CHAPTER I

THE BOOK OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS

PREFACE TO THE NEW IMPRESSION

Since the first edition of this book appeared (1897) a considerable

number of new and startling ghost stories, British, Foreign and

Colonial, not yet published, have reached me. Second Sight abounds.

Crystal Gazing has also advanced in popularity. For a singular series

of such visions, in which distant persons and places, unknown to the

gazer, were correctly described by her, I may refer to my book, The

Making of Religion (1898). A memorial stone has been erected on the

scene of the story called "The Foul Fords" (p. 269), so that tale is

likely to endure in tradition.

July, 1899.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The chief purpose of this book is, if fortune helps, to entertain

people interested in the kind of narratives here collected. For the

sake of orderly arrangement, the stories are classed in different

grades, as they advance from the normal and familiar to the undeniably

startling. At the same time an account of the current theories of

Apparitions is offered, in language as free from technicalities as

possible. According to modern opinion every "ghost" is a

"hallucination," a false perception, the perception of something which

is not present.

It has not been thought necessary to discuss the psychological and

physiological processes involved in perception, real or false. Every

"hallucination" is a perception, "as good and true a sensation as if

there were a real object there. The object happens _not_ to be there,

that is all." {0a} We are not here concerned with the visions of

insanity, delirium, drugs, drink, remorse, or anxiety, but with

"sporadic cases of hallucination, visiting people only once in a

lifetime, which seems to be by far the most frequent type". "These,"

says Mr. James, "are on any theory hard to understand in detail. They

are often extraordinarily complete; and the fact that many of them are

reported as _veridical_, that is, as coinciding with real events, such

as accidents, deaths, etc., of the persons seen, is an additional

complication of the phenomenon." {0b} A ghost, if seen, is undeniably

so far a "hallucination" that it gives the impression of the presence

of a real person, in flesh, blood, and usually clothes. No such

person in flesh, blood, and clothes, is actually there. So far, at

least, every ghost is a hallucination, "_that_" in the language of

Captain Cuttle, "you may lay to," without offending science, religion,

or common-sense. And that, in brief, is the modern doctrine of

ghosts.

The old doctrine of "ghosts" regarded them as actual "spirits" of the

living or the dead, freed from the flesh or from the grave. This

view, whatever else may be said for it, represents the simple

philosophy of the savage, which may be correct or erroneous. About

the time of the Reformation, writers, especially Protestant writers,

preferred to look on apparitions as the work of deceitful devils, who

masqueraded in the aspect of the dead or living, or made up phantasms

out of "compressed air". The common-sense of the eighteenth century

dismissed all apparitions as "dreams" or hoaxes, or illusions caused

by real objects misinterpreted, such as rats, cats, white posts,

maniacs at large, sleep-walkers, thieves, and so forth. Modern

science, when it admits the possibility of occasional hallucinations

in the sane and healthy, also admits, of course, the existence of

apparitions. These, for our purposes, are hallucinatory appearances

occurring in the experience of people healthy and sane. The

difficulty begins when we ask whether these appearances ever have any

provoking mental cause outside the minds of the people who experience

them--any cause arising in the minds of others, alive or dead. This

is a question which orthodox psychology does not approach, standing

aside from any evidence which may be produced.

This book does not pretend to be a convincing, but merely an

illustrative collection of evidence. It may, or may not, suggest to

some readers the desirableness of further inquiry; the author

certainly does not hope to do more, if as much.

It may be urged that many of the stories here narrated come from

remote times, and, as the testimony for these cannot be rigidly

studied, that the old unauthenticated stories clash with the analogous

tales current on better authority in our own day. But these ancient

legends are given, not as evidence, but for three reasons: first,

because of their merit as mere stories; next, because several of them

are now perhaps for the first time offered with a critical discussion

of their historical sources; lastly, because the old legends seem to

show how the fancy of periods less critical than ours dealt with such

facts as are now reported in a dull undramatic manner. Thus (1) the

Icelandic ghost stories have peculiar literary merit as simple

dramatic narratives. (2) Every one has heard of the Wesley ghost, Sir

George Villiers's spectre, Lord Lyttelton's ghost, the Beresford

ghost, Mr. Williams's dream of Mr. Perceval's murder, and so forth.

But the original sources have not, as a rule, been examined in the

ordinary spirit of calm historical criticism, by aid of a comparison

of the earliest versions in print or manuscript. (3) Even ghost

stories, as a rule, have some basis of fact, whether fact of

hallucination, or illusion, or imposture. They are, at lowest, "human

documents". Now, granting such facts (of imposture, hallucination, or

what you will), as our dull, modern narratives contain, we can regard

these facts, or things like these, as the nuclei which our less

critical ancestors elaborated into their extraordinary romances. In

this way the belief in demoniacal possession (distinguished, as such,

from madness and epilepsy) has its nucleus, some contend, in the

phenomena of alternating personalities in certain patients. Their

characters, ideas, habits, and even voices change, and the most

obvious solution of the problem, in the past, was to suppose that a

new alien personality--a "devil"--had entered into the sufferer.

Again, the phenomena occurring in "haunted houses" (whether caused, or

not, by imposture or hallucination, or both) were easily magnified

into such legends as that of Grettir and Glam, and into the

monstrosities of the witch trials. Once more the simple hallucination

of a dead person's appearance in his house demanded an explanation.

This was easily given by evolving a legend that he was a spirit,

escaped from purgatory or the grave, to fulfil a definite purpose.

The rarity of such purposeful ghosts in an age like ours, so rich in

ghost stories, must have a cause. That cause is, probably, a

dwindling of the myth-making faculty.

Any one who takes these matters seriously, as facts in human nature,

must have discovered the difficulty of getting evidence at first hand.

This arises from several causes. First, the cock-sure common-sense of

the years from 1660 to 1850, or so, regarded every one who had

experience of a hallucination as a dupe, a lunatic, or a liar. In

this healthy state of opinion, eminent people like Lord Brougham kept

their experience to themselves, or, at most, nervously protested that

they "were sure it was only a dream". Next, to tell the story was,

often, to enter on a narrative of intimate, perhaps painful, domestic

circumstances. Thirdly, many persons now refuse information as a

matter of "principle," or of "religious principle," though it is

difficult to see where either principle or religion is concerned, if

the witness is telling what he believes to be true. Next, some

devotees of science aver that these studies may bring back faith by a

side wind, and, with faith, the fires of Smithfield and the torturing

of witches. These opponents are what Professor Huxley called

"dreadful consequences argufiers," when similar reasons were urged

against the doctrine of evolution. Their position is strongest when

they maintain that these topics have a tendency to befog the

intellect. A desire to prove the existence of "new forces" may beget

indifference to logic and to the laws of evidence. This is true, and

we have several dreadful examples among men otherwise scientific. But

all studies have their temptations. Many a historian, to prove the

guilt or innocence of Queen Mary, has put evidence, and logic, and

common honesty far from him. Yet this is no reason for abandoning the

study of history.

There is another class of difficulties. As anthropology becomes

popular, every inquirer knows what customs he _ought_ to find among

savages, so, of course, he finds them. In the same way, people may

now know what customs it is orthodox to find among ghosts, and may

pretend to find them, or may simulate them by imposture. The white

sheet and clanking chains are forsaken for a more realistic rendering

of the ghostly part. The desire of social notoriety may beget wanton

fabrications. In short, all studies have their perils, and these are

among the dangers which beset the path of the inquirer into things

ghostly. He must adopt the stoical maxim: "Be sober and do not

believe"--in a hurry.

If there be truth in even one case of "telepathy," it will follow that

the human soul is a thing endowed with attributes not yet recognised

by science. It cannot be denied that this is a serious consideration,

and that very startling consequences might be deduced from it; such

beliefs, indeed, as were generally entertained in the ages of

Christian darkness which preceded the present era of enlightenment.

But our business in studies of any kind is, of course, with truth, as

we are often told, not with the consequences, however ruinous to our

most settled convictions, or however pernicious to society.

The very opposite objection comes from the side of religion. These

things we learn, are spiritual mysteries into which men must not

inquire. This is only a relic of the ancient opinion that he was an

impious character who first launched a boat, God having made man a

terrestrial animal. Assuredly God put us into a world of phenomena,

and gave us inquiring minds. We have as much right to explore the

phenomena of these minds as to explore the ocean. Again, if it be

said that our inquiries may lead to an undignified theory of the

future life (so far they have not led to any theory at all), that,

also, is the position of the Dreadful Consequences Argufier. Lastly,

"the stories may frighten children". For children the book is not

written, any more than if it were a treatise on comparative anatomy.

The author has frequently been asked, both publicly and privately:

"Do you believe in ghosts?" One can only answer: "How do you define

a ghost?" I do believe, with all students of human nature, in

hallucinations of one, or of several, or even of all the senses. But

as to whether such hallucinations, among the sane, are ever caused by

psychical influences from the minds of others, alive or dead, not

communicated through the ordinary channels of sense, my mind is in a

balance of doubt. It is a question of evidence.

In this collection many stories are given without the real names of

the witnesses. In most of the cases the real names, and their owners,

are well known to myself. In not publishing the names I only take the

common privilege of writers on medicine and psychology. In other

instances the names are known to the managers of the Society for

Psychical Research, who have kindly permitted me to borrow from their

collections.

While this book passed through the press, a long correspondence called

"On the Trail of a Ghost" appeared in The Times. It illustrated the

copious fallacies which haunt the human intellect. Thus it was

maintained by some persons, and denied by others, that sounds of

unknown origin were occasionally heard in a certain house. These, it

was suggested, might (if really heard) be caused by slight seismic

disturbances. Now many people argue, "Blunderstone House is not

haunted, for I passed a night there, and nothing unusual occurred".

Apply this to a house where noises are actually caused by young

earthquakes. Would anybody say: "There are no seismic disturbances

near Blunderstone House, for I passed a night there, and none

occurred"? Why should a noisy ghost (if there is such a thing) or a

hallucinatory sound (if there is such a thing), be expected to be more

punctual and pertinacious than a seismic disturbance? Again, the

gentleman who opened the correspondence with a long statement on the

negative side, cried out, like others, for scientific publicity, for

names of people and places. But neither he nor his allies gave their

own names. He did not precisely establish his claim to confidence by

publishing his version of private conversations. Yet he expected

science and the public to believe his anonymous account of a

conversation, with an unnamed person, at which he did not and could

not pretend to have been present. He had a theory of sounds heard by

himself which could have been proved, or disproved, in five minutes,

by a simple experiment. But that experiment he does not say that he

made.

This kind of evidence is thought good enough on the negative side. It

certainly would not be accepted by any sane person for the affirmative

side. If what is called psychical research has no other results, at

least it enables us to perceive the fallacies which can impose on the

credulity of common-sense.

In preparing this collection of tales, I owe much to Mr. W. A.

Craigie, who translated the stories from the Gaelic and the Icelandic;

to Miss Elspeth Campbell, who gives a version of the curious Argyll

tradition of Ticonderoga (rhymed by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who

put a Cameron where a Campbell should be); to Miss Violet Simpson, who

found the Windham MS. about the Duke of Buckingham's story, and made

other researches; and to Miss Goodrich Freer, who pointed out the

family version of "The Tyrone Ghost".

CHAPTER I

Arbuthnot on Political Lying. Begin with "Great Swingeing

Falsehoods". The Opposite Method to be used in telling Ghost Stones.

Begin with the more Familiar and Credible. Sleep. Dreams. Ghosts

are identical with Waking Dreams. Possibility of being Asleep when we

think we are Awake. Dreams shared by several People. Story of the

Dog Fanti. The Swithinbank Dream. Common Features of Ghosts and

Dreams. Mark Twain's Story. Theory of Common-sense. Not Logical.

Fulfilled Dreams. The Pig in the Palace. The Mignonette. Dreams of

Reawakened Memory. The Lost Cheque. The Ducks' Eggs. The Lost Key.

Drama in Dreams. The Lost Securities. The Portuguese Gold-piece.

St. Augustine's Story. The Two Curmas. Knowledge acquired in Dreams.

The Assyrian Priest. The Deja Vu. "I have been here before." Sir

Walter's Experience. Explanations. The Knot in the Shutter.

Transition to Stranger Dreams.

Arbuthnot, in his humorous work on Political Lying, commends the Whigs

for occasionally trying the people with "great swingeing falsehoods".

When these are once got down by the populace, anything may follow

without difficulty. Excellently as this practice has worked in

politics (compare the warming-pan lie of 1688), in the telling of

ghost stories a different plan has its merits. Beginning with the

common-place and familiar, and therefore credible, with the thin end

of the wedge, in fact, a wise narrator will advance to the rather

unusual, the extremely rare, the undeniably startling, and so arrive

at statements which, without this discreet and gradual initiation, a

hasty reader might, justly or unjustly, dismiss as "great swingeing

falsehoods".

The nature of things and of men has fortunately made this method at

once easy, obvious, and scientific. Even in the rather fantastic

realm of ghosts, the stories fall into regular groups, advancing in

difficulty, like exercises in music or in a foreign language. We

therefore start from the easiest Exercises in Belief, or even from

those which present no difficulty at all. The defect of the method is

that easy stories are dull reading. But the student can "skip". We

begin with common every-night dreams.

Sleeping is as natural as waking; dreams are nearly as frequent as

every-day sensations, thoughts, and emotions. But dreams, being

familiar, are credible; it is admitted that people do dream; we reach

the less credible as we advance to the less familiar. For, if we

think for a moment, the alleged events of ghostdom--apparitions of all

sorts--are precisely identical with the every-night phenomena of

dreaming, except for the avowed element of sleep in dreams.

In dreams, time and space are annihilated, and two severed lovers may

be made happy. In dreams, amidst a grotesque confusion of things

remembered and things forgot, we _see_ the events of the past (I have

been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy); we are present in

places remote; we behold the absent; we converse with the dead, and we

may even (let us say by chance coincidence) forecast the future. All

these things, except the last, are familiar to everybody who dreams.

It is also certain that similar, but yet more vivid, false experiences

may be produced, at the word of the hypnotiser, in persons under the

hypnotic sleep. A hypnotised man will take water for wine, and get

drunk on it.

Now, the ghostly is nothing but the experience, when men are awake, or

_apparently_ awake, of the every-night phenomena of dreaming. The

vision of the absent seen by a waking, or apparently waking, man is

called "a wraith"; the waking, or apparently waking, vision of the

dead is called "a ghost". Yet, as St. Augustine says, the absent man,

or the dead man, may know no more of the vision, and may have no more

to do with causing it, than have the absent or the dead whom we are

perfectly accustomed to see in our dreams. Moreover, the

comparatively rare cases in which two or more waking people are

alleged to have seen the same "ghost," simultaneously or in

succession, have _their_ parallel in sleep, where two or more persons

simultaneously dream the same dream. Of this curious fact let us give

one example: the names only are altered.

THE DOG FANTI

Mrs. Ogilvie of Drumquaigh had a poodle named Fanti. Her family, or

at least those who lived with her, were her son, the laird, and three

daughters. Of these the two younger, at a certain recent date, were

paying a short visit to a neighbouring country house. Mrs. Ogilvie

was accustomed to breakfast in her bedroom, not being in the best of

health. One morning Miss Ogilvie came down to breakfast and said to

her brother, "I had an odd dream; I dreamed Fanti went mad".

"Well, that _is_ odd," said her brother. "So did I. We had better

not tell mother; it might make her nervous."

Miss Ogilvie went up after breakfast to see the elder lady, who said,

"Do turn out Fanti; I dreamed last night that he went mad and bit".

In the afternoon the two younger sisters came home.

"How did you enjoy yourselves?" one of the others asked.

"We didn't sleep well. I was dreaming that Fanti went mad when Mary

wakened me, and said she had dreamed Fanti went mad, and turned into a

cat, and we threw him into the fire."

Thus, as several people may see the same ghost at once, several people

may dream the same dream at once. As a matter of fact, Fanti lived,

sane and harmless, "all the length of all his years". {4}

Now, this anecdote is credible, certainly is credible by people who

know the dreaming family. It is nothing more than a curiosity of

coincidences; and, as Fanti remained a sober, peaceful hound, in face

of five dreamers, the absence of fulfilment increases the readiness of

belief. But compare the case of the Swithinbanks. Mr. Swithinbank,

on 20th May, 1883, signed for publication a statement to this effect:--

During the Peninsular war his father and his two brothers were

quartered at Dover. Their family were at Bradford. The brothers

slept in various quarters of Dover camp. One morning they met after

parade. "O William, I have had a queer dream," said Mr. Swithinbank's

father. "So have I," replied the brother, when, to the astonishment

of both, the other brother, John, said, "I have had a queer dream as

well. I dreamt that mother was dead." "So did I," said each of the

other brothers. And the mother had died on the night of this

dreaming. Mrs. Hudson, daughter of one of the brothers, heard the

story from all three. {5a}

The distribution of the fulfilled is less than that of the unfulfilled

dream by three to five. It has the extra coincidence of the death.

But as it is very common to dream of deaths, some such dreams must

occasionally hit the target.

Other examples might be given of shared dreams: {5b} they are only

mentioned here to prove that all the _waking_ experiences of things

ghostly, such as visions of the absent and of the dead, and of the

non-existent, are familiar, and may even be common simultaneously to

several persons, in _sleep_. That men may sleep without being aware

of it, even while walking abroad; that we may drift, while we think

ourselves awake, into a semi-somnolent state for a period of time

perhaps almost imperceptible is certain enough. Now, the peculiarity

of sleep is to expand or contract time, as we may choose to put the

case. Alfred Maury, the well-known writer on Greek religion, dreamed

a long, vivid dream of the Reign of Terror, of his own trial before a

Revolutionary Tribunal, and of his execution, in the moment of time

during which he was awakened by the accidental fall of a rod in the

canopy of his bed, which touched him on the neck. Thus even a

prolonged interview with a ghost may _conceivably_ be, in real time, a

less than momentary dream occupying an imperceptible tenth of a second

of somnolence, the sleeper not realising that he has been asleep.

Mark Twain, who is seriously interested in these subjects, has

published an experience illustrative of such possibilities. He tells

his tale at considerable length, but it amounts to this:--

MARK TWAIN'S STORY

Mark was smoking his cigar outside the door of his house when he saw a

man, a stranger, approaching him. Suddenly he ceased to be visible!

Mark, who had long desired to see a ghost, rushed into his house to

record the phenomenon. There, seated on a chair in the hall, was the

very man, who had come on some business. As Mark's negro footman

acts, when the bell is rung, on the principle, "Perhaps they won't

persevere," his master is wholly unable to account for the

disappearance of the visitor, whom he never saw passing him or waiting

at his door--except on the theory of an unconscious nap. Now, a

disappearance is quite as mystical as an appearance, and much less

common.

This theory, that apparitions come in an infinitesimal moment of

sleep, while a man is conscious of his surroundings and believes

himself to be awake was the current explanation of ghosts in the

eighteenth century. Any educated man who "saw a ghost" or "had a

hallucination" called it a "dream," as Lord Brougham and Lord

Lyttelton did. But, if the death of the person seen coincided with

his appearance to them, they illogically argued that, out of the

innumerable multitude of dreams, some _must_ coincide, accidentally,

with facts. They strove to forget that though dreams in sleep are

universal and countless, "dreams" in waking hours are extremely rare--

unique, for instance, in Lord Brougham's own experience. Therefore,

the odds against chance coincidence are very great.

Dreams only form subjects of good dream-stories when the vision

coincides with and adequately represents an _unknown_ event in the

past, the present, or the future. We dream, however vividly, of the

murder of Rizzio. Nobody is surprised at that, the incident being

familiar to most people, in history and art. But, if we dreamed of

being present at an unchronicled scene in Queen Mary's life, and if,

_after_ the dream was recorded, a document proving its accuracy should

be for the first time recovered, then there is matter for a good

dream-story. {8} Again, we dream of an event not to be naturally

guessed or known by us, and our dream (which should be recorded before

tidings of the fact arrive) tallies with the news of the event when it

comes. Or, finally, we dream of an event (recording the dream), and

that event occurs in the future. In all these cases the actual

occurrence of the unknown event is the only addition to the dream's

usual power of crumpling up time and space.

As a rule such dreams are only mentioned _after_ the event, and so are

not worth noticing. Very often the dream is forgotten by the dreamer

till he hears of or sees the event. He is then either reminded of his

dream by association of ideas or _he has never dreamed at all_, and

his belief that he has dreamed is only a form of false memory, of the

common sensation of "having been here before," which he attributes to

an awakened memory of a real dream. Still more often the dream is

unconsciously cooked by the narrator into harmony with facts.

As a rule fulfilled dreams deal with the most trivial affairs, and

such as, being usual, may readily occur by chance coincidence. Indeed

it is impossible to set limits to such coincidence, for it would

indeed be extraordinary if extraordinary coincidences never occurred.

To take examples:--

THE PIG IN THE DINING-ROOM

Mrs. Atlay, wife of a late Bishop of Hereford, dreamed one night that

there was a pig in the dining-room of the palace. She came

downstairs, and in the hall told her governess and children of the

dream, before family prayers. When these were over, nobody who was

told the story having left the hall in the interval, she went into the

dining-room and there was the pig. It was proved to have escaped from

the sty after Mrs. Atlay got up. Here the dream is of the common

grotesque type; millions of such things are dreamed. The event, the

pig in the palace, is unusual, and the coincidence of pig and dream is

still more so. But unusual events must occur, and each has millions

of dreams as targets to aim at, so to speak. It would be surprising

if no such target were ever hit.

Here is another case--curious because the dream was forgotten till the

corresponding event occurred, but there was a slight discrepancy

between event and dream.

THE MIGNONETTE

Mrs. Herbert returned with her husband from London to their country

home on the Border. They arrived rather late in the day, prepared to

visit the garden, and decided to put off the visit till the morrow.

At night Mrs. Herbert dreamed that they went into the garden, down a

long walk to a mignonette bed near the vinery. The mignonette was

black with innumerable bees, and Wilburd, the gardener, came up and

advised Mr. and Mrs. Herbert not to go nearer. Next morning the pair

went to the garden. The air round the mignonette was dark with

_wasps_. Mrs. Herbert now first remembered and told her dream,

adding, "but in the dream they were _bees_". Wilburd now came up and

advised them not to go nearer, as a wasps' nest had been injured and

the wasps were on the warpath.

Here accidental coincidence is probable enough. {10} There is another

class of dreams very useful, and apparently not so very uncommon, that

are veracious and communicate correct information, which the dreamer

did not know that he knew and was very anxious to know. These are

rare enough to be rather difficult to believe. Thus:--

THE LOST CHEQUE

Mr. A., a barrister, sat up one night to write letters, and about

half-past twelve went out to put them in the post. On undressing he

missed a cheque for a large sum, which he had received during the day.

He hunted everywhere in vain, went to bed, slept, and dreamed that he

saw the cheque curled round an area railing not far from his own door.

He woke, got up, dressed, walked down the street and found his cheque

in the place he had dreamed of. In his opinion he had noticed it fall

from his pocket as he walked to the letter-box, without consciously

remarking it, and his deeper memory awoke in slumber. {11a}

THE DUCKS' EGGS

A little girl of the author's family kept ducks and was anxious to

sell the eggs to her mother. But the eggs could not be found by eager

search. On going to bed she said, "Perhaps I shall dream of them".

Next morning she exclaimed, "I _did_ dream of them, they are in a

place between grey rock, broom, and mallow; that must be 'The Poney's

Field'!" And there the eggs were found. {11b}

THE LOST KEY

Lady X., after walking in a wood near her house in Ireland, found that

she had lost an important key. She dreamed that it was lying at the

root of a certain tree, where she found it next day, and her theory is

the same as that of Mr. A., the owner of the lost cheque. {11c}

As a rule dreams throw everything into a dramatic form. Some one

knocks at our door, and the dream bases a little drama on the noise;

it constructs an explanatory myth, a myth to account for the noise,

which is acted out in the theatre of the brain.

To take an instance, a disappointing one:--

THE LOST SECURITIES

A lady dreamed that she was sitting at a window, watching the end of

an autumn sunset. There came a knock at the front door and a

gentleman and lady were ushered in. The gentleman wore an old-

fashioned snuff-coloured suit, of the beginning of the century; he

was, in fact, an aged uncle, who, during the Napoleonic wars, had been

one of the English detenus in France. The lady was very beautiful and

wore something like a black Spanish mantilla. The pair carried with

them a curiously wrought steel box. Before conversation was begun,

the maid (still in the dream) brought in the lady's chocolate and the

figures vanished. When the maid withdrew, the figures reappeared

standing by the table. The box was now open, and the old gentleman

drew forth some yellow papers, written on in faded ink. These, he

said, were lists of securities, which had been in his possession, when

he went abroad in 18--, and in France became engaged to his beautiful

companion.

"The securities," he said, "are now in the strong box of Messrs. ---;"

another rap at the door, and the actual maid entered with real hot

water. It was time to get up. The whole dream had its origin in the

first rap, heard by the dreamer and dramatised into the arrival of

visitors. Probably it did not last for more than two or three seconds

of real time. The maid's second knock just prevented the revelation

of the name of "Messrs. ---," who, like the lady in the mantilla, were

probably non-existent people. {13}

Thus dream dramatises on the impulse of some faint, hardly perceived

real sensation. And thus either mere empty fancies (as in the case of

the lost securities) or actual knowledge which we may have once

possessed but have totally forgotten, or conclusions which have passed

through our brains as unheeded guesses, may in a dream be, as it were,

"revealed" through the lips of a character in the brain's theatre--

that character may, in fact, be alive, or dead, or merely fantastical.

A very good case is given with this explanation (lost knowledge

revived in a dramatic dream about a dead man) by Sir Walter Scott in a

note to The Antiquary. Familiar as the story is it may be offered

here, for a reason which will presently be obvious.

THE ARREARS OF TEIND

"Mr. Rutherford, of Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the

Vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the

accumulated arrears of teind (or tithe) for which he was said to be

indebted to a noble family, the titulars (lay impropriators of the

tithes). Mr. Rutherford was strongly impressed with the belief that

his father had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland,

purchased these teinds from the titular, and, therefore, that the

present prosecution was groundless. But, after an industrious search

among his father's papers, an investigation among the public records

and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law

business for his father, no evidence could be recovered to support his

defence. The period was now near at hand, when he conceived the loss

of his law-suit to be inevitable; and he had formed the determination

to ride to Edinburgh next day and make the best bargain he could in

the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with

all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream

to the following purpose. His father, who had been many years dead,

appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his

mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr.

Rutherford thought that he informed his father of the cause of his

distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was

the more unpleasant to him because he had a strong consciousness that

it was not due, though he was unable to recover any evidence in

support of his belief. 'You are right, my son,' replied the paternal

shade. 'I did acquire right to these teinds for payment of which you

are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the

hands of Mr. ---, a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from

professional business and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was

a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but

who never on any other occasion transacted business on my account. It

is very possible,' pursued the vision, 'that Mr. --- may have

forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but you may call

it to his recollection by this token, that when I came to pay his

account there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of

gold and we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.'

"Mr. Rutherford awoke in the morning with all the words of the vision

imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth while to walk across the

country to Inveresk instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he

came there he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream--a very

old man. Without saying anything of the vision he inquired whether he

ever remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased

father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance

to his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold the

whole returned upon his memory. He made an immediate search for the

papers and recovered them, so that Mr. Rutherford carried to Edinburgh

the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of

losing."

The story is reproduced because it is clearly one of the tales which

come round in cycles, either because events repeat themselves or

because people will unconsciously localise old legends in new places

and assign old occurrences or fables to new persons. Thus every one

has heard how Lord Westbury called a certain man in the Herald's

office "a foolish old fellow who did not even know his own foolish old

business". Lord Westbury may very well have said this, but long

before his time the remark was attributed to the famous Lord

Chesterfield. Lord Westbury may have quoted it from Chesterfield or

hit on it by accident, or the old story may have been assigned to him.

In the same way Mr. Rutherford may have had his dream or the following

tale of St. Augustine's (also cited by Scott) may have been attributed

to him, with the picturesque addition about the piece of Portuguese

gold. Except for the piece of Portuguese gold St. Augustine

practically tells the anecdote in his De Cura pro Mortuis Habenda,

adding the acute reflection which follows. {16}

"Of a surety, when we were at Milan, we heard tell of a certain person

of whom was demanded payment of a debt, with production of his

deceased father's acknowledgment, which debt, unknown to the son, the

father had paid, whereupon the man began to be very sorrowful, and to

marvel that his father while dying did not tell him what he owed when

he also made his will. Then in this exceeding anxiousness of his, his

said father appeared to him in a dream, and made known to him where

was the counter acknowledgment by which that acknowledgment was

cancelled. Which when the young man had found and showed, he not only

rebutted the wrongful claim of a false debt, but also got back his

father's note of hand, which the father had not got back when the

money was paid.

"Here then the soul of a man is supposed to have had care for his son,

and to have come to him in his sleep, that, teaching him what he did

not know, he might relieve him of a great trouble. But about the very

same time as we heard this, it chanced at Carthage that the

rhetorician Eulogius, who had been my disciple in that art, being (as

he himself, after our return to Africa, told us the story) in course

of lecturing to his disciples on Cicero's rhetorical books, as he

looked over the portion of reading which he was to deliver on the

following day, fell upon a certain passage, and not being able to

understand it, was scarce able to sleep for the trouble of his mind:

in which night, as he dreamed, I expounded to him that which he did

not understand; nay, not I, but my likeness, while I was unconscious

of the thing and far away beyond sea, it might be doing, or it might

be dreaming, some other thing, and not in the least caring for his

cares. In what way these things come about I know not; but in what

way soever they come, why do we not believe it comes in the same way

for a person in a dream to see a dead man, as it comes that he sees a

living man? both, no doubt, neither knowing nor caring who dreams of

their images, or where or when.

"Like dreams, moreover, are some visions of persons awake, who have

had their senses troubled, such as phrenetic persons, or those who are

mad in any way, for they, too, talk to themselves just as though they

were speaking to people verily present, and as well with absent men as

with present, whose images they perceive whether persons living or

dead. But just as they who live are unconscious that they are seen of

them and talk with them (for indeed they are not really themselves

present, or themselves make speeches, but through troubled senses

these persons are wrought upon by such like imaginary visions), just

so they also who have departed this life, to persons thus affected

appear as present while they be absent, and are themselves utterly

unconscious whether any man sees them in regard of their image." {18}

St. Augustine adds a similar story of a trance.

THE TWO CURMAS

A rustic named Curma, of Tullium, near Hippo, Augustine's town, fell

into a catalepsy. On reviving he said: "Run to the house of Curma

the smith and see what is going on". Curma the smith was found to

have died just when the other Curma awoke. "I knew it," said the

invalid, "for I heard it said in that place whence I have returned

that not I, Curma of the Curia, but Curma the smith, was wanted." But

Curma of the Curia saw living as well as dead people, among others

Augustine, who, in his vision, baptised him at Hippo. Curma then, in

the vision, went to Paradise, where he was told to go and be baptised.

He said it had been done already, and was answered, "Go and be truly

baptised, for _that_ thou didst but see in vision". So Augustine

christened him, and later, hearing of the trance, asked him about it,

when he repeated the tale already familiar to his neighbours.

Augustine thinks it a mere dream, and apparently regards the death of

Curma the smith as a casual coincidence. Un esprit fort, le Saint

Augustin!

"If the dead could come in dreams," he says, "my pious mother would no

night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a

happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart,

she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an

only love."

Not only things once probably known, yet forgotten, but knowledge

never _consciously_ thought out, may be revealed in a dramatic dream,

apparently through the lips of the dead or the never existent. The

books of psychology are rich in examples of problems worked out, or

music or poetry composed in sleep. The following is a more recent and

very striking example:--

THE ASSYRIAN PRIEST

Herr H. V. Hilprecht is Professor of Assyriology in the University of

Pennsylvania. That university had despatched an expedition to explore

the ruins of Babylon, and sketches of the objects discovered had been

sent home. Among these were drawings of two small fragments of agate,

inscribed with characters. One Saturday night in March, 1893,

Professor Hilprecht had wearied himself with puzzling over these two

fragments, which were supposed to be broken pieces of finger-rings.

He was inclined, from the nature of the characters, to date them about

1700-1140 B.C.; and as the first character of the third line of the

first fragment seemed to read KU, he guessed that it might stand for

Kurigalzu, a king of that name.

About midnight the professor went, weary and perplexed, to bed.

"Then I dreamed the following remarkable dream. A tall thin priest of

the old pre-Christian Nippur, about forty years of age, and clad in a

simple abba, led me to the treasure-chamber of the temple, on its

south-east side. He went with me into a small low-ceiled room without

windows, in which there was a large wooden chest, while scraps of

agate and lapis lazuli lay scattered on the floor. Here he addressed

me as follows:--

"'The two fragments, which you have published separately upon pages 22

and 26, _belong together_'" (this amazing Assyrian priest spoke

American!). {20} "'They are not finger-rings, and their history is as

follows:--

"'King Kurigalzu (about 1300 B.C.) once sent to the temple of Bel,

among other articles of agate and lapis lazuli, an inscribed votive

cylinder of agate. Then the priests suddenly received the command to

make for the statue of the god Nibib a pair of ear-rings of agate. We

were in great dismay, since there was no agate as raw material at

hand. In order to execute the command there was nothing for us to do

but cut the votive cylinder in three parts, thus making three rings,

each of which contained a portion of the original inscription. The

first two rings served as ear-rings for the statue of the god; the two

fragments which have given you so much trouble are parts of them. If

you will put the two together, you will have confirmation of my words.

But the third ring you have not found yet, and you never will find

it.'"

The professor awoke, bounded out of bed, as Mrs. Hilprecht testifies,

and was heard crying from his study, "It is so, it is so!" Mrs.

Hilprecht followed her lord, "and satisfied myself in the midnight

hour as to the outcome of his most interesting dream".

The professor, however, says that he awoke, told his wife the dream,

and verified it next day. Both statements are correct. There were

two sets of drawings, one in the study (used that night) one used next

day in the University Library.

The inscription ran thus, the missing fragment being restored, "by

analogy from many similar inscriptions":--

TO THE GOD NIBIB, CHILD

OF THE GOD BEL,

HIS LORD

KURIGALZU,

PONTIFEX OF THE GOD BEL

HAS PRESENTED IT.

But, in the drawings, the fragments were of different colours, so that

a student working on the drawings would not guess them to be parts of

one cylinder. Professor Hilprecht, however, examined the two actual

fragments in the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. They lay in two

distinct cases, but, when put together, fitted. When cut asunder of

old, in Babylon, the white vein of the stone showed on one fragment,

the grey surface on the other.

Professor Romaine Newbold, who publishes this dream, explains that the

professor had unconsciously reasoned out his facts, the difference of

colour in the two pieces of agate disappearing in the dream. The

professor had heard from Dr. Peters of the expedition, that a room had

been discovered with fragments of a wooden box and chips of agate and

lapis lazuli. The sleeping mind "combined its information," reasoned

rightly from it, and threw its own conclusions into a dramatic form,

receiving the information from the lips of a priest of Nippur.

Probably we do a good deal of reasoning in sleep. Professor

Hilprecht, in 1882-83, was working at a translation of an inscription

wherein came Nabu--Kudurru--usur, rendered by Professor Delitzsch

"Nebo protect my mortar-board". Professor Hilprecht accepted this,

but woke one morning with his mind full of the thought that the words

should be rendered "Nebo protect my boundary," which "sounds a deal

likelier," and is now accepted. I myself, when working at the MSS. of

the exiled Stuarts, was puzzled by the scorched appearance of the

paper on which Prince Charlie's and the king's letters were often

written and by the peculiarities of the ink. I woke one morning with

a sudden flash of common-sense. Sympathetic ink had been used, and

the papers had been toasted or treated with acids. This I had

probably reasoned out in sleep, and, had I dreamed, my mind might have

dramatised the idea. Old Mr. Edgar, the king's secretary, might have

appeared and given me the explanation. Maury publishes tales in which

a forgotten fact was revealed to him in a dream from the lips of a

dream-character (Le Sommeil et les Reves, pp. 142-143. The curious

may also consult, on all these things, The Philosophy of Mysticism, by

Karl du Prel, translated by Mr. Massey. The Assyrian Priest is in

Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 14).

On the same plane as the dreams which we have been examining is the

waking sensation of the deja vu.

"I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell."

Most of us know this feeling, all the circumstances in which we find

ourselves have already occurred, we have a prophecy of what will

happen next "on the tip of our tongues" (like a half-remembered name),

and then the impression vanishes. Scott complains of suffering

through a whole dinner-party from this sensation, but he had written

"copy" for fifty printed pages on that day, and his brain was breaking

down. Of course psychology has explanations. The scene _may_ have

really occurred before, or may be the result of a malady of

perception, or one hemisphere of the brain not working in absolute

simultaneousness with the other may produce a double impression, the

first being followed by the second, so that we really have had two

successive impressions, of which one seems much more remote in time

than it really was. Or we may have dreamed something like the scene

and forgotten the dream, or we may actually, in some not understood

manner, have had a "prevision" of what is now actual, as when Shelley

almost fainted on coming to a place near Oxford which he had beheld in

a dream.

Of course, if this "prevision" could be verified in detail, we should

come very near to dreams of the future fulfilled. Such a thing--

verification of a detail--led to the conversion of William Hone, the

free-thinker and Radical of the early century, who consequently became

a Christian and a pessimistic, clear-sighted Tory. This tale of the

deja vu, therefore, leads up to the marvellous narratives of dreams

simultaneous with, or prophetic of, events not capable of being

guessed or inferred, or of events lost in the historical past, but,

later, recovered from documents.

Of Hone's affair there are two versions. Both may be given, as they

are short. If they illustrate the deja vu, they also illustrate the

fond discrepancies of all such narratives. {24}

THE KNOT IN THE SHUTTER

"It is said that a dream produced a powerful effect on Hone's mind.

He dreamt that he was introduced into a room where he was an entire

stranger, and saw himself seated at a table, and on going towards the

window his attention was somehow or other attracted to the window-

shutter, and particularly to a knot in the wood, which was of singular

appearance; and on waking the whole scene, and especially the knot in

the shutter, left a most vivid impression on his mind. Some time

afterwards, on going, I think, into the country, he was at some house

shown into a chamber where he had never been before, and which

instantly struck him as being the identical chamber of his dream. He

turned directly to the window, where the same knot in the shutter

caught his eye. This incident, to his investigating spirit, induced a

train of reflection which overthrew his cherished theories of

materialism, and resulted in conviction that there were spiritual

agencies as susceptible of proof as any facts of physical science; and

this appears to have been one of the links in that mysterious chain of

events by which, according to the inscrutable purposes of the Divine

will, man is sometimes compelled to bow to an unseen and divine power,

and ultimately to believe and live."

"Another of the Christian friends from whom, in his later years,

William Hone received so much kindness, has also furnished

recollections of him.

" . . . Two or three anecdotes which he related are all I can

contribute towards a piece of mental history which, if preserved,

would have been highly interesting. The first in point of time as to

his taste of mind, was a circumstance which shook his confidence in

_materialism_, though it did not lead to his conversion. It was one

of those mental phenomena which he saw to be _inexplicable_ by the

doctrines he then held.

"It was as follows: He was called in the course of business into a

part of London quite new to him, and as he walked along the street he

noticed to himself that he had never been there; but on being shown

into a room in a house where he had to wait some time, he immediately

fancied that it was all familiar, that he had seen it before, 'and if

so,' said he to himself, 'there is a very peculiar knot in this

shutter'. He opened the shutter and found the knot. 'Now then,'

thought he, 'here is something I cannot explain on my principles!'"

Indeed the occurrence is not very explicable on any principles, as a

detail not visible without search was sought and verified, and that by

a habitual mocker at anything out of the common way. For example,

Hone published a comic explanation, correct or not, of the famous

Stockwell mystery.

Supposing Hone's story to be true, it naturally conducts us to yet

more unfamiliar, and therefore less credible dreams, in which the

unknown past, present, or future is correctly revealed.