GHOSTS OF THE DROWNED
On the coast of Brittany there is the 'Bay of the Departed,' where,
it is said, in the dead hour of night the boatmen are summoned by
some unseen power to launch their boats and to ferry to a sacred
island the souls of men who have been drowned. On such occasions the
boat is so crowded with invisible passengers as to sink quite low in
the water, while the wails and cries of the shipwrecked are clearly
heard as the melancholy voyage progresses. On reaching the island of
Sein, the invisible passengers are numbered by unseen hands, after
which the wondering, awestruck sailors return to await in readiness
the next supernatural summons. At Guildo, on the same coast, small
phantom skiffs are reported to dart out from under the castle cliffs,
manned by spectral figures, ferrying over the treacherous sands the
souls of those unfortunate persons whose bodies lie engulfed in the
neighbourhood. So strong is the antipathy to this weird spot that,
after nightfall, none of the seafaring community will approach near
it.[197] Similar superstitions are found elsewhere, and in Cornwall,
sailors dislike walking at night near those parts of the shore where
there have been wrecks, as they are supposed to be haunted by the
ghosts of drowned sailors, and the 'calling of the dead has frequently
been heard.' 'I have been told,' writes Mr. Hunt,[198] 'that, under
certain circumstances, especially before the coming of storms, but
always at night, these callings are common. Many a fisherman has
declared he has heard the voices of dead sailors "hailing their own
names."' He further tells how a fisherman, or a pilot, was walking
one night on the sands at Porth-Towan, when all was still save the
monotonous fall of the light waves upon the sand. Suddenly, he
distinctly heard a voice from the sea exclaiming: 'The hour is come,
but not the man.'
This was repeated three times, when a black figure, like that of a man,
appeared on the top of the hill. It paused for a moment, then rushed
impetuously down the steep incline, over the sands, and was lost in
the sea. In different forms the story is current all round the Cornish
shores, and on the Norfolk coast, when any person is drowned, a voice
is said to be heard from the water, ominous of a squall.
On the Continent the same belief, with certain variations, is found.
Lord Teignmouth, in his 'Reminiscences of Many Years,' speaking of
Ullesvang, in Norway, writes: 'A very natural belief that the voice
of a person drowned is heard wailing amidst the storm is, apparently,
the only acknowledged remnant of ancient superstition still lingering
along the shores of the fiords.' In Germany, it is said that whenever
a man is drowned at sea, he announces his death to his relations, and
haunts the sea-shore. Such ghosts are supposed to make their appearance
at evening twilight, in the clothes in which they were drowned.[199]
According to a Schleswig version of this belief, the spirits of the
drowned do not enter the house, but linger about the threshold to
announce their sad errand. A story is told of a young lad who was
forced by his father to go to sea against his will. Before starting,
he bid farewell to his mother, and said, 'As you sit on the shore by
the lake think of me.' Shortly his ghost appeared to her there, and she
only knew too well afterwards that he had perished.
Among Maine fishermen there are similar stories of the ghost of the
drowned being seen. Mr. W. H. Bishop, in 'Harper's Magazine' (Sept.
1880) tells us 'there was particularly the story of the Hascall. She
broke loose from her moorings during a gale on George's banks, and
ran into and sank the Andrew Johnson, and all on board. For years
afterwards the spectres of the drowned men were reported to come on
board the Hascall at midnight, and go through the dumb show of fishing
over the side, so that no one in Gloucester could be got to sail her,
and she would not have brought sixpence in the market.' A Block Island
tradition affirms that the ghosts of certain refugees, drowned in the
surf during the revolution, are often seen struggling to reach the
shore, and occasionally their cries are distinctly heard.[200]
There is the well-known anecdote which Lord Byron, says Moore,[201]
used sometimes to mention, and which Captain Kidd related to him on
the passage. 'This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his
berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs,
and there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought,
distinctly the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the same
service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched
across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion, he shut his eyes, and
made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued; and
as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying
across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting
his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform in which he
appeared dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers,
to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished, but, in a
few months afterwards, he received the startling intelligence that on
that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian Seas. Of the
supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did
not appear to have the slightest doubt.'
A strange antipathy has long existed against rescuing a drowning man,
one reason being that the person saved would at some time or other do
injury to the man who rescued him. In China, however, this reluctance
to give help to a drowning man arises from another form of the same
superstitious dread, the idea being that the spirit of a person who
has been drowned continues to flit along the surface of the water,
until it has caused by drowning the death of a fellow creature. A
person, therefore, who is bold enough to attempt to rescue another
from drowning is believed to incur the hatred of the unquiet spirit,
which is supposed to be desirous, even at the expense of a man's life,
of escaping from its unceasing wandering. The Bohemian fisherman
shrinks from snatching a drowning man from the water, fearing that the
water-demons would take away his luck in fishing, and drown him at the
first opportunity. This, as Dr. Tylor points out,[202] is a lingering
survival of the ancient significance of this superstition, the
explanation being that the water spirit is naturally angry at being
despoiled of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against
the unlucky person who has dared to frustrate him. Thus, when a person
is drowned in Germany the remark is often made, 'The river spirit
claims his yearly sacrifice,' or 'The Nix has taken him.'
Similarly the Siamese dreads the Pnük, or water spirit, that seizes
unwary bathers, and drags them underneath the water; and the Sioux
Indians tell how men have been drowned by Unktahe, the water demon.
Speaking of the ghosts of the drowned among savage tribes, Herbert
Spenser says:[203] 'An eddy in the river, where floating sticks are
whirled round and engulfed, is not far from the place where one of
the tribe was drowned and never seen again. What more manifest,
then, than that the double of this drowned man, malicious as the
unburied dead ever are, dwells thereabouts, and pulls these things
under the surface--nay, in revenge, seizes and drags down persons who
venture near? When those who knew the drowned man are all dead, when,
after generations, the details of the story, thrust aside by more
recent stories, have been lost, there survives only the belief in a
water demon haunting the place.' We may compare the practice of the
Kamchadals, who, instead of helping a man out of the water, would drown
him by force. If rescued by any chance, no one would receive such a man
into his house, or give him food, but he was reckoned as dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[197] Jones: _Credulities Past and Present_, p. 92.
[198] _Romances of West of England_, p. 366.
[199] Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, pp. 10, 11.
[200] Quoted in Bassett's 'Legends of the Sea,' from Livermore's
_History of Block Island_.
[201] _Life of Byron._
[202] See Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 109.
[203] _Principles of Sociology_, p. 219.