He blasphemed God, so they put him down,With his iron shovel at Ipswich Bar,They chained him there for a thousand years,And the sea rolls up, to shovel it back.So when the sea cries, the good wives say,‘Harry Main growls at his work to-day.’
He blasphemed God, so they put him down,With his iron shovel at Ipswich Bar,They chained him there for a thousand years,And the sea rolls up, to shovel it back.So when the sea cries, the good wives say,‘Harry Main growls at his work to-day.’
He blasphemed God, so they put him down,With his iron shovel at Ipswich Bar,They chained him there for a thousand years,And the sea rolls up, to shovel it back.So when the sea cries, the good wives say,‘Harry Main growls at his work to-day.’
Similarly the Chibchas in their mythology had a great river that souls had to pass over on floats made of cobwebs. On this account they never killed spiders. The Araucanian soul is borne across the Stygian flood by a whale, and the Potawatomis think ‘the souls of the dead cross a large stream over a log, which rolls so that many slip off into the water. One of their ancestors went to the edge of the stream, but, not liking to venture on the log, he came back two days after his death. He reported that he heard the sounds of the drum on the other side of the river, to the beat of which the souls of the dead were dancing.’[183]The Ojibwaysspeak of a similar stream, across which lies a serpent, over whose body the soul must cross.
A favourite mode of capturing a ghost in days gone by was to entice it into something small, such as a bottle, and as a decoy, to doubt its power to do so—a mode of exorcism which would seem to have suggested our ‘bottle-imps.’ An amusing story of laying a ghost by this means, and which illustrates the popular belief, is recorded in the ‘Folk-lore Record’ (ii.176), on the authority of the late Thomas Wright. ‘There lived in the town of ——, in that part of England which lies towards the borders of Wales, a very curious simple kind of a man, though all said he knew a good deal more than other people did not know. There was in the same town a very old house, one of the rooms of which was haunted by a ghost, which prevented people making use of it. The man above mentioned was reported to be very clever at dealing with ghosts, and so the owner of the haunted house sent for him, and asked him if he could undertake to make the ghost quit the house. Tommy, for that was the name he generally went by, agreed to do this, on condition that three things were providedhim—an empty bottle, a bottle of brandy with a tumbler, and a pitcher of water. So Tommy locked the door safely inside, and sat down to pass the night drinking brandy and water.
‘Just as the clock struck twelve, he was roused by a slight noise, and lo! there was the ghost standing before him. Says the ghost, “Well, Tommy, how are ye?” “Pretty well, thank ye,” says he, “but pray, how do you know my name?” “Oh, very well indeed,” said the ghost. “And how did you get in?” “Oh, very easily.” “Not through the door, I’m sure.” “No, not at all, but through the keyhole.” “D’ye say so? None of your tricks upon me; I won’t believe you came through the keyhole.” “Won’t ye? but I did.” “Well, then,” says Tommy, pointing to the empty bottle, which he pretended to have emptied, “if you can come through the keyhole you can get into this bottle, but I won’t believe you can do either.” Now the ghost began to be very angry that Tommy should doubt his power of getting into the bottle, so he asserted most confidently that the thing was easy to be done. “No,” said Tommy, “I won’t believe it till I have seen you get in.” “Here goes then,” said the ghost, and sure enoughinto the bottle he went, and Tommy corked him up quite tight, so that he could not get out, and he took the bottle to the bridge where the river was wide and deep, and he threw the bottle exactly over the keystone of the middle arch into the river, and the ghost was never heard after.’
This cunning mode of laying a ghost is very old, and reminds us of the amusing story of the fisherman and the genie in the Arabian Nights. The tale tells how, one day, a fisherman drew a brazen bottle out of the sea, sealed with the magic seal of Suleyman Ben Daood, out of which there issued an enormous genie, who threatened the fisherman with death. The latter, feeling his life was at stake, bethought him of doubting the genie’s ability to enter so small a vessel, whereupon the affronted genie returned thither to vindicate his character, and so placed himself in the fisherman’s power. In the same way a Bulgarian sorcerer armed with a saint’s picture will hunt a vampire into a bottle containing some of the food that the demon loves; as soon as he is fairly inside, he is corked down, the bottle is thrown into the fire, and the vampire disappears for ever.
Miss Jackson[184]quotes a story from Montgomeryshire, of how the spirit of Lady Jeffreys, who for some reason could not rest in peace, and ‘troubled people dreadfully,’ was ‘persuaded to contract her dimensions and enter a bottle. She did so, after appearing in a good many hideous forms; but when once in the bottle it was corked down securely, and the bottle was thrown into the pool underneath the Short Bridge, over the Severn, in Llanidloes; and in the bottle she was to remain until the ivy that crept along the buttresses overgrew the sides of the bridge and reached the top of the parapet; then when this took place she should be released from her bottle prison.’ In the ‘Collectanea Archæologica’ (vol.i.part 1) we are told on the authority of one Sarah Mason, of Baschurch, that ‘there was a woman hanged on a tree at Cutberry, and she came again so badly that nine clergymen had to be fetched to lay her. So they read and read until they got her into a bottle, and they buried it under a flat sandstone in the road. We used to go past the stone every time we went to church, and I’ve often wondered if she was still there, and what wouldhappen if anyone was to pull the stone up.’ And as a further safeguard a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ writing from Ecclesfield, says it is best in laying ghosts to cheat them to consent to being laid while hollies are green, for hollies being evergreen, the ghost can reappear no more.
In Wales, the objectionable spectre must be conjured in the name of Heaven to depart, and return no more, the strength of the exorcism being doubled by employing the Latin language to deliver it, which, to be perfectly effectual, must be done by three clergymen. The exorcism is usually for a stated time, seven years is the favourite period, and one hundred years the limit. Instances are recorded where a ghost which had been laid a hundred years returned at the end of the time to its old haunts. According to Mr. Wirt Sikes,[185]‘in all cases it is necessary the ghost should agree to be exorcised; no power can lay it if it be possessed of an evil demon. In such cases the terrors of Heaven must be rigorously invoked, but the result is only temporary. Properly constituted family ghosts, however, will lend a reasonable ear to entreaty backed by prayer.’
Candles have generally played an important part in the ceremony of ghost laying, one popular idea being that ghosts have no power by candlelight. Thus, in many tales, the ghost is cheated into a promise not to return till the candle is burnt out, whereupon the crafty parson immediately blows it out, throwing it into a pond, or burying it in the earth. The belief is an old one, for, in one of the Sagas quoted by Mr. Baring-Gould,[186]the tomb-breaking hero finds an old Viking sitting in his dragon-ship, with his five hundred comrades motionless about him. He is about to depart, after possessing himself of the dead man’s treasures, when the taper goes out, whereupon they all rise and attack the intruder, who barely escapes by invoking St. Olaf’s aid. In all Shropshire stories, we are told that the great point is to keep the candles lighted in spite of the ghost’s utmost efforts to blow them out; an amusing instance being that of the Bagbury ghost, which appeared in the shape of a bull, and was so troublesome that twelve parsons were required to lay it. The story goes that they got him into Hyssington Church; ‘theyall had candles, and one blind old parson, who knowed him, and knowed what a rush he would make, he carried his candle in his top-boot. And he made a great rush, and all the candles went out, all but the blind parson’s, and he said, “You light your candles by mine.”’
Miss Jackson also tells[187]how ‘Squire Blount’s ghost’ long haunted Kinlet Hall, because his daughter had married a page-boy. At last it was found necessary to pull down Kinlet Old Hall, and to build it again on a fresh site, ‘for he would even come into the room where they were at dinner, and drive his coach and four white horses across the dinner table.’ But ‘at last they got a number of parsons together and lighted candles, and read and read till all the candles were burnt out but one, and so they quieted him, and laid him in the sea. There was, it is reported, a little bottle under his monument in Kinlet Church, and if that were broken he would come again. It is a little flat bottle seven or eight inches long, with a glass stopper in it, which nobody could get out; and if anyone got hold of it, the remark was made, “Takecare as you dunna let that fall, for if it breaks, old Blount will come again.”’
According to Mr. Henderson[188]there was a house in a village of Arkingarthdale which had long been haunted by a bogle. At last the owner adopted the following plan for expelling it. Opening the Bible, he placed it on a table with a lighted candle, and said aloud to the bogle, ‘Noo thoo can read or dance, or dea as ta likes.’ He then turned round and walked upstairs, when the bogle, in the form of a grey cat, flew past and vanished in the air. Years passed without its being seen again, but one day he met it on the stairs, and he was that day killed in the mines.
At Leigh, Worcestershire, a spectre known as ‘Old Coles’ formerly appeared, and would drive a coach and four over the great barn at Leigh Court, and then cool the fiery nostrils of his steeds in the waters of the Teme. This perturbed spirit was at length laid in a neighbouring pool by twelve parsons at midnight, by the light of an inch of candle; and as he was not to rise again until the candle wasquite burnt out, it was thrown into the pool, and to make all sure, the pool was filled up,
And peaceful ever after sleptOld Coles’s shade.[189]
And peaceful ever after sleptOld Coles’s shade.[189]
And peaceful ever after sleptOld Coles’s shade.[189]
But sometimes, when the candles burn out their time, it is an indication that none of the party can lay the ghost, as happened in the case of a certain Dartmoor vicar’s unquiet spirit described by Mr. Henderson.[190]‘A jury of seven parsons was convoked to lay it, and each sat for half an hour with a candle in his hand, but it burned out its time with each. The spirit could afford to defy them; it was not worth his while to blow their candles out. But the seventh parson was a stranger and a scholar fresh from Oxford. In his hand the light went out at once. He was clearly the man to lay the ghost; he laid it at once, and in a beer-barrel.’
According to another way of ejecting or laying ghosts, there must be two or three clergymen, and the ceremony must be performed in the Latin language, which, it is said, will strike the most audacious ghost with terror. Allan Ramsay mentions,as common in Scotland, the vulgar notion that a ghost cannot be laid till some priest speaks to it, and ascertains what prevents it from resting.
For well we wat it is his ghaistWow, wad some folk that can do’t best,Speak tol’t, and hear what it confest.To send a wand’ring saul to rest’Tis a good deedAmang the dead.
For well we wat it is his ghaistWow, wad some folk that can do’t best,Speak tol’t, and hear what it confest.To send a wand’ring saul to rest’Tis a good deedAmang the dead.
For well we wat it is his ghaistWow, wad some folk that can do’t best,Speak tol’t, and hear what it confest.To send a wand’ring saul to rest’Tis a good deedAmang the dead.
And in the ‘Statistical Account of Scotland’ (xiii.557) the writer, speaking of the parish of Locharron, county of Ross, alludes to the same idea: ‘There is one opinion which many of them entertain, and which, indeed, is not peculiar to this parish alone, that a Popish priest can cast out devils and cure madness, and that the Presbyterian clergy have no such power. A person might as well advise a mob to pay no attention to a merry Andrew, as to desire many ignorant people to stay from the priest.’
On a small island off Scotland, called Ledge’s Holm, writes Mr. Bassett, there is a quarry called ‘The Crier of Claife.’ According to a local tradition, a ferryman was hailed on a dark night from the island, and went over. After a long absence hereturned, having witnessed many horrible sights which he refused to relate. Soon afterwards he became a monk. After a time the same cry was heard, and he went over and succeeded in laying the ghost where it now rests. But Bourne, who has preserved a form for exorcising a haunted house, ridicules the fancy that ‘none can lay spirits but Popish priests,’ and says that ‘our own clergy know just as much of the black art as the others do’—a statement which is amply confirmed. Thus, a ghost known as ‘Benjie Gear’ long troubled the good people of Okehampton to such an extent that, ‘at last,’ writes Mr. James Spry, in ‘The Western Antiquary,’ ‘the aid of the archdeacon was called in, and the clergy were assembled in order that the troubled spirit might be laid and cease to trouble them. There were twenty-three of the clergy who invoked him in various classic languages, but the insubordinate spirit refused to listen to their request. At length, one more learned than the rest addressed him in Arabic, to which he was forced to succumb, saying, “Now thou art come, I must be gone!” He was then compelled to take the form of a colt; a new bridle and bit, which hadnever been used, were produced, with a rider, to whom the Sacrament was administered. The man was directed to ride the colt to Cranmere Pool, on Dartmoor, the following instructions being given him. He was to prevent the colt from turning its head towards the town until they were out of the park, and then make straight for the pool, and when he got to the slope, to slip from the colt’s back, pull the bridle off, and let him go. All this was dexterously performed, and the impetus thus gained by the animal with the intention of throwing the rider over its head into the Pool, accomplished its own fate.’
Another curious account of laying a ghost is connected with Spedlin’s Tower, which stands on the south-west bank of the Annan. The story goes, that one of its owners, Sir Alexander Jardine, confined, in the dungeon of his tower, a miller named Porteous, on suspicion of having wilfully set fire to his own premises. Being suddenly called away to Edinburgh, he forgot the existence of his captive until he had died of hunger. But no sooner was the man dead, than his ghost began so persistently to disturb Spedlin’s Tower, that Sir Alexander Jardine summoned ‘a whole legion of ministers to his aid,and by their efforts Porteous was at length confined to the scene of his mortal agonies, where, at times, he was heard screaming, “Let me out, let me out, for I’m deein’ o’ hunger!”’ The spell which compelled his spirit to remain in bondage was attached to a large black-lettered Bible used by the exorcists, and afterwards deposited in a stone niche, which still remains in the wall of the staircase. On one occasion the Bible, requiring to be re-bound, was sent to Edinburgh, whereupon the ghost of Porteous recommenced its annoyances, so that the Bible was recalled before reaching Edinburgh, and was replaced in its former situation. But, it would seem, the ghost is at last at rest, for the Bible is now kept at Jardine Hall.
Then there is the ghost of ‘Madam Pigott,’ once the terror of Chetwynd and Edgmond. Twelve of the neighbouring clergy were summoned to lay her by incessantly reading psalms till they had succeeded in making her obedient to their power. ‘Mr. Foy, curate of Edgmond,’ says Miss Jackson,[191]‘has the credit of having accomplished this, for he continued reading after all the others were exhausted.’ But, ‘ten or twelve yearsafter his death, some fresh alarm of Madam Pigott arose, and a party went in haste to beg a neighbouring rector to come and lay the ghost; and to this day Chetwynd Hall has the reputation of being haunted.’ It is evident that ‘laying a ghost’ was far from an easy task. A humorous anecdote is told[192]of a haunted house at Homersfield, in Suffolk, where an unquiet spirit so worried and harassed the inmates that they sent for a parson. On his arrival he commenced reading a prayer, but instantly the ghost got a line ahead of him. Happily one of the family hit on this device: the next time, as soon as the parson began his exorcism, two pigeons were let loose; the spirit stopped to look at them, the priest got before him in his prayer, and the ghost was laid.
Clegg Hall, Lancashire, was the scene of a terrible tragedy, for tradition tells how a wicked uncle destroyed the lawful heirs—two orphans that were left to his care—by throwing them over a balcony into the moat, in order that he might seize on their inheritance. Ever afterwards the house was the reputed haunt of a troubled and angry spirit, until means were taken for its expulsion.Mr. William Nuttall, in a ballad entitled ‘Sir Roland and Clegg Hall Boggart,’ makes Sir Roland murder the children in bed with a dagger. Remorse eventually drove him mad, and he died raving during a violent storm. The hall was ever after haunted by the children’s ghosts, and also by demons, till St. Anthony, with a relic from the Virgin’s shrine, exorcised and laid the evil spirits. According to Mr. Nuttall there were two boggarts of Clegg Hall, and it is related how the country people ‘importuned a pious monk to exorcise or lay the ghost.’ Having provided himself with a variety of charms and spells, he quickly brought the ghosts to a parley. They demanded as a condition of future quiet the sacrifice of a body and a soul. Thereupon the cunning monk said, ‘Bring me the body of a cock and the sole of a shoe.’ This being done, the spirits were forbidden to appear till the whole of the sacrifice was consumed, and so ended the laying of the Clegg Hall boggarts. But, for some reason or other, the plan of this wily priest did not prove successful, and these two ghosts have continued to walk.[193]
With this idea of sacrifice as necessary for laying ghosts may be mentioned the apparition of a servant at Waddow Hall, known as ‘Peg o’ Nell.’ On one occasion, the story goes, she had a quarrel with the lord or lady of Waddow Hall, who, in a fit of anger, wished that she ‘might fall and break her neck.’ In some way or other Peggy did fall and break her neck, and to be revenged on her evil wisher she haunted the Hall, and made things very uncomfortable. In addition to these perpetual annoyances, ‘every seven years Peg required a life, and it is said that “Peg’s night,” as the time of sacrifice at each anniversary was called, was duly observed; and if no living animal were ready as a septennial offering to her manes, a human being became inexorably the victim. Consequently, it grew to be the custom on “Peg’s night” to drown a bird, or a cat, or a dog in the river; and a life being thus given, Peg was appeased for another seven years.’[194]
At Beoley, Worcestershire, at the commencement of the present century, the ghost of a reputed murderer managed to keep undisputed possession of a certain house, until a conclave of clergymenchained him to the Red Sea for fifty years. At the expiration of this term of imprisonment, the released ghost reappeared, and more than ever frightened the inmates of the said house, slamming the doors, and racing through the ceilings. At last, however, they took heart and chased the restless spirit, by stamping on the floor from one room to another, under the impression that could they once drive him to a trap door opening in the cheese-room, he would disappear for a season.[195]
A curious case of laying a ghost occurs in ‘An account of an apparition attested by the Rev. W. Ruddell, minister at Launceston, in Cornwall,’ 1665, quoted in Gilbert’s ‘Historical Survey of Cornwall.’ A schoolboy was haunted by Dorothy Dingley, and he pined. He was thought to be in love, and when, at the wishes of his friends, the parson questioned him, he told him of his ghostly visitor, and showed him the spectral Dorothy. Then comes the story of the ghost-laying.
‘The next morning being Thursday, I went out very early by myself, and walked for about an hour’s space in meditation and prayer in the field adjoiningto the Quartills. Soon after five I stepped over the stile into the disturbed field, and had not gone above thirty or forty paces when the ghost appeared at the further stile. I spoke to it with a loud voice in some such sentences as the way of these dealings directed me; thereupon it approached, but slowly, and when I came near it, it moved not. I spoke again, and it answered again in a voice which was neither very audible nor intelligible. I was not the least terrified, therefore I persisted till it spoke again, and gave me satisfaction. But the work could not be finished this time, wherefore the same evening, an hour after sunset, it met me again near the same place, and after a few words on each side it quietly vanished, and neither doth appear since, nor ever will more to any man’s disturbance.’
Local tradition still tells us that ‘Madam Dudley’s ghost did use to walk in Cumnor Park, and that it walked so obstinately, that it took no less than nine parsons from Oxford “to lay her.” That they at last laid her in a pond, called “Madam Dudley’s Pond,” and, moreover, wonderful to relate, the water in that pond was never known to freeze afterwards.’ Heath Old Hall, near Wakefield, ishaunted by the ghost of Lady Bolles, who is commonly reported to have been conjured down into a hole of the river, locally known as ‘Bolles Pit.’ But, as in many other cases of ghost-laying, ‘the spell was not so powerful, but that she still rises, and makes a fuss now and then.’ Various reasons have been assigned for her ‘walking,’ such as the non-observance by her executors of certain clauses in her will, whilst a story current in the neighbourhood tells us that a certain room in the Hall which had been walled up for a certain period, owing to large sums of money having been gambled away in it, was opened before the stipulated time had expired. Others assert that her unhappy condition is on account of her father’s mysterious death, which was ascribed to demoniacal agency.[196]
But of all places the most common, in years gone by, for laying ghosts was the Red Sea, and hence, in one of Addison’s plays, we read, ‘There must be a power of spirits in that sea.’ ‘This is a locality,’ says Grose, ‘which ghosts least like, it being related in many instances that ghosts have most earnestly besought the exorcists not to confine themin that place. It is, nevertheless, considered as an indisputable fact that there are an infinite number laid there, perhaps from its being a safer prison than any other nearer at hand.’ But when such exiled ghosts did happen to re-appear, they were thought more audacious, being seen by day instead of at night.
In an amusing poem entitled ‘The Ghost of a Boiled Scrag of Mutton,’ which appeared in the ‘Flowers of Literature’ many years ago, the following verse occurs embodying the idea:
The scholar was versed in all magical lore,Most famous was he throughout college;To the Red Sea full many an unquiet ghost,To repose with King Pharaoh and his mighty host,He had sent through his proverbial knowledge.
The scholar was versed in all magical lore,Most famous was he throughout college;To the Red Sea full many an unquiet ghost,To repose with King Pharaoh and his mighty host,He had sent through his proverbial knowledge.
The scholar was versed in all magical lore,Most famous was he throughout college;To the Red Sea full many an unquiet ghost,To repose with King Pharaoh and his mighty host,He had sent through his proverbial knowledge.
Addison tells us in the ‘Spectator,’ alluding to his London lodgings at a good-natured widow’s house one winter, how on one occasion he entered the room unexpectedly, where several young ladies, visitors, were telling stories of spirits and apparitions, when, on being told that it was onlythe gentleman, the broken conversation was resumed, and ‘I seated myself by the candle that stood atone end of the table, and, pretending to read a book that I took out of my pocket, heard several stories of ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the bed’s foot, or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and others that had been conjured into the Red Sea for disturbing people’s rest.’ As it has been humorously remarked, it is not surprising that many a strange ghost story has been told by the sea-faring community, when we remember how many spirits have been banished to the Red Sea.
Onthe coast of Brittany there is the ‘Bay of the Departed,’ where, it is said, in the dead hour of night the boatmen are summoned by some unseen power to launch their boats and to ferry to a sacred island the souls of men who have been drowned. On such occasions the boat is so crowded with invisible passengers as to sink quite low in the water, while the wails and cries of the shipwrecked are clearly heard as the melancholy voyage progresses. On reaching the island of Sein, the invisible passengers are numbered by unseen hands, after which the wondering, awestruck sailors return to await in readiness the next supernatural summons. At Guildo, on the same coast, small phantom skiffs are reported to dart out from under the castle cliffs, manned by spectral figures, ferrying over the treacherous sands the souls of those unfortunate personswhose bodies lie engulfed in the neighbourhood. So strong is the antipathy to this weird spot that, after nightfall, none of the seafaring community will approach near it.[197]Similar superstitions are found elsewhere, and in Cornwall, sailors dislike walking at night near those parts of the shore where there have been wrecks, as they are supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of drowned sailors, and the ‘calling of the dead has frequently been heard.’ ‘I have been told,’ writes Mr. Hunt,[198]‘that, under certain circumstances, especially before the coming of storms, but always at night, these callings are common. Many a fisherman has declared he has heard the voices of dead sailors “hailing their own names.”’ He further tells how a fisherman, or a pilot, was walking one night on the sands at Porth-Towan, when all was still save the monotonous fall of the light waves upon the sand. Suddenly, he distinctly heard a voice from the sea exclaiming: ‘The hour is come, but not the man.’
This was repeated three times, when a black figure, like that of a man, appeared on the top ofthe hill. It paused for a moment, then rushed impetuously down the steep incline, over the sands, and was lost in the sea. In different forms the story is current all round the Cornish shores, and on the Norfolk coast, when any person is drowned, a voice is said to be heard from the water, ominous of a squall.
On the Continent the same belief, with certain variations, is found. Lord Teignmouth, in his ‘Reminiscences of Many Years,’ speaking of Ullesvang, in Norway, writes: ‘A very natural belief that the voice of a person drowned is heard wailing amidst the storm is, apparently, the only acknowledged remnant of ancient superstition still lingering along the shores of the fiords.’ In Germany, it is said that whenever a man is drowned at sea, he announces his death to his relations, and haunts the sea-shore. Such ghosts are supposed to make their appearance at evening twilight, in the clothes in which they were drowned.[199]According to a Schleswig version of this belief, the spirits of the drowned do not enter the house, but linger about the threshold to announce their sad errand. A story is told of ayoung lad who was forced by his father to go to sea against his will. Before starting, he bid farewell to his mother, and said, ‘As you sit on the shore by the lake think of me.’ Shortly his ghost appeared to her there, and she only knew too well afterwards that he had perished.
Among Maine fishermen there are similar stories of the ghost of the drowned being seen. Mr. W. H. Bishop, in ‘Harper’s Magazine’ (Sept. 1880) tells us ‘there was particularly the story of the Hascall. She broke loose from her moorings during a gale on George’s banks, and ran into and sank the Andrew Johnson, and all on board. For years afterwards the spectres of the drowned men were reported to come on board the Hascall at midnight, and go through the dumb show of fishing over the side, so that no one in Gloucester could be got to sail her, and she would not have brought sixpence in the market.’ A Block Island tradition affirms that the ghosts of certain refugees, drowned in the surf during the revolution, are often seen struggling to reach the shore, and occasionally their cries are distinctly heard.[200]
There is the well-known anecdote which Lord Byron, says Moore,[201]used sometimes to mention, and which Captain Kidd related to him on the passage. ‘This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the same service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion, he shut his eyes, and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued; and as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform in which he appeared dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished, but, in a few months afterwards, he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian Seas. Of the supernatural character of thisappearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt.’
A strange antipathy has long existed against rescuing a drowning man, one reason being that the person saved would at some time or other do injury to the man who rescued him. In China, however, this reluctance to give help to a drowning man arises from another form of the same superstitious dread, the idea being that the spirit of a person who has been drowned continues to flit along the surface of the water, until it has caused by drowning the death of a fellow creature. A person, therefore, who is bold enough to attempt to rescue another from drowning is believed to incur the hatred of the unquiet spirit, which is supposed to be desirous, even at the expense of a man’s life, of escaping from its unceasing wandering. The Bohemian fisherman shrinks from snatching a drowning man from the water, fearing that the water-demons would take away his luck in fishing, and drown him at the first opportunity. This, as Dr. Tylor points out,[202]is a lingering survival of the ancient significance of this superstition, the explanation being that the water spiritis naturally angry at being despoiled of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against the unlucky person who has dared to frustrate him. Thus, when a person is drowned in Germany the remark is often made, ‘The river spirit claims his yearly sacrifice,’ or ‘The Nix has taken him.’
Similarly the Siamese dreads the Pnük, or water spirit, that seizes unwary bathers, and drags them underneath the water; and the Sioux Indians tell how men have been drowned by Unktahe, the water demon. Speaking of the ghosts of the drowned among savage tribes, Herbert Spenser says:[203]‘An eddy in the river, where floating sticks are whirled round and engulfed, is not far from the place where one of the tribe was drowned and never seen again. What more manifest, then, than that the double of this drowned man, malicious as the unburied dead ever are, dwells thereabouts, and pulls these things under the surface—nay, in revenge, seizes and drags down persons who venture near? When those who knew the drowned man are all dead, when, after generations, thedetails of the story, thrust aside by more recent stories, have been lost, there survives only the belief in a water demon haunting the place.’ We may compare the practice of the Kamchadals, who, instead of helping a man out of the water, would drown him by force. If rescued by any chance, no one would receive such a man into his house, or give him food, but he was reckoned as dead.
Accordingto the popular creed, some persons have the peculiar faculty of seeing ghosts, a privilege which, it would seem, is denied to others. It has been urged, however, that under certain conditions of health there are those who are endowed with special powers of perception, whereby they are enabled to see objects not visible at other times. Thus, as Sir William Hamilton has observed, ‘however astonishing, it is now proved, beyond all rational doubt, that in certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the senses.’ But, without entering into this metaphysical question, folk-lore holds that persons born at a particular time of the day have the power of seeing ghosts. Thus it is said in Lancashire, thatchildren born during twilight are supposed to have this peculiarity, and to know who of their acquaintance will next die. Some say that this property belongs also to those who happen to be born exactly at twelve o’clock at night, or, as the peasantry say in Somersetshire, ‘a child born in chime-hours will have the power to see spirits.’ The same belief prevails in Yorkshire, where it is commonly supposed that children born during the hour after midnight have the privilege through life of seeing the spirits of the departed. Mr. Henderson says[204]that ‘a Yorkshire lady informed him she was very near being thus distinguished, but the clock had not struck twelve when she was born. When a child she mentioned this circumstance to an old servant, adding that mamma was sure her birthday was the 23rd, not the 24th, for she had inquired at the time. “Ay, ay,” said the old woman, turning to the child’s nurse, “mistress would be very anxious aboutthat, for bairns born after midnight see more things than other folk.”’
This superstition prevails on the Continent, and, in Denmark, Sunday children have prerogativesfar from enviable. Thorpe[205]tells how ‘in Fyer there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other Sunday children, had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from others. But, because of this property, she could not pass by the church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre. The gift became a perfect burden to her; she therefore sought the advice of a man skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre, to say, “Go to Heaven!” but when she met a hearse, “Hang on!” Happening some time after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory, cried out, “Go to Heaven!” and straightway the hearse rose in the air and vanished. Afterwards meeting a spectre, she said to it, “Hang on!” when the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before the spectre would put an end to her wretched life.’
It is a popular article of faith in Scotland that those who are born on Christmas Day or Good Friday have the power of seeing spirits, and even of commanding them, a superstition to which SirWalter Scott alludes in his ‘Marmion’ (stanzaxxii.). The Spaniards imputed the haggard and downcast looks of their PhilipII.to the disagreeable visions to which this privilege subjected him.
Among uncultured tribes it is supposed that spirits are visible to some persons and not to others. The ‘natives of the Antilles believed that the dead appeared on the roads when one went alone, but not when many went together; and among the Finns the ghosts of the dead were to be seen by the Shamans, but not by men generally unless in dreams.’[206]It is, too, as already noticed,[207]a popular theory with savage races that the soul appears in dreams to visit the sleeper, and hence it has been customary for rude tribes to drink various intoxicating substances, under the impression that when thrown into a state of ecstasy they would have pleasing visions. On this account certain tribes on the Amazon use certain narcotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting twenty-four hours. During this period they are said to be subject to extraordinary visions, in the course of which they acquire information on any subject theymay specially require. For a similar reason the inhabitants of North Brazil, when anxious to discover some guilty person, were in the habit of administering narcotic drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminal made his appearance. The Californian Indians would give children certain intoxicants, in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about their enemies. And the Darien Indians used the seeds of theDatura sanguineato produce in children prophetic delirium, during which they revealed the whereabouts of hidden treasure.
In our own country various charms have been practised from time immemorial for invoking spirits, and, as we shall show in a succeeding chapter, it is still a widespread belief that, by having recourse to certain spells at special seasons in the year, one, if so desirous, may be favoured with a view of the spirits of departed friends.
Thebelief in death-omens peculiar to certain families has long been a fruitful source of superstition, and has been embodied in many a strange legendary romance. Such family forewarnings of death are of a most varied description, and are still said to be of frequent occurrence. An ancient Roman Catholic family in Yorkshire, of the name of Middleton, is supposed to be apprised of the death of any one of its members by the apparition of a Benedictine nun; and Sir Walter Scott, in his ‘Peveril of the Peak,’ tells us how a certain spirit is commonly believed to attend on the Stanley family, warning them by uttering a loud shriek of some approaching calamity, and especially ‘weeping and bemoaning herself before the death of any person of distinction belonging to the family.’ Inhis ‘Waverley,’ too, towards the end of Fergus MacIvor’s history, he alludes to the Bodach Glas, or dark grey man. Mr. Henderson says,[208]‘Its appearance foretold death in the Clan of ——, and I have been informed on the most credible testimony of its appearance in our own day. The Earl of E——, a nobleman alike beloved and respected in Scotland, was playing on the day of his decease on the links of St. Andrews at golf. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the game, saying, “I can play no longer, there is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to befall me.” He died that night as he was handing a candlestick to a lady who was retiring to her room.’ According to Pennant, most of the great families in Scotland had their death-omens. Thus it is reported ‘the family of Grant Rothiemurcus had the “Bodach au Dun,” or the Ghost of the Hill; and the Kinchardines the “Lham-dearg,” or the Spectre of the Bloody Hand, of whom Sir Walter Scott has given the subjoined account from Macfarlane’s MSS.: “There is much talk of a spirit called ‘Ly-erg,’ who frequents the Glenmore. Heappears with a red hand, in the habit of a soldier, and challenges men to fight with him. As lately as the year 1669 he fought with three brothers, one after another, who immediately died therefrom.”’
The family of Gurlinbeg was haunted by Garlin Bodacher, and Tulloch Gorms by May Moulach, or the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand.[209]The Synod gave frequent orders that inquiry should be made into the truth of this apparition, and one or two declared that they had seen one that answered the description. An ancestor of the family of McClean, of Lochburg, was commonly reported, before the death of any of his race, to gallop along the sea-beach announcing the death by dismal lamentations; and the Banshee of Loch Nigdal used to be arrayed in a silk dress of greenish hue.
Reference is made elsewhere to the apparition of the Black Friar, the evil genius of the Byrons, supposed to forebode misfortune to the member of the family to whom it appeared, and Mr. Hunt has described the death-token of the Vingoes. It seems that above the deep caverns in a certain partof their estate rises a cairn. On this, it is asserted, chains of fire were formerly seen ascending and descending, which were frequently accompanied by loud and frightful noises. But it is affirmed that these warnings have not been heard since the last male of the family came to a violent end.[210]Whenever two owls are seen perched on the family mansion of the family of Arundel of Wardour, it is said that one of its members will shortly die. The strange appearance of a white-breasted bird[211]was long thought to be a warning of death to a family of the name of Oxenham, in Devonshire.
Equally strange is the omen with which the old baronet’s family of Clifton, of Clifton Hall, in Nottinghamshire, is forewarned when death is about to visit one of its members. It seems that, in this case, the omen takes the form of a sturgeon, which is seen forcing itself up the River Trent, on whose bank the mansion of the Clifton family is situated. With this curious tradition may be compared one connected with the Edgewell Oak, which is commonly reported to indicate the coming death of aninmate of Castle Dalhousie by the fall of one of its branches. Burke, in his ‘Anecdotes of the Aristocracy’ (1849,i.122), says that ‘opposite the dining-room at Gordon Castle is a large and massive willow-tree, the history of which is somewhat singular. Duke Alexander, when four years of age, planted this willow in a tub filled with earth; the tub floated about in a marshy piece of land, till the shrub, expanding, burst its cerements, and struck root in the earth below; here it grew and prospered, till it attained the present goodly size. The Duke regarded the tree with a sort of fatherly and even superstitious regard, half believing there was some mysterious affinity between its fortunes and his own. If an accident happened to the one by storm or lightning, some misfortune was not long in befalling the other.’
It may be remembered, too, how in the Park of Chartley, near Lichfield, has long been preserved the breed of the indigenous Staffordshire cow, of sand white colour. In the battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was born, and the year of the downfall of the House of Ferrers happening about the same time,gave rise to the tradition that the birth of a parti-coloured calf from the wild herd in Chartley Park is a sure omen of death within the same year to a member of the family. Thus, ‘by a noticeable coincidence,’ says the ‘Staffordshire Chronicle’ (July 1835), ‘a calf of this description has been born whenever a death has happened to the family of late years.’ It appears that the death of the seventh Earl Ferrers, and of his Countess, and of his son, Viscount Tamworth, and of his daughter, Mrs. William Joliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the eighth Earl and of his daughter, Lady Francis Shirley, were each preceded by the ominous birth of the fatal-hued calf. This tradition has been made the subject of a romantic story entitled ‘Chartley, or the Fatalist.’
Walsingham, in his ‘Ypodigma Neustriæ’ (1574, p. 153), informs us how, on January 1, 1399, just before the civil wars broke out between the houses of York and Lancaster, the River Ouse suddenly stood still at a place called Harewood, about five miles from Bedford, so that below this place the bed of the river was left dry for three miles together, and above it the waters swelled to a greatheight. The same thing is said to have happened at the same place in January 1648, which was just before the death of CharlesI., and many superstitious persons ‘have supposed both these stagnations of the Ouse to be supernatural and portentous; others suppose them to be the effect of natural causes, though a probable natural cause has not yet been assigned.’[212]
The following curious anecdote, styled ‘An Irish Water-fiend,’ said to be perfectly well authenticated, is related in Burke’s ‘Anecdotes of the Aristocracy’ (i.329). The hero of the tale was the Rev. James Crawford, rector of the parish of Killina, co. Leitrim. In the autumn of 1777, Mr. Crawford had occasion to cross the estuary called ‘The Rosses,’ on the coast of Donegal, and on a pillion behind him sat his sister-in-law, Miss Hannah Wilson. They had advanced some distance, until the water reached the saddle-laps, when Miss Wilson became so alarmed that she implored Mr. Crawford to get back as fast as possible to land. ‘I do not think there can be danger,’ replied Crawford, ‘for I see a horseman crossing the ford not twenty yardsbefore us.’ Miss Wilson also saw the horseman. ‘You had better hail him,’ said she, ‘and inquire the depth of the intervening water.’ Crawford checked his horse, and hallooed to the other horseman to stop. He did stop, and turning round, displayed a ghastly face grinning fiendishly at Crawford, who waited for no further parley, but returned as fast as he could. On reaching home he told his wife of the spectral rencontre. The popular belief was that whenever any luckless person was foredoomed to be drowned in that estuary, the fatal event was foreshown to the doomed person by some such apparition as Crawford had seen. Despite this monitory warning, Mr. Crawford again attempted to cross the ford of the Rosses upon September 27, 1777, and was drowned in the attempt.
A correspondent of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ speaks of a superstition prevalent among the peasantry in Worcestershire, that when storms, heavy rains, or other elemental strifes take place at the death of a great man, the spirit of the storm will not be appeased till the moment of burial. ‘This superstition,’ he adds, ‘gained great strengthon the occasion of the Duke of Wellington’s funeral, when, after some weeks of heavy rain, and one of the highest floods ever known in this country, the skies began to clear, and both rain and flood abated. It was a common observation in this part of the country, in the week before the interment of his Grace, “Oh, the rain won’t give over till the Duke is buried.”’
In Germany several princes have their warnings of death. In some instances it is the roaring of a lion, and in others the howling of a dog. Occasionally a similar announcement was made by the tolling of a bell, or the striking of a clock at an unusual time. Then there is the time-honoured White Lady, whose mysterious appearance has from time immemorial been supposed to indicate some event of importance. According to a popular legend, the White Lady is seen in many of the castles of German princes and nobles, by night as well as by day, especially when the death of any member of the family is imminent. She is regarded as the ancestress of the race, ‘shows herself always in snow white garments, carries a bunch of keys at her side, and sometimes rocks and watches over the childrenat night when their nurses sleep.’ The earliest instance of this apparition was in the sixteenth century, and is famous under the name of ‘Bertha of Rosenberg,’ in Bohemia. The white lady of other princely castles was identified with Bertha, and the identity was accounted for by the intermarriages of other princely houses with members of the house of Rosenberg,[213]in whose train the White Lady passed into their castles. According to Mrs. Crowe[214]the White Lady was long supposed to be a Countess Agnes of Orlamunde; but a picture of a princess called Bertha, or Perchta von Rosenberg, discovered some time since, was thought so to resemble the apparition, that it is a disputed point which of the two ladies it is, or whether it is or is not the same apparition that is seen at different places. The opinion of its being the Princess Bertha, who lived in the fifteenth century, was somewhat countenanced by the circumstance that, at a period when, in consequence of the war, an annual benefit which she had bequeathed to the poor was neglected, the apparition appeared morefrequently, and seemed to be unusually disturbed. The ‘Archæologia’ (xxxiii.) gives an extract from Brereton’s ‘Travels’ (i.33), which sets forth how the Queen of Bohemia told William Brereton ‘that at Berlin—the Elector of Brandenburg’s house—before the death of any related in blood to that house, there appears and walks up and down that house like unto a ghost in a white sheet, which walks during the time of their sickness and until their death.’[215]
Cardan and Henningius Grosius relate a similar marvel of some of the ancient families of Italy, the following being recorded by the latter authority: ‘Jacopo Donati, one of the most important families in Venice, had a child, the heir to the family, very ill. At night, when in bed, Donati saw the door of his chamber opened and the head of a man thrust in. Knowing that it was not one of his servants, he roused the house, drew his sword, went over the whole palace, all the servants declaring that they had seen such a head thrust in at the doors of their several chambers at the same hour; the fastenings were found all secure, so that no one could have come in from without. The next day the child died.’
Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ says that near Rufus Nova, in Finland, Sweden, ‘there is a lake in which, when the governor of the castle dies, a spectrum is seen, in the habit of Arion, with a harp, and makes excellent music, like those clocks in Cheshire which (they say) presage death to the master of the family; or that oak in Lanthadran Park, in Cornwall, which foreshows as much.’
One of the most celebrated ghosts of this kind in Britain is the White Lady of Avenel, the creation of Sir Walter Scott. In the Highlands it was long a common belief that many of the chiefs had some kind spirit to watch over the fortunes of their house. Popular tradition has many well-known legends about white ladies, who generally dwell in forts and mountains as enchanted maidens waiting for deliverance. They delight to appear in warm sunshine to poor shepherds, or herd boys. They are either combing their long hair or washing themselves, drying wheat or spinning, they also point out treasures, &c. They wear snow-white or half-white black garments, yellow or green shoes, and a bunch of keys at their side. All these and many other traits that appear in individual legends may be traced back to agoddess of German mythology who influences birth and death, and presides over the ordering of the household.[216]
An interesting instance of a death-warning among uncultured tribes is told by Mr. Lang,[217]on the authority of Mr. J. J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia, which is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example of a belief current in Breton folk-lore. Mr. Atkinson relates how one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit and seemed loth to go away. After some hesitation he explained that he was about to die, and would never see his English friend again, as his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart, but he became aware too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of his beloved. As he said, so it happened, for the unlucky man shortly afterwards died. ‘This is the ground-work,’ adds Mr. Lang, ‘of the old Breton ballad of “Le Sieur Nann,” who died after his intrigue with the forest spectre!’ A version of the ballad is printed by De laVillemarque, Barzaz-Breiz (i.41), and variants exist in Swedish, French, and even in a Lowland Scotch version, sung by children in a kind of dancing game.[218]Another story quoted by Mr. Lang tells how, in 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr. Du Ve. ‘The day before he died, having been ill some time, he said that in the night his father, his father’s friend, and a female spirit he could not recognise, had come to him, and said that he would die next day, and that they would wait for him.’ Mr. Du Ve adds that, ‘though previously the Christian belief had been explained to this man, it had entirely failed, and that he had gone back to the belief of his childhood.’ But cases of this kind, it would appear, are not uncommon among rude races, and have a special value to the student of comparative folk-lore.
Thepower of seeing things invisible to others is commonly known as ‘second sight,’ a peculiarity which the ancient Gaels called ‘shadow sight.’ The subject has, for many years past, excited popular interest, and demanded the attention even of our learned men. Dr. Johnson was so favourably impressed with the notion of ‘second sight,’ that after, in the course of his travels, giving the subject full inquiry, he confessed that he never could ‘advance his curiosity to conviction, but came away at last only willing to believe.’ Sir Walter Scott, too, went so far as to say that ‘if force of evidence could authorise us to believe facts inconsistent with the general laws of nature, enough might be produced in favour of the existence of “second sight.”’ When we recollect how all historyand tradition abound in instances of this belief, oftentimes apparently resting on evidence beyond impeachment, it is not surprising that it has numbered among its adherents advocates of most schools of thought. Although, too, of late years the theory of ‘second sight’ has not been so widely preached as formerly, yet it must not be supposed that the stories urged in support of it are less numerous, or that it has ceased to be regarded as great a mystery as in days gone by.
In defining ‘second sight’ as a singular faculty ‘of seeing an otherwise invisible object without any previous means used by the person that beholds it for that end,’ we are at once confronted with the well-known axiom that ‘a man cannot be in two places at once,’ a rule with which it is difficult to reconcile such statements as those recorded by Pennant of a gentleman of the Hebrides said to have had the gift of foreseeing visitors in time to get ready for them, or the anecdote which tells how St. Ambrose fell into a comatose state while celebrating the mass at Milan, and on his recovery asserted that he had been present at St. Martin’s funeral at Tours, where it was afterwards declared he had beenseen. But it must be remembered that believers in ‘second sight’ base their faith not so much on metaphysical definitions as on the evidence of daily experience, it being of immaterial importance to them how impossible a certain doctrine may seem, provided it only has the testimony of actual witnesses in its favour. Hence, in spite of all arguments against the so-called ‘second sight,’ it is urged, on the other hand, that visions coinciding with real facts and events occurring at a distance—oftentimes thousands of miles away—are beheld by persons possessing this remarkable faculty. Thus Collins, in his ode on the ‘Popular Superstitions of the Highlands,’ alludes to this belief: