GHOSTLY DEATH-WARNINGS
The belief in death-omens peculiar to certain families has long been
a fruitful source of superstition, and has been embodied in many a
strange legendary romance. Such family forewarnings of death are
of a most varied description, and are still said to be of frequent
occurrence. An ancient Roman Catholic family in Yorkshire, of the name
of Middleton, is supposed to be apprised of the death of any one of its
members by the apparition of a Benedictine nun; and Sir Walter Scott,
in his 'Peveril of the Peak,' tells us how a certain spirit is commonly
believed to attend on the Stanley family, warning them by uttering
a loud shriek of some approaching calamity, and especially 'weeping
and bemoaning herself before the death of any person of distinction
belonging to the family.' In his 'Waverley,' too, towards the end of
Fergus MacIvor's history, he alludes to the Bodach Glas, or dark grey
man. Mr. Henderson says,[208] 'Its appearance foretold death in the
Clan of ----, and I have been informed on the most credible testimony
of its appearance in our own day. The Earl of E----, a nobleman alike
beloved and respected in Scotland, was playing on the day of his
decease on the links of St. Andrews at golf. Suddenly he stopped in the
middle of the game, saying, "I can play no longer, there is the Bodach
Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to
befall me." He died that night as he was handing a candlestick to a
lady who was retiring to her room.' According to Pennant, most of the
great families in Scotland had their death-omens. Thus it is reported
'the family of Grant Rothiemurcus had the "Bodach au Dun," or the Ghost
of the Hill; and the Kinchardines the "Lham-dearg," or the Spectre
of the Bloody Hand, of whom Sir Walter Scott has given the subjoined
account from Macfarlane's MSS.: "There is much talk of a spirit called
'Ly-erg,' who frequents the Glenmore. He appears with a red hand, in
the habit of a soldier, and challenges men to fight with him. As lately
as the year 1669 he fought with three brothers, one after another, who
immediately died therefrom."'
The family of Gurlinbeg was haunted by Garlin Bodacher, and Tulloch
Gorms by May Moulach, or the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand.[209] The
Synod gave frequent orders that inquiry should be made into the truth
of this apparition, and one or two declared that they had seen one
that answered the description. An ancestor of the family of McClean,
of Lochburg, was commonly reported, before the death of any of his
race, to gallop along the sea-beach announcing the death by dismal
lamentations; and the Banshee of Loch Nigdal used to be arrayed in a
silk dress of greenish hue.
Reference is made elsewhere to the apparition of the Black Friar, the
evil genius of the Byrons, supposed to forebode misfortune to the
member of the family to whom it appeared, and Mr. Hunt has described
the death-token of the Vingoes. It seems that above the deep caverns in
a certain part of their estate rises a cairn. On this, it is asserted,
chains of fire were formerly seen ascending and descending, which were
frequently accompanied by loud and frightful noises. But it is affirmed
that these warnings have not been heard since the last male of the
family came to a violent end.[210] Whenever two owls are seen perched
on the family mansion of the family of Arundel of Wardour, it is said
that one of its members will shortly die. The strange appearance of a
white-breasted bird[211] was long thought to be a warning of death to a
family of the name of Oxenham, in Devonshire.
Equally strange is the omen with which the old baronet's family of
Clifton, of Clifton Hall, in Nottinghamshire, is forewarned when death
is about to visit one of its members. It seems that, in this case, the
omen takes the form of a sturgeon, which is seen forcing itself up
the River Trent, on whose bank the mansion of the Clifton family is
situated. With this curious tradition may be compared one connected
with the Edgewell Oak, which is commonly reported to indicate the
coming death of an inmate of Castle Dalhousie by the fall of one of
its branches. Burke, in his 'Anecdotes of the Aristocracy' (1849, i.
122), says that 'opposite the dining-room at Gordon Castle is a large
and massive willow-tree, the history of which is somewhat singular.
Duke Alexander, when four years of age, planted this willow in a tub
filled with earth; the tub floated about in a marshy piece of land,
till the shrub, expanding, burst its cerements, and struck root in the
earth below; here it grew and prospered, till it attained the present
goodly size. The Duke regarded the tree with a sort of fatherly and
even superstitious regard, half believing there was some mysterious
affinity between its fortunes and his own. If an accident happened
to the one by storm or lightning, some misfortune was not long in
befalling the other.'
It may be remembered, too, how in the Park of Chartley, near Lichfield,
has long been preserved the breed of the indigenous Staffordshire cow,
of sand white colour. In the battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was
born, and the year of the downfall of the House of Ferrers happening
about the same time, gave rise to the tradition that the birth of a
parti-coloured calf from the wild herd in Chartley Park is a sure omen
of death within the same year to a member of the family. Thus, 'by
a noticeable coincidence,' says the 'Staffordshire Chronicle' (July
1835), 'a calf of this description has been born whenever a death has
happened to the family of late years.' It appears that the death of the
seventh Earl Ferrers, and of his Countess, and of his son, Viscount
Tamworth, and of his daughter, Mrs. William Joliffe, as well as the
deaths of the son and heir of the eighth Earl and of his daughter,
Lady Francis Shirley, were each preceded by the ominous birth of the
fatal-hued calf. This tradition has been made the subject of a romantic
story entitled 'Chartley, or the Fatalist.'
Walsingham, in his 'Ypodigma Neustriæ' (1574, p. 153), informs us how,
on January 1, 1399, just before the civil wars broke out between the
houses of York and Lancaster, the River Ouse suddenly stood still at
a place called Harewood, about five miles from Bedford, so that below
this place the bed of the river was left dry for three miles together,
and above it the waters swelled to a great height. The same thing is
said to have happened at the same place in January 1648, which was just
before the death of Charles I., and many superstitious persons 'have
supposed both these stagnations of the Ouse to be supernatural and
portentous; others suppose them to be the effect of natural causes,
though a probable natural cause has not yet been assigned.'[212]
The following curious anecdote, styled 'An Irish Water-fiend,' said
to be perfectly well authenticated, is related in Burke's 'Anecdotes
of the Aristocracy' (i. 329). The hero of the tale was the Rev. James
Crawford, rector of the parish of Killina, co. Leitrim. In the autumn
of 1777, Mr. Crawford had occasion to cross the estuary called 'The
Rosses,' on the coast of Donegal, and on a pillion behind him sat his
sister-in-law, Miss Hannah Wilson. They had advanced some distance,
until the water reached the saddle-laps, when Miss Wilson became so
alarmed that she implored Mr. Crawford to get back as fast as possible
to land. 'I do not think there can be danger,' replied Crawford, 'for
I see a horseman crossing the ford not twenty yards before us.' Miss
Wilson also saw the horseman. 'You had better hail him,' said she,
'and inquire the depth of the intervening water.' Crawford checked
his horse, and hallooed to the other horseman to stop. He did stop,
and turning round, displayed a ghastly face grinning fiendishly at
Crawford, who waited for no further parley, but returned as fast as he
could. On reaching home he told his wife of the spectral rencontre. The
popular belief was that whenever any luckless person was foredoomed to
be drowned in that estuary, the fatal event was foreshown to the doomed
person by some such apparition as Crawford had seen. Despite this
monitory warning, Mr. Crawford again attempted to cross the ford of the
Rosses upon September 27, 1777, and was drowned in the attempt.
A correspondent of the 'Gentleman's Magazine' speaks of a superstition
prevalent among the peasantry in Worcestershire, that when storms,
heavy rains, or other elemental strifes take place at the death of a
great man, the spirit of the storm will not be appeased till the moment
of burial. 'This superstition,' he adds, 'gained great strength on the
occasion of the Duke of Wellington's funeral, when, after some weeks of
heavy rain, and one of the highest floods ever known in this country,
the skies began to clear, and both rain and flood abated. It was a
common observation in this part of the country, in the week before the
interment of his Grace, "Oh, the rain won't give over till the Duke is
buried."'
In Germany several princes have their warnings of death. In some
instances it is the roaring of a lion, and in others the howling of a
dog. Occasionally a similar announcement was made by the tolling of
a bell, or the striking of a clock at an unusual time. Then there is
the time-honoured White Lady, whose mysterious appearance has from
time immemorial been supposed to indicate some event of importance.
According to a popular legend, the White Lady is seen in many of the
castles of German princes and nobles, by night as well as by day,
especially when the death of any member of the family is imminent. She
is regarded as the ancestress of the race, 'shows herself always in
snow white garments, carries a bunch of keys at her side, and sometimes
rocks and watches over the children at night when their nurses sleep.'
The earliest instance of this apparition was in the sixteenth century,
and is famous under the name of 'Bertha of Rosenberg,' in Bohemia. The
white lady of other princely castles was identified with Bertha, and
the identity was accounted for by the intermarriages of other princely
houses with members of the house of Rosenberg,[213] in whose train the
White Lady passed into their castles. According to Mrs. Crowe[214]
the White Lady was long supposed to be a Countess Agnes of Orlamunde;
but a picture of a princess called Bertha, or Perchta von Rosenberg,
discovered some time since, was thought so to resemble the apparition,
that it is a disputed point which of the two ladies it is, or whether
it is or is not the same apparition that is seen at different places.
The opinion of its being the Princess Bertha, who lived in the
fifteenth century, was somewhat countenanced by the circumstance
that, at a period when, in consequence of the war, an annual benefit
which she had bequeathed to the poor was neglected, the apparition
appeared more frequently, and seemed to be unusually disturbed. The
'Archæologia' (xxxiii.) gives an extract from Brereton's 'Travels' (i.
33), which sets forth how the Queen of Bohemia told William Brereton
'that at Berlin--the Elector of Brandenburg's house--before the death
of any related in blood to that house, there appears and walks up and
down that house like unto a ghost in a white sheet, which walks during
the time of their sickness and until their death.'[215]
Cardan and Henningius Grosius relate a similar marvel of some of the
ancient families of Italy, the following being recorded by the latter
authority: 'Jacopo Donati, one of the most important families in
Venice, had a child, the heir to the family, very ill. At night, when
in bed, Donati saw the door of his chamber opened and the head of a man
thrust in. Knowing that it was not one of his servants, he roused the
house, drew his sword, went over the whole palace, all the servants
declaring that they had seen such a head thrust in at the doors of
their several chambers at the same hour; the fastenings were found all
secure, so that no one could have come in from without. The next day
the child died.'
Burton, in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' says that near Rufus Nova,
in Finland, Sweden, 'there is a lake in which, when the governor of
the castle dies, a spectrum is seen, in the habit of Arion, with a
harp, and makes excellent music, like those clocks in Cheshire which
(they say) presage death to the master of the family; or that oak in
Lanthadran Park, in Cornwall, which foreshows as much.'
One of the most celebrated ghosts of this kind in Britain is the White
Lady of Avenel, the creation of Sir Walter Scott. In the Highlands it
was long a common belief that many of the chiefs had some kind spirit
to watch over the fortunes of their house. Popular tradition has many
well-known legends about white ladies, who generally dwell in forts and
mountains as enchanted maidens waiting for deliverance. They delight
to appear in warm sunshine to poor shepherds, or herd boys. They are
either combing their long hair or washing themselves, drying wheat
or spinning, they also point out treasures, &c. They wear snow-white
or half-white black garments, yellow or green shoes, and a bunch of
keys at their side. All these and many other traits that appear in
individual legends may be traced back to a goddess of German mythology
who influences birth and death, and presides over the ordering of the
household.[216]
An interesting instance of a death-warning among uncultured tribes is
told by Mr. Lang,[217] on the authority of Mr. J. J. Atkinson, late
of Noumea, New Caledonia, which is curious because it offers among
the Kanekas an example of a belief current in Breton folk-lore. Mr.
Atkinson relates how one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit
and seemed loth to go away. After some hesitation he explained that he
was about to die, and would never see his English friend again, as his
fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood one whom he took for
the Kaneka girl of his heart, but he became aware too late that she
was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of his beloved. As
he said, so it happened, for the unlucky man shortly afterwards died.
'This is the ground-work,' adds Mr. Lang, 'of the old Breton ballad of
"Le Sieur Nann," who died after his intrigue with the forest spectre!'
A version of the ballad is printed by De la Villemarque, Barzaz-Breiz
(i. 41), and variants exist in Swedish, French, and even in a Lowland
Scotch version, sung by children in a kind of dancing game.[218]
Another story quoted by Mr. Lang tells how, in 1860, a Maneroo black
fellow died in the service of Mr. Du Ve. 'The day before he died,
having been ill some time, he said that in the night his father, his
father's friend, and a female spirit he could not recognise, had come
to him, and said that he would die next day, and that they would wait
for him.' Mr. Du Ve adds that, 'though previously the Christian belief
had been explained to this man, it had entirely failed, and that he
had gone back to the belief of his childhood.' But cases of this kind,
it would appear, are not uncommon among rude races, and have a special
value to the student of comparative folk-lore.
FOOTNOTES:
[208] _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 344.
[209] See _Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works_, 1853, viii. p. 126.
[210] _Popular Romances of West of England_, p. 372.
[211] See Chapter on 'Phantom Birds.'
[212] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1764, p. 59.
[213] See Moncure Conway's _Demonology and Devil Lore_.
[214] _Night Side of Nature_, 1854, p. 315.
[215] See _Notes and Queries_, 5th S. xi. p. 334.
[216] Chambers's _Encyclopædia_, 1886, x. p. 179.
[217] The _Nineteenth Century_, April 1865, p. 628; _Myth, Ritual, and
Religion_, 1887, i. p. 104.
[218] Fison's _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 253.