ANIMAL GHOSTS
It is the rule rather than the exception for ghosts to take the
form of animals. A striking feature of this form of animism is its
universality, an argument, it is said, in favour of its having
originally sprung from the old theory of metempsychosis which has
pertinaciously existed in successive stages of the world's culture.
'Possibly,' it has been suggested, 'the animal form of ghosts is a mark
of the once-supposed divinity of the dead. Ancestor worship is one
of the oldest of the creeds, and in all mythologies we find that the
gods could transform themselves into any shape at will, and frequently
took those of beasts and birds.'[105] At the same time, one would
scarcely expect to come across nowadays this fanciful belief in our
own and other civilised countries, and yet instances are of constant
occurrence, being deeply rooted in many a local tradition. Acts of
injustice done to a person cause the soul to return in animal form by
way of retribution. Thus, in Cornwall, it is a very popular fancy that
when a young woman who has loved not wisely but too well dies forsaken
and broken-hearted, she comes back to haunt her deceiver in the form
of a white hare.[106] This phantom pursues the false one everywhere,
being generally invisible to everyone but himself. It occasionally
rescues him from danger, but invariably causes his death in the end. A
Shropshire story tells[107] how 'two or three generations back there
was a lady buried in her jewels at Fitz, and afterwards the clerk
robbed her; and she used to walk Cuthery Hollow in the form of a colt.
They called it Obrick's Colt, and one night the clerk met it, and fell
on his knees, saying, "Abide, Satan! abide! I am a righteous man, and a
psalm singer."'[108] The ghost was known as Obrick's Colt from the name
of the thief, who, as the peasantry were wont to say, 'had niver no
pace atter; a was sadly troubled in his yed, and mithered.'[109]
Sometimes the spirit in animal form is that of a wicked person doomed
to wear that shape for some offence. A man who hanged himself at
Broomfield, near Shrewsbury, 'came again in the form of a large black
dog;' and an amusing Shropshire story is told of the laying of an
animal ghost at Bagbury, which took the form of a roaring bull, and
caused no small alarm. This bull, it appears, had been a very bad
man, but when his unexpected presence as a bull-ghost terrified the
neighbourhood, it was deemed desirable by the twelve parsons whose help
had been invoked to run him to earth in Hyssington Church, with candles
and all the paraphernalia employed on such occasions. But the bull,
becoming infuriated, 'made such a bust that he cracked the wall of
the church from the top to the bottom.' Their efforts were ultimately
successful, for they captured him, and as he was compressible, they
shut him up in a snuff-box, and laid him in the Red Sea for a thousand
years.
Lady Howard, a Devonshire notable of the time of James I., in spite
of her beauty and accomplishments, had many bad qualities, and amongst
others was not only guilty of unnatural cruelty to her only daughter,
but had a mysterious knack of getting rid of her husbands, having been
married no less than four times. Her misdemeanours, however, did not
escape with impunity, for, on her death, her spirit was transformed
into a hound, and compelled to run every night, between midnight and
cockcrow, from the gateway of Fitzford, her former residence, to
Oakhampton Park, and bring back to the place from whence she started a
blade of grass in her mouth, and this penance she is doomed to continue
till every blade of grass is removed from the park, which she will not
be able to effect till the end of the world.
Many spectral dogs, believed to be the souls of wicked persons, are
said to haunt the sides of rivers and pools, and the story goes that
there once lived in the hamlet of Dean Combe, Devon, a weaver of great
fame and skill. After a prosperous life he died, but the next day he
appeared sitting at the loom and working diligently as when he was
alive. His sons applied to the parson, who, hearing the noise of the
weaver's shuttle above, cried, 'Knowles! come down; this is no place
for thee.' 'I will,' said the weaver, 'as soon as I have worked out
my quill' (the quill is the shuttle-full of wool). 'Nay,' said the
vicar, 'thou hast been long enough at thy work, come down at once!' So
when the spirit came down, the vicar took a handful of earth from the
churchyard, and threw it on its face, and instantly it became a black
hound. Then the vicar took a nutshell with a hole in it, and led the
hound to the pool below the waterfall. 'Take this shell,' he said,
'and when thou shalt have dipped out the pool with it, thou mayest
rest, not before.'[110] On the west coast of Ireland, fishermen have a
strong prejudice against killing seals, owing to a popular tradition
that they enshrined 'the souls of them that were drowned at the flood.'
It was also said that such seals possessed the power of casting aside
their external skins, and disporting themselves in human form on the
sea-shore.
Within the parish of Tring, Hertford, a poor old woman was drowned
in 1751 for suspected witchcraft. A chimney-sweeper, who was the
principal perpetrator of this deed, was hanged and gibbeted near the
place where the murder was committed; and while the gibbet stood, and
long after it had disappeared, the spot was haunted by a black dog. A
correspondent of the 'Book of Days' (ii. 433) says that he was told by
the village schoolmaster, who had been 'abroad,' that he himself had
seen this diabolical dog. 'I was returning home,' said he, 'late at
night in a gig with the person who was driving. When we came near the
spot, where a portion of the gibbet had lately stood, he saw on the
bank of the roadside a flame of fire as large as a man's hat. "What's
that?" I exclaimed. "Hush!" said my companion, and suddenly pulling
in his horse, made a dead stop. I then saw an immense black dog just
in front of our horse, the strangest looking creature I ever beheld.
He was as big as a Newfoundland, but very gaunt, shaggy, with long
ears and tail, eyes like balls of fire, and large, long teeth, for he
opened his mouth and seemed to grin at us. In a few minutes the dog
disappeared, seeming to vanish like a shadow, or to sink into the
earth, and we drove on over the spot where he had lain.'
Occasionally, when loss of life has happened through an accident, a
spectre animal of some kind has been afterwards seen. Some years ago
an accident happened in a Cornish mine, whereby several men lost their
lives. As soon as help could be procured, a party descended, but the
remains of the poor fellows were discovered to be mutilated beyond
recognition. On being brought up to the surface, the clothes and a
mass of mangled flesh dropped from the bodies. A bystander, anxious
to spare the feelings of the relatives present, quickly cast the
unsightly mass into the blazing furnace of an engine close at hand. But
ever since that day the engineman positively asserted that troops of
little black dogs continually haunted the locality. Then there is the
pretty legend mentioned by Wordsworth in his poem entitled, 'The White
Doe of Rylstone,' in which is embodied a Yorkshire tradition to the
effect that the lady founder of Bolton Abbey revisited the ruins of the
venerable structure in the form of a spotless white doe:
Which, though seemingly doomed in its breast to sustain
A softened remembrance of sorrow and pain,
Is spotless, and holy, and gentle, and bright,
And glides o'er the earth like an angel of light.
So common in France are human ghosts in bestial form, 'that M.
D'Assier has invented a Darwinian way of accounting for the phenomena.
M. D'Assier, a positivist, is a believer in ghosts, but not in the
immortality of the soul. He suggests that the human _revenants_ in the
guise of sheep, cows, and shadowy creatures may be accounted for by a
kind of Atavism, or "throwing back," on the side of the spirit to the
lower animal forms out of which humanity was developed!'[111]
According to a German piece of folk-lore, the soul takes the form of a
snake, a notion we find shared by the Zulus, who revere a certain kind
of serpents as the ghosts of the dead; and the Northern Indians speak
of a serpent coming out of the mouth of a woman at death. It is further
related that out of the mouth of a sleeping person a snake creeps and
goes a long distance, and that whatever it sees, or suffers, on its
way, the sleeper dreams of. If it is prevented from returning, the
person dies.[112] Another belief tells us that the soul occasionally
escapes from the mouth in the shape of a weasel or a mouse, a
superstition to which Goethe alludes in 'Faust':
Ah! in the midst of her song,
A red mouseskin sprang out of her mouth.
Turning to similar beliefs current among distant nations, we are told
that the Andaman Islanders had a notion that at death the soul vanished
from the earth in the form of various animals and fishes; and in
Guinea, monkeys found in the locality of a graveyard are supposed to be
animated by the spirits of the dead. As Mr. Andrew Lang remarks:[113]
'Among savages who believe themselves to be descended from beasts,
nothing can be more natural than the hypothesis that the souls revert
to bestial shapes.' Certain of the North American Indian tribes believe
that the spirits of their dead enter into bears; and some of the
Papuans in New Guinea 'imagine they will reappear as certain of the
animals in their own island. The cassowary and the emu are the most
remarkable animals that they know of; they have lodged in them the
shades of their ancestors, and hence the people abstain from eating
them.'[114] Spiritualism, we are told, is very widely spread among
the Esquimos, who maintain that all animals have their spirits, and
that the spirits of men can enter into the bodies of animals.[115]
In the Ladrone Islands it was supposed that the spirits of the dead
animated the bodies of the fish, and 'therefore to make better use of
these precious spirits, they burnt the soft portions of the dead body,
and swallowed the cinders which they let float on the top of their
cocoa-nut wine.'[116]
In most parts of England there is a popular belief in a spectral dog,
which is generally described as 'large, shaggy, and black, with long
ears and tail. It does not belong to any species of living dogs, but is
severally said to represent a hound, a setter, a terrier, or a shepherd
dog, though often larger than a Newfoundland.'[117] It is commonly
supposed to be a bad spirit, haunting places where evil deeds have
been done, or where some calamity may be expected. In Lancashire, this
spectre-dog is known as 'Trash' and 'Striker,'[118] its former name
having been applied to it from the peculiar noise made by its feet,
which is supposed to resemble that of a person walking along a miry,
sloppy road, with heavy shoes; and its latter appellation from its
uttering a curious screech, which is thought to warn certain persons
of the approaching death of some relative or friend. If followed, it
retreats with its eyes fronting its pursuer, and either sinks into
the ground with a frightful shriek, or in some mysterious manner
disappears. When struck, the weapon passes through it as if it were a
mere shadow. In Norfolk and Cambridgeshire this apparition is known
to the peasantry by the name of 'shuck'--the provincial word for
'shag'--and is reported to haunt churchyards and other lonely places.
A dreary lane in the parish of Overstrand is called from this spectral
animal 'Shuck's Lane,' and it is said that if the spot where it has
been seen be examined after its disappearance, it will be found to be
scorched, and strongly impregnated with the smell of brimstone. Mrs.
Latham tells[119] how a man of notoriously bad character, who lived in
a lonely spot at the foot of the South Downs, without any companion
of either sex, was believed to be nightly haunted by evil spirits in
the form of rats. Persons passing by his cottage late at night heard
him cursing them, and desiring them to let him rest in peace. It was
supposed they were sent to do judgment on him, and would carry him away
some night. But he received his death-blow in a drunken brawl.
In the neighbourhood of Leeds there is the Padfoot, a weird apparition
about the size of a small donkey, 'with shaggy hair and large eyes
like saucers.' Mr. Baring-Gould relates[120] how a man in Horbury once
saw 'the Padfooit,' which 'in this neighbourhood is a white dog like
a "flay-craw."' It goes sometimes on two legs, sometimes it runs on
three, and to see it is a prognostication of death. He was going home
by Jenkin, and he saw a white dog in the hedge. He struck at it, and
the stick passed through it. Then the white dog looked at him, and
it had 'great saucer e'en'; and he was so 'flayed,' that he ran home
trembling and went to bed, when he fell ill and died. With this strange
apparition may be compared the Barguest, Bahrgeist, or Boguest of
Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, and the Boggart of Lancashire;
an uncanine creature, which generally assumes the form of a large black
dog with flaming eyes, and is supposed to be a presage of death. The
word 'barguest,' according to Sir Walter Scott, is from the German
'bahrgeist'--spirit of the bier; and, as it has been pointed out, the
proverbial expression to 'war like a Barguest,' shows how deep a hold
this apparition once had on the popular mind. There is a Barguest in a
glen between Darlington and Houghton, near Throstlenest, and another
haunted a piece of waste land above a spring called the Oxwells,
between Wreghorn and Headingly Hill, near Leeds. On the death of any
person of local importance in the neighbourhood the creature would
come forth, followed by all the dogs barking and howling.[121] Another
form of this animal spectre is the Capelthwaite, which, according to
common report, had the power of appearing in the form of any quadruped,
but usually chose that of a large black dog. It does not seem to have
appeared of late years, for tradition tells how a vicar of Beetham went
out in his ecclesiastical vestments to lay this troublesome spirit in
the River Bela.[122]
In Wales, there is the Gwyllgi, or 'dog of darkness,' a terrible
spectre of a mastiff which, with a baleful breath and blazing red
eyes, has often inspired terror even amongst the strong-minded Welsh
peasantry. Many stories are told of its encountering unwary travellers,
who have been so overcome by its unearthly howl, or by the glare of its
fiery eyes, that they have fallen senseless on the ground. A certain
lane, leading from Mowsiad to Lisworney-Crossways, is said to have been
haunted by a Gwyllgi of the most terrible aspect. A farmer, living near
there, was one night returning home from market on a young mare, when
suddenly the animal shied, reared, tumbled the farmer off, and bolted
for home. The farm-servants, finding the mare trembling by the barn
door, suspected she had seen the Gwyllgi, and going in search of their
master, they found him on his back in the mud, who, being questioned,
protested 'it was the Gwyllgi, and nothing less, that had made all this
trouble.'[123]
It is a popular belief in Wales that horses have the peculiar 'gift'
of seeing spectres, and carriage horses have been known to display
every sign of the utmost terror when the occupants of the carriage
could see no cause for alarm. Such an apparition is an omen of death,
and an indication that a funeral will pass before long, bearing to the
grave some person not dead at the time of the horses' fright. Another
famous dog-fiend, in the shape of a shaggy spaniel, was the 'Mauthe
Doog,' which was said to haunt Peel Castle, Isle of Man. Its favourite
place was the guard-chamber, where it would lie down by the fireside.
According to Waldron, 'the soldiers lost much of their terror by the
frequency of the sight; yet, as they believed it to be an evil spirit
waiting for an opportunity to hinder them, the belief kept them so far
in order that they refrained from swearing in its presence. But, as
the Mauthe Doog used to come out and return by the passage through the
church, by which also somebody must go to deliver the keys every night
to the captain, they continued to go together; he whose turn it was to
do that duty being accompanied by the next in rotation. On a certain
night, however, one of the soldiers, being the worse for liquor, would
go with the key alone, though it really was not his turn. His comrades
tried to dissuade him, but he said he wanted the Mauthe Doog's company,
and would try whether he was dog or devil. Soon afterwards a great
noise alarmed the soldiers; and when the adventurer returned, he was
struck with horror and speechless, nor could he even make such signs
as might give them to understand what had happened to him; but he died
with distorted features in violent agony. After this the apparition was
never seen again.'
Then there are the packs of spectral hounds, which some folk-lorists
tell us are evil spirits that have assumed this form in order to mimic
the sports of men, or to hunt their souls. They are variously named
in different parts of the country--being designated in the North,
'Gabriel's Hounds'; in Devon, the 'Wisk,' 'Yesk,' 'Yeth,' or 'Heath
Hounds'; in Wales, 'Cwn Annwn' or 'Cwn y Wybr'; and in Cornwall,
the 'Devil and his Dandy-Dogs.' Such spectral hounds are generally
described as 'monstrous human-headed dogs,' and 'black, with fiery
eyes and teeth, and sprinkled all over with blood.' They are often
heard though seldom seen, 'and seem to be passing along simply in the
air, as if in hot pursuit of their prey'; and when they appear to hang
over a house, then death or misfortune may shortly be expected. In the
gorge of Cliviger the spectre huntsman, under the name of 'Gabriel
Ratchets,' with his hounds yelping through the air, is believed to hunt
a milk-white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden,
on All Hallows Eve.[124] Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, has embodied the
local belief in the subjoined sonnet, and says: 'I never can forget the
impression made upon my mind when once arrested by the cry of these
Gabriel hounds as I passed the parish church of Sheffield one densely
dark and very still night. The sound was exactly like the questing
of a dozen beagles on the foot of a race, but not so loud, and highly
suggestive of ideas of the supernatural.'
Oft have I heard my honoured mother say,
How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds--
Those strange, unearthly, and mysterious sounds
Which on the ear through murkiest darkness fell;
And how, entranced by superstitious spell,
The trembling villager nor seldom heard,
In the quaint notes of the nocturnal bird,
Of death premonished, some sick neighbour's knell.
I, too, remember, once at midnight dark,
How these sky-yelpers startled me, and stirred
My fancy so, I could have then averred
A mimic pack of beagles low did bark.
Nor wondered I that rustic fear should trace
A spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.
In the neighbourhood of Leeds these hounds are known as 'Gabble
Retchets,' and are supposed, as in other places, to be the souls of
unbaptized children who flit restlessly about their parents' abode. The
Yeth hounds were heard some few years ago in the parish of St. Mary
Tavy by an old man named Roger Burn. He was walking in the fields, when
he suddenly heard the baying of the hounds, the shouts and horn of
the huntsman, and the smacking of his whip. The last point the old man
quoted as at once settling the question, 'How could I be mistaken? Why,
I heard the very smacking of his whip.'
But, as Mr. Yarrell has long ago explained, this mysterious noise is
caused by bean-geese, which, coming southwards in large flocks on the
approach of winter--partly from Scotland and its islands, but chiefly
from Scandinavia--choose dark nights for their migration, and utter a
loud and very peculiar cry. The sound of these birds has been observed
in every part of England, and as far west as Cornwall. One day a man
was riding alone near Land's End on a still dark night, when the
yelping cry broke out above his head so suddenly, and to appearance so
near, that he instinctively pulled up the horse as if to allow the pack
to pass, the animal trembling violently at the unexpected sounds.
An amusing account of the devil and his dandy-dogs is given by Mr.
J. Q. Couch, in his 'Folk-lore of a Cornish Village,' from which it
appears that 'a poor herdsman was journeying homeward across the
moors one windy night, when he heard at a distance among the Tors
the baying of hounds, which he soon recognised as the dismal chorus
of the dandy-dogs. It was three or four miles to his house, and, very
much alarmed, he hurried onward as fast as the treacherous nature of
the soil and the uncertainty of the path would allow; but, alas! the
melancholy yelping of the hounds, and the dismal holloa of the hunter,
came nearer and nearer. After a considerable run they had so gained
upon him that on looking back--oh, horror! he could distinctly see
hunter and dogs. The former was terrible to look at, and had the usual
complement of _saucer-eyes_, horns, and tail accorded by common consent
to the legendary devil. He was black, of course, and carried in his
hand a long hunting pole. The dogs, a numerous pack, blackened the
small patch of moor that was visible, each snorting fire, and uttering
a yelp of indescribably frightful tone. No cottage, rock, or tree was
near to give the herdsman shelter, and nothing apparently remained
to him but to abandon himself to their fury, when a happy thought
suddenly flashed upon him and suggested a resource. Just as they were
about to rush upon him, he fell on his knees in prayer. There was a
strange power in the holy words he uttered, for immediately, as if
resistance had been offered, the hell hounds stood at bay, howling more
dismally than ever, and the hunter shouted, "Bo Shrove," which means
"The boy prays," at which they all drew off on some other pursuit and
disappeared.'
Gervase of Tilbury informs us that in the thirteenth century the wild
hunt was often seen by full moon in England traversing forest and down.
In the twelfth century it was known as the Herlething, the banks of the
Wye having been the scene of the most frequent chases.
In Wales, the Cwn Annwn, or Dogs of Hell, or, as they are sometimes
called, 'Dogs of the Sky,' howl through the air 'with a voice
frightfully disproportionate to their size, full of a wild sort of
lamentation,' but, although terrible to hear, they are harmless, and
have never been known to commit any mischief. One curious peculiarity
is that the nearer these spectral hounds are to a man, the less loud
their voices sound; and the farther off they are, the louder is their
cry. According to one popular tradition, they are supposed to be
hunting through the air the soul of the wicked man the instant it
quits the body.
This superstition occupies, too, a conspicuous place in the folk-lore
of Germany and Norway. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his 'Iceland, its Scenes
and Sages,' describes it as he heard it from his guide Jon, who
related it to him under the title of the 'Yule Host.' He tells us how
'Odin, or Wodin, is the wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white
horse over the German and Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his
legion of hell hounds. Some luckless woodcutter, on a still night,
is returning through the pine-woods when suddenly his ear catches a
distant wail; a moan rolls through the interlacing branches; nearer
and nearer comes the sound. There is the winding of a long horn waxing
louder and louder, the baying of hounds, the rattle of hoofs and paws
on the pine-tree tops.' This spectral chase goes by different names.
In Thuringia and elsewhere it is 'Hakelnberg' or 'Hackelnbärend,' and
the story goes that Hakelnberg was a knight passionately fond of the
chase, who, on his death-bed, would not listen to the priest, but
said, 'I care not for heaven, I care only for the chase.' Then 'hunt
until the last day,' exclaimed the priest. And now, through storm and
sunshine, he fleets, a faint barking or yelping in the air announcing
his approach. Thorpe quotes a similar story as current in the
Netherlands,[125] and in Denmark it occurs under various forms.[126]
In Schleswig it is Duke Abel, who slew his brother in 1252. Tradition
says that in an expedition against the Frieslanders, he sank into a
deep morass as he was fording the Eyder, where, being encumbered with
the weight of his armour, he was slain. His body was buried in the
Cathedral, but his spirit found no rest. The canons dug up the corpse,
and buried it in a morass near Gottorp, but in the neighbourhood of
the place where he is buried all kinds of shrieks and strange sounds
have been heard, and 'many persons worthy of credit affirm that they
have heard sounds so resembling a huntsman's horn, that anyone would
say that a hunter was hunting there. It is, indeed, the general rumour
that Abel has appeared to many, black of aspect, riding on a small
horse, and accompanied by three hounds, which appear to be burning
like fire.'[127] In Sweden, when a noise like that of carriage and
horses is heard at night, the people say, 'Odin is passing by,' and in
Norway this spectral hunt is known as the 'Chase of the inhabitants of
Asgarth.' In Danzig, the leader of the hounds is Dyterbjernat, _i.e._
Diedrick of Bern. Near Fontainebleau, Hugh Capet is supposed to ride,
having, it is said, rushed over the palace with his hounds before
the assassination of Henry IV.; and at Blois, the hunt is called the
'Chasse Macabee.' In some parts of France the wild huntsman is known
as Harlequin, or Henequin, and in the Franche Comté he is 'Herod in
pursuit of the Holy Innocents.' This piece of folk-lore is widespread,
and it may be added that in Normandy, the Pyrenees, and in Scotland,
King Arthur has the reputation of making nightly rides.
Another form of spectre animal is the kirk-grim, which is believed
to haunt many churches. Sometimes it is a dog, sometimes a pig,
sometimes a horse, the haunting spectre being the spirit of an animal
buried alive in the churchyard for the purpose of scaring away the
sacrilegious. Swedish tradition tells how it was customary for the
early founders of Christian churches to bury a lamb under the altar.
It is said that when anyone enters a church out of service time he may
chance to see a little lamb spring across the choir and vanish. This
is the church lamb, and its appearance in the churchyard, especially
to the grave-digger, is said to betoken the death of a child.[128]
According to a Danish form of this superstition, the kirk-grim dwells
either in the tower or wherever it can find a place of concealment,
and is thought to protect the sacred building; and it is said that
in the streets of Kroskjoberg, a grave-sow, or as it is also called,
a 'gray-sow,' has frequently been seen. It is thought to be the
apparition of a sow formerly buried alive, and to forebode death and
calamity.
FOOTNOTES:
[105] _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 131.
[106] Hunt's _Popular Romances of the West of England_, p. 377.
[107] _Shropshire Folk-lore_, pp. 105, 106.
[108] See _Ibid._ pp. 108-111.
[109] See Hartshorne's _Salopia Antiqua_, p. 522
[110] _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. ii. p. 515.
[111] _Nineteenth Century_, April 1885, p. 625.
[112] See Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, ii. pp. 289, 290.
[113] _Nineteenth Century_, April 1885, p. 625.
[114] Letourneau's _Sociology_, p. 250.
[115] _Ibid._ p. 264.
[116] _Ibid._ p. 266.
[117] _Book of Days_, ii. p. 433.
[118] See Harland and Wilkinson's _Lancashire Folk-lore_, p. 91.
[119] 'West Sussex Superstitions,' _Folk-lore Record_, i. p. 23.
[120] Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 274, 275.
[121] Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 275.
[122] See Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 274-278.
[123] See Wirt Sikes' _British Goblins_, pp. 167-169.
[124] See Roby's _Traditions of Lancashire_; Homerton's _Isles of
Loch Awe_; Hardwick's _Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore_, pp.
153-176.
[125] _Northern Mythology_, iii. p. 219.
[126] _Ibid._ ii. pp. 195-202.
[127] _Northern Mythology_, ii. pp. 198, 199.
[128] See Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, ii. pp. 102, 166, 167.