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.