PHANTOM DRESS
According to a popular ghost doctrine, the spirits of the departed
'generally come in their habits as they lived,' and as George
Cruikshank once remarked,[258] 'there is no difference in this respect
between the beggar and the king.' For they come--
Some in rags, and some in jags, and some in silken gowns.
And he adds that all narrators agree that 'the spirits appear in
similar or the same dresses which they were accustomed to wear during
their lifetime, so exactly alike that the ghost-seer could not possibly
be mistaken as to the identity of the individual.' Horatio, describing
the ghost to Hamlet, says--
A figure like your father,
Armed at all points, exactly cap-à-pé.
And it is further stated that the ghost was armed 'from top to toe,'
'from head to foot,' that 'he wore his beaver up;' and when Hamlet sees
his father's spirit he exclaims--
What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?
It is the familiar dress worn in lifetime that is, in most cases,
one of the distinguishing features of the ghost, and when Sir George
Villiers wanted to give a warning to his son, the Duke of Buckingham,
his spirit appeared to one of the duke's servants 'in the very clothes
he used to wear.' Mrs. Crowe,[259] some years ago, gave an account of
an apparition which appeared at a house in Sarratt, Hertfordshire. It
was that of a well-dressed gentleman, in a blue coat and bright gilt
buttons, but without a head. It seems that this was reported to be the
ghost of a poor man of that neighbourhood who had been murdered, and
whose head had been cut off. He could, therefore, only be recognised
by his 'blue coat and bright gilt buttons.' Indeed, many ghosts have
been nicknamed from the kinds of dress in which they have been in the
habit of appearing. Thus the ghost at Allanbank was known as 'Pearlin
Jean,' from a species of lace made of thread which she wore; and the
'White Lady' at Ashley Hall--like other ghosts who have borne the
same name--from the white drapery in which she presented herself.
Some lady ghosts have been styled 'Silky,' from the rustling of their
silken costume, in the wearing of which they have maintained the
phantom grandeur of their earthly life. There was the 'Silky' at Black
Heddon who used to appear in silken attire, oftentimes 'rattling in
her silks'; and the spirit of Denton Hall--also termed 'Silky'--walks
about in a white silk dress of antique fashion. This last 'Silky' 'was
thought to be the ghost of a lady who was mistress to the profligate
Duke of Argyll in the reign of William III., and died suddenly, not
without suspicion of murder, at Chirton, near Shields--one of his
residences. The "Banshee of Loch Nigdal," too, was arrayed in a silk
dress, green in colour. These traditions date from a period when silk
was not in common use, and therefore attracted notice in country
places.'[260] Some years ago a ghost appeared at Hampton Court,[261]
habited in a black satin dress with white kid gloves. The 'White
Lady of Skipsea' makes her midnight serenades clothed in long white
drapery. Lady Bothwell, who haunted the mansion of Woodhouselee, always
appeared in white; and the apparition of the mansion of Houndwood, in
Berwickshire--bearing the name of 'Chappie'--is clad in silk attire.
One of the ghosts seen at the celebrated Willington Mill was that of a
female in greyish garments. Sometimes she was said to be wrapped in a
sort of mantle, with her head depressed and her hands crossed on her
lap. Walton Abbey had its headless lady who used to haunt a certain
wainscotted chamber, dressed in blood-stained garments, with her infant
in her arms; and, in short, most of the ghosts that have tenanted our
country-houses have been noted for their distinctive dress.
Daniel de Foe, in his 'Essay on the History and Reality of
Apparitions,' has given many minute details as to the dress of a ghost.
He tells a laughable and highly amusing story of some robbers who broke
into a mansion in the country, and, whilst ransacking one of the rooms,
they saw, in a chair, 'a grave, ancient man, with a long full-bottomed
wig, and a rich brocaded gown,' &c. One of the robbers threatened to
tear off his 'rich brocaded gown'; another hit at him with a firelock,
and was alarmed at seeing it pass through the air; and then the old
man 'changed into the most horrible monster that ever was seen, with
eyes like two fiery daggers red hot.' The same apparition encountered
them in different rooms, and at last the servants, who were at the
top of the house, throwing some 'hand grenades' down the chimneys of
these rooms, the thieves were dispersed. Without adding further stories
of this kind, which may be taken for what they are worth, it is a
generally received belief in ghost lore that spirits are accustomed
to appear in the dresses which they wore in their lifetime--a notion
credited from the days of Pliny the Younger to the present day.
But the fact of ghosts appearing in earthly raiment has excited the
ridicule of many philosophers, who, even admitting the possibility of
a spiritual manifestation, deny that there can be the ghost of a suit
of clothes. George Cruikshank, too, who was no believer in ghosts, sums
up the matter thus: 'As it is clearly impossible for spirits to wear
dresses made of the materials of the earth, we should like to know if
there are spiritual outfitting shops for the clothing of ghosts who pay
visits on earth.' Whatever the objections may be to the appearance of
ghosts in human attire, they have not hitherto overthrown the belief in
their being seen thus clothed, and Byron, describing the 'Black Friar'
who haunted the cloisters and other parts of Newstead Abbey, tells us
that he was always
arrayed
In cowl, and beads, and dusky garb.
Indeed, as Dr. Tylor remarks,[262] 'it is an habitual feature of the
ghost stories of the civilised, as of the savage, world, that the ghost
comes dressed, and even dressed in well-known clothing worn in life.'
And he adds that the doctrine of object-souls is held by the Algonquin
tribes, the islanders of the Fijian group, and the Karens of Burmah--it
being supposed that not only men and beasts have souls, but inorganic
things. Thus, Mariner describing the Fijian belief, writes: 'If a stone
or any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward;
nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and
yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its
soul for the service of the gods. The Fijians can further show you
a sort of natural well, or deep hole in the ground, at one of their
islands, across the bottom of which runs a stream of water, in which
you may clearly see the souls of men and women, beasts and plants,
stocks and stones, canoes and horses, and of all the broken utensils
of this frail world, swimming, or rather tumbling along, one over the
other, pell-mell, into the regions of immortality.'[263] As it has been
observed, animistic conceptions of this kind are no more irrational
than the popular idea prevalent in civilised communities as to spirits
appearing in all kinds of garments.
FOOTNOTES:
[258] _A Discovery Concerning Ghosts_, p. 3.
[259] _Night Side of Nature._
[260] Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 270.
[261] See _All the Year Round_, June 22, 1867.
[262] _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 480.
[263] See Letourneau's _Sociology_, p. 250; Sir John Lubbock's _Origin
of Civilisation, and Primitive Condition of Man_, 1870, p. 246.