which has given rise to a host of strange superstitious practices.

Keppel, in his 'Visit to the Indian Archipelago,' says that in Northern
Australia the natives will not willingly approach graves at night,
alone, 'but when they are obliged to pass them, they carry a firestick
to keep off the spirit of darkness.'

There is still a belief that the ghost of the last person watches
round the churchyard till another is buried, to whom he delivers his
charge. Crofton Croker says that in Ireland it is the general opinion
among the lower orders that 'the last buried corpse has to perform an
office like that of "fag" in our public schools by the junior boy, and
that the attendance on his churchyard companions is duly relieved by
the interment of some other person.' Serious disturbances have resulted
from this superstition, and terrific fights have at times taken place
to decide which corpse should be buried first. The ancient churchyard
of Truagh, county Monaghan, is said to be haunted by an evil spirit,
whose appearance generally forebodes death. The legend runs, writes
Lady Wilde,[288] 'that at funerals the spirit watches for the person
who remains last in the graveyard. If it be a young man who is there
alone, the spirit takes the form of a beautiful young girl, inspires
him with an ardent passion, and exacts from him a promise that he will
meet her that day month in the churchyard. The promise is then sealed
by a kiss, which sends a fatal fire through his veins, so that he is
unable to resist her caresses, and makes the promise required. Then
she disappears, and the young man proceeds homewards; but no sooner
has he passed the boundary wall of the churchyard than the whole story
of the evil rushes on his mind, and he knows that he has sold himself,
soul and body, for a demon's kiss. Then terror and dismay take hold of
him, till despair becomes insanity, and on the very day month fixed for
the meeting with the demon bride, the victim dies the death of a raving
lunatic, and is laid in the fatal graveyard of Truagh.'

The dead, too, particularly object to persons treading carelessly on
their graves, an allusion to which occurs in one of the songs of Greek
outlawry:[289]

    All Saturday we held carouse, and far through Sunday night,
    And on the Monday morn we found our wine expended quite.
    To seek for more, without delay, the captain made me go;
    I ne'er had seen nor known the way, nor had a guide to show.
    And so through solitary roads and secret paths I sped,
    Which to a little ivied church long time deserted led.
    This church was full of tombs, and all by gallant men possest;
    One sepulchre stood all alone, apart from all the rest.
    I did not see it, and I trod above the dead man's bones,
    And as from out the nether world came up a sound of groans.
    'What ails thee, sepulchre? Why thus so deeply groan and sigh?
    Doth the earth press, or the black stone weigh on thee heavily?'
    'Neither the earth doth press me down, nor black stone do me scath,
    But I with bitter grief am wrung, and full of shame and wrath,
    That thou dost trample on my head, and I am scorned in death.
    Perhaps I was not also young, nor brave and stout in fight,
    Nor wont, as thou, beneath the moon, to wander through the night.'

According to the Guiana Indians, 'every place is haunted where any have
died;' and in Madagascar the ghosts of ancestors are said to hover
about their tombs. The East Africans 'appear to imagine the souls to be
always near the place of sepulture,' and on the Gold Coast 'the spirit
is supposed to remain near the spot where the body has been buried.'
The souls of warriors slain on the field of battle are considered by
the Mangaians to wander for a while amongst the rocks and trees of
the neighbourhood in which their bodies were thrown. At length 'the
first slain on each battlefield would collect his brothers' ghosts,
and lead them to the summit of a mountain, whence they leap into the
blue expanse, thus becoming the peculiar clouds of the winter.'[290]
And the Mayas of Yucatan think the souls of the dead return to the
earth if they choose, and, in order that they may not lose the way to
the domestic hearth, they mark the path from the hut to the tomb with
chalk.[291]

The primitive doctrine of souls obliges the savage, says Mr.
Dorman,[292] 'to think of the spirit of the dead as close at hand. Most
uncultured tribes, on this account, regard the spot where death has
taken place as haunted. A superstitious fear soon instigates worship,
and this worship, beginning at the tombs and burial-places, develops
into the temple ritual of higher culture.'

The Iroquois believe the space between the earth and sky is full of
spirits, usually invisible, but occasionally seen, and the Ojibways
affirm that innumerable spirits are ever near, and dwell in all kinds
of places. European folk-lore has similar beliefs, it having been a
Scandinavian idea that the souls of the departed dwell in the interior
of mountains, a phase of superstition which frequently presents
itself in the Icelandic sagas, and exists in Germany at the present
day. 'Of some German mountains,' writes Thorpe, 'it is believed that
they are the abodes of the damned. One of these is the Horselberg,
near Eisenach, which is the habitation of Frau Holle; another is the
fabulous Venusberg, in which the Tannhäuser sojourns, and before which
the trusty Eckhart sits as a warning guardian.'[293]

Departed souls were also supposed to dwell in the bottom of wells and
ponds, with which may be compared the many tales current throughout
Germany and elsewhere of towns and castles that have been sunk in the
water, and are at times visible. But, as few subjects have afforded
greater scope for the imagination than the hereafter of the human soul,
numerous myths and legendary stories have been invented to account for
its mysterious departure in the hour of death. Shakespeare has alluded
to the numerous destinations of the disembodied spirit, enumerating
the many ideas prevalent, in his day, on the subject. In 'Measure for
Measure' (Act iii. sc. 1) Claudio pathetically says:

    Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
    To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
    This sensible warm motion to become
    A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
    To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
    In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
    To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
    And blown with restless violence round about
    The pendent world.[294]

Indeed, it would be a long task to enter into the mass of mystic
details respecting 'the soul's dread journey by caverns and rocky paths
and weary plains, over steep and slippery mountains, by frail bank or
giddy bridge, across gulfs or rushing rivers,' to its destined home.

According to the Mazovians the soul remains with the coffin, sitting
upon the upper part of it until the burial is over, when it flies
away. Such traditions, writes Mr. Ralston,[295] 'vary in different
localities, but everywhere, among all the Slavonic people, there seems
always to have prevailed an idea that death does not finally sever the
ties between the living and the dead. This idea has taken various
forms, and settled into several widely differing superstitions, lurking
in the secrecy of the cottage, and there keeping alive the cultus of
the domestic spirit, and showing itself openly in the village church,
where on a certain day it calls for a service in remembrance of the
dead. The spirits of those who are thus remembered, say the peasants,
attend the service, taking their place behind the altar. But those who
are left unremembered weep bitterly all through the day.'

In some parts of Ireland, writes Mr. McAnally, 'there exists a belief
that the spirits of the dead are not taken from earth, nor do they lose
all their former interest in earthly affairs, but enjoy the happiness
of the saved, or suffer the punishment imposed for their sins in the
neighbourhood of the scenes among which they lived while clothed in
flesh and blood. At particular crises in the affairs of mortals these
disenthralled spirits sometimes display joy and grief in such a manner
as to attract the attention of living men and women. At weddings they
are frequently unseen guests; at funerals they are always present; and
sometimes, at both weddings and funerals, their presence is recognised
by aerial voices, or mysterious music, known to be of unearthly origin.
The spirits of the good wander with the living as guardian angels; but
the spirits of the bad are restrained in their action, and compelled to
do penance at, or near, the place where their crimes were committed.
Some are chained at the bottom of lakes, others buried underground,
others confined in mountain gorges, some hang on the sides of
precipices, others are transfixed on the tree-tops, while others haunt
the homes of their ancestors, all waiting till the penance has been
endured and the hour of deliverance arrives.'

Harriet Martineau, speaking of the English lakes, says that Souter or
Soutra Fell is the mountain on which ghosts appeared in myriads at
intervals during ten years of the last century. 'On the Midsummer Eve
of the fearful 1745, twenty-six persons, expressly summoned by the
family, saw all that had been seen before, and more. Carriages were
now interspersed with the troops; and everybody knew that no carriages
had been, or could be, on the summit of Souter Fell. The multitude was
beyond imagination; for the troops filled a space of half a mile, and
marched quickly till night hid them, still marching. There was nothing
vaporous or indistinct about the appearance of these spectres. So real
did they seem, that some of the people went up the next morning to look
for the hoof-marks of the horses; and awful it was to them to find not
one footprint on heather or grass.' This spectral march was similar to
that seen at Edge Hill, in Leicestershire, in 1707, and corresponds
with the tradition of the tramp of armies over Helvellyn, on the eve of
the battle of Marston Moor.

With such phantoms may be compared the mock suns, the various
appearances of halos and wandering lights, and such a phenomenon as
the 'Spectre of the Brocken.' Calmet relates a singular instance at
Milan, where some two thousand persons saw, as they supposed, an angel
hovering in the air: he cites Cardan as an eye-witness, who says that
the populace were only undeceived when it was shown, by a sharp-sighted
lawyer, to be a reflection from one of the statues of a neighbouring
church, the image of which was caught on the surface of a cloud. The
mirage, or water of the desert, owes its appearance to similar laws
of refraction. Mountain districts, we know, abound in these illusions,
and 'the splendid enchantment presented in the Straits of Reggio by
the Fata Morgana' has attracted much notice. At such times, 'minarets,
temples, and palaces, have seemed to rise out of the distant waves;'
and spectral huntsmen, soldiers in battle array, and gay but mute
cavalcades, have appeared under similar circumstances, pictured on
the table of the clouds. It was thus, we are told, that the Duke of
Brunswick and Mrs. Graham saw the image of their balloon distinctly
exhibited on the face of a cumulous cloud, in 1836; and travellers on
Mont Blanc have been startled by their own magnified shadows, floating
among the giant peaks.[296] It is difficult to say how many of the
apparitions which have been supposed to haunt certain spots might be
attributed to similar causes.

FOOTNOTES:

[276] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 22.

[277] See Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, ii. p. 26.

[278] _Contemporary Review_, xlviii. p. 108.

[279] Schoolcraft's _Indian Tribes_, v. p. 270.

[280] See Herbert Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, 1885, i. p. 199.

[281] _Ibid._ p. 199.

[282] The _Contemporary Review_, xlviii. p. 109.

[283] The _Contemporary Review_, xlviii. p. 111.

[284] _Northern Mythology_, ii. p. 20.

[285] _Bucolics_, viii. p. 98.

[286] _Primitive Culture_, ii. p. 30.

[287] See Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 21.

[288] _Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland_, p. 84.

[289] _Essay in the Study of Folk-Songs_, pp. 14, 15.

[290] Gill: _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, pp. 162, 163.

[291] See Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 33.

[292] _Ibid._ p. 30.

[293] _Northern Mythology_, i. p. 286.

[294] Cf. _Othello_, Act v. sc. 2.

[295] _Songs of the Russian People_, pp. 115, 116.

[296] _Occult Sciences_, 1855; _Apparitions_, pp. 80, 81.

CHAPTER XXV

CHECKS AND SPELLS AGAINST GHOSTS

Amongst the qualities ascribed to the cock was the time-honoured belief
that by its crow it dispelled all kinds of ghostly beings--a notion
alluded to by the poet Prudentius, who flourished at the commencement
of the fourth century. There is, also, a hymn said to have been
composed by St. Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salisbury Missal, in
which allusion is made to this superstition. In Blair's 'Grave' the
apparition vanishes at the crowing of the cock, and in 'Hamlet,' on the
departure of the ghost, Bernardo says:

    It was about to speak when the cock crew;

to which Horatio answers:

    And then it started like a guilty thing
    Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
    The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
    Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
    Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
    Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
    The extravagant and erring spirit hies
    To his confine: and of the truth herein
    This present object made probation.

Whereupon Marcellus adds the well-known lines:

    It faded on the crowing of the cock.
    Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
    Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
    The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
    And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
    The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
    So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

Even the devil is powerless at the sound of cock-crow. An amusing story
is told on the Continent of how a farmer's wife tricked the devil by
means of this spell. It appears that her husband was mourning the loss
of his barn--either by wind or fire--when a stranger addressed him,
and said: 'That I can easily remedy. If you will just write your name
in your blood on this parchment, your barn shall be fixed and ready
to-morrow before the cock crows; if not, our contract is void.' But
afterwards the farmer repented of the bargain he had made, and, on
consulting his wife, she ran out in the middle of the night, and found
a number of workmen employed on the barn. Thereupon she cried with all
her might, 'Cock-a-doodle-doo! cock-a-doodle-doo!' and was followed
by all the cocks in the neighbourhood, each of which sent forth a
hearty 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!' At the same moment all the phantom workmen
disappeared, and the barn remained unfinished. In a pretty Swedish
ballad of 'Little Christina,' a lover rises from the grave to console
his beloved. One night Christina hears light fingers tapping at the
door; she opens it and sees her betrothed. She washes his feet with
pure wine, and for a long while they converse. Then the cocks begin to
crow, and the dead get them underground. The young girl follows her
sweetheart through the white forest, and when they reach the graveyard,
the fair hair of the young man begins to disappear. 'See, maiden,' he
says, 'how the moon has reddened all at once; even so, in a moment,
thy beloved will vanish.' She sits down on the tomb, and says, 'I
shall remain here till the Lord calls me.' Then she hears the voice
of her betrothed, 'Little Christina, go back to thy dwelling-place.
Every time a tear falls from thine eyes my shroud is full of blood.
Every time thy heart is gay, my shroud is full of rose-leaves.' These
folk-tales are interesting, as embodying the superstitions of the
people among whom they are current.

A similar idea prevails in India, where the cock is with the Hindoos,
as with the English peasant, a most potent instrument in the
subjugation of troublesome spirits. A paragraph in the 'Carnatic Times'
tells us how a Hindoo exorcist tied his patient's hair in a knot, and
then with a nail attached it to a tree. Muttering some 'incantatory'
lines, he seized a live cock, and holding it over the girl's head with
one hand, he, with the other, cut its throat. The blood-stained knot of
hair was left attached to the tree, which was supposed to detain the
demon. It is further supposed that 'one or a legion thus exorcised will
haunt that tree till he or they shall choose to take possession of some
other unfortunate.'

It was said that chastity was of itself a safeguard against the
malignant power of bad ghosts; a notion to which Milton has referred:

    Some say no evil thing that walks by night,
    In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
    Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
    That breaks the magic chains at curfew-time,
    No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
    Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.

The cross and holy water have, too, generally been considered sacred
preservatives against devils and spirits, illustrations of which will
be found in many of our old romances.[297]

Fire, like water,[298] has been employed for the purpose of excluding
or barring the ghost, and Mr. Frazer writes how 'the Siberians seek
to get rid of the ghost of the departed by leaping over a fire. At
Rome, mourners returning from a funeral stepped over fire,' a practice
which still exists in China. A survival of this custom prevails among
the south Slavonians, who, on their return from a funeral, are met
by an old woman carrying a vessel of live coals. On these they pour
water, or else they take a live coal from the hearth and fling it over
their heads. The Brahmans simply touched fire, while in Ruthenia 'the
mourners merely look steadfastly at the stove or place their hands on
it.'[299] It is noteworthy that in the Highlands of Scotland and in
Burma, the house-fires were always extinguished when a death happened;
for fear, no doubt, of the ghost being accidentally burnt.

The Eskimos drive away spirits by blowing their breath at them,[300]
and the Mayas of Yucatan had evil spirits which could be driven away
by the sorcerers; but they never came near when their fetiches were
exposed. They had a ceremony for expelling evil spirits from houses
about to be occupied by newly married persons.[301] The natives of
Brazil so much dread the ghosts of the dead that it is recorded how
some of them have been struck with sudden death because of an imaginary
apparition of them. They try to appease them by fastening offerings on
stakes fixed in the ground for that purpose.[302]

Mutilations of the dead were supposed to keep his ghost harmless, and
on this account Greek murderers hacked off the extremities of their
victims. Australians cut off the right thumb of a slain enemy that his
ghost might not be able to draw the bow. And in Arabia, Germany, and
Spain, as the ghosts of murderers and their victims are especially
restless, everyone who passes their graves is bound to add a stone to
the pile.[303]

In Pekin, six or seven feet away from the front of the doors, small
brick walls are built up. These are to keep the spirits out, which
fly only in straight lines, and therefore find a baulk in their way.
Another mode of keeping spirits away in the case of children is to
attire them as priests, and also to dress the boys as girls, who are
supposed to be the less susceptible to the evil influence. In fact,
most countries have their contrivances for counteracting, in one way or
another, the influence of departed spirits--a piece of superstition of
which European folk-lore affords abundant illustrations.

Thus, in Norway, bullets, gunpowder, and weapons have no influence on
ghosts, but at the sight of a cross, and from exorcisms, they must
retire. The same belief prevails in Denmark, where all kinds of checks
to ghostly influence are resorted to. It is said, for instance, to
be dangerous to shoot at a spectre, as the bullet will return on him
who shot it. But if the piece be loaded with a silver button, that
will infallibly take effect. A Danish tradition tells how once there
was a horrible spectre which caused great fear and disquietude, as
everyone who saw it died immediately afterwards. In this predicament,
a young fellow offered to encounter the apparition, and to endeavour
to drive it away. For this purpose he went at midnight to the church
path, through which the spectre was in the habit of passing, having
previously provided himself with steel in various shapes. When the
apparition approached, he fearlessly threw steel before its feet,
so that it was obliged instantly to turn back, and it appeared no
more.[304] A common superstition, equally popular in England as on
the Continent, is that when a horseshoe is nailed over the doorway
no spirit can enter. It is also said that 'if anyone is afraid of
spectres, let him strew flax seed before the door; then no spirit
can cross the threshold. A preventive equally efficacious is to place
one's slippers by the bedside with the heels towards the bed. Spectres
may be driven away by smoking the room with the snuff of a tallow
candle; while wax-lights attract them.' And at the present day various
devices are adopted by our English peasantry for warding off from their
dwellings ghosts, and other uncanny intruders.[305]

FOOTNOTES:

[297] See E. Yardley's _Supernatural in Fiction_, pp. 29-31.

[298] See Chapter on 'Ghost Laying.'

[299] _Contemporary Review_, xlviii. p. 112; Ralston's _Songs of the
Russian People_, p. 319.

[300] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 20.

[301] _Ibid._ p. 29.

[302] _Ibid._ p. 21.

[303] 'The Primitive Ghost,' _Contemporary Review_, xlviii. p. 107.

[304] Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, ii. p. 205.

[305] See Harland and Wilkinson's _Lancashire Folk-lore_, 1867, p. 63.

CHAPTER XXVI

WRAITH-SEEING

Closely allied to 'second sight' is the doctrine of 'wraiths' or
'fetches,' sometimes designated 'doubles'--an apparition exactly
like a living person, its appearance, whether to that person or
to another, being considered an omen of death. The 'Fetch' is a
well-known superstition in Ireland, and is supposed to be a mere
shadow, 'resembling in stature, features, and dress, a living person,
and often mysteriously or suddenly seen by a very particular friend.'
Spiritlike, it flits before the sight, seeming to walk leisurely
through the fields, often disappearing through a gap or lane. The
person it resembles is usually known at the time to be labouring under
some mortal illness, and unable to leave his or her bed. When the
'fetch' appears agitated, or eccentric in its motions, a violent or
painful death is indicated for the doomed prototype. Such a phantom,
too, is said to make its appearance at the same time, and in the same
place, to more than one person.[306] Should it be seen in the morning,
a happy longevity for the original is confidently expected; but if it
be seen in the evening, immediate dissolution of the living prototype
is anticipated. It is thought, too, that individuals may behold their
own 'fetches.' Queen Elizabeth is said to have been warned of her death
by the apparition of her own double, and Miss Strickland thus describes
her last illness: 'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the
superstitious fears of her simple ladies were excited almost to mania,
even to conjuring up a spectral apparition of the Queen while she
was yet alive. Lady Guilford, who was then in waiting on the Queen,
leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went
out to take a little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or
four chambers off. Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the
act of leaving the royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some
trepidation in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished
away. She returned terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen in
the same lethargic slumber in which she left her.'

Shelley, shortly before his death, believed he had seen his wraith.
'On June 23,' says one of his biographers, 'he was heard screaming at
midnight in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found him staring
on vacancy. He had had a vision of a cloaked figure which came to
his bedside and beckoned him to follow. He did so, and when they had
reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted the hood of his cloak and
disclosed Shelley's own features, and saying "Siete soddisfatto?"
vanished. This vision is accounted for on the ground that Shelley had
been reading a drama attributed to Calderon, named 'El Embozado, ó el
Encapotado,' in which a mysterious personage who had been haunting
and thwarting the hero all his life, and is at last about to give
him satisfaction in a duel, unmasks and proves to be the hero's own
wraith. He also asks, "Art thou satisfied?" and the haunted man dies of
horror.' Sir Robert Napier is supposed to have seen his double, and
Aubrey quaintly relates how 'the beautiful Lady Diana Rich, daughter
to the Earl of Holland, as she was walking in her father's garden at
Kensington to take the air before dinner, about 11 o'clock, being
then very well, met her own apparition, habit and everything, as in a
looking-glass. About a month after, she died of small-pox. And it is
said that her sister, the Lady Isabella Thynne, saw the like of herself
also before she died. This account I had from a person of honour. A
third sister, Mary, was married to the Earl of Breadalbane, and it has
been recorded that she also, not long after her marriage, had some such
warning of her approaching dissolution.'

The Irish novelist, John Banim, has written both a novel and a ballad
on this subject, one which has also largely entered into many a
tradition and folk-tale.[307] In Cumberland this apparition is known by
the peasantry as a 'swarth,' and in Yorkshire by the name of a 'waff.'
The gift of wraith-seeing still flourishes on the Continent, and
examples abound in Silesia and the Tyrol.

'With regard to bilocation, or double personality,' writes a Catholic
priest,[308] 'there is a great deal of very interesting matter in
St. Thomas of Aquin, and also in Cardinal Cajetan's "Commentaries of
St. Thomas." The substance of the principles is this: Bilocation,
properly so called, is defined by the scholastics as the perfect and
simultaneous existence of one and the same individual in two distinct
places at the same time. This _never_ does and never can happen. But
bilocation, improperly so called, and which St. Thomas terms _raptus_,
does occur, and is identical with the double, as you call it, in the
cases of St. Gennadius, St. Ignatius, &c.

'St. Thomas quotes as illustrations or instances, St. Paul being taken
up to the Third Heaven. Ezekiel, the prophet, was taken by God and
shown Jerusalem, whilst at the same time he was sitting in the room
with the ancients of the tribe of Judah before him (Ezekiel viii.),
&c. In which the soul of man is not wholly detached from the body,
being necessary for the purpose of giving life, but is detached from
the _senses_ of the body. St. Thomas gives three causes for this
phenomenon: (1) Divine power; (2) the power of the Devil; and (3),
disease of the body when very violent sometimes.' Bardinus tells how
Marsilius Ficinus appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse to
Michael Mercatus, and rode away crying, 'O Michael, Michael, vera, vera
sunt illa,' that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Instances
of this kind of phenomenon have been common in all ages of the world,
and Lucretius suggested the strange fancy that the superficial surfaces
of all bodies were continually flying off like the coats of an onion,
which accounted for the appearance of apparitions; whilst Jacques
Gaffarel suggested that corrupting bodies send forth vapours which,
being compressed by the cold night air, appear visible to the eye in
the forms of men.[309]

In one of the notes to 'Les Imaginations Extravagantes de Monsieur
Oufle,' by the Abbé Bordélon, it is said that the monks and nuns, a
short time before their death, have seen the images of themselves
seated in their chairs or stalls. Catharine of Russia, after retiring
to her bedroom, was told that she had been seen just before to enter
the State Chamber. On hearing this she went thither, and saw the exact
similitude of herself seated upon the throne. She ordered her guards to
fire upon it.

In Scotland and the northern counties of England it was formerly said
that the apparition of the person that was doomed to die within a
short time was seen wrapped in a winding-sheet, and the higher the
winding-sheet reached up towards the head the nearer was death. This
apparition was seen during day, and it might show itself to anyone, but
only to one, who generally fell into a faint a short time afterwards.
If the person who saw the apparition was alone at the time, the
fainting fit did not come on till after meeting with others.

In the 'Statistical Account of Scotland' (xxi. 148), the writer,
speaking of the parish of Monquhitter, says, the 'fye gave due warning
by certain signs of approaching mortality'; and, again (149), 'the
fye has withdrawn his warning.' Some friends observing to an old
woman, when in the ninety-ninth year of her age, that, in the course
of nature, she could not long survive, she remarked, with pointed
indignation, 'What fye-token do you see about me?'

In the same work (iii. 380) the minister of Applecross, county of
Ross, speaking of the superstitions of that parish, says: 'The ghosts
of the dying, called "tasks," are said to be heard, their cry being
a repetition of the moans of the sick. Some assume the sagacity of
distinguishing the voice of their departed friends. The corpse follows
the track led by the "tasks" to the place of interment, and the early
or late completion of the prediction is made to depend on the period of
the night at which the "task" is heard.'

The Scotch wraith and Irish fetch have their parallel in Wales in
the Lledrith, or spectre of a person seen before his death. It never
speaks, and vanishes if spoken to. It has been seen by miners previous
to a fatal accident in the mine. The story is told of a miner who saw
himself lying dead and horribly maimed in a phantom tram-car, led by
a phantom horse, and surrounded by phantom miners. As he watched this
dreadful group of spectres they passed on, looking neither to the
right nor the left, and faded away. The miner's dog was as frightened
as its master, and ran away howling. The miner continued to work in the
pit, and as the days passed on and no harm came to him he grew more
cheerful, and was so bold as to laugh at the superstition. But the
day he did this a stone fell from the roof and broke his arm. As soon
as he recovered he resumed work in the pit; but a stone crushed him,
and he was borne maimed and dead in the tram along the road where his
'lledrith' had appeared.[310]

'Examining,' says Dr. Tylor,[311] 'the position of the doctrine of
wraiths among the higher races, we find it specially prominent in three
intellectual districts: Christian hagiology, popular folk-lore, and
modern spiritualism. St. Anthony saw the soul of St. Ammonius carried
to heaven in the midst of choirs of angels, the same day that the
holy hermit died five days' journey off in the desert of Nitria. When
St. Ambrose died on Easter Eve, several newly-baptized children saw
the holy bishop and pointed him out to their parents; but these, with
their less pure eyes, could not behold him.' Numerous instances of
wraith-seeing have been chronicled from time to time, some of which
are noteworthy. It is related how Ben Jonson, when staying at Sir
Robert Cotton's house, was visited by the apparition of his eldest son,
with a mark of a bloody cross upon his forehead, at the moment of his
death by the plague. Lord Balcarres, it is said, when in confinement
in Edinburgh Castle under suspicion of Jacobitism, was one morning
lying in bed when the curtains were drawn aside by his friend Viscount
Dundee, who looked upon him steadfastly, and then left the room.
Shortly afterwards the news came that he had fallen about the same
hour at Killiecrankie. Lord Mohun, who was killed in a duel in Chelsea
Fields, is reported to have appeared at the moment of his death, in the
year 1642, to a lady in James Street, Covent Garden, and also to the
sister of Glanvill, famous as the author of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus.'
It is related how the second Earl of Chesterfield, in 1652, saw, when
walking, a spectre with long white robes and black face. Regarding it
as an intimation of some illness of his wife, then visiting her father
at Networth, he set off early to inquire, and met a servant from Lady
Chesterfield, describing the same apparition. Anna Maria Porter, when
living at Esher, was visited by an old gentleman, a neighbour, who
frequently came in to tea. On this occasion, the story goes, he left
the room without speaking; and, fearing that something had happened,
she sent to inquire, and found that he had died at the moment of his
appearance. Similarly Maria Edgeworth, when waiting with her family for
an expected guest, saw in a vacant chair the apparition of a sailor
cousin, who suddenly stated that his ship had been wrecked and he
himself the only one saved. The event proved the contrary--he alone was
drowned.[312]

One of the most striking and best authenticated cases on record is
known as the Birkbeck Ghost, and is thus related in the 'Proceedings
of the Psychical Research Society': 'In 1789, Mrs. Birkbeck, wife of
William Birkbeck, banker, of Settle, and a member of the Society of
Friends, was taken ill and died at Cockermouth while returning from
a journey to Scotland, which she had undertaken alone--her husband
and three children, aged seven, five, and four years respectively,
remaining at Settle. The friends at whose house the death occurred
made notes of every circumstance attending Mrs. Birkbeck's last hours,
so that the accuracy of the several statements as to time as well as
place was beyond the doubtfulness of man's memory, or of any even
unconscious attempt to bring them into agreement with each other. One
morning, between seven and eight o'clock, the relation to whom the care
of the children had been entrusted, and who kept a minute journal of
all that concerned them, went into their bedroom, as usual, and found
them all sitting up in bed in great excitement and delight. "Mamma has
been here," they cried; and the little one said, "She called, 'Come,
Esther!'" Nothing could make them doubt the fact, and it was carefully
noted down to entertain the mother when she came home. That same
morning, as their mother lay on her dying bed at Cockermouth, she said,
"I should be ready to go if I could but see my children." She then
closed her eyes, to reopen them, as they thought, no more. But after
ten minutes of perfect stillness she looked up brightly, and said,
"I am ready now; I have been with my children;" and at once passed
peacefully away. When the notes taken at the two places were compared,
the day, hour, and minutes were the same.'

Baxter, in his 'World of Spirits,' records a very similar case of a
dying woman visiting her children in Rochester, and in a paper on
'Ghosts and Goblins,' which appeared in the 'Cornhill' (1873, xxvii.
457), the writer relates how, in a house in Ireland, a girl lay dying.
Her mother and father were with her, and her five sisters were praying
for her in a neighbouring room. This room was well lit, but overhead
was a skylight, and the dark sky beyond. One of the sisters, looking
towards this skylight, saw there the face of her dying sister looking
sorrowfully down upon them. She seized another sister and pointed to
the skylight; one after another the sisters looked where she pointed.
They spoke no word; and in a few moments their father and mother called
them to the room where their sister had just died. But when afterwards
they talked together about what had happened that night, it was found
that they had all seen the vision and the sorrowful face. But, as the
writer observes, 'in stories where a ghost appears for some useful
purpose, the mind does not reject the event as altogether unreasonable,
though the circumstances may be sufficiently preposterous;' but one can
conceive no reason why the vision of a dying sister should look down
through a skylight.

According to a Lancashire belief, the spirits of persons about to die,
especially if the persons be in distant lands, are supposed to return
to their friends, and thus predict the event. While the spirit is thus
away, the person is supposed to be in a swoon, and unaware of what is
passing. But his desire to see his friends is necessary; and he must
have been thinking of them.[313]

It is related from Devonshire, of the well-known Dr. Hawker, that, when
walking one night, he observed an old woman pass by him, to whom he was
in the habit of giving a weekly charity. As soon as she had passed, he
felt somebody pull his coat, and on looking round he recognised her,
and put his hand in his pocket to seek for a sixpence, but on turning
to give it to her she was gone. On his return home he heard she was
dead, but his family had forgotten to mention the circumstance.[314]

A correspondent of 'Notes and Queries' (3rd S. vi. 182) tells how a
judge of the Staffordshire County Courts, being on one occasion in the
North, went with his sisters into the church of the place to inspect
its monuments. While there they were surprised to see a lady, whom they
knew to be in Bath, walk in at one door and out through another. They
immediately followed, but could neither see nor hear anything further
of her. On writing to her friends, it was found that she was dead, and
a second letter elicited the fact that she had died at the very same
time at which she had been seen by them in the North.

Patrick Kennedy, in his 'Legendary Fiction of the Irish Celt,' speaking
of the Irish fetch, gives the following tale of 'The Doctor's Fetch,'
based, it is stated, on the most authentic sources: 'In one of our
Irish cities, and in a room where the mild moonbeams were resting on
the carpet and on a table near the window, Mrs. B., wife of a doctor
in good practice and general esteem, looking towards the window from
her pillow, was startled by the appearance of her husband standing
near the table just mentioned, and seeming to look with attention on
the book which was lying open on it. Now, the living and breathing man
was by her side apparently asleep, and, greatly as she was surprised
and affected, she had sufficient command of herself to remain without
moving, lest she should expose him to the terror which she herself
at the moment experienced. After gazing on the apparition for a few
seconds, she bent her eyes upon her husband to ascertain if his looks
were turned in the direction of the window, but his eyes were closed.
She turned round again, although now dreading the sight of what she
believed to be her husband's fetch, but it was no longer there. She
remained sleepless throughout the remainder of the night, but still
bravely refrained from disturbing her partner.

'Next morning, Mr. B., seeing signs of disquiet on his wife's
countenance while at breakfast, made some affectionate inquiries, but
she concealed her trouble, and at his ordinary hour he sallied forth
to make his calls. Meeting Dr. C. in the street, and falling into
conversation with him, he asked his opinion on the subject of fetches.
"I think," was the answer, "and so I am sure do you, that they are mere
illusions produced by a disturbed stomach acting upon the excited brain
of a highly imaginative or superstitious person." "Then," said Dr. B.,
"I am highly imaginative or superstitious, for I distinctly saw my
own outward man last night standing at the table in the bedroom, and
clearly distinguishable in the moonlight. I am afraid my wife saw it
too, but I have been afraid to speak to her on the subject."

'About the same hour on the ensuing night the poor lady was again
roused, but by a more painful circumstance. She felt her husband
moving convulsively, and immediately afterwards he cried to her in
low, interrupted accents, "Ellen, my dear, I am suffocating; send for
Dr. C." She sprang up, huddled on some clothes, and ran to his house.
He came with all speed, but his efforts for his friend were useless.
He had burst a large blood-vessel in the lungs, and was soon beyond
human aid. In her lamentations the bereaved wife frequently cried out,
"Oh! the fetch, the fetch!" and at a later period told the doctor of
the appearance the night before her husband's death.' But, whilst
many stories of this kind are open to explanation, it is a singular
circumstance how even several persons may be deceived by an illusion
such as the following. A gentleman who had lately lost his wife,
looking out of window in the dusk of evening, saw her sitting in a
garden-chair. He called one of his daughters and asked her to look out
into the garden. 'Why,' she said, 'mother is sitting there.' Another
daughter was called, and she experienced the same illusion. Then the
gentleman went out into the garden, and found that a garden-dress of
his wife's had been placed over the seat in such a position as to
produce the illusion which had deceived himself and his daughters.

In 'Phantasms of the Living'[315] very many strange and startling cases
are recorded, in which the mysterious 'double' has appeared, sometimes
speaking, and sometimes without speech, although such manifestations
have not always been omens of death. Thus the late Lord Dorchester[316]
is said to have seen the phantom of his daughter standing at the
window, having his attention aroused by its shadow, which fell across
the book he was reading at the time. She had accompanied a fishing
expedition, was caught in a storm, and was distressed at the thought
that her father would be anxious on her account.

In Fitzroy's 'Cruise of the Beagle' an anecdote is told of a young
Fuegian, Jemmy Button, and his father's ghost. 'While at sea, on board
the "Beagle," about the middle of the year 1842, he said one morning to
Mr. Byno, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock,
and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Byno tried to
laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that
such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding
his relations in Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that
his father had died some months previously.' This story is interesting,
especially as Mr. Lang says it is the only one he has encountered among
savages, of a warning conveyed to a man by a ghost as to the death of a
friend.[317]

FOOTNOTES:

[306] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1865, pt. ii. p. 564.

[307] See _Popular Irish Superstitions_, by W. R. Wilde, p. 109.

[308] _More Ghost Stories_, collected and edited by W. T. Stead, 1892,
p. 22.

[309] See Mrs. Crowe's _Night Side of Nature_, 1854, p. 111.

[310] Wirt Sikes, _British Goblins_, p. 215.

[311] _Primitive Culture_, 1891, i. p. 448.

[312] _Real Ghost Stories_, W. T. Stead, p. 103.

[313] Harland and Wilkinson, _Lancashire Folk-lore_, p. 105.

[314] Quoted by Mrs. Crowe, _Night Side of Nature_, p. 202.

[315] Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore.

[316] _Phantasms of the Living_, ii. p. 531.

[317] _Nineteenth Century_, April 1865, p. 629.

CHAPTER XXVII

GHOSTLY TIMES AND SEASONS

Shakespeare, quoting from an early legend, has reminded us that at
Christmastide 'no spirit dares stir abroad.' And yet, in spite of this
time-honoured belief, Christmas would seem to be one of the favourite
seasons of the year for ghosts to make their presence felt in all kinds
of odd ways. Many an old baronial hall, with its romantic associations
and historic legends, is occasionally, as Christmastime comes round,
disturbed by certain uncanny sounds, which timidity is only too ready
to invest with the most mysterious and unaccountable associations. One
reason for this nervous credulity may be ascribed to the fact that, as
numerous old country seats are supposed to be haunted, Christmas is
a fitting opportunity for the ghost to catch a glimpse of the family
revelry and mirth. But, judging from the many legendary tales which
have been handed down in connection with Christmas, it would seem that
these spirit-members of the family intrude their presence on their
relatives in the flesh in various ways. In Ireland, the ill-fated
Banshee has selected this season on more than one occasion, to warn the
family of coming trouble. According to one tale told from Ireland, one
Christmas Eve, when the family party were gathered round the festive
board in an old castle in the South of Ireland, the prancing of horses
was suddenly heard, and the sharp cracking of the driver's whip.
Imagining that one of the absent members of the family had arrived,
some of the young people moved to the door, but found that it was the
weird apparition of the 'headless coach and horseman.'

Many such stories might be enumerated, which, under one form or
another, have imparted a dramatic element to the season. With some of
our country peasantry, there is a deep-rooted dread of encountering
anything either bordering on, or resembling, the supernatural, as
sometimes spirits are supposed at Christmastide to be unfriendly
towards mankind. In Northamptonshire, for instance, there is a strange
notion that the ghosts of unfortunate individuals buried at cross-roads
have a particular license to wander about on Christmas Eve, at which
time they wreak their evil designs upon defenceless and unsuspecting
persons. But conduct of this kind seems to be the exception, and ghosts
are oftentimes invoked at Christmastide by those anxious to have a
foretaste of events in store for them. Thus, the anxious maiden, in her
eager desire to know something of her matrimonial prospects, has often
subjected herself to the most trying ordeal of 'courting a ghost.' In
many countries, at the 'witching hour of midnight, on Christmas Eve,'
the candidate for marriage goes into the garden and plucks twelve
sage leaves, 'under a firm conviction that she will be favoured with
a glimpse of the shadowy form of her future husband as he approaches
her from the opposite end of the garden.' But a ceremony observed in
Sweden, in years past, must have required a still more strong-minded
person to take advantage of its prophetic powers. It was customary
in the morning twilight of Christmas Day, to go into a wood, without
making the slightest noise, or uttering a word; total abstinence from
eating and drinking being another necessary requirement. If these rules
were observed, it was supposed that the individual as he went along
the path leading to the church, would be favoured with a sight of as
many funerals as would pass that way during the ensuing year. With
this practice may be compared one current in Denmark, where, it is
said, when a family are sitting together on Christmas Eve, if anyone is
desirous of knowing whether a death will occur amongst them during the
ensuing year, he must go outside, and peep silently through the window,
and the person who appears at table sitting without a head, will die
before Christmas comes round again. The feast of St. Agnes was formerly
held in high veneration by women who wished to know when and whom
they should marry. It was required that on this day they should not
eat--which was called 'fasting St. Agnes' fast'--if they wished to have
visions of delight, a piece of superstition on which Keats has founded
his poem, 'The Eve of St. Agnes:'

    They told me how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
    Young virgins might have visions of delight,
    And soft adorings from their love receive,
    Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
    If ceremonies due they did aright;
    As supperless to bed they must retire,
    And couch supine their beauties, lily white,
    Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
    Of heaven, with upward eyes, for all that they desire.

Laying down on her back that night, with her hands under her head, the
anxious maiden was led to expect that her future spouse would appear
in a dream, and salute her with a kiss. Various charms have long been
observed on St. Valentine's Eve, and Poor Robin's Almanack tells us how:

    On St. Mark's Eve, at twelve o'clock,
    The fair maid will watch her smock,
    To find her husband in the dark,
    By praying unto good St. Mark.

But St. Mark's Eve was a great day for apparitions. Allusion has been
made in a previous chapter to watching in the church porch for the
ghosts of those who are to be buried in the churchyard during the
following months; and Jamieson tells us of a practice kept up in the
northern counties, known as 'ash-ridlin.' The ashes being sifted, or
riddled, on the hearth, if any one of the family 'be to die within the
year, the mark of the shoe, it is supposed, will be impressed on the
ashes; and many a mischievous wight has made some of the credulous
family miserable, by slyly coming downstairs after the rest have
retired to bed, and marking the ashes with the shoe of one of the
members.'

In Peru it is interesting to trace a similar superstitious usage. As
soon as a dying man draws his last breath, ashes are strewed on the
floor of the room, and the door is securely fastened. Next morning
the ashes are carefully examined to ascertain whether they show any
impression of footsteps, and imagination readily traces marks, which
are alleged to have been produced by the feet of birds, dogs, cats,
oxen, or llamas. The destiny of the dead person is construed by the
footmarks which are supposed to be discernible. The soul has assumed
the form of that animal whose tracks are found.[318]

There is St. John's, or Midsummer Eve, around which many weird and
ghostly superstitions have clustered. Grose informs us that if anyone
sit in the church porch, he will see the spirits of those destined to
die that year come and knock at the church door in the order of their
decease. In Ireland there is a popular belief that on St. John's Eve
the souls of all persons leave their bodies, and wander to the place,
by land or sea, where death shall finally separate them from the
tenement of the clay. The same notion of a temporary liberation of the
soul gave rise to a host of superstitious observances at this time,
resembling those connected with Hallow Eve. Indeed, this latter night
is supposed to be the time of all others when supernatural influences
prevail. 'It is the night,' we are told, 'set apart for a universal
walking abroad of spirits, both of the visible and invisible world; for
one of the special characteristics attributed to this mystic evening is
the faculty conferred on the immaterial principle in humanity to detach
itself from its corporeal tenement and wander abroad through the realms
of space. Divination is then believed to attain its highest power,
and the gift asserted by Glendower of calling spirits "from the vast
deep" becomes available to all who choose to avail themselves of the
privileges of the occasion.'[319] Similarly, in Germany on St. Andrew's
Eve, young women try various charms in the hope of seeing the shadow of
their sweethearts; one of the rhymes used on the occasion being this:

    St. Andrew's Eve is to-day;
    Sleep all people,
    Sleep all children of men
    Who are between heaven and earth,
    Except this only man,
    Who may be mine in marriage.

The story goes that a girl once summoned the shadow of her future
husband. Precisely as the clock struck twelve he appeared, drank some
wine, laid a three-edged dagger on the table and vanished. The girl
put the dagger into her trunk. Some years afterwards there came a man
from a distant part to the town where the girl dwelt, bought property
there, and married her. He was, in fact, the identical person whose
form had appeared to her. Some time after their marriage the husband by
chance opened the trunk, and there found the dagger, at the sight of
which he became furious. 'Thou art the girl,' said he, 'who years ago
forced me to come hither from afar in the night, and it was no dream.
Die, therefore!' and with these words he thrust the dagger into her
heart.[320]

It may be added, that by general consent night-time is the season when
spirits wander abroad. The appearance of morning is the signal for
their dispersion.

    The flocking shadows pale,
    Troop to the infernal jail;
    Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
    And the yellow skirted fays,
    Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their noon-loved maze.

The ghost of Hamlet's father says, 'Methinks I scent the morning air,'
and adds:

                     'Fare thee well at once!
    The glow-worm shows the matins to be near.'

According to a popular notion formerly current, the presence of
unearthly beings was announced by an alteration in the tints of the
lights which happened to be burning--a superstition alluded to in
'Richard III.' (Act v. sc. 3)--where the tyrant exclaims as he awakens:

    'The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight,
    Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

    Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
    Came to my tent.'

So in 'Julius Cæsar' (Act iv. sc. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of
Cæsar, exclaims:

    'How ill this taper burns. Ha! who comes here?'

FOOTNOTES:

[318] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 48.

[319] See _Book of Days_, ii. pp. 519-521.

[320] See Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, iii. p. 144.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SPIRIT-HAUNTED TREES

According to Empedocles 'there are two destinies for the souls of
highest virtue--to pass into trees or into the bodies of lions,'
this conception of plants as the habitation of the departing soul
being founded on the old idea of transmigration. Illustrations of the
primitive belief meet us in all ages, reminding us how Dante passed
through that leafless wood, in the bark of every tree of which was
confined a suicide; and of Ariel's imprisonment:

    Into a cloven pine, within which rift
    Imprison'd, thou didst painfully remain
    A dozen years....
    ... Where thou didst vent thy groans,
    As fast as mill-wheels strike.

In German folk-lore the soul is supposed occasionally to take the form
of a flower, as a lily or white rose; and, according to a popular
belief, one of these flowers appears on the chairs of those about to
die. Grimm[321] tells a pretty tale of a child who 'carries home a bud
which the angel had given him in the wood; when the rose blooms the
child is dead.' Similarly, from the grave of one unjustly executed
white lilies are said to spring as a token of the person's innocence,
and from that of a maiden three lilies, which no one save her lover
must gather, a superstition which, under one form or another, has
largely prevailed both amongst civilised and savage communities. In
Iceland it is said that when innocent persons are put to death, the
sorb or mountain ash will spring over their grave, and the Lay of
Runzifal makes a blackthorn shoot out of the bodies of slain heathens,
and a white flower by the heads of fallen Christians. The well-known
story of 'Tristram and Ysonde' tells how 'from his grave there grew an
eglantine which twined about the statue, a marvel for all men to see;
and though three times they cut it down, it grew again, and ever wound
its arms about the image of the fair Ysonde.' With which legend may be
compared the old Scottish ballad of 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William':

    Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
    And out of his a briar;
    They grew till they grew to the church top,
    And there they tied in a true lover's knot.

It is to this time-honoured fancy that Laertes refers when he wishes
that violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia,[322] and Lord
Tennyson has borrowed the same idea:

    And from his ashes may be made,
    The violet of his native land.[323]

Some of the North-Western Indians believed that those who died a
natural death would be compelled to dwell among the branches of
tall trees, and the Brazilians have a mythological character called
Mani[324]--a child who died and was buried in the house of her mother.
Soon a plant--the Mandioca--sprang out of the grave, which grew,
flourished, and bore fruit. According to the Iroquois, the spirits of
certain trees are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females;
recalling, writes Mr. Herbert Spencer,[325] 'the dryads of classic
mythology, who, similarly conceived as human-shaped female spirits,
were sacrificed to in the same ways that human spirits in general were
sacrificed to.' 'By the Santals,' he adds, 'these spirits or ghosts are
individualised. At their festivals the separate families dance round
the particular trees which they fancy their domestic lares chiefly
haunt.'

In modern Greece certain trees are supposed to have their 'stichios,'
a being variously described as a spectre, a wandering soul, a vague
phantom, occasionally invisible, and sometimes assuming the most widely
different forms. When a tree is 'stichimonious,' it is generally
considered dangerous for anyone 'to sleep beneath its shade, and the
woodcutters employed to cut it down will lie upon the ground and hide
themselves, motionless, and holding their breath, at the moment when it
is about to fall, dreading lest the stichio at whose life the blow is
aimed with each blow of the axe, should avenge itself at the precise
moment when it is dislodged.'[326] This idea is abundantly illustrated
in European folk-lore, and a Swedish legend tells how, when a man was
on the point of cutting down a juniper tree, a voice was heard saying,
'Friend, hew me not.' But he gave another blow, when, to his horror and
amazement, blood gushed from the root.

Such spirit-haunted trees have been supposed to give proof of their
peculiar character by certain weird and mysterious signs. Thus the
Australian bush-demons whistle in the branches, and Mr. Schoolcraft
mentions an Indian tradition of a hollow tree, from the recesses of
which there issued on a calm day a sound like the voice of a spirit.
Hence it was considered to be inhabited by some powerful spirit, and
was deemed sacred. The holes in trees have been supposed to be the
doors through which the spirits pass, a belief which reappears in the
German idea that the holes in the oak are the pathways for elves, and
that various diseases may be cured by contact with these holes. It is
not surprising, too, that the idea of spirit-haunted trees caused them
to be regarded by the superstitious with feelings of awe. Mr. Dorman
tells us[327] of certain West Indian tribes, that if any person going
through a wood perceived a motion in the trees which he regarded as
supernatural, frightened at the strange prodigy, he would address
himself to that tree which shook the most. Similarly, when the wind
blows the long grass or waving corn, the German peasant is wont to say
that the 'Grass-wolf,' or the 'Corn-wolf' is abroad. Under a variety
of forms this animistic conception is found in different parts of the
world, and has been embodied in many a folk-tale--an Austrian Märchen
relating, for instance, how there sits in a stately fir-tree a fairy
maiden waited on by a dwarf, rewarding the innocent and plaguing the
guilty; and there is the German song of the maiden in the pine, whose
bark the boy split with a gold and silver horn.

FOOTNOTES:

[321] _Teutonic Mythology_, ii. p. 827.

[322] _Hamlet_, Act v. sc. 1.

[323] See _Folk-lore of Plants_, pp. 12, 13.

[324] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 293.

[325] _Principles of Sociology_, 1885, pp. 357-359.

[326] _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1882, p. 394; _Superstitions of
Modern Greece_, by M. Le Baron d'Estournelles.

[327] _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 288.

CHAPTER XXIX

GHOSTS AND HIDDEN TREASURES

The presence of troubled phantoms in certain localities has long been
attributed to their being interested in the whereabouts of certain
secreted treasures, the disposal of which to the rightful owner having
been frustrated through death having prematurely summoned them from
their mortal existence. Traditions of the existence of large sums of
hidden money are associated with many of our own country mansions.
Such a legend was long connected with Hulme Castle, formerly a seat
of a branch of the Prestwich family. The hoard was generally supposed
to have been hidden either in the hall itself or in the grounds
adjoining, and was said to be protected by spells and incantations.
Many years ago the hall was pulled down, but, although considerable
care was taken to search every spot, no money was discovered. Secreted
treasure is associated with the apparition of Madame Beswick, who used
to haunt Birchen Tower, Hollinwood;[328] and an eccentric spectre
known as 'Silky,' which used to play all kinds of strange pranks in
the village of Black Heddon, Northumberland, was commonly supposed to
be the troubled phantom of a certain lady who had died before having
an opportunity of disclosing the whereabouts of some hoarded money.
With the discovery of the gold, this unhappy spirit is said to have
disappeared. The story goes that one day, in a house at Black Heddon,
a terrific noise was heard, which caused the servant to exclaim, 'The
deevil's in the house! the deevil's in the house! He's come through the
ceiling!' But on the room being examined where the noise occurred, a
great dog's skin was found on the floor, filled with gold, after which
time 'Silky' was neither seen nor heard.

Equally strange is the legend related of Swinsty Hall, which tells how
its original founder was a poor weaver, who travelled to London at a
time when the plague was raging, and finding many houses desolate and
uninhabited, took possession of the money left without an owner, to
such an extent that he loaded a waggon with the wealth thus acquired,
and, returning to his home, he built Swinsty Hall. But he cannot
cleanse himself from the contamination of the ill-acquired gold, and at
times, it is said, his unquiet spirit has been seen bending over the
Greenwell Spring rubbing away at his ghastly spoil. Mr. Henderson[329]
gives the history of an apparition which, with retributive justice,
once haunted a certain Yorkshire farmer. An old woman of Sexhow, near
Stokesley, appeared after her death to a farmer of the place, and
informed him that beneath a certain tree in his apple orchard he would
find a hoard of gold and silver which she had buried there; the silver
he was to keep for his trouble, but the gold he was to give to a niece
of hers living in great poverty. The farmer went to the spot indicated,
found the money, and kept it all to himself. But from that day his
conscience gave him no rest, and every night, at home or abroad, old
Nanny's ghost dogged his steps. At last one evening the neighbours
heard him returning from Stokesley market very late; his horse was
galloping furiously, and as he passed a neighbour's house, its inmates
heard him screaming out, 'I will, I will, I will!' and looking out they
saw a little old woman in black, with a large straw hat on her head,
clinging to him. The farmer's hat was off, his hair stood on end, as
he fled past them uttering his fearful cry, 'I will, I will, I will!'
But when the horse reached the farm all was still, for the rider was a
corpse.

Tradition asserts that the 'white lady' who long haunted Blenkinsopp
Castle, is the ghost of the wife of Bryan de Blenkinsopp, who
quarrelled with her husband, and in a fit of spite she concealed a
chest of gold that took twelve of the strongest men to carry into the
castle. Filled with remorse for her undutiful conduct, the unhappy
woman cannot rest in her grave, but her spirit is doomed to wander back
to the old castle, and to mourn over the accursed wealth of which its
rightful owner was defrauded.

An old farm, popularly known in the neighbourhood as 'Sykes' Lumb
Farm,' from having been inhabited for many generations by a family of
the name of Sykes, was long haunted by an old wrinkled woman who, one
night, being interrogated by an occupier of the farm as to the cause of
her wandering about, made no reply, but proceeding towards the stump of
an old apple tree in the orchard, pointed significantly to the ground
beneath. On search being made, there was found buried deep in the earth
a jar of money, on the discovery of which the phantom vanished.

Anecdotes of treasures concealed at the bottom of wells are of frequent
occurrence, and the 'white ladies' who dwell in the lakes, wells, and
seas of so many countries, are owners of vast treasures, which they
occasionally offer to mortals. Tradition says that in a pool known as
Wimbell Pond at Acton, Suffolk, is concealed an iron chest of money,
and if any person approach the pond and throw a stone into the water,
it will ring against the chest--a small white figure having been heard
to cry in accents of distress, 'That's mine.'[330]

Scotland has many such stories. It is popularly believed that for many
ages past a pot of gold has lain at the bottom of a pool beneath a
fall of the rivulet underneath Craufurdland Bridge, about three miles
from Kilmarnock. Many attempts have been made to recover this treasure,
but something unforeseen has always happened to prevent a successful
issue. 'The last effort made, by the Laird of Craufurdland himself,'
writes Mr. Chambers,[331] 'was early in the last century, at the head
of a party of his domestics, who first dammed up the water, then
emptied the pool of its contents, and had heard their instruments clink
on the kettle, when a voice was heard saying:

    Pow, pow!
    Craufurdland tower's a' in a low!

Whereupon the laird left the scene, followed by his servants, and ran
home to save what he could. Of course, there was no fire in the house,
and when they came back to renew their operations, they found the
water falling over the lin in full force. Being now convinced that a
power above that of mortals was opposed to their researches, the laird
and his people gave up the attempt. Such is the traditionary story,
whether,' adds Mr. Chambers, 'founded on any actual occurrence, or
a mere fiction of the peasants' brain, cannot be ascertained; but it
is curious that a later and well authenticated effort to recover the
treasure was interrupted by a natural occurrence in some respects
similar.'

Vast treasures are said to be concealed beneath the ruins of Hermitage
Castle, but, as they are in the keeping of the Evil One, they are
considered beyond redemption. Venturesome persons have occasionally
made the attempt to dig for them, but a storm of thunder and lightning
has generally deterred the adventurers from proceeding, otherwise,
of course, the money would have long ago been found. It is ever, we
are told, that such supernatural obstacles come in the way of these
interesting discoveries. Mr. Chambers relates how 'an honest man in
Perthshire, named Finlay Robertson, about a hundred years ago, went
with some stout-hearted companions to seek for the treasures which were
supposed to be concealed in the darksome cave of a deceased Highland
robber, but just as they had commenced operations with their mattocks,
the whole party were instantaneously struck, as by an electric shock,
which sent them home with fear and trembling, and they were ever after
remarked as silent, mysterious men, very apt to take offence when
allusion was made to their unsuccessful enterprise.'[332]

In Scotland and the North of England, the Brownie was regarded as a
guardian of hidden treasure, and 'to him did the Borderers commit
their money or goods, when, according to the custom prevalent in wild
insecure countries, they concealed them in the earth.' Some form of
incantation was practised on the occasion, such as the dropping upon
the treasure the blood of a slaughtered animal, or burying the slain
animal with it.[333]

According to the Welsh belief, if a person die while any hoarded
money--or, indeed, metal of any kind, were it nothing more than old
iron--is still secretly hidden, the spirit of that person cannot rest.
Others affirm that it is only ill-gotten treasure which creates this
disturbance of the grave's repose; but it is generally agreed that the
soul's unquiet condition can only be relieved by finding a human hand
to take the hidden metal, and throw it down the stream of a river.
To throw it up a stream is useless. The spirit 'selects a particular
person as the subject of its attentions, and haunts that person till
asked what it wants.' A story is told of a tailor's wife at Llantwit
Major, a stout and jolly dame, who was thus haunted until she was worn
to the semblance of a skeleton, 'for not choosing to take a hoard
honestly to the Ogmore'--the favourite river in Glamorganshire for this
purpose. To quote her own words, 'I at last consented, for the sake
of quiet, to take the treasure to the river, and the spirit wafted
me through the air so high that I saw below me the church loft and
all the houses, as if I had leaned out of a balloon. When I took the
treasure to throw it into the river, in my flurry I flung it up stream
instead of down, and on this the spirit, with a savage look, tossed me
into a whirlwind, and how ever I got back to my home I know not.' The
bell-ringers found her lying insensible in the Church lane, on their
return from church, late in the evening.[334]

No piece of folk-lore is more general in Ireland than that gold or
silver may be found under nearly all the raths, cairns, or old castles
throughout the island. It is always a difficult task to exhume such
buried treasure, for some preternatural guardian or other will be
found on the alert. These buried treasures are usually deposited in
'a crock,' but whenever an attempt is made to lift it, some awful
gorgon, or monster, appears. Sometimes a rushing wind sweeps over the
plain, or from the opening made, with destructive force, carrying away
the gold-seeker's hat or spade, or even, in various instances, the
adventurer himself, who is deposited with broken bones, or a paralysed
frame, at a respectful distance from the object of his quest. 'On
the banks of a northern river, and near a small eminence,' writes a
correspondent of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,'[335] 'is a beautiful green
plot, on which two large, moss-covered stones over six hundred feet
apart are shown. It is said two immense "crocks" of gold lie buried
under these conspicuous landmarks, and that various attempts have been
made to dig round and beneath them. In all those instances when a
persistent effort has been made, a monk appeared in full habit, with a
cross in his hand to warn off sacrilegious offenders.'

Similar legends are found in different parts of the world. 'The Isle of
Yellow Sands,' says Mr. Dorman,[336] 'derives its chief interest from
the traditions and fanciful tales which the Indians relate concerning
its mineral treasures and their supernatural guardians. They pretend
that its shores are covered with a heavy, shining, yellow sand, which
they are persuaded is gold, but that the guardian spirit of the island
will not permit any to be carried away. To enforce his commands, he has
drawn together upon it myriads of eagles, hawks, and other birds of
prey, who, by their cries warn him of any intrusions upon the domain,
and assist with their claws and beaks to expel the enemy. He has also
called from the depths of the lake, large serpents of the most hideous
forms, who lie thickly coiled upon the golden sands, and hiss defiance
to the steps of the intruder. A great many years ago, they say, some
people driven by stress of weather upon the island, put a large
quantity of the glittering treasure in their canoes and attempted to
carry it off; but a gigantic spirit strode into the water and in a tone
of thunder commanded them to bring it back'--

    Listen, white man, go not there!
    Unseen spirits stalk the air;
    Ravenous birds their influence lend,
    Snakes defy, and kites defend....
    Touch not, then, the guarded lands,
    Of the Isle of Yellow Sands.

The 'Ceylon Times' records a remarkable instance of superstition among
the Tamul population employed as labourers on a coffee estate. 'It is
the belief of all Orientals,' says the writer, 'that hidden treasures
are under the guardianship of supernatural beings. The Singhalese,
however, divide the charge between demons and cobra da capellos.
Various charms are resorted to by those who wish to gain the treasures,
the demons requiring a sacrifice. Blood of a human being is the most
important, but, as far as it is known, the Cappowas have hitherto
confined themselves to the sacrifice of a white cock, combining its
blood with their own, drawn by a slight puncture in the hand or foot.'

Many curious stories are on record of persons having been informed by
ghosts of the whereabouts of hidden money, and of their having been
directed to the spot where the hoarded treasure has lain for years
secreted in its undetected recess.

In the 'Antiquarian Repertory' is a singular narrative of a man named
Richard Clarke, a farm-labourer at Hamington, Northamptonshire, who was
haunted by the ghost of a man who declared that he had been murdered
near his own house 267 years, 9 months, and 2 days ago, and buried
in an orchard. He added that his wife and children, who had lived in
Southwark, never knew what became of him; that he had some treasures
and papers buried in the cellar of a house near London, and that he
(Clarke) must seek for it, and that he (the ghost) would meet him in
the cellar, to assist him in the search. The ghost added that as soon
as the money and the writings were found, and duly delivered to certain
relatives of his in Southwark, at such an address, removed from him in
the fourth generation, he would cease to visit him, and would leave him
in peace. Clarke went to town, and on London Bridge the ghost passed
him, and conducted him to the house, where his wife had lived four
generations before. Clarke found everything answering the description
which the ghost had given him; the money and the documents were
discovered, the writings on vellum found, but those on paper decayed.
Clarke divided the money, and acted as the ghost of the murdered man
directed him to do; and the latter 'lookt chearfully upon him, and gave
him thankes, and said now he should be at rest, and spoke to those
other persons which were of his generation, relations, but they had not
courage to answer, but Clarke talkt for them.'

FOOTNOTES:

[328] See Ingram's _Haunted Homes_, 2nd S. pp. 24, 25.

[329] _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 322.

[330] _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. v. p. 195.

[331] _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, pp. 241-242.

[332] _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, p. 240.

[333] Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 247-248.

[334] Wirt Sikes: _British Goblins_, pp. 151-152.

[335] 1865, pt. ii. pp. 706-707.

[336] _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 310.

CHAPTER XXX

PHANTOM MUSIC

Many of those weird melodious sounds which romance and legendary lore
have connected with the enchanted strains of invisible music have
originated in the moaning of the winds, and the rhythmical flow of
the waves. In several of their operatic works, our dramatic composers
have skilfully introduced the music of the fairies and of other aerial
conceptions of the fancy, reminding us of those harmonious sounds which
Caliban depicts in the 'Tempest' (Act iii. sc. 2):

                            The isle is full of noises,
    Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not;
    Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments,
    Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
    That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
    Will make me sleep again.

Most countries have their stories and traditions of mysterious music
which, in many cases, has been associated with certain supernatural
properties. Under one form or another, the belief in phantom music
has extensively prevailed throughout Europe, and in many parts of
England it is still supposed to be heard, occasionally as a presage
of death. It has been generally supposed that music is the favourite
recreation of the spirits that haunt mountains, rivers, and all kinds
of lonely places. The Indians would not venture near Manitobah Island,
their superstitious fears being due to the weird sounds produced by
the waves as they beat upon the beach at the foot of the cliffs,
near its northern extremity. During the night, when a gentle breeze
was blowing from the north, the various sounds heard on the island
were quite sufficient to strike awe into their minds. These sounds
frequently resembled the ringing of distant bells; so close, indeed,
was the resemblance that travellers would awake during the night with
the impression that they were listening to chimes. When the breeze
subsided, and the waves played gently on the beach, a low wailing
sound would be heard three hundred yards from the cliffs.[337]

Sometimes music is heard at sea, and it is believed in Ireland that
when a friend or relative dies, a warning voice is discernible.
The following is a rough translation of an Irish song founded on
this superstition, which is generally sung to a singularly wild and
melancholy air:

    A low sound of song from the distance I hear,
    In the silence of night, breathing sad on my ear.
    Whence comes it? I know not--unearthly the note,
    And unearthly the tones through the air as they float;
    Yet it sounds like the lay that my mother once sung,
    And o'er her firstborn in his cradle she hung.

When ships go down at sea, it is said the death-bell is at times
distinctly heard, a superstition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes:

    And the kelpie rang,
    And the sea-maid sang,
    The dirge of lovely Rosabelle.

At the present day, indeed, all kinds of phantom musical sounds are
believed to float through the air--sounds which the peasantry, in days
past, attributed to the fairies.

The American Indians have a similar piece of legendary lore. Gayarre,
in his 'Louisiana,' says that mysterious music floats on the waters
of the river Pascagoula, 'particularly on a calm moonlight night. It
seems to issue from caverns or grottoes in the bed of the river, and
sometimes oozes up through the water under the very keel of the boat
which contains the traveller, whose ear it strikes as the distant
concert of a thousand Æolian harps. On the banks of the river, close by
the spot where the music is heard, tradition says that there existed
a tribe different from the rest of the Indians. Every night when the
moon was visible, they gathered round the beautifully carved figure
of a mermaid, and, with instruments of strange shape, worshipped the
idol with such soul-stirring music as had never before blessed human
ears. One day a priest came among them and tried to convert them from
the worship of the mermaid. But on a certain night, at midnight, there
came a rushing on the surface of the river, and the water seemed to be
seized with a convulsive fury. The Indians and the priest rushed to
the bank of the river to contemplate the supernatural spectacle. When
she saw them, the mermaid turned her tones into still more bewitching
melody, and kept chanting a sort of mystic song. The Indians listened
with growing ecstasy, and one of them plunged into the river to rise no
more. The rest--men, women, and children--followed in quick succession,
moved, as it were, with the same irresistible impulse. When the last of
the race disappeared, the river returned to its bed. Ever since that
time is heard occasionally the distant music, which the Indians say is
caused by their musical brethren, who still keep up their revels at the
bottom of the river, in the palace of the mermaid.'

It was a popular belief in years gone by, that it was dangerous to
listen long to the weirdly fascinating influence of phantom music,
or, as it was sometimes called, 'diabolic music,' as it was employed
by evil-disposed spirits for the purpose of accomplishing some wicked
design. Tradition tells how certain weird music was long since heard in
an old mansion in Schleswig Holstein. The story goes that at a wedding
there was a certain young lady present, who was the most enthusiastic
dancer far and near, and who, in spite of having danced all the
evening, petulantly exclaimed, 'If the devil himself were to call me
out, I would not refuse him.' Suddenly the door of the ball-room flew
open, and a stranger entered and invited her to dance. Round and round
they whirled unceasingly, faster and faster, until, to the horror of
all present, she fell down dead. Every year afterwards, on the same
day as this tragic event happened, exactly at midnight, the mansion
long resounded with diabolic music, the lady haunting the scene of
her fearful death. There are numerous versions of this story, and one
current in Denmark is known as 'The Indefatigable Fiddler.' It appears
that on a certain Sunday evening, some young people were merrymaking,
when it was decided to have a little dancing. In the midst of an
animated discussion as to how they could procure a musician, one of
the party boastingly said, 'Now, that leave to me. I will bring you
a musician, even if it should be the devil himself.' Thereupon he
left the house, and had not gone far when he met a poverty-looking
man with a fiddle under his arm, who, for a certain sum, agreed to
play. Soon the young people, spellbound by the fiddler's music, were
frantically dancing up and down the room unable to stop, and in spite
of their entreaties he continued playing. They must have soon died
of exhaustion, had not the parish priest arrived at the farmhouse,
and expelled the fiddler by certain mystic words. Sometimes, it is
said, the sound of music, such as harp-playing, is heard in the most
sequestered spots, and is attributed to supernatural agency. The Welsh
peasantry thought it proceeded from the fairies, who were supposed
to be specially fond of this instrument; but such music had this
peculiarity--no one could ever learn the tune.

Cortachy Castle, the seat of the Earl of Airlie, has long had its
mysterious drummer; and whenever the sound of his drum is heard, it
betokens the speedy death of a member of the Ogilvie family. The
story goes that 'either the drummer, or some officer whose emissary
he was, had excited the jealousy of a former Lord Airlie, and that
in consequence he was put to death by being thrust into his own drum
and flung from the window of the tower, in which is situated the
chamber where his music is apparently chiefly heard. It is said that
he threatened to haunt the family if his life were taken,' a promise
which he has fulfilled.[338] With this strange warning may be compared
the amusing story popularly known as 'The Drummer of Tedworth,' in
which the ghost or evil spirit of a drummer, or the ghost of a drum,
performed the principal part in this mysterious drama for 'two entire
years.' The story, as succinctly given by George Cruikshank,[339] goes
that in March 1661, Mr. Monpesson, a magistrate, caused a vagrant
drummer to be arrested, who had been annoying the country by noisy
demands for charity, and had ordered his drum to be taken from him, and
left in the bailiff's house. About the middle of the following April,
when Mr. Monpesson was preparing for a journey to London, the bailiff
sent the drum to his house. But on his return home, he was informed
that noises had been heard, and then he heard the noises himself,
which were a 'thumping and drumming,' accompanied by 'a strange noise
and hollow sound.' The sign of it when it came was like a hurling in
the air over the house, and at its going off, the beating of a drum,
like that of the 'breaking up of a guard.' After a month's disturbance
outside the house, it came into the room where the drum lay. For an
hour together it would beat 'Roundheads and Cockolds,' the 'tattoo,'
and several other points of war as well as any drummer. Upon one
occasion, when many were present, a gentleman said, 'Satan, if the
drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,' which it did at once. And
for further trial, he bid it for confirmation, if it were the drummer,
to give five knocks and no more that night, which it did, and left the
house quiet all the night after. 'But,' as George Cruikshank observes,
'strange as it certainly was, is it not still more strange that
educated gentlemen, and even clergymen, as in this case, also should
believe that the Almighty would suffer an evil spirit to disturb and
affright a whole innocent family, because the head of that family had,
in his capacity as magistrate, thought it his duty to take away a drum
from no doubt a drunken drummer, who, by his noisy conduct, had become
a nuisance to the neighbourhood?'

In many parts of the country, phantom bells are supposed to be heard
ringing their ghostly peals. Near Blackpool, about two miles out
at sea, there once stood, tradition says, the church and cemetery
of Kilmigrol, long ago submerged. Even now, in rough weather, the
melancholy chimes of the bells may be heard sounding over the restless
waters. A similar story is told of Jersey. According to a local legend,
many years ago, 'the twelve parish churches in that island possessed
each a valuable peal of bells, but during a long civil war the bells
were sold to defray the expenses of the troops. The bells were sent to
France, but on the passage the ship foundered, and everything was lost.
Since then, during a storm, these bells always ring at sea, and to
this day the fishermen of St. Ouen's Bay, before embarking, go to the
edge of the water to listen if they can hear the bells; if so, nothing
will induce them to leave the shore.' With this story may be compared
one told of Whitby Abbey, which was suppressed in 1539. The bells were
sold, and placed on board to be conveyed to London. But, as soon as
the vessel had moved out into the bay it sank, and beneath the waters
the bells may occasionally be heard, a legend which has been thus
poetically described:

    Up from the heart of the ocean
      The mellow music peals,
    Where the sunlight makes its golden path,
      And the seamew flits and wheels.

    For many a chequered century,
      Untired by flying time,
    The bells no human fingers touch
      Have rung their hidden chime.

To this day the tower of Forrabury Church, Cornwall, or, as it has been
called by Mr. Hawker, 'the silent tower of Bottreaux,' remains without
bells. It appears the bells were cast and shipped for Forrabury, but as
the ship neared the shore, the captain swore and used profane language,
whereupon the vessel sank beneath a sudden swell of the ocean. As it
went down, the bells were heard tolling with a muffled peal; and ever
since, when storms are at hand, their phantom sound is still audible
from beneath the waves:

    Still when the storm of Bottreaux's waves
    Is waking in his weedy caves,
    Those bells that sullen surges hide,
    Peal their deep tones beneath the tide--
    'Come to thy God in time,'
    Thus saith the ocean chime;
    'Storm, whirlpool, billow past,
    Come to thy God at last.'

Legends of this kind remind us of Southey's ballad of the 'Inchcape
Bell,' founded on a tragic legend. The abbots of Aberbrothock
(Arbroath) fixed a bell on a rock, as a kindly warning to sailors, that
obstruction having long been considered the chief difficulty in the
navigation of the Firth of Forth. The bell was so fastened as to be
rung by the agitation of the waves, but one day, Sir Ralph the Rover
'cut the bell from the Inchcape float,' and down sank the bell with a
gurgling sound. Afterwards,

    Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away,
    He scoured the sea for many a day,
    And now grown rich with plundered store,
    He steers his course for Scotland's shore.

But the night is dark and hazy, and--

    They hear no sound, the swell is strong,
    Though the wind hath fallen they drift along,
    Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock.
    'O Christ! It is the Inchcape rock!'

But it is too late--the ship is doomed:

    Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair;
    He cursed himself in his despair.
    The waves rush in on every side;
    The ship is sinking beneath the tide.

    But even in his dying fear
    One dreadful sound could the rover hear,
    A sound as if with the Inchcape bell,
    The devil below was ringing his knell.

Indeed, there are all kinds of whimsical stories current of phantom
bells, and according to a tradition at Tunstall, in Norfolk, the parson
and churchwardens disputed for the possession of some bells which
had become useless because the tower was burnt. But, during their
altercation, the arch-fiend quickly travelled off with the bells,
and being pursued by the parson, who began to exorcise in Latin,
he dived into the earth with his ponderous burden, and the place
where he disappeared is a boggy pool of water, called 'Hell Hole.'
Notwithstanding the aversion of the powers of darkness to such sounds,
even these bells are occasionally permitted to favour their native
place with a ghostly peal. Similarly, at Fisherty Brow, near Lonsdale,
there is a sort of hollow where, as the legend runs, a church, parson,
and congregation were swallowed up. On a Sunday morning the bells
may be heard ringing a phantom peal by anyone who puts his ear to the
ground.

Occasionally, it is said, phantom music, by way of warning, is heard
just before a death, instances of which are numerous.

Samuel Foote, in the year 1740, while visiting at his father's house in
Truro, was kept awake by sounds of sweet music. His uncle was at about
the same time murdered by assassins. This strange occurrence is thus
told by Mr. Ingram.[340] Foote's maternal uncles were Sir John Goodere
and Captain Goodere, a naval officer. In 1740 the two brothers dined
at a friend's house near Bristol. For a long time they had been on bad
terms, owing to certain money transactions, but at the dinner-table a
reconciliation was, to all appearance, arrived at between them. But, on
his return home, Sir John was waylaid by some men from his brother's
vessel, acting by his brother's authority, carried on board, and
deliberately strangled, Captain Goodere not only unconcernedly looking
on, but furnishing the rope with which the crime was committed. The
strangest part of this terrible tale, however, remains to be told. On
the night the murder was perpetrated, Foote arrived at his father's
house in Truro, and he used to relate how he was kept awake for some
time by the softest and sweetest strains of music he had ever heard. At
first he tried to fancy it was a serenade got up by some of the family
to welcome him home, but not being able to discover any trace of the
musicians, he came to the conclusion that he was deceived by his own
imagination. He shortly afterwards learnt that the murder had been
consummated at the same hour of the same night as he had been haunted
by the mysterious sounds.

FOOTNOTES:

[337] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 309.

[338] See Ingram's _Haunted Homes_, p. 53.

[339] _A Discovery Concerning Ghosts_, 1864, pp. 18, 19.

[340] _Haunted Homes_, p. 253.

CHAPTER XXXI

PHANTOM SOUNDS

The deceptiveness of sound in olden times was very little understood,
and hence originated, in most countries, a host of traditionary tales
descriptive of sundry mysterious noises which were generally attributed
to supernatural agencies. Hence, it is impossible to say how many a
ghost story would long ago have found a satisfactory solution if only
attention had been paid to the properties of sound. But by disregarding
the laws which regulate the conditions upon which sound is oftentimes
more or less audible, the imagination has frequently conjured up
the most fantastic reasons for some mysterious rumbling which has
suddenly trespassed on the silence of the night. Thus, Dr. Tyndall
has proved how the atmosphere is occasionally in an unusual degree
more transparent or opaque to sound as well as to light, and supported
this theory by referring to the audibility of fog-signals, which
vary according to the state of the weather. Facts of this kind are of
the utmost importance in accounting, it may be, for some apparently
inexplicable sound. It is sometimes forgotten, too, that sounds are
far more audible at night time than during the day, and what would
fail to attract notice, even if heard during the hours of sunlight,
would probably be treated in a different aspect when once the darkness
of evening had set in. There is perhaps no superstition so deeply
rooted in the popular mind as the belief in what are generally termed
'death-warnings'; the common opinion being that death announces its
approach by certain mysterious noises, a powerful illustration of which
occurs in 'Macbeth' (Act ii. sc. 3), where Lennox graphically describes
how, on the awful night in which Duncan is murdered--

    Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say
    Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death:
    And prophesying, with accents terrible,
    Of dire combustion, and confused events,
    New hatch'd to the woeful time.

Modern folk-lore holds either that a knocking or rumbling in the floor
is an omen of death about to happen, or that dying persons themselves
announce their dissolution to their friends in such strange sounds.[341]

In recent years one of the most interesting instances of a phantom
voice occurred in connection with the death of Mr. George Smith,
the well-known Assyriologist. This eminent scholar died at Aleppo,
on August 19, 1876, at about six o'clock in the afternoon. On the
same day, and at about the same time, as Dr. Delitzsch--a friend and
fellow-worker of Mr. Smith--was passing within a stone's throw of the
house in which he had lived when in London, he suddenly heard his own
name uttered aloud 'in a most piercing cry,' which a contemporary
record of the time said 'thrilled him to the marrow.' The fact
impressed Dr. Delitzsch so much that he looked at his watch, made a
note of the hour, and recorded the fact in his note-book, this being
one of those straightforward and unimpeachable coincidences which, even
to an opponent, is difficult to explain.

There can be no doubt that many of the unearthly noises heard near and
in lonely houses on the coast were produced by an illicit class of
spirits, that is, through the agency of smugglers, 'in order to alarm
and drive all others but their accomplices from their haunts.' Thus, in
a house at Rottingdean, Sussex, all kinds of strange noises were heard
night after night, when suddenly they ceased. Soon afterwards one of
a gang of smugglers confessed to their having made a secret passage
from the beach close by the house, and that, wishing to induce the
occupiers to abandon it, they had rolled at the dead of night tub after
tub of spirits up the passage, and so had caused it to be reported that
the place was haunted.[342] George Cruikshank tells how, in the wine
cellar of a house somewhere near Blackheath, there were sometimes heard
strange noises in the evening and at night-time, such as knocking,
groaning, footsteps, &c. The master of the house at last determined 'to
lay the ghost' if possible, and one evening, when these noises had been
heard, went with his servants to the cellar, where they discovered an
under-gardener in a drunken state. It seems that he had tunnelled a
hole from the tool-house through the wall into the cellar.

In numerous cases, too, there can be no doubt that strange noises heard
in the silent hours of the night have been due to some cleverly-devised
trick for the purpose, in many cases, of keeping the house uninhabited,
and thereby benefiting, it may be, some impecunious care-taker. A story
is told of a ghost--which turned out to be the trick of a Franciscan
friar--that answered questions by knocking in the Catholic church of
Orleans, and demanded the removal of the provost's Lutheran wife, who
had been buried there.[343] But one of the most eccentric instances
of spiritual antics was the noises said to have been heard at Epworth
Parsonage in the time of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, these sounds having
consisted of 'knockings' and 'groanings,' of 'footsteps,' and 'rustling
of silk trailing along,' 'clattering of the iron casement,' and
'clattering of the warming pan,' and all sorts of frightful noises,
which frightened even a big dog, a large mastiff, who used, at first,
when he heard the noises, 'to bark, and leap, and snap on one side
and the other, and that frequently before anyone in the room heard
the noises at all; but after two or three days he used to creep away
before the noise began, and by this the family knew it was at hand.'
Mr. Wesley at one time thought it was rats, and sent for a horn to
blow them away. But this made matters worse, for after the horn was
blown the noise came in the daytime as well. Some of the Wesley family
believed it to be supernatural hauntings, and explained the cause of
it thus: at morning and evening prayers, 'when the Rev. Samuel Wesley
commenced prayer for the king, a knocking began all round the room, and
a thundering knock attended the _Amen_.' Mr. Wesley observed that his
wife did not say '_Amen_' to the prayer for the king, but Mrs. Wesley
added she could not, for she did not believe that the Prince of Orange
was king.[344] Ewshott House, Hampshire, was disturbed by equally
strange sounds, and Glamis Castle, with its secret room, has long been
famous for the mysterious noises, knocking, and hammering heard at
night-time, which a lady once remarked reminded her of the erection of
a scaffold.

The miscreant ghosts of wicked people are supposed to make all kinds of
unearthly noises, for as they cannot enjoy peace in their graves, they
delight in annoying the occupants of their mortal haunts. Lowther Hall,
the residence of the 'bad Lord Lonsdale,' was disturbed by such uncanny
sounds that neither men nor animals were permitted to rest, and many of
the ghost stories told of our old country houses describe the peculiar
noises made by their ghostly tenants. The mother of the premier, George
Canning, used to tell her experiences of a haunted house in Plymouth,
where she stayed during a theatrical engagement. Having learnt from a
Mr. Bernard, who was connected with the theatre, that he could obtain
comfortable apartments for her at a moderate price, she accepted his
offer. 'There is,' said he, 'a house belonging to our carpenter that
is reported to be haunted, and nobody will live in it. If you like to
have it you may, and for nothing, I believe, for he is so anxious to
get a tenant; only you must not let it be known that you do not pay any
rent for it.' It turned out as Mr. Bernard had informed her, for night
after night she heard all such noises as are wont to proceed from a
workshop, although, on examining every part of the house herself, she
found nothing to account for this extraordinary series of noises.

Occasionally, it is said, before the perpetration of any dreadful
crime, as murder, a supernatural sound is heard. A murder was
committed, for instance, at Cottertown, of Auchanasie, near Keith,
on January 11, 1797, in connection with which the following facts
have been recorded: 'On the day on which the deed was done, two men,
strangers to the district, called at a farmhouse about three miles
from the house in which lived the old folk that were murdered. Shortly
before the tragic act was committed, a sound was heard passing along
the road the two men were seen to take, in the direction of the place
at which the murder was perpetrated. So loud and extraordinary was the
noise that the people left their houses to see what it was that was
passing. To the amazement of every one, nothing was to be seen, though
it was moonlight, and moonlight so bright that it aroused attention.
All believed something dreadful was to happen, and some proposed to
follow the sound. About the time this discussion was going on, a
blaze of fire arose on the hill of Auchanasie. The foul deed had been
accomplished, and the cottage set on fire. By next day all knew of what
the mysterious sound had been the forerunner.'[345] At Wheal Vor Mine
an unaccountable noise has been generally supposed to be a warning.
On Barry Island, near Cardiff, it is said that certain ghostly noises
were formerly heard in it--sounds resembling the clanking of chains,
hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, and which were supposed to
be made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of
crags to surround Carmarthen.

The following extract from Lockhart's 'Life of Sir Walter Scott'
records a strange noise which was heard while the new house at
Abbotsford was being built, the novelist living in an older part,
close adjoining: 'Walter Scott to Daniel Terry, April 30, 1818.... The
exposed state of my house has led to a mysterious disturbance. The
night before last we were awakened by a violent noise, like drawing
heavy boards along the new part of the house. I fancied something had
fallen, and thought no more about it; this was about _two_ in the
morning. Last night, at the same witching hour, the very same noise
occurred. Mrs. S., as you know, is rather timbersome, so up I got, with
Beardie's broad sword under my arm--

    Bolt upright,
    And ready to fight.

But nothing was out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned
the disturbance.' Mr. Lockhart adds: 'On the morning that Mr. Terry
received the foregoing letter in London, Mr. William Erskine was
breakfasting with him, and the chief subject of their conversation
was the sudden death of George Bullock, which had occurred on the
same night, and nearly as they could ascertain at the very hour when
Scott was aroused from his sleep by the "mysterious disturbance" here
described. This coincidence, when Scott received Erskine's minute
detail of what had happened in Tenterdon Street (that is, the death of
Bullock, who had the charge of furnishing the new rooms at Abbotsford),
made a much stronger impression on his mind than might be gathered
from the tone of an ensuing communication.' It seems that Bullock had
been at Abbotsford, and made himself a great favourite with old and
young. Sir Walter Scott, a week or two afterwards, wrote thus to Terry:
'Were you not struck with the fantastical coincidence of our nocturnal
disturbances at Abbotsford, with the melancholy event that followed? I
protest to you the noise resembled half a dozen men at work, putting
up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that
there was nobody on the premises at the time. With a few additional
touches, the story would figure in Glanville or Aubrey's collection. In
the meantime you may set it down, with poor Dubisson's warnings, as a
remarkable coincidence coming under your own observation.'

In a paper by Mrs. Edwards, in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' entitled 'The
Mystery of Pezazi,' an account is given of constant disturbing sounds
of nocturnal tree-felling heard near a bungalow in Ceylon, where
examination proved that no trees had been felled. Mrs. Edwards, her
husband, and their servants were on several occasions disturbed by
these sounds, which were unmistakable and distinct. The Singhalese
attribute these noises to a Pezazi, or spirit. A description of
precisely the same disturbances occurs, writes Mr. Andrew Lang,[346]
in Sahagun's account of the superstitions of the Aztecs, and it seems
that the Galapagos Islands, 'suthard of the line,' were haunted by the
midnight axe. 'De Quincey,' adds Mr. Lang, 'who certainly had not heard
the Ceylon story, and who probably would have mentioned Sahagun's had
he known it, describes the effect produced by the midnight axe on the
nerves of his brother, Pink: "So it was, and attested by generations
of sea-vagabonds, that every night, duly as the sun went down and the
twilight began to prevail, a sound arose--audible to other islands,
and to every ship lying quietly at anchor in that neighbourhood--of
a woodcutter's axe.... The close of the story was that after, I
suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash
was heard, announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet
was made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old woodman's
persecution.... The woodcutter's axe began to intermit about the
earliest approach of dawn, and as light strengthened it ceased
entirely, after poor Pink's ghostly panic grew insupportable."'

Among the American Indians all the sounds that issued from caverns
were thought to be produced by their spiritual inhabitants. The
Sonora Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and
nooks of their cliffs, and that echoes often heard there are their
voices. Similarly, when explosions were heard, caused by the
sulphurous gas from the rocks around the head-waters of Lake Ontario,
the superstitious Indians attributed them to the breathing of the
Manitous.[347] The modern Dayaks, Siamese, and Singhalese agree with
the Esths as to noises being caused by spirits. European folk-lore has
long ascribed most of the unexplained noises to the agency of spirits,
and to this day Franconian damsels go to a tree on St. Thomas's Day,
knock three times, and listen for the indwelling spirit to inform them
from raps within what kind of husbands they are to have. Hence the
night is known as 'Little Knocker's Night.' There is the Poltergeist of
the German, a mischievous spirit, who wanders about the house at night
making all kinds of strange noises.

FOOTNOTES:

[341] Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 145.

[342] Mrs. Latham's 'West Sussex Superstitions,' _Folk-lore Record_, i.
p. 21.

[343] See Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 146.

[344] See Southey's _Life of Wesley_.

[345] Walter Gregor: _Folk-lore of North-East of Scotland_, pp. 205,
206.

[346] _Nineteenth Century_, vol. xvii. p. 627.

[347] Dorman's _Primitive Superstitions_, p. 302.

INDEX

  Abbot, ghost of, in Abbey of Clare, 326
  Abbotsford, 434-436
  Abipones, superstitions of, 89, 336, 340
  Accidents, ghosts appear at scene of, 168
  African beliefs, 30, 90-91, 182, 346
  Agnes', St., Fast, 385
  Alaska belief, 10
  Albans, St., Duchess of, 100
  Aleutian islanders, 341
  Algonquin Indians, 40, 309, 339
  Allanbank, ghost at, 312
  Allhallow Eve, 118
  Althorp, apparition seen at, 319
  American Indian beliefs, 6, 23, 37, 89, 143, 217, 343, 414, 438
  Ancestor worship, 102
  Andaman islanders, 110
  Andrew's Eve, St., 388
  Angel of death, 273
  Angola, belief in, 182
  Animal ghosts, 102-126
  Arabian belief, 360
  Ash-ridlin, 386
  Ashley Hall, Cheshire, 326
  Assiniboins, belief of, 66
  Astwood Castle, 319
  Australian beliefs, 21, 33, 45, 67, 165, 340, 343, 360, 395
  Awd Nance, ghost so called, 326
  Aztec legend of Creation, 36
  ---- belief, 90, 437

  Bad Lord Lonsdale, 311, 432
  Bagley House, 318
  Bahrgeist, 114
  Balcarres, Lord, 372
  Banshee, 221, 271-283, 305, 383
  Barguest, 114
  Barton Hall, haunted, 312
  Basutos, belief of, 3
  Baxter, R., story told by, 250
  Bean-geese, 120
  Bear, soul as, 111
  Beckington Castle, 333
  Bees, soul in form of, 161
  Bell, passing, 15
  Bells, legends of, 420
  ---- phantom, 420
  ---- tolling of, 227
  Belludo, Spanish ghost, 147
  Benedictine nun, ghost of, 219
  Benjie Gear, ghost so called, 195
  Ben Jonson, 372
  Benshee, 273
  Bergmönch, spectre so called, 269
  Berkeley Square, mystery of, 317-318
  Berry Pomeroy Castle, 318
  Bertha of Rosenberg, 228
  Beswick, Madame, ghost of, 131, 399
  Bible in ghost laying, 192, 197
  Biddick Hall, South, 327
  Bilocation, or double personality, 367
  Birchen Tower, Hollinwood, 398
  Bird near sick-room, 97
  Birds as soul bearers, 96
  ---- phantom, 85-101
  ---- singed, souls as, 96
  ---- the way of, 96
  Birkbeck ghost, 372-373
  Birraark, 165-166
  Birth, superstitions relating to, 97
  Black dog, spectral, 107-108
  ---- friar, ghost of, 221, 308
  ---- Heddon, Northumberland, 398
  Bleeding nun, ghost of, 44
  Blenkinsopp Castle, 326, 400
  Bloodstains, indelible, 146
  Bloody hand, spectre of, 220
  Bluecap, 264
  ---- lights, 390
  Bodach au Dun, 220
  ---- Glas, 220
  Bodacher Garlin, 221
  Boggan, 114
  Boggart, at Clegg Hall, 199
  Boguest, 114
  Bohemian belief, 86, 160, 183, 211, 228, 336, 339
  Boleyn, Lady Ann, 147
  Bolivia, Yuricares of, 37
  Bolles pit, 203
  Bolotu, 28
  Bones of dead preserved, 36-37
  Booty's ghost, 241-244
  Borneo, Dayaks of, 18, 438
  Bothwell, Lady, ghost of, 74, 308
  Bottle imps, 185
  Bottreaux, bells of, 421
  Brandenburg, Elector of, 229
  Brazil, Indians of, 33, 41, 45, 90, 359, 393
  Brides, ghosts of, 61
  Bridge End House, 327
  Brocken, spectre of, 352
  Brougham, Lord, 245
  Brownies, 313, 404
  Brown lady at Rainham, 312
  Bulgarian belief, 80, 160, 189
  Bull, ghost as a, 104
  Burial-grounds, haunted, 343
  Burma, 359
  Burton Agnes Hall, 326
  Butterflies, phantom, 156-162
  Byron, Lord, 210, 221
  ---- Sir John, the Little, 313

  Caistor Hall, ghost at, 150
  Calabar superstition, 336
  Californian beliefs, 15, 35, 90
  Candles in ghost laying, 190
  ---- snuff of, taken for ghost laying, 362
  ---- spectral, 139
  Canning, George, 432
  Capelthwaite, 114
  Cassowary, 111
  Castle, sunken, 348
  Cedar room at Ashley Hall, 326
  Chappie, ghost so called, 306
  Chartley Park, 224
  Chasse Macabee, 125
  Checks against ghosts, 354-362
  Chevalier de Saxe, 171
  Chiancungi, fortune-tellers, 173
  Chibchas, 184
  Chinese belief, 6, 19, 33, 53, 55, 62, 65, 66, 72, 195, 211, 292,
    339, 358
  Choctaw belief, 29, 37
  Chough, King Arthur in form of, 94
  Christmastide, ghosts at, 302-303
  Church ghosts, 330-331
  ---- lamb, 126
  ---- porch, 332-333, 387
  ---- yard spectres, 69
  Churton Hall, 321
  Clegg Hall boggart, 199, 322
  Clock superstition, 227
  Cloud, soul as white, 4
  Cobal, ghost so called, 270
  Cock-crow, 354-356
  Cocks' feathers hinder exit of soul, 12
  Cold lad, 313
  Colt, ghost as a, 103
  Combermere Abbey, 322
  Compacts between living and dead, 245-256
  Copeland, lady of, 133
  Corby Castle, ghost at, 311
  Cornish beliefs, 103, 108, 120, 128, 201, 207, 208, 262, 294, 300,
    421
  ---- legend of King Arthur, 94
  Cornwolf, 396
  Corpse candle, 139-140
  Cortachy Castle haunted, 311, 417
  Courting a ghost, 384
  Coved saloon at Combermere Abbey, 322
  Cows, ghosts in form of, 109
  Craighouse, 325
  Creslow Manor House, 313
  Criminals, ghosts of, 69
  Crook Hall haunted, 327
  Cross, check against evil spirits, 358, 361
  Cross-roads, ghosts at, 61, 383
  Cruikshank, George, 429
  Cullaby Castle, 320
  Cumberland, 76, 78, 266, 366
  Cumnor Hall, 77, 320
  Cutty Soams, 264
  Cwn y Wybe, 118
  Cyprus, 183

  Dandy dogs, 118, 120, 121
  Danish superstitions, 8, 48, 61, 88, 97, 126, 183, 215, 289, 361,
    385, 416
  Dead, mutilation of, 359-360
  ---- unburied, 43-49
  ---- worship of, 63
  Death bell, 413
  ---- birds presage of, 97-98
  ---- warnings, 12, 13, 219, 232, 427
  Delitzsch, Dr., 428
  Demon, soul as, 62
  Denis, St., 145
  Denton Hall, 326
  Departed, Bay of the, 206
  Derwentwater, Lady, 321
  Desert, water of, 352
  Devil, compact with Lord Soulis, 323
  ---- powerless at cock-crow, 355
  ---- tries to seize soul at death, 14
  Devonshire beliefs, 97, 98, 376
  Diedrick of Bern, 125
  Dishonesty in life causes soul to wander, 51
  Doe, White, of Rylstone, 108
  Dogs of hell, 122
  ---- spectral, 105-106
  ---- the sky, 122
  Donart's Castle, St., 76
  Doors unfastened at death, 6
  Dorcas, ghost so called, 267
  Dorchester, Lord, 380
  Dorsetshire, 149
  Doves in ghost-lore, 94, 98
  Doyle, Bishop, death of, 100
  Dreams, proof of soul's existence, 17, 18
  Dress, phantom, 303-309
  Drowned, ghosts of, 206-213
  Drummer, mysterious, 311
  ---- of Tedworth, 317
  Duck, soul as, 87
  Durham, 151
  Dutch belief, 8-9
  Dyterbjernat, 125

  Eagle, 94, 96
  Easterton ghost, the, 329
  Ebb of tide, death at, 15-16
  Edge Hill, strange phenomenon at, 351
  Edgewell oak, 222
  Edgeworth, Maria, 372
  Effigy, burial in, 49
  Elixir of life, 175
  Elizabeth, Queen, and her fetch, 364
  Elymas, the sorcerer, 164
  Epworth Parsonage haunted, 328, 430
  Eskimo belief, 6, 111, 143, 359
  Essex, 111
  Ewshott House haunted, 318, 431
  Exorcism, 88, 166
  Eye, soul in the, 3, 4

  Fairy music, 413
  Fata Morgana, 352
  Feathers, game, hinder exit of soul, 11-12
  Female fairy, 273
  Fetches, 363-364
  Fiddler, the indefatigable, 416
  Fijian beliefs, 19, 23, 27-28, 182, 217, 309, 339
  Finland, custom in, 336
  Fire, check against ghosts, 358
  Fish animated by souls, 111
  Flame, soul in, 137
  Flax-seed, charm against ghosts, 362
  Flies, souls as, 161
  Flying Dutchman, 286, 293
  Foot of the Fawn, 99
  Foote, Samuel, 424
  Foundation sacrifices, 30
  French beliefs, 5, 109, 125, 133, 231, 270, 289, 291
  Furious host, 136
  Fye, or wraith, 369

  Gabriel hounds, 117, 136
  ---- Ratchets, 118-119
  Galicia, belief in, 37
  Game feathers hinder exit of soul, 11-12
  German beliefs, 5, 6, 8, 9, 56, 86, 97, 99, 123, 135-136, 155, 183,
    212, 227, 260, 338, 341, 348, 360, 388, 391, 396
  Ghosts and hidden treasures, 397-410
  ---- checks against, 354-362
  ---- different classes of, 41
  ---- headless, 33, 53, 69, 144-158, 306, 383
  ---- times of appearing, 382-390
  ---- why they wander, 50-63
  Ghost laying, 104, 179-205
  ---- of the Hill, 220
  ---- raising, 163-178
  ---- seers, 214-218
  Glamis Castle haunted, 313, 431
  Gnat, soul as, 161
  Goblin friar, 313
  Golden mountain, 146
  Gould, Madame, 98
  Grass-wolf, 396
  Grave-sow, 126
  Graves, haunted, 341
  ---- treading on, 345
  Gray sow, 126
  Greece, beliefs in, 25, 183, 394
  Greenland, beliefs in, 23, 29, 339
  Grief causes soul to wander, 61
  Gunpowder and ghosts, 360-361
  Gurlinbeg, family of, 221

  Hackwood House haunted, 32
  Hairy left hand, girl with, 221
  Hallow Eve, 388
  Hamilton, Lady, of Bothwellhaugh, 74
  Hanged, ghosts of, 53
  Hare, ghost as, 103, 271
  Harlequin, 125
  Haunted houses, 310-334
  ---- localities, 335-353
  Headless ghosts, 33, 53, 60, 144-158, 306, 383
  Heart, seat of soul, 2, 3
  Hell Hole, 423
  Henequin, 125
  Herburt family, 94
  Hermitage Castle, 322, 403
  Herring piece, 93
  ---- spear, 93
  Hidden treasures and ghosts, 397-410
  Hilton Castle, 313
  Hindu beliefs, 339
  ---- dirge, 11
  Hinton Ampner Manor House, 312
  Hoby, Lady, 321
  Holland House, 145, 314
  Holly and ghost laying, 188
  ---- charm against evil spirits, 358
  Holt Castle, 319
  Hooper of Sennen Cove, 300
  Horse, spectre as, 125
  ---- shoe, 361
  Hottentot customs at death, 336, 339
  Hound, ghost as, 105
  House-fire put out at death, 359
  Houses, haunted, 310-334
  Howard, Lady, ghost of, 104
  Hugh Capet, 125
  Hulme Castle, treasures at, 397
  Hungary, belief in, 61
  Hunt, spectral, 124-125
  Huntsman, wild, 125
  Hurons of America, belief of, 67
  Hyssington Church, ghost at, 104

  Ignes Fatui, ghost as, 50-51
  Incantations against ghosts, 164
  Inchcape Bell, 422-423
  India, beliefs in, 12, 62, 67, 96, 99, 109, 110, 340, 343, 346,
    357, 393, 395, 412, 414
  Insect life, 102
  Irish superstitions, 11, 94, 137, 146, 153, 156-157, 226, 274-275,
    344, 350, 370, 377, 383, 405, 413
  Iroquois of North America, beliefs of, 44, 347, 393
  Italian belief, 358
  ---- burial custom, 339

  Jackals, ghosts as, 9
  Japanese ghost story, 72
  ---- mode of raising ghost, 166
  Jeffrey, Lady, ghost of, 187
  Jemmy Lowther, 311
  Juniper, spirit-haunted tree, 395

  Kaffir beliefs, 2, 336
  Kaneka superstition, 230-231
  Karens, beliefs of, 45, 67, 160, 309
  Kendal, Duchess of, 100
  Kilncote church porch, 332
  Kinchardines, 220
  Kirk-grim, 125
  Knauff-Kriegen, 270
  Knockers, 262

  Lady of Copeland, 133
  ---- of Death, 273
  ---- of the Golden Casket, 129
  ---- of the Lantern, 128
  ---- Winter's walk, 156
  Lamb buried under altar, 126
  ---- church, 126
  Lambton, Madame, 327
  Lancashire, 4-5, 14, 74-75, 91-92, 112, 198, 214, 376
  Lavington, East, parsonage, 329
  Lightfoot, Lady, 77
  Lights, phantom, 127-143
  Lily, soul as, 391-392
  Lincolnshire, 129
  Lion, 226
  Little Knocker's Night, 438
  Lledrith, 370
  Locks unfastened at death, 5, 7
  Lowther Hall haunted, 432
  Ly-erg, 220
  Lyttelton, Lord, 100

  Madagascar, beliefs in, 23, 346
  Madge Figg's chair, 129
  Madness causes soul to wander, 61
  Magic circle, 167
  Malay belief, 3
  Malevolent spirits, 70
  Manes worship, 63
  Manx fishermen, 93
  Maori belief, 336
  Mark's, St., Eve, 332, 386
  Martyrs, ghosts of, 86
  Mary Way, spectre so called, 152
  Mauthe Doog, 116-117, 311
  May Moulach, 221
  Mazarin, Duchess of, 254
  Mermaid, 415
  Mexican belief, 89
  Midsummer Eve, 387
  Milky-way, the, 96
  Miners' ghosts, 257-272, 370-371
  Mines, ghosts in, 108, 262-263
  Mirage, 352
  Mohun, Lord, 372
  Money hidden by ghosts, 400-409
  Monkey, soul as, 110
  Mountain, abode of spirits, 348
  Mourning customs, 340
  Mouse, soul as, 110
  Mouth, escape of soul from, 2-5
  Murder discovered through ghost, 81-84
  ---- preceded by supernatural sounds, 433-434
  Murdered, ghosts of, 33, 64-84
  Murderers, ghosts of, 52-53, 54, 360
  Music, phantom, 411-425
  ---- at sea, 413

  Necromancy, 165
  Netherby Hall, 327
  Newstead Abbey, 313
  New Zealanders, beliefs of, 3, 35, 182
  Nix, river spirit, 202
  Norfolk, 112, 148, 149, 208, 423
  Northamptonshire, 383-384, 409-410
  Northumberland, 150, 398
  Norwegian beliefs, 68, 76, 360
  Nostrils, exit of soul through, 3
  Nun, bleeding, 44
  ---- of Walton, spectre so called, 154
  Nymph of air, 273

  Oak, holes in, 395
  Obrick's colt, 103
  Ojibway, beliefs in, 30, 162, 184, 185, 217, 291, 336, 339, 347
  Old Barbery, ghost so called, 326-327
  ---- Hummums, 316
  Orleans, Catholic church of, 430
  Ottawas, beliefs of, 45, 68
  Oulton House, Suffolk, 322
  Ouse, river, 225
  Owls and Arundel of Wardour, 99, 222
  ---- as souls, 94-95
  Oxenham family, death-omen of, 98

  Padfoot, 113
  Papuans of New Guinea, belief of, 110
  Parsonages, haunted, 328-329
  Passing bell, 15
  Pawcorance, small bird, 95
  Pearlin, Jean, 305
  Peel Castle haunted, 116-117, 311
  Peg O'Nell, ghost so called, 200, 327
  Percy, Sir Joceline, 150
  Personality, double, 367
  Peruvian beliefs, 36, 257, 387
  Pezazi, mystery of, 436-437
  Phantom bells, 420-421
  ---- birds, 85-101
  ---- butterflies, 159-162
  ---- dress, 303-309
  ---- lights, 127-143
  ---- music, 411-425
  ---- sounds, 426-438
  Philosopher's stone, 175
  Pig, ghost as, 125
  Pigeon feathers hinder exit of soul, 11-12
  ---- ghost as a, 86
  Pigott, Madame, 197
  Pileck family, 94
  Pirate wrecker, 294
  Polish legend, 94
  Poltergeist, a spectre in Germany, 438
  Polynesian belief, 45
  Pomerania, belief in, 183
  Porter, Anna Maria, 373
  Potawatomis, 184
  Powis Castle, 320
  Prophecy at death, 13-14
  Pysling, form of ghost, 70

  Rabbit, 271
  Radiant boy, 129, 311
  Rainham, story Marquis of Townshend, 312
  Ramhurst Manor House, 312
  Ravens as ghosts of the murdered, 48, 88
  ---- omens of death, 100
  Red Sea, ghosts laid in, 201, 203-204
  Redwing, noise caused by, 93
  Rich, Lady Diana, 366
  Robin redbreast, 100-101
  Robsart, Amy, 77, 202, 320
  Roof, hole made in for exit of soul, 6
  Rose, white, soul as, 392
  Roslin Chapel, 141
  Rothiemurcus, 220
  Roumenian legend, 31
  Rufus, William, fetch of, 34
  Russia, Catharine of, 369
  Russian beliefs, 2, 12, 32, 137, 159, 161, 338, 349, 358
  Rustling lady, the, 327

  Sacrifices, foundation, 30
  ---- to souls of departed, 62
  Samlesbury Hall, 322
  Sampford Peverell ghost, 322
  Sandwich Islanders, 340
  Scotch beliefs, 6, 7, 11, 61, 73, 125, 129, 169, 180, 194, 230,
    239, 258, 265, 312, 359, 369, 370, 401-402
  Scott, Sir Walter, 434-435
  Seals, spectral, 106
  Sea-phantoms, 284-302
  Seaton Delaval Castle, 321
  Second sight, 22, 233-244
  Seminoles of Florida, 4, 336
  Serpent comes out of mouth, 109
  Servian belief, 160
  Seven whistlers, 91
  Sexhow, ghost at, 399
  Shadow sight, 233
  ---- soul as, 29-32
  Sheep, ghosts as, 109
  Shelley and his wraith, 365
  Shell fire, 137
  Shrieking woman, the, 71
  Shropshire, 55, 61, 103-104, 151-153, 181-187, 190
  Shuck's Lane, 112
  Siamese superstitions, 67, 212, 339-438
  Siberian belief, 358
  Silky, name of a ghost, 130, 305, 321, 327, 398
  Silky's bridge, 131
  Simon Magus, 164
  Singed birds, souls as, 96
  Singhalese superstitions, 408, 437-438
  Skipsea Castle, 326
  Skull at Agnes Burton Hall, 326
  Smellie, W., 252
  Smith, George, the Assyriologist, 428
  Smoke, soul as, 2
  Smugglers, 429
  Snakes, ghosts in form of, 62-109
  Sneezing, explanation of, 22
  Soul-bringer, 97
  Soul, appearance of, 40-41
  ---- bringing back of, 19
  ---- destination of, 348
  ---- duplex nature of, 27
  ---- existence of depends on manner of death, 33-35
  ---- exit of, 1-16
  ---- materiality of, 24-27
  ---- nature of, 24-42
  ---- temporary exit of, 17-23, 338
  ---- voice of, 39-40
  ---- weight of, 38-39
  Souldern Rectory, 328
  Souter, or Soutra, Fell, 351
  Spanish beliefs, 5, 360
  Spectral child, 321
  ---- dogs, 111
  ---- hunt, 124-5
  ---- ships, 288-9, 294
  Spells against ghosts, 354-362
  Spirit of air, 273
  Staffordshire rhyme, 51
  Steam, soul as, 3
  Stichios, a kind of spectre, 394
  Storks, 95, 97
  Stradling, Lady, 76
  Strand varsler, 48
  Striker, 112
  Sturgeon, death omen, 222
  Suffolk belief, 149, 184-198
  Suicides, ghosts of, 53
  Sunday children, 215
  Sunken towns, 348
  Sunrise, ghosts disappear at, 390
  Sussex beliefs, 11, 37, 150, 429
  Swallow, ghost as, 86
  Swan, soul in form of, 88
  Swarth or fetch, 366
  Swedish beliefs, 88, 125, 135, 229, 289, 356, 384-395
  Swinsty Hall, 398
  Switzerland, 161
  Sykes Lumb Farm, 400-401

  Tahiti beliefs, 3, 182
  Talking dog, 311
  Tasks, or wraiths, 370
  Tasmanian belief, 340
  Tears hinder exit of soul, 8-11
  Tedworth, drummer of, 418
  Thomas's Day, St., 438
  Thuringia, Duke Louis of, sign of his death, 99
  Tibetan belief, 339
  Tide, life goes out with, 15-16
  Tipperahs of Chittagong, 181
  Tongan belief, 29
  Tower of London haunted, 314-315
  Trash, spectre dog so called, 112
  Treasures and ghosts, 397-410
  ---- guarded by evil spirits, 257-258
  Trees, spirit-haunted, 391-396
  Trevelyan, seat of, haunted, 321
  Trinity Church, York, ghost at, 330
  Tulloch Gorms, 221
  Tyrolese superstitions, 4

  Unbaptized, souls of, 136

  Valentine's Eve, St., 386
  Vampires, 189
  Vapour, soul as, 3
  Vingoes, death token of, 221
  Violets spring from graves, 393

  Waddow Hall, 327
  Waff, or fetch, 366
  Wallow Crag, ghost laid under, 312
  Walton Abbey, 306, 322
  Warwickshire, 263
  Water, relation of ghosts to, 181-182
  Weasel, soul as, 110
  Wells, haunted, 348
  Welsh superstitions, 53, 116, 122, 140, 185, 189, 260-261, 404-405,
    417
  Wheal Vor, mine haunted at, 260, 434
  Whistlers, the seven, 91
  Whistling, voice of souls, 40
  Whitby Abbey, 420
  White-breasted bird, 97, 223
  White Doe of Rylstone, 108
  ---- lady, 98, 227-229, 305, 326-327
  ---- ---- of Skipsea, 306
  ---- ---- of Sorrow, 273
  Wicked priest, 321
  Willington Mill, 306, 327
  Willow tree, anecdote connected with, 223
  Wimbell Pond haunted, 401
  Wisk hounds, 118
  Witchcraft, 7, 106
  Woman of peace, 273
  Worcestershire, 62, 100, 156, 192, 200, 226
  Wraith-seeing, 363-381
  Wren, superstition connected with, 93
  Wyecoller Hall, 312

  Yellow Sand, Isle of, 407
  Yesk hounds, 118
  Yeth hounds, 118-119
  Yorkshire, 12, 91, 108, 129-130, 150, 154, 159, 215, 366

  Zambesi superstition, 341
  Zulus, beliefs of, 30, 40, 109

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Transcriber's note:

A table of contents was missing from the original and has been added.

Footnotes were renumbered and gathered at the end of the chapter to
which they belong.

Errors in punctuation, capitalisation, and missing letters and
footnote numbers have been corrected without note. If necessary for
the placement of quotation marks or the footnote number, the source
of some quotations was verified on Internet Archive.

The following corrections were made, on page

   89 "ledy" changed to "lady" (The lady in earth by her lord lay)
   91 "Brazials" changed to "Brazilians" (The Brazilians imagined that
      the souls of the bad)
  257 2nd "to" removed (a belief to which Falstaff alludes in)
  320 "Ann" changed to "Amy" (the supposed scene of the murder of
      Lady Amy Bobsart)
  369 "ninty-ninth" changed to "ninety-ninth" (when in the
      ninety-ninth year of her age)
  439 "Becklington" changed to "Beckington" (Beckington Castle, 333)
  439 "Bergmouch" changed to "Bergmönch" (Bergmönch, spectre so
      called, 269)
  440 "Bodach Gartin" changed to "Bodacher, Garlin" (Bodacher Garlin,
      221) and the word order changed
  440 "Cassioway" changed to "Cassowary" (Cassowary, 111)
  440 "Chibehas" changed to "Chibchas" (Chibchas, 184)
  442 "Gurlinheg" changed to "Gurlinbeg" (Gurlinbeg, family of, 221)
  444 "Lledwith" changed to "Lledrith" (Lledrith, 370)
  444 "Wray" changed to "Way" (Mary Way, spectre so called, 152)
  444 "Mazarine" changed to "Mazarin" (Mazarin, Duchess of, 254)
  444 "Mohin" changed to "Mohun" (Mohun, Lord, 372)
  445 "460-469" changed to "400-409" (Money hidden by ghosts, 400-409)
  445 "Padfoit" changed to "Padfooit" (Padfooit, 113)
  445 "Padfoot" added (Padfoot, 113)
  445 "Josceline" changed to "Joceline" (Percy, Sir Joceline, 150)
  445 "Potawatomies" changed to "Potawatomis" (Potawatomis, 184)
  445 "Peverel" changed to "Peverell" (Sampford Peverell ghost, 322)
  447 "Waddon" changed to "Waddow" (Waddow Hall, 327)
  and in footnote 101: 2 words exchanged between lines, "Indo-" and
      "1872" (_Folk-lore_, 1872 p. 243; Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_,
      i. p. 289. See Kelly's _Indo-European Folk-lore_).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including unusual, archaic and
inconsistent spelling and hyphenation.

Additional: "Vanna Levou" in the quote on page 26 should probably be
"Vanua Levu" also known as "Sandelwood Island", Fuji.