It does not seem to have appeared of late years, for tradition tells how a vicar of Beetham went out in his ecclesiastical vestments to lay this troublesome spirit in the River Bela.[122]

In Wales, there is the Gwyllgi, or ‘dog of darkness,’ a terrible spectre of a mastiff which, with a baleful breath and blazing red eyes, has often inspired terror even amongst the strong-minded Welsh peasantry. Many stories are told of its encountering unwary travellers, who have been so overcome by its unearthly howl, or by the glare of its fiery eyes, that they have fallen senseless on the ground. A certain lane, leading from Mowsiad to Lisworney-Crossways, is said to have been haunted by a Gwyllgi of the most terrible aspect. A farmer, living near there, was one night returning home from market on a young mare, when suddenly the animal shied, reared, tumbled the farmer off, and bolted for home. The farm-servants,finding the mare trembling by the barn door, suspected she had seen the Gwyllgi, and going in search of their master, they found him on his back in the mud, who, being questioned, protested ‘it was the Gwyllgi, and nothing less, that had made all this trouble.’[123]

It is a popular belief in Wales that horses have the peculiar ‘gift’ of seeing spectres, and carriage horses have been known to display every sign of the utmost terror when the occupants of the carriage could see no cause for alarm. Such an apparition is an omen of death, and an indication that a funeral will pass before long, bearing to the grave some person not dead at the time of the horses’ fright. Another famous dog-fiend, in the shape of a shaggy spaniel, was the ‘Mauthe Doog,’ which was said to haunt Peel Castle, Isle of Man. Its favourite place was the guard-chamber, where it would lie down by the fireside. According to Waldron, ‘the soldiers lost much of their terror by the frequency of the sight; yet, as they believed it to be an evil spirit waiting for an opportunity to hinder them, the belief kept them so far in orderthat they refrained from swearing in its presence. But, as the Mauthe Doog used to come out and return by the passage through the church, by which also somebody must go to deliver the keys every night to the captain, they continued to go together; he whose turn it was to do that duty being accompanied by the next in rotation. On a certain night, however, one of the soldiers, being the worse for liquor, would go with the key alone, though it really was not his turn. His comrades tried to dissuade him, but he said he wanted the Mauthe Doog’s company, and would try whether he was dog or devil. Soon afterwards a great noise alarmed the soldiers; and when the adventurer returned, he was struck with horror and speechless, nor could he even make such signs as might give them to understand what had happened to him; but he died with distorted features in violent agony. After this the apparition was never seen again.’

Then there are the packs of spectral hounds, which some folk-lorists tell us are evil spirits that have assumed this form in order to mimic the sports of men, or to hunt their souls. They are variously named in different parts of the country—being designated in the North, ‘Gabriel’s Hounds’; in Devon, the ‘Wisk,’ ‘Yesk,’ ‘Yeth,’ or ‘Heath Hounds’; in Wales, ‘Cwn Annwn’ or ‘Cwn y Wybr’; and in Cornwall, the ‘Devil and his Dandy-Dogs.’ Such spectral hounds are generally described as ‘monstrous human-headed dogs,’ and ‘black, with fiery eyes and teeth, and sprinkled all over with blood.’ They are often heard though seldom seen, ‘and seem to be passing along simply in the air, as if in hot pursuit of their prey’; and when they appear to hang over a house, then death or misfortune may shortly be expected. In the gorge of Cliviger the spectre huntsman, under the name of ‘Gabriel Ratchets,’ with his hounds yelping through the air, is believed to hunt a milk-white doe round the Eagle’s Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden, on All Hallows Eve.[124]Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, has embodied the local belief in the subjoined sonnet, and says: ‘I never can forget the impression made upon my mind when once arrested by the cry of these Gabriel hounds as I passed the parish church of Sheffield one densely dark andvery still night. The sound was exactly like the questing of a dozen beagles on the foot of a race, but not so loud, and highly suggestive of ideas of the supernatural.’

Oft have I heard my honoured mother say,How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds—Those strange, unearthly, and mysterious soundsWhich on the ear through murkiest darkness fell;And how, entranced by superstitious spell,The trembling villager nor seldom heard,In the quaint notes of the nocturnal bird,Of death premonished, some sick neighbour’s knell.I, too, remember, once at midnight dark,How these sky-yelpers startled me, and stirredMy fancy so, I could have then averredA mimic pack of beagles low did bark.Nor wondered I that rustic fear should traceA spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.

In the neighbourhood of Leeds these hounds are known as ‘Gabble Retchets,’ and are supposed, as in other places, to be the souls of unbaptized children who flit restlessly about their parents’ abode. The Yeth hounds were heard some few years ago in the parish of St. Mary Tavy by an old man named Roger Burn. He was walking in the fields, when he suddenly heard the baying of thehounds, the shouts and horn of the huntsman, and the smacking of his whip. The last point the old man quoted as at once settling the question, ‘How could I be mistaken? Why, I heard the very smacking of his whip.’

But, as Mr. Yarrell has long ago explained, this mysterious noise is caused by bean-geese, which, coming southwards in large flocks on the approach of winter—partly from Scotland and its islands, but chiefly from Scandinavia—choose dark nights for their migration, and utter a loud and very peculiar cry. The sound of these birds has been observed in every part of England, and as far west as Cornwall. One day a man was riding alone near Land’s End on a still dark night, when the yelping cry broke out above his head so suddenly, and to appearance so near, that he instinctively pulled up the horse as if to allow the pack to pass, the animal trembling violently at the unexpected sounds.

An amusing account of the devil and his dandy-dogs is given by Mr. J. Q. Couch, in his ‘Folk-lore of a Cornish Village,’ from which it appears that ‘a poor herdsman was journeying homeward across the moors one windy night, when he heard at adistance among the Tors the baying of hounds, which he soon recognised as the dismal chorus of the dandy-dogs. It was three or four miles to his house, and, very much alarmed, he hurried onward as fast as the treacherous nature of the soil and the uncertainty of the path would allow; but, alas! the melancholy yelping of the hounds, and the dismal holloa of the hunter, came nearer and nearer. After a considerable run they had so gained upon him that on looking back—oh, horror! he could distinctly see hunter and dogs. The former was terrible to look at, and had the usual complement ofsaucer-eyes, horns, and tail accorded by common consent to the legendary devil. He was black, of course, and carried in his hand a long hunting pole. The dogs, a numerous pack, blackened the small patch of moor that was visible, each snorting fire, and uttering a yelp of indescribably frightful tone. No cottage, rock, or tree was near to give the herdsman shelter, and nothing apparently remained to him but to abandon himself to their fury, when a happy thought suddenly flashed upon him and suggested a resource. Just as they were about to rush upon him, he fell on his knees in prayer.There was a strange power in the holy words he uttered, for immediately, as if resistance had been offered, the hell hounds stood at bay, howling more dismally than ever, and the hunter shouted, “Bo Shrove,” which means “The boy prays,” at which they all drew off on some other pursuit and disappeared.’

Gervase of Tilbury informs us that in the thirteenth century the wild hunt was often seen by full moon in England traversing forest and down. In the twelfth century it was known as the Herlething, the banks of the Wye having been the scene of the most frequent chases.

In Wales, the Cwn Annwn, or Dogs of Hell, or, as they are sometimes called, ‘Dogs of the Sky,’ howl through the air ‘with a voice frightfully disproportionate to their size, full of a wild sort of lamentation,’ but, although terrible to hear, they are harmless, and have never been known to commit any mischief. One curious peculiarity is that the nearer these spectral hounds are to a man, the less loud their voices sound; and the farther off they are, the louder is their cry. According to one popular tradition, they are supposed to be huntingthrough the air the soul of the wicked man the instant it quits the body.

This superstition occupies, too, a conspicuous place in the folk-lore of Germany and Norway. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his ‘Iceland, its Scenes and Sages,’ describes it as he heard it from his guide Jon, who related it to him under the title of the ‘Yule Host.’ He tells us how ‘Odin, or Wodin, is the wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white horse over the German and Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his legion of hell hounds. Some luckless woodcutter, on a still night, is returning through the pine-woods when suddenly his ear catches a distant wail; a moan rolls through the interlacing branches; nearer and nearer comes the sound. There is the winding of a long horn waxing louder and louder, the baying of hounds, the rattle of hoofs and paws on the pine-tree tops.’ This spectral chase goes by different names. In Thuringia and elsewhere it is ‘Hakelnberg’ or ‘Hackelnbärend,’ and the story goes that Hakelnberg was a knight passionately fond of the chase, who, on his death-bed, would not listen to the priest, but said, ‘I care not for heaven, I care only for the chase.’Then ‘hunt until the last day,’ exclaimed the priest. And now, through storm and sunshine, he fleets, a faint barking or yelping in the air announcing his approach. Thorpe quotes a similar story as current in the Netherlands,[125]and in Denmark it occurs under various forms.[126]In Schleswig it is Duke Abel, who slew his brother in 1252. Tradition says that in an expedition against the Frieslanders, he sank into a deep morass as he was fording the Eyder, where, being encumbered with the weight of his armour, he was slain. His body was buried in the Cathedral, but his spirit found no rest. The canons dug up the corpse, and buried it in a morass near Gottorp, but in the neighbourhood of the place where he is buried all kinds of shrieks and strange sounds have been heard, and ‘many persons worthy of credit affirm that they have heard sounds so resembling a huntsman’s horn, that anyone would say that a hunter was hunting there. It is, indeed, the general rumour that Abel has appeared to many, black of aspect, riding on a small horse, and accompanied by three hounds,which appear to be burning like fire.’[127]In Sweden, when a noise like that of carriage and horses is heard at night, the people say, ‘Odin is passing by,’ and in Norway this spectral hunt is known as the ‘Chase of the inhabitants of Asgarth.’ In Danzig, the leader of the hounds is Dyterbjernat,i.e.Diedrick of Bern. Near Fontainebleau, Hugh Capet is supposed to ride, having, it is said, rushed over the palace with his hounds before the assassination of HenryIV.; and at Blois, the hunt is called the ‘Chasse Macabee.’ In some parts of France the wild huntsman is known as Harlequin, or Henequin, and in the Franche Comté he is ‘Herod in pursuit of the Holy Innocents.’ This piece of folk-lore is widespread, and it may be added that in Normandy, the Pyrenees, and in Scotland, King Arthur has the reputation of making nightly rides.

Another form of spectre animal is the kirk-grim, which is believed to haunt many churches. Sometimes it is a dog, sometimes a pig, sometimes a horse, the haunting spectre being the spirit of an animal buried alive in the churchyard for the purpose of scaring away the sacrilegious. Swedishtradition tells how it was customary for the early founders of Christian churches to bury a lamb under the altar. It is said that when anyone enters a church out of service time he may chance to see a little lamb spring across the choir and vanish. This is the church lamb, and its appearance in the churchyard, especially to the grave-digger, is said to betoken the death of a child.[128]According to a Danish form of this superstition, the kirk-grim dwells either in the tower or wherever it can find a place of concealment, and is thought to protect the sacred building; and it is said that in the streets of Kroskjoberg, a grave-sow, or as it is also called, a ‘gray-sow,’ has frequently been seen. It is thought to be the apparition of a sow formerly buried alive, and to forebode death and calamity.

Storiesof mysterious lights suddenly illuminating the nocturnal darkness of unfrequented spots have long been current throughout the world. In the ‘Odyssey,’ when Athene was mystically present as Odysseus and Telemachus were moving the weapons out of the hall (xix.21-50), Telemachus exclaims, ‘Father, surely a great marvel is this I behold! Meseemeth that the walls of the hall, and the fair spaces between the pillars, and the beams of pine, and the columns that run aloft, are bright as it were with flaming fire. Verily some god is within of them that hold the wide heaven.’ Odysseus answers, ‘Lo, this is the wont of the gods that possess Olympus.’ In Theocritus, when Hera sends the snakes to attack the infant Heracles, a mysterious flame shines forth. The samephenomenon occurs in the Sagas of Burut Njas, when Gunnar sings within his tomb. The brilliance of the light which attends the presence of the supernatural is indeed widely diffused, and, as Mr. Andrew Lang writes,[129]‘Philosophers may dispute whether any objective fact lies at the bottom of this belief, or whether a savage superstition has survived into Greek epic and idyll and into modern ghost stories.’

Although science has years ago explained many such phosphoric appearances as governed by certain atmospheric laws, superstitious fancy has not only attributed to them supernatural causes, but associated them with all kinds of weird and romantic tales. According to one popular notion, strange lights of this kind are the spirits of persons who, for some reason, cannot remain quiet. Thus a spectre known as the ‘Lady and the Lantern,’ has long been said to haunt the beach at St. Ives, Cornwall, in stormy weather. The story goes that a lady and her child had been saved from a wreck, but the child was swept away and drowned, andshe is supposed to be hunting for its body. Similar tales are told elsewhere, but the object of search is not always the same. A light, for instance, hovers about a stone on the Cornish coast, locally designated ‘Madge Figg’s Chair,’ which is supposed to be the ghost of a wrecked lady whom Madge stripped of her jewels. In Scotland the appearance of a spectral ‘lady of the golden casket’ was attended by a phantom light, and it is also related how the ghost of a murdered woman is seen by her lover at sea, approaching in the shape of a bright light, which assumes the human form as it draws nearer. She finally calls him, and he springs into her arms, and disappears in a flash of fire.[130]

There is the popular legend of the ‘Radiant Boy’—a strange boy with a shining face, who has been seen in certain Lincolnshire houses and elsewhere. This ghost was described to Mr. Baring-Gould[131]by a Yorkshire farmer, who, as he was riding one night to Thirsk, suddenly saw passby him a ‘radiant boy’ on a white horse. To quote his own words, ‘there was no sound of footfall as the boy drew nigh. He was first aware of the approach of the mysterious rider by seeing the shadow of himself and his horse flung before him on the high road. Thinking there might be a carriage with lamps, he was not alarmed till, by the shortening of the shadow, he knew that the light must be near him, and then he was surprised to hear no sound. He thereupon turned in his saddle, and at the same moment the “radiant boy” passed him. He was a child of about eleven, with a fresh bright face. “Had he any clothes on? and if so, what were they like?” I asked. But the old man could not tell. His astonishment was so great that he took no notice of particulars. The boy rode on till he came to a gate which led into a field; he stooped as if to open the gate, rode through, and all was instantly dark.’

At the commencement of the present century the little village of Black Heddon, near Stamfordham, in Northumberland, was greatly disturbed by an apparition known as ‘Silky,’ from the nature of her dress. She suddenly appearedto benighted travellers, breaking forth upon them in dazzling splendour, in the darkest and most lonely parts of the road. This spirit exercised a marvellous power over the brute creation, and once, it is said, waylaid a waggon bringing coals to a farm near Black Heddon, and fixed the team upon a bridge, since called, after her, ‘Silky’s Brig.’ Do what he could, the driver could not make the horses move a step, and there they would have stayed all night had not another farm servant come up with some mountain ash about him. It was generally supposed that Silky, who suddenly disappeared, was the troubled phantom of some person who had died miserable because she owned treasure, and was overtaken by death before she had disclosed its hiding-place.

An old barn situated near Birchen Tower, Hollinwood, which was noted for the apparition of Madame Beswick on dark and wintry nights, at times, it is said, appears to be on fire, a red glare of glowing heat being observable through the loopholes and crevices of the building. Sometimes the sight is so threatening that the neighbours will raise an alarm that the barn is in flames. But when thepremises are searched, everything is in order, and nothing found wrong.[132]And a Welsh romance tells how, after Howel Sele slew his cousin Glendower, and buried him in ‘a broad and blasted oak, scorched by the lightning’s vivid glare,’

Pale lights on Cader’s rocks were seen,And midnight voices heard to moan.

Such phantom lights are not confined to land, and most of the tales of spectre ships speak of their being seen by the affrighted crews. In the ‘Salem Spectre Ship’ we are told how

The night grew thick, but a phantom lightAround her path was shed.

They are generally dreaded as foreboding a catastrophe, and have given rise to a host of curious stories. A light is said to hover about in Sennen Cove, which is thought to be an ill-omened apparition; and a Welsh story speaks of a ghost, the ‘Cyhyraeth,’ that appears on the beach, in a light, with groanings and cries.[133]Flames are reported to issue from the Eider River, and from several lakes in Germany. Where ships have beenwrecked, blue lights are supposed to faintly glimmer, occasionally accompanied by the spirits of wrecked or injured persons. A notable instance is told of Sable Island,[134]where, with the leaping flames, is seen the ‘Lady of Copeland’ wrecked and murdered by pirates from the Amelie transport. She has one finger missing on her hand.

Sometimes weird lights flickering in solitary places are thought to be the unhappy spirits of wicked persons who have no rest in the grave. Milton refers to this fancy in his ‘Paradise Lost’ (ix.634):

A wandering fire,Compact of unctuous vapour, which the nightCondenses, and the cold environs round,Kindled through agitation to a flame,Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,Hovering and blazing with delusive light,Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his wayTo bogs and mires; and oft through pond or poolThere swallowed up and lost from succour far.

Hence they were doomed to wander backwards and forwards carrying a light. A tradition current in Normandy says that a pale light occasionally seen by travellers is the unquiet spirit of some unfortunatewoman who, as a punishment for her intrigues with a minister of the Church, is doomed to this existence. There are various versions of this story, and one formerly current in this country tells how the hovering flame—the cause of terror to many—is the soul of a priest who has been condemned to expiate his vows of perpetual chastity by thus haunting the scenes of his disobedience. Brand, quoting from an old work on ‘Lights that Lead People out of their Ways in the Night,’ informs us that the lights which are seen in churchyards and Moorish places were represented by the Popish clergy to be ‘souls come out of purgatory all in flame, to move the people to pray for their entire deliverance, by which they gulled them of much money to say mass for them, everyone thinking it might be the soul of his or her deceased relations.’

According to another explanation, it is believed on the Continent that the ghosts of those who in their lifetime were guilty of removing their neighbours’ landmarks are fated to roam hither and thither, lantern in hand, ‘sometimes impelled to replace the old boundary mark, then to move it again, constantly changing their course with theirchanging purpose.’ A Swedish tradition adds that such a spirit may be heard saying in a harsh, hoarse voice, ‘It is right! it is right! it is right!’ But the next moment qualms of conscience and anguish seize him, and he then exclaims, ‘It is wrong! it is wrong! it is wrong!’[135]It is also said that these lights are the souls of land-measurers, who, having acted dishonestly in their business, are trying to remedy the wrong measurements they made. A German legend tells how, at the partition of the land, there arose between the villages of Alversdorf and Röst, in South Ditmarschen, great disputes. One man gave fraudulent measurements, but after his death he wandered about as a fire sprite. A flame, the height of a man, was seen dancing about till the moor dried up. Whenever it flared up higher than usual, the people would cry out, ‘Dat is de Scheelvalgt’—that is the land-divider. There is a tale told of a certain land-measurer near Farsum, in the Netherlands, who had in his lifetime acted dishonestly when he had a piece of land to measure. He suffered himself ‘tobe bribed by one or other, and then allotted to the party more than was just, for which offence he was condemned after death to wander as a burning man with a burning measuring-staff.’

Popular fancy, too, has long identified phantom lights as being the souls of unbaptized children. Because such souls cannot enter heaven, they make their abodes in forests, and in dark and lonely places, where they mourn over their hard lot. If at night they chance to meet anyone, they run up to him, and walk on before to show him the way to some water where they may be baptized. The mysterious lady, Frau Bertha, is ever attended by troops of unbaptized children, whom she takes with her when she joins the wild huntsman. One tradition relates how a Dutch parson, happening to return home later than usual, was confronted with no less than three of these fiery phenomena. Remembering them to be the souls of unbaptized children, he thoughtfully stretched out his hand, and pronounced the words of baptism over them. But, much to his unexpected surprise, in the same instant hundreds of these moving lights made their appearance, which so frightened him that, forgetting his good intentions,he ran home as fast as he could. In Ireland unbaptized children have been represented as sitting blindfolded within fairy moats, the peasantry supposing such souls ‘go into nought.’ A somewhat similar idea may be found in Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline,’ where we have introduced among thecontesof an Arcadian village notary allusion to

The white Létiche, the ghost of a child unchristened,Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children.

Closely allied with the notion of phantom lights are the strange phosphoric appearances said occasionally to be seen about the dying. In Russia, the soul under certain circumstances is believed to assume the form of a flame, and such a ghostly apparition cannot be banished till the necessary prayers have been offered up.[136]According to a Sussex death-omen, lights of a circular form seen in the air are significant, and it is supposed that the death of sick persons is shown by the prognostic of ‘shell-fire.’ This is a sort of lambent flame, which seems to rise from the bodies of those who are ill, and to envelope the bed. On one occasion, considerablealarm was created in a Sussex village by a pale light being observed to move over the bed of a sick person, and after flickering for some time in different parts of the room, to vanish through the window. But the difficulty was eventually explained, for the light was found to proceed from a luminous insect—the small glow-worm.[137]Marsh[138]relates how a pale moonlight-coloured glimmer was once seen playing round the head of a dying girl about an hour and a half before her last breath. The light proceeded from her head, and was faint and tremulous like the reflection of summer lightning, which at first those watching her mistook it to be. Another case, reported by a medical man in Ireland, was that of a consumptive patient, in whose cabin strange lights had been seen, filling the neighbourhood with alarm. To quote a further instance, from the mouth of a patient in a London hospital, some time since, the nurses observed issuing a pale bluish flame, and soon after the man died. The frightened nurses were at a loss to account for this unusual sight, but a scientific explanation of thephenomenon ascribed it to phosphoretted hydrogen, a result of incipient decomposition.[139]

Dante Rossetti, in his ‘Blessed Damozel,’ when he describes her as looking down from heaven towards the earth that ‘spins like a fretful image,’ whence she awaits the coming of her lover, depicts the souls mounting up to God as passing by her ‘like thin flames.’

Another form of this superstitious fancy is the corpse-candle, or ‘tomb-fire,’ which is invariably a death-warning. It sometimes appears ‘as a stately flambeau, stalking along unsupported, burning with a ghastly blue flame. Sometimes it is a plain tallow “dip” in the hand of a ghost; and when the ghost is seen distinctly, it is recognised as that of some person still living, who will now soon die[140]—in fact, a wraith.’ Occasionally the light issues from the person’s mouth, or nostrils. The size of the candle indicates the age of the person who is about to die, being large when it is a full-grown person whose death is foretold, small when it is a child, still smaller when an infant. When two candles togetherare seen, one of which is large and the other small, it is a mother and child who are to die. When the flame is white the doomed person is a woman, when red a man. A Carmarthenshire tradition relates how one evening, when the coach which runs between Llandilo and Carmarthen was passing by Golden Grove, the property of the Earl of Cawdor, three corpse-candles were observed on the surface of the water gliding down the stream which runs near the road. A few days afterwards, just as many men were drowned there. Such a light, too, has long been thought to hover near the grave of the drowned, reminding us of Moore’s lines—

Where lights, like charnel meteors, burned the distant wave,Bluely as o’er some seaman’s grave,

and stories of such uncanny appearances have been told of nearly every village churchyard.

It should be added that, according to a popular idea, the presence of ghosts was announced, in bygone years, by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to be burning—an item of folk-lore alluded to in ‘RichardIII.’ (Actv.sc. 3), where the tyrant exclaims as he awakens—

The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight,Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh........Methought the souls of all that I had murder’dCame to my tent.

So in ‘Julius Cæsar,’ (Activ.sc. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Cæsar, exclaims:

How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here?

Phantom lights have also been associated with buildings, as in the case of the ancient chapel of Roslin, founded in the year 1446 by William St. Clair, Prince of Orkney. It is believed that whenever any of the founder’s descendants are about to depart this life, the chapel appears to be on fire, a weird and terrible occurrence graphically portrayed by Harold’s song in ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’:

O’er Roslin all that dreary night,A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;’Twas broader than the watch-fire light,And redder than the bright moonbeam.It glared on Roslin’s castled rock,It ruddied all the copse-wood glen;’Twas seen from Dryden’s groves of oak,And seen from cavern’d Hawthornden.Seem’d all on fire that chapel proud,Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffin’d lie;Each Baron, for a sable shroud,Sheathed in his iron panoply.Seem’d all on fire, within, around,Deep sacristy and altar’s pale;Shone every pillar foliage-bound,And glimmer’d all the dead men’s mail.Blazed battlement and pinnet high,Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair;So still they blaze when fate is nigh,The lordly line of Hugh St. Clair.

O’er Roslin all that dreary night,A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam;’Twas broader than the watch-fire light,And redder than the bright moonbeam.

It glared on Roslin’s castled rock,It ruddied all the copse-wood glen;’Twas seen from Dryden’s groves of oak,And seen from cavern’d Hawthornden.

Seem’d all on fire that chapel proud,Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffin’d lie;Each Baron, for a sable shroud,Sheathed in his iron panoply.

Seem’d all on fire, within, around,Deep sacristy and altar’s pale;Shone every pillar foliage-bound,And glimmer’d all the dead men’s mail.

Blazed battlement and pinnet high,Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair;So still they blaze when fate is nigh,The lordly line of Hugh St. Clair.

But notwithstanding the fact that the last ‘Roslin,’ as he was called, died in 1778, and the estates passed into the possession of the Erskines, Earls of Rosslyn, the old tradition has not yet been extinguished.[141]Sir Walter Scott also tells us that the death of the head of a Highland family is sometimes announced by a chain of lights, of different colours, called Dr’eug, or death of the Druid. The direction which it takes is supposed to mark the place of the funeral.[142]A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ gives a curious account of ahouse at Taunton which possessed ‘a luminous chamber,’ for, as common report said, ‘the room had a light of its own.’ As an eye-witness observed, ‘A central window was generally illuminated.’ All the other windows were dark, but from this was a wan, dreary light visible; and as the owners had deserted the place, and it had no occupant, the lighted window became a puzzle.

With the North American tribes one form of spiritual manifestation is fire; and among the Hurons, a female spirit, who was supposed to cause much of their sickness, appeared like a flame of fire. Of the New England Indians it is related that ‘they have a remarkable observation of a flame that appears before the death of an Indian, upon their wigwams, in the dead of night. Whenever this appears, there will be a death.’[143]The Eskimos believe that the Inue, or powerful spirits, ‘generally have the appearance of a fire or bright light, and to see them is very dangerous, particularly as foreshadowing the death of a relation.’[144]

Localitieswhere any fatal accident has happened, or murder been committed, are frequently supposed to be haunted by that uncanny apparition known as ‘the headless ghost.’ Many curious tales are still told by the peasantry of this mysterious spectre, whose weird movements have long been the subject of comment. Sir Walter Scott, it may be remembered, speaking of the Irish dullahan, writes: ‘It puts me in mind of a spectre at Drumlanrick Castle, of no less a person than the Duchess of Queensberry—“Fair Kitty, blooming, young, and gay”—who, instead of setting fire to the world in mama’s chariot, amuses herself with wheeling her own head in a wheelbarrow through the great gallery.’

But it has often puzzled the folk-lorist whyghosts should assume this form, although the idea is by no means a modern one, for, as Dr. Tylor has pointed out,[145]a people of wide celebrity are Pliny’s Blemmyæ, said ‘to be headless, and accordingly to have their mouths and eyes in their breasts—creatures over whom Prester John reigned in Asia, and who dwelt far and wide in South America.’ Stories, too, like that of St. Denis, who is said to have walked from Paris,sans tête, to the place which bears his name, show that the living, as well as the dead, occasionally managed to do without their heads—a strange peculiarity which Kornmann, in his ‘De Miraculis Vivorum,’ would attempt to account for philosophically. Princess Marie Lichtenstein, in her ‘History of Holland House,’ tells us that one room of this splendid old mansion is believed to be haunted by Lord Holland, the first of his name, and the chief builder of Holland House. To quote her words, ‘The gilt room is said to be tenanted by the solitary ghost of its just lord, who, according to tradition, issues forth at midnight from behind a secret door, and walks slowly through the scenes of former triumphs with hishead in his hand. To add to this mystery, there is a tale of three spots of blood on one side of the recess whence he issues—three spots which can never be effaced.’ Such a strange act, on the part of the dead, is generally regarded as a very bad omen. The time of the headless ghost’s appearance is always midnight, and in Crofton Croker’s ‘Fairy Legends of Ireland’ it is thus described:

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