STRANGE SURVIVALS.
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STRANGE SURVIVALS
Some Chapters in the History of Man
BY
S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
AUTHOR OF “MEHALAH,” “OLD COUNTRY LIFE,” “URITH,”
“IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA.”
Methuen & Co.
18 BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C.
1892.
_Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. ON FOUNDATIONS 1
II. ON GABLES 36
III. OVENS 62
IV. BEDS 84
V. STRIKING A LIGHT 110
VI. UMBRELLAS 129
VII. DOLLS 139
VIII. REVIVALS 149
IX. BROADSIDE BALLADS 180
X. RIDDLES 220
XI. THE GALLOWS 238
XII. HOLES 252
XIII. RAISING THE HAT 282
STRANGE SURVIVALS:
_SOME CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF MAN._
I.
On Foundations.
When the writer was a parson in Yorkshire, he had in his parish a
blacksmith blessed, or afflicted--which shall we say?--with seven
daughters and not a son. Now the parish was a newly constituted one,
and it had a temporary licensed service room; but during the week
before the newly erected church was to be consecrated, the blacksmith’s
wife presented her husband with a boy--his first boy. Then the
blacksmith came to the parson, and the following conversation ensued:--
Blacksmith: “Please, sir, I’ve gotten a little lad at last, and I want
to have him baptised on Sunday.”
Parson: “Why, Joseph, put it off till Thursday, when the new church
will be consecrated; then your little man will be the first child
christened in the new font in the new church.”
Blacksmith (shuffling with his feet, hitching his shoulders, looking
down): “Please, sir, folks say that t’ fust child as is baptised i’ a
new church is bound to dee (die). T’ old un (the devil) claims it. Now,
sir, I’ve seven little lasses, and but one lad. If this were a lass
again ’twouldn’t ’a’ mattered; but as it’s a lad--well, sir, I won’t
risk it.”
A curious instance this of a very widespread and very ancient
superstition, the origin of which we shall arrive at presently.
In the first place, let us see the several forms it takes.
All over the north of Europe the greatest aversion is felt to be the
first to enter a new building, or to go over a newly erected bridge.
If to do this is not everywhere and in all cases thought to entail
death, it is considered supremely unlucky. Several German legends
are connected with this superstition. The reader, if he has been to
Aix-la-Chapelle, has doubtless had the rift in the great door pointed
out to him, and has been told how it came there. The devil and the
architect made a compact that the first should draw the plans, and
the second gain the _Kudos_; and the devil’s wage was to be that he
should receive the first who crossed the threshold of the church when
completed. When the building was finished, the architect’s conscience
smote him, and he confessed the compact to the bishop. “We’ll do him,”
said the prelate; that is to say, he said something to this effect in
terms more appropriate to the century in which he lived, and to his
high ecclesiastical office.
When the procession formed to enter the minster for the consecration,
the devil lurked in ambush behind a pillar, and fixed his wicked
eye on a fine fat and succulent little chorister as his destined
prey. But alas for his hopes! this fat little boy had been given his
instructions, and, as he neared the great door, loosed the chain of a
wolf and sent it through. The evil one uttered a howl of rage, snatched
up the wolf and rushed away, giving the door a kick, as he passed it,
that split the solid oak.
The castle of Gleichberg, near Rönskild, was erected by the devil in
one night. The Baron of Gleichberg was threatened by his foes, and he
promised to give the devil his daughter if he erected the castle before
cockcrow. The nurse overheard the compact, and, just as the castle was
finished, set fire to a stack of corn. The cock, seeing the light,
thought morning had come, and crowed before the last stone was added to
the walls. The devil in a rage carried off the old baron--and served
him right--instead of the maiden. We shall see presently how this story
works into our subject.
At Frankfort may be seen, on the Sachsenhäuser Bridge, an iron rod with
a gilt cock on the top. This is the reason: An architect undertook
to build the bridge within a fixed time, but three days before that
on which he had contracted to complete it, the bridge was only half
finished. In his distress he invoked the devil, who undertook the job
if he might receive the first who crossed the bridge. The work was
done by the appointed day, and then the architect drove a cock over
the bridge. The devil, who had reckoned on getting a human being, was
furious; he tore the poor cock in two, and flung it with such violence
at the bridge that he knocked two holes in it, which to the present day
cannot be closed, for if stones are put in by day they are torn out by
night. In memorial of the event, the image of the cock was set up on
the bridge.
Sometimes the owner of a house or barn calls in the devil, and forfeits
his life or his soul by so doing, which falls to the devil when the
building is complete.
And now, without further quotation of examples, what do they mean? They
mean this--that in remote times a sacrifice of some sort was offered
at the completion of a building; but not only at the completion--the
foundation of a house, a castle, a bridge, a town, even of a church,
was laid in blood. In heathen times a sacrifice was offered to the god
under whose protection the building was placed; in Christian times,
wherever much of old Paganism lingered on, the sacrifice continued,
but was given another signification. It was said that no edifice would
stand firmly unless the foundations were laid in blood. Some animal was
placed under the corner-stone--a dog, a sow, a wolf, a black cock, a
goat, sometimes the body of a malefactor who had been executed for his
crimes.
Here is a ghastly story, given by Thiele in his “Danish Folk-tales.”
Many years ago, when the ramparts were being raised round Copenhagen,
the wall always sank, so that it was not possible to get it to stand
firm. They, therefore, took a little innocent girl, placed her in a
chair by a table, and gave her playthings and sweetmeats. While she
thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built an arch over her,
which, when completed, they covered with earth to the sound of drums
and trumpets. By this process the walls were made solid.
When, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was
demolished, the skeleton of a child was actually found embedded in the
foundations.
Heinrich Heine says on this subject: “In the Middle Ages the opinion
prevailed that when any building was to be erected something living
must be killed, in the blood of which the foundation had to be laid,
by which process the building would be secured from falling; and in
ballads and traditions the remembrance is still preserved how children
and animals were slaughtered for the purpose of strengthening large
buildings with their blood.”
The story of the walls of Copenhagen comes to us only as a tradition,
but the horrible truth must be told that in all probability it is no
invention of the fancy, but a fact.
Throughout Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and North Germany, tradition
associates some animal with every church, and it goes by the name of
Kirk-Grim. These Kirk-Grims are the goblin apparitions of the beasts
that were buried under the foundation-stones of the churches. It is the
same in Devonshire--the writer will not say at the present day, but
certainly forty or fifty years ago. Indeed, when he was a boy he drew
up a list of the Kirk-Grims that haunted all the neighbouring parishes.
To the church of the parish in which he lived, belonged two white sows
yoked together with a silver chain; to another, a black dog; to a
third, a ghostly calf; to a fourth, a white lamb.
Afzelius, in his collection of Swedish folk-tales, says: “Heathen
superstition did not fail to show itself in the construction of
Christian churches. In laying the foundations, the people retained
something of their former religion, and sacrificed to their old
deities, whom they could not forget, some animal, which they buried
alive, either under the foundation or without the wall. The spectre of
this animal is said to wander about the churchyard at night, and is
called the Kirk-Grim. A tradition has also been preserved that under
the altar of the first Christian churches, a lamb was usually buried,
which imparted security and duration to the edifice. This is an emblem
of the true Church Lamb--the Saviour, who is the Corner-Stone of His
Church. When anyone enters a church at a time when there is no service,
he may chance to see a little lamb spring across the quire and vanish.
This is the church-lamb. When it appears to a person in the churchyard,
particularly to the grave-digger, it is said to forbode the death of a
child.”
Thiele, in his “Danish Folk-tales,” says much the same of the churches
in Denmark. He assures us that every church there has its Kirk-Grim,
which dwells either in the tower, or in some other place of concealment.
What lies at the base of all stories of haunted houses is the same
idea. All old mansions had their foundations laid in blood. This fact
is, indeed, forgotten, but it is not forgotten that a ghostly guard
watches the house, who is accounted for in various ways, and very often
a crime is attributed to one of the former inhabitants to account for
the walking of the ghost. By no means infrequently the crime, which,
in the popular mind, accounts for the ghost, can be demonstrated
historically not to have taken place. Again, in a great number of
cases, the spectre attached to a building is not that of a human being
at all, but of some animal, and then tradition is completely at a loss
to explain this phenomenon.
The proverb says that there is a skeleton in every man’s house, and the
proverb is a statement of what at one time was a fact. Every house had
its skeleton, and every house was intended to have its skeleton; and
what was more, every house was designed to have not only its skeleton,
but its ghost.
We are going back to heathen times, when we say that at the
foundation-stone laying of every house, castle, or bridge, provision
was made to give to each its presiding, haunting, protecting spirit.
The idea, indeed, of providing every building with its spectre, as
its spiritual guard, was not the primary idea, it grew later, out of
the original one, the characteristically Pagan idea, of a sacrifice
associated with the beginning of every work of importance.
When the primeval savage lived in a hut of poles over which he
stretched skins, he thought little of his house, which could be carried
from place to place with ease, but directly he began to build of stone,
or raise earthworks as fortifications, he considered himself engaged on
a serious undertaking. He was disturbing the face of Mother Earth, he
was securing to himself in permanency a portion of that surface which
had been given by her to all her children in common. Partly with the
notion of offering a propitiatory sacrifice to the earth, and partly
also with the idea of securing to himself for ever a portion of soil by
some sacramental act, the old Pagan laid the foundations of his house
and fortress in blood.
Every great work was initiated with sacrifice. If a man started on
a journey, he first made an offering. A warlike expedition was not
undertaken till an oblation had been made, and the recollection of
this lingered on in an altered form of superstition, _viz._, that that
side would win the day which was the first to shed blood, a belief
alluded to in the “Lady of the Lake.” A ship could not be launched
without a sacrifice, and the baptism of a vessel nowadays with a bottle
of wine is a relic of the breaking of the neck of a human victim and
the suffusion of the prow with blood, just as the burial of a bottle
with coins at the present day under a foundation stone is the faded
reminiscence of the immuring of a human victim.
Building, in early ages, was not so lightly taken in hand as at
present, and the principles of architectural construction were ill
understood. If the walls showed tokens of settlement, the reason
supposed was that the earth had not been sufficiently propitiated, and
that she refused to bear the superimposed burden.
Plutarch says that when Romulus was about to found the Eternal City,
by the advice of Etruscan Augurs, he opened a deep pit, and cast into
it the “first fruits of everything that is reckoned good by use, or
necessary by nature,” and before it was closed by a great stone,
Faustulus and Quinctilius were killed and laid under it. This place
was the Comitium, and from it as a centre, Romulus described the
circuit of the walls.[1] The legend of Romulus slaying Remus because
he leaned over the low walls is probably a confused recollection of
the sacrifice of the brothers who were laid under the bounding wall.
According to Pomponius Mela, the brothers Philæni were buried alive
at the Carthaginian frontier. A dispute having arisen between the
Carthaginians and Cyrenæans about their boundaries, it was agreed that
deputies should start at a fixed time from each of the cities, and
that the place of their meeting should thenceforth form the limit of
demarcation. The Philæni departed from Carthage, and advanced much
farther than the Cyrenæans. The latter accused them of having set out
before the time agreed upon, but at length consented to accept the
spot which they had reached as a boundary line, if the Philæni would
submit to be buried alive there. To this the brothers consented. Here
the story is astray of the truth. Really, the Philæni were buried at
the confines of the Punic territory, to be the ghostly guardians of
the frontier. There can be little doubt that elsewhere burials took
place at boundaries, and it is possible that the whipping of boys
on gang-days or Rogations may have been a mediæval and Christian
mitigation of an old sacrifice. Certainly there are many legends of
spectres that haunt and watch frontiers, and these legends point to
some such practice. But let us return to foundations.
In the ballad of the “Cout of Keeldar,” in the minstrelsy of the
Border, it is said,
“And here beside the mountain flood
A massy castle frowned,
Since first the Pictish race in blood
The haunted pile did found.”
In a note, Sir Walter Scott alludes to the tradition that the
foundation stones of Pictish raths were bathed in human gore.
A curious incident occurs in the legend of St. Columba, founder of
Iona, which shows how deep a hold the old custom had taken. The
original idea of a sacrifice to propitiate the earth was gone, but the
idea that appropriation of a site was not possible without one took
its place. The Saint is said to have buried one of his monks, Oran by
name, alive, under the foundations of his new abbey, because, as fast
as he built, the spirits of the soil demolished by night what he raised
by day. In the life of the Saint by O’Donnell (Trias Thaumat.) the
horrible truth is disguised. The story is told thus:--On arriving at Hy
(Iona), St. Columba said, that whoever willed to die first would ratify
the right of the community to the island by taking corporal possession
of it. Then, for the good of the community, Oran consented to die. That
is all told, the dismal sequel, the immuring of the living monk, is
passed over. More recent legend, unable to understand the burial alive
of a monk, explains it in another way. Columba interred him because he
denied the resurrection.
It is certain that the usage remained in practice long after Europe had
become nominally Christian; how late it continued we shall be able to
show presently.
Grimm, in his “German Mythology,” says: “It was often considered
necessary to build living animals, even human beings, into the
foundations on which any edifice was reared, as an oblation to the
earth to induce her to bear the superincumbent weight it was proposed
to lay on her. By this horrible practice it was supposed that the
stability of the structure was assured, as well as other advantages
gained.” Good weather is still thought, in parts of Germany, to be
secured by building a live cock into a wall, and cattle are prevented
from straying by burying a living blind dog under the threshold of a
stable. The animal is, of course, a substitute for a human victim, just
as the bottle and coins are the modern substitute for the live beast.
In France, among the peasantry, a new farmhouse is not entered on
till a cock has been killed, and its blood sprinkled in the rooms. In
Poitou, the explanation given is that if the living are to dwell in
the house, the dead must have first passed through it. And in Germany,
after the interment of a living being under a foundation was abandoned,
it was customary till comparatively recently to place an empty coffin
under the foundations of a house.
This custom was by no means confined to Pagan Europe. We find traces of
it elsewhere. It is alluded to by Joshua in his curse on Jericho which
he had destroyed, “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up,
and buildeth this city Jericho: _he shall lay the foundation thereof in
his firstborn_, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of
it.” (Josh. vi. 26.)
The idea of a sacrifice faded out with the spread of Christianity, and
when tenure of soil and of buildings became fixed and usual, the notion
of securing it by blood disappeared; but in its place rose the notion
of securing a spiritual protector to a building, sacred or profane, and
until quite late, the belief remained that weak foundations could be
strengthened and be made to stand by burying a living being, generally
human, under them. The thought of a sacrifice to the Earth goddess was
quite lost, but not the conviction that by a sacrifice the cracking
walls could be secured.
The vast bulk of the clergy in the early Middle Ages were imbued with
the superstitions of the race and age to which they belonged. They were
of the people. They were not reared in seminaries, and so cut off from
the influences of ignorant and superstitious surroundings. They were
a little ahead of their fellows in culture, but only a little. The
mediæval priest allowed the old Pagan customs to continue unrebuked,
he half believed in them himself. One curious and profane incident of
the close of the fifteenth century may be quoted to show to how late
a date heathenism lingered mixed up with Christian ideas. An Italian
contemporary historian says, that when Sessa was besieged by the King
of Naples, and ran short of water, the inhabitants put a consecrated
host in the mouth of an ass, and buried the ass alive in the porch of
the church. Scarcely was this horrible ceremony completed, before the
windows of heaven were opened, and the rain poured down.[2]
In 1885, Holsworthy parish church was restored, and in the course of
restoration the south-west angle wall of the church was taken down. In
it, embedded in the mortar and stone, was found a skeleton. The wall of
this portion of the church was faulty, and had settled. According to
the account given by the masons who found the ghastly remains, there
was no trace of a tomb, but every appearance of the person having been
buried alive, and hurriedly. A mass of mortar was over the mouth, and
the stones were huddled about the corpse as though hastily heaped about
it, then the wall was leisurely proceeded with.
The parish church of Kirkcudbright was partially taken down in 1838,
when, in removing the lintel of the west doorhead, a skull of a man was
found built into the wall above the doorway. This parish church was
only erected in 1730, so that this seems to show a dim reminiscence, at
a comparatively recent date, of the obligation to place some relic of a
man in the wall to insure its stability.
In the walls of the ancient castle of Henneberg, the seat of a line
of powerful counts, is a relieving arch, and the story goes that a
mason engaged on the castle was induced by the offer of a sum of money
to yield his child to be built into it. The child was given a cake,
and the father stood on a ladder superintending the building. When
the last stone was put in, the child screamed in the wall, and the
man, overwhelmed with self-reproach, lost his hold, fell from the
ladder, and broke his neck. A similar story is told of the castle of
Liebenstein. A mother sold her child for the purpose. As the wall rose
about the little creature, it cried out, “Mother, I still see you!”
then, later, “Mother, I can hardly see you!” and lastly, “Mother, I see
you no more!” In the castle of Reichenfels, also, a child was immured,
and the superstitious conviction of the neighbourhood is, that were the
stones that enclose it removed, the castle would fall.
In the Eifel district, rising out of a gorge is a ridge on which stand
the ruins of two extensive castles, Ober and Nieder Manderscheid.
According to popular tradition, a young damsel was built into the wall
of Nieder Manderscheid, yet with an opening left, through which she was
fed as long as she was able to eat. In 1844 the wall at this point was
broken through, and a cavity was discovered in the depth of the wall,
in which a human skeleton actually was discovered.
The Baron of Winneburg, in the Eifel, ordered a master mason to erect
a strong tower whilst he was absent. On his return he found that the
tower had not been built, and he threatened to dismiss the mason.
That night someone came to the man and said to him: “I will help you
to complete the tower in a few days, if you will build your little
daughter into the foundations.” The master consented, and at midnight
the child was laid in the wall, and the stones built over her. That is
why the tower of Winneburg is so strong that it cannot be overthrown.
When the church of Blex, in Oldenburg, was building, the foundations
gave way, being laid in sand. Accordingly, the authorities of the
village crossed the Weser, and bought a child from a poor mother at
Bremerleke, and built it alive into the foundations. Two children were
thus immured in the basement of the wall of Sandel, one in that of
Ganderkesee. At Butjadeirgen, a portion of the dyke gave way, therefore
a boy named Hugo was sunk alive in the foundations of the dam. In 1615
Count Anthony Günther of Oldenburg, on visiting a dyke in process of
construction, found the workmen about to bury an infant under it. The
count interfered, saved the child, reprimanded the dam-builders, and
imprisoned the mother who had sold her babe for the purpose. Singularly
enough, this same count is declared by tradition to have buried a
living child in the foundations of his castle at Oldenburg.
When Detinetz was built on the Danube, the Slavonic settlers sent out
into the neighbourhood to capture the first child encountered. A boy
was taken, and walled into the foundations of their town. Thence the
city takes its name, _dijete_ is the Slavonic for boy.
In the life of Merlin, as given by Nennius and by Geoffrey of Monmouth,
we are told that Vortigern tried to build a castle, but that the
walls gave way as fast as he erected them. He consulted the wise men,
and they told him that his foundations could only be made to stand
if smeared with the blood of a fatherless boy. Thus we get the same
superstition among Celts, Slaves, Teutons, and Northmen.
Count Floris III. of Holland, who married Ada, daughter of Henry, the
son of David, King of Scotland, visited the island of Walcheren in
1157, to receive the homage of the islanders. On his return to Holland
he despatched a number of experienced workmen to repair the sea-walls
which were in a dilapidated condition. In one place where the dam
crossed a quicksand, they were unable to make it stand till they had
sunk a live dog in the quicksand. The dyke is called Hontsdamm to this
day. Usually a live horse was buried in such places, and this horse
haunts the sea-walls; if an incautious person mounts it, the spectre
beast plunges into the sea and dissolves into foam.
The dog or horse is the substitute for a child. A few centuries earlier
the dyke builders would have reared it over an infant buried alive.
The trace of the substitution remains in some folk-tales. An architect
promises the devil the soul of the first person who crosses the
threshold of the house, or church, or goes over the bridge he has built
with the devil’s aid. The evil one expects a human victim, and is put
off with a wolf, or a dog, or a cock. At Aix-la-Chapelle, as we have
seen, a wolf took the place of a human victim: at Frankfort a cock.
In Yorkshire, the Kirk-Grim is usually a huge black dog with eyes like
saucers, and is called a padfoot. It generally frequents the church
lanes; and he who sees it knows that he must die within the year.
And now--to somewhat relieve this ghastly subject--I may tell an odd
incident connected with it, to which the writer contributed something.
On a stormy night in November, he was out holding over his head a big
umbrella, that had a handle of white bone. A sudden gust--and the
umbrella was whisked out of his hand, and carried away into infinite
darkness and mist of rain.
That same night a friend of his was walking down a very lonely
church lane, between hedges and fields, without a house near. In the
loneliest, most haunted portion of this lane, his feet, his pulsation
and his breath were suddenly arrested by the sight of a great black
creature, occupying the middle of the way, shaking itself impatiently,
moving forward, then bounding on one side, then running to the other.
No saucer eyes, it is true, were visible, but it had a white nose that,
to the horrified traveller, seemed lit with a supernatural phosphoric
radiance. Being a man of intelligence, he would not admit to himself
that he was confronted by the padfoot; he argued with himself that
what he saw was a huge Newfoundland dog. So he addressed it in broad
Yorkshire: “Sith’ere, lass, don’t be troublesome. There’s a bonny dog,
let me pass. I’ve no stick. I wi’nt hurt thee. Come, lass, come, let me
by.”
At that moment a blast rushed along the lane. The black dog, monster,
padfoot, made a leap upon the terrified man, who screamed with fear. He
felt claws in him, and he grasped--an umbrella. Mine!
That this idea of human victims being required to ensure the stability
of a structure is by no means extinct, and that it constitutes a
difficulty that has to be met and overcome in the East, will be seen
from the following interesting extract from a recent number of the
_London and China Telegraph_. The writer says:--“Ever and anon the
idea gets abroad that a certain number of human bodies are wanted,
in connection with laying the foundation of some building that is in
progress; and a senseless panic ensues, and everyone fears to venture
out after nightfall. The fact that not only is no proof forthcoming of
anyone having been kidnapped, but that, on the contrary, the circle of
friends and acquaintances is complete, quite fails to allay it. But
is there ever any reasoning with superstition? The idea has somehow
got started; it is a familiar one, and it finds ready credence. Nor
is the belief confined either to race, creed, or locality. We find
it cropping up in India and Korea, in China and Malaysia, and we
have a strong impression of having read somewhere of its appearance
in Persia. Like the notions of celibacy and retreat in religion, it
is common property--the outcome, apparently, of a certain course of
thought rather than of any peculiar surroundings. The description of
the island of Solovetsk in Mr. Hepworth Dixon’s ‘Free Russia’ might
serve, _mutatis mutandis_, for a description of Pootoo; and so a report
of one of these building scares in China would serve equally well for
the Straits. When the last mail left, an idea had got abroad among the
Coolie population that a number of heads were required in laying the
foundations of some Government works at Singapore; and so there was a
general fear of venturing out after nightfall, lest the adventurer
should be pounced on and decapitated. One might have thought the ways
of the Singapore Government were better understood! That such ideas
should get abroad about the requirements of Government even in China
or Annam is curious enough; but the British Government of the Straits
above all others! Yet there it is; the natives had got it into their
heads that the Government stood in need of 960 human heads to ensure
the safe completion of certain public works, and that 480 of the
number were still wanting. Old residents in Shanghai will remember
the outbreak of a very similar panic at Shanghai, in connection with
the building of the cathedral. The idea got abroad that the Municipal
Council wanted a certain number of human bodies to bury beneath the
foundation of that edifice, and a general dread of venturing out after
nightfall--especially of going past the cathedral compound--prevailed
for weeks, with all kinds of variations and details. A similar notion
was said to be at the bottom of the riots which broke out last autumn
at Söul. Foreigners--the missionaries for choice--were accused of
wanting children for some mysterious purpose, and the mob seized and
decapitated in the public streets nine Korean officials who were
said to have been parties to kidnapping victims to supply the want.
This, however, seems more akin to the curious desire for infantile
victims which was charged against missionaries in the famous Honan
proclamation which preceded the Tientsin massacre, and which was one
of the items in the indictment against the Roman Catholics on the
occasion of that outbreak. Sometimes children’s brains are wanted for
medicine, sometimes their eyes are wanted to compound material for
photography. But these, although cognate, are not precisely similar
superstitions to the one which now has bestirred the population of
Singapore. A case came to us, however, last autumn, from Calcutta,
which is so exactly on all fours with this latest manifestation, that
it would almost seem as if the idea had travelled like an epidemic
and broken out afresh in a congenial atmosphere. Four villagers of
the Dinagepore district were convicted, last September, of causing
the death of two Cabulis and injuring a third, for the precise reason
that they had been kidnapping children to be sacrificed in connection
with the building of a railway bridge over the Mahanuddi. A rumour
had got abroad that such proceedings were in contemplation, and when
these Cabulis came to trade with the villagers they were denounced as
kidnappers and mobbed. Two were killed outright, their bodies being
flung into the river; while the third, after being severely handled,
escaped by hiding himself. We are not aware whether the origin of
this curious fancy has ever been investigated and explained, for it
may be taken for granted that, like other superstitions, it has its
origin in some forgotten custom or faded belief of which a burlesque
tradition only remains. This is not the place to go into a disquisition
on the origin of human sacrifice; but it is not difficult to believe
that, to people who believe in its efficacy, the idea of offering up
human beings to propitiate the deity, when laying the foundations of
a public edifice, would be natural enough. Whether the notion which
crops up now and again, all over Asia, really represents the tradition
of a practice--whether certain monarchs ever did bury human bodies,
as we bury newspapers and coins, beneath the foundations of their
palaces and temples, is a question we must leave others to answer. It
is conceivable that they may have done so, as an extravagant form of
sacrifice; and it is also conceivable that the abounding capacity of
man for distorting superstitious imagery, may have come to transmute
the idea of sacrificing human beings as a measure of propitiation, into
that of employing human bodies as actual elements in the foundation
itself. It is possible that the inhabitants of Dinagepore conserve
the more ideal and spiritual view, which the practical Chinese mind
has materialised, as in the recent instance at Singapore. Anyhow, the
idea is sufficiently wide-spread and curious to deserve a word of
examination as well as of passing record.”
[Illustration: _Fig. 1._--FIGURE FOUND UNDER THE FOUNDATIONS AT
STINVEZAND.]
When the north wall of the parish church of Chulmleigh in North Devon
was taken down a few years ago--a wall of Perpendicular date--in it was
found laid a very early carved figure of Christ crucified to a vine,
or interlacing tree, such as is seen in so-called Runic monuments.
The north wall having been falling in the fifteenth century, had been
re-erected, and this figure was laid in it, and the wall erected over
it, just as, in the same county, about the same time, the wall of
Holsworthy Church was built over a human being. At Chulmleigh there was
an advance in civilisation. The image was laid over the wall in place
of the living victim.
When, in 1842, the remains of a Romano-Batavian temple were explored
at Stinvezand, near Rysbergen, a singular mummy-like object was found
under the foundation. This was doubtless a substitute for the human
victim.
The stubborn prejudice which still exists in all parts against a first
burial in a new cemetery or churchyard is due to the fact that in Pagan
times the first to be buried was the victim, and in mediæval times was
held to be the perquisite of the devil, who stepped into the place of
the Pagan deity.
Every so-called Devil’s Bridge has some story associated with it
pointing to sacrifice, and sometimes to the substitution of an animal
for the human victim. The almost invariable story is that the devil
had been invoked and promised his aid, if given the first life that
passed over the bridge. On the completion of the structure a goat, or
a dog, or a rabbit is driven over, and is torn to pieces by the devil.
At Pont-la-Ville, near Courbières, is a four-arched Devil’s Bridge,
where six mice, then six rats, and lastly six cats, were driven across,
according to the popular story, in place of the eighteen human souls
demanded by the Evil One.
At Cahors, in Ouercy, is a singularly fine bridge over the Lot, with
three towers on it. The lower side of the middle tower could never
be finished, it always gave way at one angle. The story goes that
the devil was defrauded of his due--the soul of the architect--when
he helped to build the bridge, and so declared that the bridge never
should be finished. Of late years the tower has been completed, and
in token that modern skill has triumphed, the Evil One has been
represented on the angle, carved in stone. The legend shows that the
vulgar thought that the bridge should have been laid in blood, and as
it was not so, concluded that the faulty tower was due to the neglect
of the Pagan usage.
The black dog that haunts Peel Castle, and the bloodhound of Launceston
Castle, are the spectres of the animals buried under their walls, and
so the White Ladies and luminous children, who are rumoured to appear
in certain old mansions, are the faded recollections of the unfortunate
sacrifices offered when these houses were first reared, not, perhaps,
the present buildings, but the original manor-halls before the Conquest.
At Coatham, in Yorkshire, is a house where a little child is seen
occasionally--it vanishes when pursued. In some German castles the
apparition of a child is called the “Still child;” it is deadly pale,
white-clothed, with a wreath on the head. At Falkenstein, near Erfurth,
the appearance is that of a little maiden of ten, white as a sheet,
with long double plaits of hair. A white baby haunts Lünisberg, near
Aerzen. I have heard of a house in the West of England, where on a
pane of glass, every cold morning, is found the scribbling of little
fingers. However often the glass be cleaned, the marks of the ghostly
fingers return. The Cauld Lad of Hilton Castle in the valley of Wear
is well known. He is said to wail at night:
“Wae’s me, wae’s me,
The acorn’s not yet
Fallen from the tree
That’s to grow the wood,
That’s to make the cradle,
That’s to rock the bairn,
That’s to grow to a man,
That’s to lay me.”
At Guilsland, in Cumberland, is another Cauld Lad; he is deadly white,
and appears ever shivering with cold, and his teeth chattering.
An allied apparition is that of the Radiant Boy. Lord Castlereagh is
said to have seen one, a spectre, which the owner of the castle where
he saw it admitted had been visible to many others. Dr. Kerner mentions
a very similar story, wherein an advocate and his wife were awakened by
a noise and a light, and saw a beautiful child enveloped in a sort of
glory. I have heard of a similar appearance in a Lincolnshire house.
A story was told me, second-hand, the other day, of a house where
such a child was seen, which always disappeared at the hearth, and
sometimes, instead of the child, little white hands were observed held
up appealingly above the hearthstone. The stone was taken up, quite
recently, and some bones found under it, which were submitted to an
eminent comparative anatomist, who pronounced them to be those of a
child.
Mrs. Crowe, in her “Night Side of Nature,” gives an account of such
an apparition from an eye-witness, dated 1824. “Soon after we went to
bed, we fell asleep: it might be between one and two in the morning
when I awoke. I observed that the fire was totally extinguished; but,
although that was the case, and we had no light, I saw a glimmer in
the centre of the room, which suddenly increased to a bright flame.
I looked out, apprehending that something had caught fire, when, to
my amazement, I beheld a beautiful boy standing by my bedside, in
which position he remained some minutes, fixing his eyes upon me with
a mild and benevolent expression. He then glided gently away towards
the side of the chimney, where it is obvious there is no possible
egress, and entirely disappeared. I found myself in total darkness,
and all remained quiet until the usual hour of rising. I declare this
to be a true account of what I saw at C---- Castle, upon my word as a
clergyman.”
When we consider that the hearth is the centre and sacred spot of a
house, and that the chimney above it is the highest portion built,
and the most difficult to rear, it is by no means improbable that the
victim was buried under the hearthstone or jamb of the chimney. The
case already mentioned of a child’s bones having been found in this
position is by no means an isolated one.
It would be impossible to give a tithe of the stories of White Ladies
and Black Ladies and Brown Ladies who haunt old houses and castles.
The latest instance of a human being having been immured alive, of
which a record remains and which is well authenticated, is that of
Geronimo of Oran, in the wall of the fort near the gate Bab-el-oved,
of Algiers, in 1569. The fort is composed of blocks of _pise_, a
concrete made of stones, lime, and sand, mixed in certain proportions,
trodden down and rammed hard into a mould, and exposed to dry in the
sun. When thoroughly baked and solid it is turned out of the mould, and
is then ready for use. Geronimo was a Christian, who had served in a
Spanish regiment; he was taken by pirates and made over to the Dey of
Algiers. When the fort was in construction, Geronimo was put into one
of the moulds, and the concrete rammed round him (18th Sept., 1569),
and then the block was put into the walls. Don Diego de Haedo, the
contemporary author of the “Topography of Algiers,” says, “On examining
with attention the blocks of pise which form the walls of the fort, a
block will be observed in the north wall of which the surface has sunk
in, and looks as if it had been disturbed; for the body in decaying
left a hollow in the block, which has caused the sinkage.”
On December 27, 1853, the block was extracted. The old fort was
demolished to make room for the modern “Fort des vingt-quatre-heures,”
under the direction of Captain Susoni, when a petard which had been
placed beneath two or three courses of pise near the ground, exploded,
and exposed a cavity containing a human skeleton, the whole of which
was visible, from the neck to the knees, in a perfect state of
preservation. The remains, the cast of the head, and the broken block
of pise, are now in the Cathedral of Algiers.
The walls of Scutari are said also to contain the body of a victim; in
this case of a woman, who was built in, but an opening was left through
which her infant might be passed in to be suckled by her as long as
life remained in the poor creature, after which the hole was closed.
At Arta also, in the vilajet of Janina, a woman was walled into
the foundation of the bridge. The gravelly soil gave way, and it
was decided that the only means by which the substructure could be
solidified was by a human life. One of the mason’s wives brought her
husband a bowl with his dinner, when he dropped his ring into the hole
dug for the pier, and asked her to search for it. When she descended
into the pit, the masons threw in lime and stones upon her, and buried
her.
The following story is told of several churches in Europe. The masons
could not get the walls to stand, and they resolved among themselves
to bury under them the first woman or child that came to their works.
They took oath to this effect. The first to arrive was the wife of
the master-mason, who came with the dinner. The men at once fell on
her and walled her into the foundations. One version of the story is
less gruesome. The masons had provided meat for their work, and the
wife of the master had dealt so carelessly with the provision, that
it ran out before the building was much advanced. She accordingly put
the remaining bones into a cauldron, and made a soup of vegetables.
When she brought it to the mason, he flew into a rage, and built
the cauldron and bones into the wall, as a perpetual caution to
improvident wives. This is the story told of the church of Notre Dame
at Bruges, where the cauldron and bones are supposed to be still seen
in the wall. At Tuckebrande are two basins built into the wall, and
various legends not agreeing with one another are told to account for
their presence. Perhaps these cauldrons contained the blood of victims
of some sort immured to secure the stability of the edifice.[3]
A very curious usage prevails in Roumania and Transylvania to the
present day, which is a reminiscence of the old interment in the
foundations of a house. When masons are engaged on the erection of a
new dwelling, they endeavour to catch the shadow of a stranger passing
by and wall it in, and throw in stones and mortar whilst his shadow
rests on the walls. If no one goes by to cast his shade on the stones,
the masons go in quest of a woman or child, who does not belong to the
place, and, unperceived by the person, apply a reed to the shadow,
and this reed is then immured; and it is believed that when this is
done, the woman or child thus measured will languish and die, but
luck attaches to the house. In this we see the survival of the old
confusion between soul and shade. The Manes are the shadows of the
dead. In some places it is said that a man who has sold his soul to the
devil is shadowless, because soul and shadow are one. But there are
other instances of substitution hardly less curious. In Holland have
been found immured in foundations curious objects like ninepins, but
which are really rude imitations of babes in their swaddling-bands.
When it became unlawful to bury a child, an image representing it was
laid in the wall in its place. Another usage was to immure an egg. The
egg had in it life, but undeveloped life, so that by walling it in
the principle of sacrificing a life was maintained without any shock
to human feelings. Another form of substitution was that of a candle.
From an early period the candle was burnt in place of the sacrifice
of a human victim. At Heliopolis, till the reign of Amasis, three men
were daily sacrificed; but when Amasis expelled the Hyksos kings, he
abolished these human offerings, and ordered that in their place three
candles should be burned daily on the altar. In Italy, wax figures,
sometimes figures of straw, were burnt in the place of the former
bloody sacrifices.
In the classic tale, at the birth of Meleager, the three fates were
present; Atropos foretold that he would live as long as the brand
then burning on the hearth remained unconsumed; thereupon his mother,
Althæa, snatched it from the fire, and concealed it in a chest. When,
in after years, Meleager slew one of his mother’s brothers, she, in a
paroxysm of rage and vengeance, drew forth the brand, and burnt it,
whereupon Meleager died.
In Norse mythology a similar tale is found. The Norns wandered over the
earth, and were one night given shelter by the father of Nornagest;
the child lay in a cradle, with two candles burning at the head. The
first two of the Norns bestowed luck and wealth on the child; but the
third and youngest, having been thrust from her stool in the crush,
uttered the curse, “The child shall live no longer than these candles
burn.” Instantly the eldest of the fateful sisters snatched the candles
up, extinguished them, and gave them to the mother, with a warning to
take good heed of them.
A story found in Ireland, and Cornwall, and elsewhere, is to this
effect. A man has sold himself to the devil. When the time comes for
him to die, he is in great alarm; then his wife, or a priest, persuades
the devil to let him live as long as a candle is unconsumed. At once
the candle is extinguished, and hidden where it can never be found.
It is said that a candle is immured in the chancel wall of Bridgerule
Church, no one knows exactly where. A few years ago, in a tower of St.
Osyth’s Priory, Essex, a tallow candle was discovered built in.
As the ancients associated shadow and soul, so does the superstitious
mind nowadays connect soul with flame. The corpse-candle which comes
from a churchyard and goes to the house where one is to die, and hovers
on the doorstep, is one form of this idea. In a family in the West of
England the elder of two children had died. On the night of the funeral
the parents saw a little flame come in through the key-hole and run up
to the side of the cradle where the baby lay. It hovered about it, and
presently two little flames went back through the key-hole. The baby
was then found to be dead.
In the Arabic metaphysical romance of “Yokkdan,” the hero, who is
brought up by a she-goat on a solitary island, seeks to discover the
principle of life. He finds that the soul is a whitish luminous vapour
in one of the cavities of the heart, and it burns his finger when he
touches it.
In the German household tale of “Godfather Death,” a daring man enters
a cave, where he finds a number of candles burning; each represents
a man, and when the light expires, that man whom it represents dies.
“Jack o’ lanterns” are the spirits of men who have removed landmarks.
One of Hebel’s charming Allemanic poems has reference to this
superstition.
The extinguished torch represents the departed life, and in Yorkshire
it was at one time customary to bury a candle in a coffin, the modern
explanation being that the deceased needed it to light him on his road
to Paradise; but in reality it represented an extinguished life, and
probably was a substitute for the human sacrifice which in Pagan times
accompanied a burial. In almost all the old vaults opened in Woodbury
Church, Devon, candles have been found affixed to the walls. The lamps
set in graves in Italy and Greece were due to the same idea. The candle
took the place of a life, as a dog or sow in other places was killed
instead of a child.