Say who is he with summons loud and longShall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly,Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,While each dark warrior kindles at the blast;The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairy land?
Say who is he with summons loud and longShall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly,Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,While each dark warrior kindles at the blast;The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairy land?
Sir Walter Scott's version of the legend is as follows:—"A daring horse-jockey sold a black horse to a man of venerable and antique appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon Hills, called the Lucken Hare, as the place where, at twelve o'clock at night he should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was invited by his customer to view his residence. The trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's feet. 'All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. The man, in confusion, took the horn and attempted to wind it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, stamped, and shook their bridles, the men arose and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a giant, louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words:—
Woe to the coward that ever he was born,That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!
Woe to the coward that ever he was born,That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!
A whirlwindexpelled the horse dealer from the cavern, the entrance to which he could never find again."
In the neighbourhood of Kirkoswald, on the Eden, in Cumberland, a district prolific in Arthurian legends, it is said that "a peculiar wind called theHelmwind, sometimes blows with great fury in this part of the country. It is believed by some persons to be an electrical phenomenon." Perhaps this fact may have some remote connection with the superstition under consideration.
Sir Walter remarks that although his legend refers to Sheriffmoor,and 1715, a similar story is related in the reign of Elizabeth by Reginald Scot. Indeed, it is told with some variations in several localities, both in the Highlands and in the northern counties of England. In Hodgson's "Northumberland" it is described in the following terms:—
"Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur, his queen, Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds, were enchanted in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there till some one should first blow a bugle-horn, that lay on a table near the entrance of the hall, and then, with 'the sword of the stone,' cut a garter, also placed there beside it. But none had ever heard where the entrance to this enchanted hall was, till the farmer at Sewingshields, about fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the castle, and his clew fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briers and nettles, as he supposed, into a deep subterranean passage. Full in the faith that the entrance into King Arthur's hall was now discovered, he cleared the briery portal of its weeds and rubbish, and, entering a vaulted passage, followed, in his darkling way, the thread of his clew. The floor was infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of bats, disturbed by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant light, which, as he advanced, grew gradually brighter, till, all at once, he entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which, a fire without fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor, blazed with a high and lambent flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the monarch and his queen and court reposing around, in a theatre of thrones and costly couches. On the floor, beyond the fire, lay the faithful anddeep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and, on a table before it, the spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently, but firmly, grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty scabbard, the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open, and they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter; and, as the sword was being slowly sheathed, the spell assumed its ancient power, and they all sank gradually to rest; but not before the monarch had lifted up his eyes and hands, and exclaimed:—
O woe betide that evil dayOn which this witless wight was born,Who drew the sword—the garter cut,But never blew the bugle-horn.
O woe betide that evil dayOn which this witless wight was born,Who drew the sword—the garter cut,But never blew the bugle-horn.
Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance to the enchanted hall."
The Arthur legend is repeated, with some slight variations, by the country people about Alderley Edge, Cheshire. The sleeping warriors are said to repose in the recesses of a place called the "Wizard's Cave."
An old Cornish legend avers that King Arthur is still alive in the form of a raven; and certain superstitious people refuse to shoot these birds, from a fear that they might inadvertently destroy the mythic warrior.
King Arthur and his knights have been so popular in Lancashire, that the Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, seriously relates the story of Sir Tarquin and Lancelot of the Lake as an historical event pertaining to this county. According to him, Tarquin's castle was at Manchester, and the lake from which Sir Lancelot derived his surname the now almost thoroughly drained Martin Mere. He contends that discovered remains demonstrate that three of the battles won by Arthur, and ascribed by tradition to the neighbourhood of the Douglas, were fought near Wigan and Blackrod. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, only mentions one battle as being fought on the banks of the Douglas. He says:—
"The Saxons, under the command of Colgrin, were attempting to exterminate the whole of the British race. They had also entirely subdued all that part of the island which extends from the Humber to the sea of Caithness.... Hereupon he (Arthur) marched to (towards) York, of which, when Colgrin had intelligence, he met him with a very great army, composed of Saxons, Scots, and Picts,by the river Duglas, where a battle happened with the loss of the greater part of both armies. Notwithstanding, the victory fell to Arthur, who pursued Colgrin to York, and there besieged him."
The "historical" Arthur, however, has long been looked upon by the best historians as a mythical or fictitious personage, the representative, or impersonation as it were, of the national valour and superstition.[31]Dr. Kuhn and others regard all the stories of these caverned heroes as merely relatively modernised forms of Odin and his terrible host. They refer the weapon suspended in the cave to "that of Heimdallr, the Sverdâs or sword-god, and warder of Bifrost Bridge," to whom belongs the "Gjallar horn with whichhe will warn the gods that the frost giants are advancing to storm Valhalla." The mighty conflict in which they expect to be engaged "will be fought before the end of the world, when heaven and earth shall be destroyed, and the Æsir gods themselves shall perish, and their places shall be filled by a new creation and new and brighter gods." This dark myth is by some writers regarded as a foreshadowing of the downfall of paganism and the advent of a higher civilisation and purer religion under the Christian dispensation.
Tempests and the howling of the wind appear to have been regarded with superstitious reverence from the earliest times in the British islands. Plutarch speaks of the return to Delphos from Britain of a certain grammarian, named Demetrius, who related some curious stories with respect to the then but little known country. Amongst other things the travelled sage narrated to Plutarch and his friends the following story:—"There are many desert islands scattered about Britain, some of which have the name of being the islands of genii and heroes; that he had been sent by the emperor, for the sake of describing and viewing them, to that which lay nearest to the desert isles, and which had but few inhabitants; all of whom were esteemed by the Britons sacred and inviolable. Very soon after his arrival there was great turbulence in the air, and many portentous storms; the winds became tempestuous, and fiery whirlwinds rushed forth. When these ceased, the islanders said that the departure of some one of the superior genii had taken place. For, as a light when burning, say they, has nothing disagreeable, but when extinguished, is offensive to many; so likewise lofty spirits afford an illumination benignant and mild, but their extinction and destruction frequently, as at the present moment, excite winds and storms, and often infect the atmosphere with pestilential evils. Moreover, that there was one island there, where Saturn was confined by Briareus in sleep: for that sleep had been devised for his bonds; and that around him were many genii as his companions and attendants."
Singularly enough, M. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," found a similar superstition to obtain amongst the West Coast Equatorial Africans. They believe that the Oguisi or "spirit" brings the plague amongst them in the form of a whirlwind. An impression got abroad that the white man who was advancing into their territories was the veritable Oguisi, and consequently, owing to their fetich superstition, they expected disaster therefrom. He says:—"The King of the Niembouai, like most of the other monarchs of these regions, did not show himself on my arrival—he was absent until about noonto-day. I have been told that the reason why the chiefs keep away from the villages until I have been in them some time is, that they have a notion that I bring with me a whirlwind which may do them some great harm; so they wait until it has had time to blow away from the village before they make their appearance."
It is somewhat remarkable that the tradition of the "wild hunt," or the "furious host," has become obsolete, or nearly so, in Ireland, inasmuch as that country has preserved, with much minuteness, many other Aryan myths. What does remain in Ireland, however, is singularly in accordance with the properties assigned to the elder storm-gods, Indra and Rudra, and their followers, the Ribhus and the Maruts, in the Rig Veda.
A writer in theAthenæum, in 1847, makes the following observations:—"The ideas of the Irish peasantry respecting the state of departed souls are very singular. According to the tenets of the church to which the majority of them belong, the souls of the departed are either in paradise, hell, or purgatory. But popular belief assigns the air as a fourth place of suffering, where unquiet souls wander about until their period of penance is past. On a cold, or wet, or stormy night, the peasant will exclaim with real sympathy 'Musha! God help the poor souls that are in the shelter of the ditches, or under the eaves this way!' And the good 'chanathee' or mother of a family will sweep the hearth, that the poor souls may warm themselves when the family retires. The conviction that the spirits of the departed sweep along with the storm or shiver in the driving rain, is singularly wild and near akin to the Scandinavian myth." The identity of this superstition with some of the Aryan myths, is very easily perceived. Kelly says:—"Indra has for friends and followers the Maruts, or spirits of the winds, whose host consists, at least in part, of the souls of the pious dead; and the Ribhus, who are of similar origin, but whose element is rather that of the sunbeams or the lightning, though they too rule the winds, and sing like the Maruts the loud song of the storm."
The same writer gives the following graphic description of the popular feeling and action on the approach of this mythic cavalcade:—"The first token which the furious host gives of its approach is a low song that makes the hearer's flesh creep. The grass and the leaves of the forest wave and bow in the moonshine as often as the strain begins anew. Presently the sounds come nearer and nearer, and swell into the music of a thousand instruments. Then bursts the hurricane, and the oaks of the forest come crashing down. The spectral appearanceoften presents itself in the shape of a great black coach, on which sit hundreds of spirits singing a wonderfully sweet song. Before it goes a man, who loudly warns everybody to get out of the way. All who hear him must instantly drop down with their faces to the ground, as at the coming of the wild hunt, and hold fast by something, were it only a blade of grass; for the furious host has been known to force many a man into its coach and carry him hundreds of miles away through the air."
The black coach version of the legend of the furious host yet survives in the North of England. Mr. Henderson says:—"Night after night, too, when it is sufficiently dark, the headless coach whirls along the rough approach to Langley Hall, near Durham, drawn by black and fiery steeds." In a work entitled "Rambles in Northumberland," it is referred to in the following terms:—"When the death-hearse, drawn by headless horses, and driven by a headless driver, is seen about midnight, proceeding rapidly, but without noise, towards the churchyard, the death of some considerable person in the parish is sure to happen at no distant period." It is likewise referred to in Rees's Diary as a "vision of a coach drawn by six black swine, and driven by a black driver."
Grose says:—"We sometimes read of ghosts striking violent blows; and that, if not made way for, they overturn all impediment,like a furious whirlwind." Yet singularly enough in the same paragraph, speaking on the authority of Glanvil of the apparition of an old woman, he informs us that "if a tree stood in her walk," the spectator "observed her always to go through it." Notwithstanding this feat, the old lady must have had some materiality about her, for on being lifted from the ground by human hands at her request, her ghostship "felt just like a bag of feathers."
"The furious host" seems to have differed in some legends from the "wild hunt" of Odin and his followers, and yet in others they appear as it were in combination. Indeed, the name Woden, itself, signifies the "Furious One;" and hence, doubtless, we have the link which legitimately connects them together. "Wud" still signifies "mad" in some existing Scottish dialects. The hounds of the "spectre huntsman" are believed to be human souls transformed into air; which in their wild career strip the hedges of the linen placed there to dry; they eat up or scatter abroad meal and the ashes that lay on the peasant's hearth. The hound sometimes left behind in the household, through which the wild hunt has passed, is supposed to repose on the hearth for a whole year, during which time it livesupon ashes, and howls and whines, until the spectre horseman returns, when it jumps on its feet, wags its tail with joy, and rejoins its ancient comrades. Kelly says:—"There is only one way amongst the Germans of ridding the house sooner of the unwelcome guest, and that is to brew beer in eggshells. The hound watches the operation and exclaims
Though I am now as old as the old Bohemian wold,Yet the like of this I ween, in my life I ne'er have seen.
Though I am now as old as the old Bohemian wold,Yet the like of this I ween, in my life I ne'er have seen.
And it goes, and is seen no more. On Christmas evenings especially, that is to say, at the season of the winter solstice, it is very unsafe to leave linen hanging out of doors, for the wild huntsman's hounds will tear it to pieces." The soughing of the wind through crevices, windows, or doorways in buildings, or narrow passages in the hills, like that at Cliviger, was believed to be the howling of Odin's hounds, and to indicate the passage of "the furious host."
This spectre hound or dog is a very common sprite in Lancashire. I remember well being terrified in my youth in Preston, by Christmas recitals of strange stories of its appearance, and the misfortune which its howling was said to forebode. The Preston black dog was without a head, which rendered the said howling still more mysterious to my youthful imagination. A gentleman recently related to me a story respecting this "dog-fiend," which he had direct from a Manchester tradesman's own lips, who thoroughly believed in the supernatural character of his nocturnal assailant. This tradesman, a Mr. Drabble, assured my friend that the celebrated black headless dog-fiend, on one occasion, about the year 1825, suddenly appeared before, or rather behind, him, not far from the then Collegiate Church; and, placing its fore paws upon his shoulders, actually ran him home at a rapid rate, in spite of his strenuous resistance. He was so terrified at the incident that he rushed into bed in his dirty clothes, much to the surprise and dismay of his family. This particular dog-boggart is believed yet by many to have been "laid" and buried under the dry arch of the old bridge across the Irwell, on the Salford side of the river; and that the spell to which it has been subjected will endure for 999 years, which, I suppose, in vulgar as well as legal parlance, is supposed to be nearly equivalent to the more comprehensive term—"for ever."
In Larwood and Hotten's "History of Signboards," I find the following:—"This Black Dog may have derived its name from the canine spectre that still frightens the ignorant and fearful in the rural districts, just as the terrible Dun Cow and the Lambton Worm werethe terror of the people in olden times. Near Lyme Regis, Dorset, there is an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend that the spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen fire of a neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Royalist mansion, destroyed by Cromwell's troops. The dog would sit opposite the farmer; but one night a little extra liquor gave the man additional courage, and he struck at the dog, intending to rid himself of the horrid thing. Away, however, flew the dog, and the farmer after him, from one room to another, until it sprang through the roof, and was seen no more that night. In mending the hole, a lot of money fell down, which, of course, was connected in some way or other with the dog's strange visit. Near the house is a lane still called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog, and to thisgenius locithe sign is dedicated."
I am inclined to think that the "Trash" or "Skriker" described by Mr. Wilkinson, of Burnley, has some relationship to the strayed hound of Odin, and more especially so, as the spectre huntsman is well known in the neighbourhood of the Cliviger gorge. He says:—
"The appearance of this sprite is considered a certain death-sign, and has obtained the local names of 'Trash' or 'Skriker.' He generally appears to one of the family from which death is about to select his victim, and is more or less visible according to the distance of the event. I have met with persons to whom the barghaist has assumed the form of a white cow or a horse; but on most occasions 'Trash' is described as having the appearance of a large dog, with very broad feet, shaggy hair, drooping ears, and 'eyes as large as saucers.' When walking, his feet make a loud splashing noise, like old shoes in a miry road, and hence the name of 'Trash.' The appellation, 'Skriker,' has reference to the screams uttered by the sprite, which are frequently heard when the animal is invisible. When followed by any individual, he begins to walk backwards, with his eyes fixed full on his pursuer, and vanishes on the slightest momentary inattention. Occasionally he plunges into a pool of water, and at other times he sinks at the feet of the person to whom he appears with a loud splashing noise, as if a heavy stone was thrown into the miry road. Some are reported to have attempted to strike him with any weapon they had at hand, but there was no substance present to receive the blows, although the Skriker kept his ground. He is said to frequent the neighbourhood of Burnley at present, and is mostly seen in Godly Lane and about the Parochial Church; buthe by no means confines his visits to the churchyard, as similar sprites are said to do in other parts of England and Wales."
Grose tells us that dogs have "the faculty of seeing spirits," and he instances the case of one David Hunter, a neatherd to the Bishop of Down and Connor, whose dog accompanied himquietly, when, from an impulse he was unable to restrain, he wandered after the apparition of an old woman by which he was haunted. "But," Grose adds, "they usually show signs of terror, by whining and creeping to their master for protection; and it is generally supposed that they often see things of this nature when their owner cannot; there being some persons, particularly those born on a Christmas-eve, who cannot see spirits."
Max Müller etymologically identifies the classic Cerberus or Kerberos with the Vedic Sarvari, "the dog of night, watching the path to the lower world." Grimm says that the dog is an embodiment of the wind and an attendant of the dead both in the mythology of the Germans and the Aryans, and that both these attributes are conspicuous in the wild hunt superstitions. Dogs, he adds, see ghosts, as well as the goddess of death, Hel, although she is invisible to human eyes. Kuhn contends that the name of Yama's canine messengers, Sârameyas, was borne in Greek form, by the messenger of the Greek gods, Hermeias or Hermes, the conductor of the shades of the departed to the realm of Hades. With the aid of Athenê, Hermes conducted Heracles in safety, with the dog Kerberos, out of Hades.
In the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" (1631) is the following reference to this superstition:—
I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs,With hollow howling, tell of thy approach;The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;And this distempered and tempestuous nightTells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.
I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs,With hollow howling, tell of thy approach;The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;And this distempered and tempestuous nightTells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.
The superstition that the howling of a dog, especially in the night time, portends the death of some person in the immediate neighbourhood, is yet, at the present day, firmly believed in, even by the middle, and by no means uneducated, classes in Lancashire. I listened, not very long ago, to the serious recital of a story by one who heard the howling and knew well the party whose death immediately followed. He himself, being sick at the time, deemed his own end approaching, but was relieved of his terror on being informed that a well-known neighbour had just expired.
It is by no means improbable that the extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by some of the canine species or varieties, as especiallyexhibited in the scenting of game and carrion or putrid flesh, may have influenced the original personification of the dog as an attendant on the dead.
Charles Dickens, in a recent Christmas story, describes, with his usual felicity, a rather singular phase of this "howling hound" superstition. It appears that Dr. Marigold's dog, true to the instincts of his blustering race, could snuff an approaching storm of a "domestic" character with the most unerring precision. Certainly there are localities in which the blasts of old Boreas, and the storm songs of the Maruts, are infinitely more disagreeable than they are in certain others. To encounter them alone on the bleak mountain top, or in a wild gorge, like that of Cliviger, on an "old-fashioned Christmas" or New Year's-eve, is not productive of exactly the same kind of satisfaction as results from attentively listening to their wild harmonies when seated in a warm corner of one's own "snuggery," with plenty of good cheer, and a select few of tried old friends partaking of the hospitality characteristic of the season. Dr. Marigold, who is neither more nor less than the witty and loquacious "Cheap John," of mock-auction renown, thinks, very properly, that his peripatetic place of business was a very unsuitable locality for domestic hurricanes. He says:—"We might have had such a pleasant life. A roomy cart, with the large goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when on the road, an iron pot and kettle, a fire-place for the cold weather, a chimney for the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a horse. What more do you want? You draw off on a bit of turf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors', you cook your stew, and you would not call the Emperor of France your father. But have atemperin the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings! My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it was a mystery to me, but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl and bolt. At such times I wished I was him."
The large "saucer eyes" of Skriker, and his "vanishingon the slightest momentary inattention," are suggestive of some connection with lightning or the ignis fatuus, or wild fire; and, singularly enough, I find Will-o'-whisp traditions bear considerable resemblance to those which appertain to the furious host. Mr. Thoms, in his "ShakspereNotelets," has some curious information on this subject. He says:—
"According to some these phantoms are believed to be the souls of children who have died unbaptised; while others again believe them to be the restless spirits of wicked and covetous men, who have not scrupled, for the sake of their own aggrandisement, to remove their neighbours' landmarks. In Brittany, we learn from Villemarqué, thePorte-brandonappears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this it is said he sets fire to the villages, which are sometimes suddenly in the middle of the night wrapped in flames. In Lusatia, where these wandering children are also supposed to be the souls of unbaptised children, they are believed to be perfectly harmless, and to be relieved from their destined wanderings as soon as any pious hand throws a handful of consecrated ground after them."
This form of superstition prevails yet to a considerable extent in the north of England and Scotland.
The Maruts or storm-winds of the Sanscrit myths, who rode on tawny-coloured horses, roared like lions, shook the mountains, and tore up trees, when their wild work was done, Max Müller informs us, assumed again, "according to their wont, the form of new-born babes," a phrase which, as Mr. Cox justly observes, "exhibits the germ, and more than the germ, of the myth of Hermes returning like a child to his cradle after tearing up the forests." Hermes, as a personification of both the gentle breeze and the stormy wind, gives forth soothing as well as martial music, and his plaintive breath was supposed "to waft the spirits of the dead to their unseen home." Crantz says the Greenland Esquimaux "lay a dog's head by the grave of a child, for the soul of a dog can find its way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of souls." The Parsees place a dog before the dying, from a similar superstitious belief.
There is much probability in the suggestion that Shakspere had some of these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth, while contemplating the murder, and its consequences, of the "gracious Duncan," the following magnificent metaphors:—
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsedUpon the sightless couriers of the air,Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,That tears shall drown the wind!
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsedUpon the sightless couriers of the air,Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,That tears shall drown the wind!
The furious host, in the German versions, is sometimes "a cavalcade of the dead," and not exactly a wild hunt, in the ordinaryacceptation of the term. Kelly says:—"Sometimes it gallops through the stormy air as a herd of wild boars; but the spirits of which it consists generally appear in human form. They are of both sexes and of all ages, souls of unchristened babes being included among them; for Holda or Bertha often joins the hunt." When Odin rides at the head of a full field, he is believed to chase a horse or a wild boar; but when he alone appears at the heels of his yelping pack, it "is in pursuit of a woman with long snow-white breasts. Seven years he follows her; at last he runs her down, throws her across his horse, and carries her home." These seven years are regarded by commentators as having reference to the seven winter months of the year, during which "the spell bound" lightning and storm-god was unable, owing to the prevailing cold weather, to continue in active chase of his flying bride. This latter myth concerning the chased maiden seems to be the counterpart or prototype of the spectre huntsman, who "is believed to pursue a milk-white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden, on All-Hallow Eve," as related by Mr. Wilkinson. In Germany the wild hunt chases a whole flock of elfish beings, the moss-wifekins and wood-maidens, whose lives are bound up with those of the forest trees. Holda and Bertha are but local or characteristic appellations for the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday), the wife of Odin. In some parts of Germany the wild hunt is called the dead hunt (Heljagd), and, in others, the English hunt (die Engelske jagd), which are synonymous, England being but, at one period, "another name for the nether world." Hel or Hela, was the name of both the Scandinavian and German goddess of death. Kuhn, referring to the dispute whether the ancient locality of departed souls was Great Britain or Brittany, decides in favour of the former, and informs us that the German peasants to this day use such expressions as the following: "How the bells are ringing in England!" "How my children are crying in England!" when referring to the nether or lower regions.
The dismal realm of Hela, which was a journey of nine days' dreary descent from Heaven, was termed Niflheimr, the world of mists. It was said to be situated under one of the roots of the great world-tree, Yggdrasil, but it appears not to have been regarded, like the modern Hell, as a place of torment or punishment for sins committed on earth. It seems to have had more relationship to the Greek Hades. All departed souls, good and evil, dwelt in Hela's realm, with the exception of those of heroes slain in battle, which were conveyed at once to Valhalla, by Odin himself. Kelly says:—
"But the idea of retribution after death for crimes done in the body was not unknown to German paganism. It was part of the Aryan creed, and the Vedas speak of the goddess Nirriti, and her dreadful world Naraka, the destined abode of all guilty souls. It is not conceivable that such a tradition could have died out, even for a time, amongst any of the pagan Indo-Europeans."
In support of his position, Kelly cites the following passage from Kemble's "Saxons in England":—
"For the perjurer and the secret murderer Nastrond existed, a place of torment and punishment—the strand of the dead—filled with foulness, peopled with poisonous serpents, dark, cold, and gloomy; the kingdom of Hel wasHades, the invisible, the world of shadows; Nastrond was what we call Hell."
Kelly further contends that as "the heaven of the (Aryan) Pitris is often called 'the world of good deed, the world of the righteous,' and as they themselves were spirits of light and ministers of all good men, there is strong reason for inferring, although the fact is nowhere expressly stated, that the inhabitants of the opposite world became spirits of darkness, and confederates of all the evil powers." He adds,—"If this conjecture prove to be well founded, it will have brought to light another remarkable instance of the continuity of Aryan tradition."
The Rev. G. W. Cox, however, scarcely indorses this view of the Gothic Hell and Devil. He says,—"Hel had been like Persephonê, the queen of the unseen land,—in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter cold and icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim, but Niflheim itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell where the old man hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good to grind almost anything.' It was not so pleasant, indeed, as Heaven, or the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. But more particularly the Devil was a being who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into acting against his own interest, in other words he might be outwitted, and this character of a poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in Teutonic legends. In fact, as Professor Max Müller remarks, the Germans, when they had been 'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner;' nor is it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that 'no greater proof can begiven of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted.'" Mr. Cox adds, in a note, that it has "been said of Southey that he could never think of the devil without laughing. This is but saying that he had the genuine humour of our Teutonic ancestors."
Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," says,—"The Christian notion of Hell is that of a place of heat, for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dwellers in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame."
How grandly has Shakspere expressed the various traditionary forms respecting the lost soul's lodgment or condition after death, in "Measure for Measure." In act 3, scene 1, Claudio exclaims:—
Ay, but to die and go we know not where,To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence round aboutThe pendent world; or to be worse than worstOf those, that lawless and incertain thoughtsImagine howling! 'tis too horrible!The wearied and most loathed worldly life,That age, ache, penury, and imprisonmentCan lay on nature, is a paradiseTo what we fear of death.
Ay, but to die and go we know not where,To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence round aboutThe pendent world; or to be worse than worstOf those, that lawless and incertain thoughtsImagine howling! 'tis too horrible!The wearied and most loathed worldly life,That age, ache, penury, and imprisonmentCan lay on nature, is a paradiseTo what we fear of death.
It is a common superstition yet that the ghosts of persons, murdered or otherwise, not buried in consecrated ground, cannot rest, but must wander about in search of the means of Christian sepulture. This superstition obtained amongst the Greeks and Latins. The ghosts of unburied bodies, not possessing theobolusor fee due to Charon, the ferryman of theStyxorAcheron, were unable to obtain a lodging or place of rest. They were, therefore, compelled to wanderabout the banks of the river for a hundred years, when thePortitoror "ferryman of hell" passed them over,in forma pauperis. Hence the sacred nature of the duty of surviving relatives and friends under the most trying circumstances. The celebrated tragedy of Antigone, by Sophocles, owes its chief interest and pathos to the popular faith on this subject.
Brand on the authority of Aubrey, states that, amongst the vulgar in Yorkshire, it was believed, "and, perhaps, is in part still," that, after a person's death, the soul went over Whinney Moor; and till about 1624, at the funeral, a woman came (like a Præfica) and sung the following song:—
This ean night, this ean night,Every night and awle,Fire and fleet (water) and candle-light,And Christ receive thy sawle.When thou from hence doest pass away,Every night and awle,To Whinny-Moor [silly poor] thou comest at last,And Christ receive thy sawle.If ever thou gave hosen or shoon [shoes],Every night and awle,Sit thee down and put them on,And Christ receive thy sawle.But if hosen and shoon thou never gave naen,Every night and awle,The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane,And Christ receive thy sawle.From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass,Every night and awle,To Brig of Dread thou comest at last,Christ receive thy sawle.From Brig of Dread, na brader than a thread,Every night and awle,To purgatory fire thou com'st at last,And Christ receive thy sawle.If ever thou give either milke or drink,Every night and awle,The fire shall never make thee shrink,And Christ receive thy sawle.But if milk nor drink thou never gave naen,Every night and awle,The fire shall burn thee to the bare beane,And Christ receive thy sawle.
This ean night, this ean night,Every night and awle,Fire and fleet (water) and candle-light,And Christ receive thy sawle.
When thou from hence doest pass away,Every night and awle,To Whinny-Moor [silly poor] thou comest at last,And Christ receive thy sawle.
If ever thou gave hosen or shoon [shoes],Every night and awle,Sit thee down and put them on,And Christ receive thy sawle.
But if hosen and shoon thou never gave naen,Every night and awle,The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane,And Christ receive thy sawle.
From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass,Every night and awle,To Brig of Dread thou comest at last,Christ receive thy sawle.
From Brig of Dread, na brader than a thread,Every night and awle,To purgatory fire thou com'st at last,And Christ receive thy sawle.
If ever thou give either milke or drink,Every night and awle,The fire shall never make thee shrink,And Christ receive thy sawle.
But if milk nor drink thou never gave naen,Every night and awle,The fire shall burn thee to the bare beane,And Christ receive thy sawle.
In the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," this song is printed with one or two slight variations, with the title of a "Lyke-WakeDirge." Sir Walter Scott likewise quotes a passage from a MS. in the Cotton Library, descriptive of Cleveland in the northern part of Yorkshire, in Elizabeth's reign, which aptly illustrates this custom. It is as follows:—
"When any dieth certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, reciting the journey that the partye deceased must goe, and they are of beliefe (such is their fondnesse) that once in their lives it is good to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man, for as much as after this life they are to pass barefoote through a great launde, full of thorns and furzen, except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redemed the forfeyte; for at the edge of the launde an olde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving, and after he had shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin without scratch or scalle."
According to Mannhardt and Grimm a pair of shoes was deposited in the grave, in Scandinavia and Germany, for this very purpose. In the Henneberg district, on this account, the nametodtenschuh, or "dead shoe" is applied to a funeral. In Scandinavia the shoe is namedhelsköor "hel-shoe."
It is customary yet in some parts of the North of England to place a plate filled with salt on the stomach of a corpse soon after death. Lighted candles too, are sometimes placed on or about the body. Reginald Scot says, in his "Discourse concerning Devils and Spirits," on the authority of Bodin, that "the devil loveth no salt in his meat, for that is a sign of eternity, and used by God's commandment in all sacrifices." Douce, speaking of this practice, particularly in Leicestershire, says it is done with the view of preventing air from getting into the bowels and swelling the body. Herrick, in his "Hesperides," says:—
The Soul is the Salt.The body's salt the soul is, which, when gone,The flesh soon sucks in putrifaction.
The Soul is the Salt.The body's salt the soul is, which, when gone,The flesh soon sucks in putrifaction.
According to the learned Moresin the devil abhorreth salt, it being the emblem of eternity and immortality. It is not liable to corruption itself, and it preserves other substances from decay. Hence its superstitious or emblematical import.
The screaming of certain birds, as we have already seen, foreboded disaster. In some districts the midnight flight of flocks of migratory seafowl are believed to be the cause of the noises in the atmosphere, which the peasant's imagination translates into the rush of the furious host. Mr. Yarrell, in "Notes and Queries," says that flocksof bean-geese, from Scandinavia and Scotland, when flying over various parts of England, select very dark nights for their migrations, and that their flight is accompanied by a very loud and very peculiar cry. The "seven whistlers," referred to by Wordsworth, and others already quoted, in some instances appear to be curlews, whose screams are believed by fishermen to announce the approach of a tempest.
The bellowing of cows at unseasonable hours was likewise regarded as an announcement of death, as well as the howling of the dog. Cows in the Aryan mythology represented the rain clouds. Odin and his host, nevertheless, seem to have fancied the earthly article. They were said to carry cows away, milk them dry, and, in about three days, generally return them, but not always. It was idle for the farmer to refuse complying, as when the furious host appeared, the fattest animals in the stalls became restive, and on being let loose suddenly disappeared.
The Lancashire peasant, in some districts, still believes the "Milky Way" to be the path by which departed souls enter Heaven. Mr. Benjamin Brierley, in one of his Lancashire stories, places in the mouth of one of his strongly marked provincial characters, the following expression,—"When tha goes up th' cow lone (lane) to th' better place," and he assures me that he has often heard the expression from the lips of the peasantry. The Germans entertain a similar belief in the "Milky Way" being the spirit path to heaven. In Friesland its name iskaupat, or cowpath. The giving of a cow to the poor, while on earth, was considered to confer upon the donor the power to pass with certainty the fearful Gjallar bridge; for, as in the Vedic superstition, a cow, (or cloud,) would be present to aid his soul to make the passage in safety. Mannhardt informs us that "hence it was of yore a funeral custom in Sweden, Denmark, England, Upper and Lower Germany, that a cow should follow the coffin to the churchyard. This custom was partially continued until recent times, being accounted for on the ground that the cow was a gift to the clergy for saying masses for the dead man's soul or preaching his funeral sermon."
It is not improbable that the "mortuary" or "heriot" of the olden time, which rendered the gift of a cow to the church, on the death of a parishioner, as a condonement of possibly unpaid dues, a necessary condition of clerical favour, was based on some such superstition. It was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the funeralcortégeto the place of sepulture. Mr. E. Baines, speaking of the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, says:—"Theobnoxious feudalheriot, consisting of the best beast on the farm, required to be given to the lord, on the death of the farmer, was a cruel and unmanly exaction, in illustration of which there are many traditionary stories in the manor of Ashton, and no doubt in other manors. The priest, as well as the lord of the manor, claimed his heriot, called a mortuary in these early times, on the death of his parishioners, as a kind of expiation for the personal tithes, which the deceased in his lifetime had neglected to pay." He adds that the custom was in Ashton for "holy kirk" to take thebestbeast, and the lord of the manor thesecondbest.
To those who treated Odin with proper respect when he and his hunters passed by, he is said to have dropped a horse's leg or haunch, which turned to gold. Those who mocked him received a similar present, or "moss-wifekin's foot, with the green shoe upon it." But the limb in the latter case became fœtid, and the horrible stench resulting therefrom defied all attempts to remove it.
All of these legends have been resolved into figurative and sometimes highly poetic descriptions of natural phenomena, and especially what is termed the "elemental strife." The horse's leg thrown down by Odin represents the crooked lightning's flash; the gold its brightness, and the stench its sulphurous odour. The wild boars which he hunts are stormy wind-clouds; the fair ladies the light white scudding vapours that seem to coquette with the squally wind. Odin's broad-brimmed hat is the dark cloud, and his mantle the starry heavens. Kelly says—"The moss-wifekins and wood-maidens are female elementary spirits brought down to the earth from the clouds to become genii of the forest, and when they are chasedin whole flocks—or, in other words, when the leaves are blown off the trees—this is but a modification of the older conception of flying clouds.... The wild huntsman loves to ride through houses that have two outer doors directly opposite to each other; that is to say, in plain prose, a thorough draft, more or less strong, from one door to the other."
Mr. Ruskin, in his recent lectures at Oxford, as "Slade Professor of Fine Art," gives an admirable example from paintings on an ancient vase, of the manner in which Greek artistic genius gradually evolved from out of natural phenomena, their mythological personifications. He says,—
"First you have Apollo ascending from the sea; thought of as thephysical sunrise: only a circle of light for his head; his chariot horses seen foreshortened, black against the day-break, their feet not yet risen above the horizon. Underneath is the painting from theopposite side of the same vase: Athena as the morning breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, flying across the waves before sunrise. At the distance I now hold them from you, it is scarcely possible for you to see that they are figures at all, so like are they to broken fragments of flying mist; and when you look close you will see that as Apollo's face is invisible in the circle of light, Mercury's is invisible in the broken form of cloud; but I can tell you that it is conceived as reverted, looking back to Athena; the grotesque appearance of feature in the front is the outline of his hair. These two paintings are exceedingly rude, and of the archæic period; the deities being yet thought of chiefly as physical powers in violent agency."
Max Müller contends that the earlier Aryan name for the Ribhus, namely Arbhus, is identical with the Greek Orpheus. Philologists, by the aid of the earlier Sanscrit writings, have been enabled to get at the roots of many Greek names, which formerly defied investigation. We see in the musical influence of Orpheus over trees, rocks, and mountain torrents, but a highly artistic development of the original Aryan storm-wind myth. By certain well understood philological steps, the term Arbhus has passed, in its Teutonic descent, into Albs, Alb, or Alp, which in the plural yields Elbe and Elfen, the equivalents of our English Elf and Elves.
Another remnant of the Aryan nomenclature of the train of Odin, the wild huntsman, may be found in the word mârt or maur, as presented in the English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently descended from the Maruts or wind-gods of the Vedas. The nightmare is known to result chiefly from that form of dyspepsia termed flatulent. The corruption of the word in English to mare has given rise to some singular blunders, and none greater or more absurd than that perpetrated by Fuseli, the Royal Academician, in his celebrated picture of "The Nightmare," in which he represents the fiend in equine form bestraddling his unhappy victim. Kelly says he can find accounts of the nightmare assuming the forms of a mouse, a weasel, a toad, and even a cat, but never that of a horse or a mare, except in the picture referred to. The fact is, the genuine nightmare is the rider who plies his spurs and grips the reins, and not a mare that has usurped the function of a jockey. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," describes one phase of the superstition as a remnant of witchcraft. "To hinder the nightmare, they hang in a string a flint with a hole in it. It is to prevent the nightmare, viz., the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat at night. The flint thus hung does hinder it." Brand observesthat "ephialtes, or nightmare, is called by common peoplewitch-riding." He traces the superstition to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."
In classical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that Faunus and Sylvanus were "supposed to be the same with Pan." He further adds,—"There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed to occasion the nightmare."
It is not improbable that the modern equine form of the hag may have resulted from ordinary punning. Lluellin (1679) has the following stanza, which refers to the power of coral over the nightmare. Hence the prejudice in favour of coral beads for children which obtains to this day:—