and adds in a note, 'popular fancy has generally conceived a
connection between the foxglove and the good people.' In Ireland,
where it is called _lusmore_, or the great herb, and also Fairy Cup,
the bending of its stalks is believed to denote the unseen presence of
supernatural beings. The Shefro, or gregarious fairy, is represented
as wearing the corona of the foxglove on his head, and no unbecoming
head-dress either. In Wales, that the elves wear gloves of the bells
of _Digitalis_ is a common fancy.
15.
This conventional circle seems to be universally common to such
stories of summoning the Evil One. Even in China, as Mr. Dennys has
stated, the ring is drawn round the summoner, and the incantation
uttered, as in our own stories.
16.
In Lancashire, Old Nick (afterwards St. Nicholas, the patron saint of
sailors) is considered the patron saint of the wind, just as in the
Scandinavian mythology it is Odin, also termed Nick and Hold Neckar,
who raises storms.
In Normandy, near Aigle, there is a superstition respecting a Mother
_Nique_, doubtless, says Vaugeois, of Scandinavian origin.
17.
Instances of generous treatment of opponents on the part of the Evil
One are by no means rare. Readers of Mr. Roby will remember that Satan
gave a loophole of escape to Michael Waddington, the hero of 'Th' Dule
upo' Dun' legend, by granting him an extra wish, although the poor
wretch's time was up.
18.
The Cockerham schoolmaster appears to have lacked originality, for in
the Scottish legend of 'Michael Scott' it is recorded that when the
fairies crowded round his dwelling crying for work, he bade them twine
ropes of sand to reach the moon, and tradition has it that traces of
their unsuccessful attempts may yet be found. A more recent instance
is told in a sketch of Dr. Linkbarrow, a Westmoreland wizard, who
lived about a hundred years ago, quoted from the _Kendal Mercury_ by
Mr. Sullivan, in his _Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ancient and
Modern_. The Doctor, who was disturbed at church by a terrible storm,
hurried home, and on the way met the devil, who asked for work. He
immediately set him to make 'thumb symes' of river sand. Imitating the
Israelites, perhaps not unconsciously--for Satan's knowledge of
Scripture is proverbial--the Evil One asked for straw, which was
refused him. On his arrival at home, the Doctor found his servant
prying into his black-letter book, which imprudence had caused the
storm and Satan's pilgrimage.
Several similar stories, illustrating the danger of tampering with
books of magic, are told in Normandy. In one of them it is recorded
that the servant of a village cure, moved by curiosity, read a page or
two of one of his master's volumes, when suddenly Satan appeared. The
domestic fled, but the Evil One captured him, and was making away with
him when the cure arrived and simply read a few other words from the
book, upon which Satan dropped his prey. In another one Satan keeps
his victim three years, but at length is obliged to let him go.
In the last story of this kind, however, which has come under my
notice--a French one by the way--the incautious student has scarcely
read a line of the open book when Satan appears and strangles him. The
sorcerer, quietly returning home, sees devils perched on the house,
and, surprised, beckons them to approach. One does so, and tells him
the story, and he thereupon rushes to his study and finds the student
stretched dead upon the floor. Afraid of being accused of murder, he
orders the devil who had assassinated the scholar to pass into the
body of his victim. The demon obeys, and goes to promenade in the
street at the point most frequented by the students, but suddenly,
upon another order, he quits the body, and the corpse falls in the
midst of the terrified promenaders.
In Cornwall, instead of the devil, it is the ghost of Tregeagle, the
wizard, that is doomed to make trusses of sand in Genvor Cove, and to
bear them to the top of Escol's Cliff. Having once succeeded in
carrying a truss, after having first brought water from a neighbouring
stream and frozen the sand, he is now condemned to make the trusses
without water.
19.
Another version of this story, which is still told in the lonely
farm-houses of the district, gives the scholars the credit of having
raised the devil during the absence of their master. Similar tasks
were given to the infernal visitor by a sharp-witted lad, who feared
lest his should be the soul the Evil One threatened to take back with
him; and not many years ago a flag, said to have been broken by the
outwitted Satan in his passage across the floor, used to be
triumphantly exhibited to any daring and irreverent sceptic who
expressed doubts as to the truthfulness of the narrative.
At Burnley Grammar School a black mark on a stone was at one time
exhibited in proof of a state visit of the same kind, and a similar
ignominious flight.
The Grammar School of Middleton, near Manchester, also can boast of
the patronage of the Evil One; and Samuel Bamford has recorded that in
his youth a hole in the school flags was shown as an impression of the
Satanic hoof. The Middleton legend credits the lads with the
unenviable honour of having called up the fiend and afterwards
innocently wishing him to withdraw, which he sternly declined to do
without having received his usual fee of a soul. As at Cockerham, he
was requested to make a rope of sand; and he was rapidly completing
the task, when, to the joy of the urchins, the schoolmaster came upon
the scene, and quickly exorcised the visitor, who, in his disgusted
and disordered flight, broke down nearly half of the building.
20.
Stories of headless beings may be found in the lore of most countries
of Europe, and are of the same class as those of the men, women and
horses 'beawt yeds,' common to the hilly districts of both North and
South Lancashire. As a general rule, in South Lancashire, the head is
not seen at all, whereas in the northern part of the county the
spectre almost invariably carries it under the left arm, as is done by
the wandering beings in similar Danish stories. A Scotch legend,
alluded to by Sir Walter Scott, credits the ghost of a Duchess of
Queensberry with an innovation, as the spectre is said to wheel its
head in a barrow through the galleries of Drumlanrick Castle. In
Glamorganshire there is a tradition of a headless woman, who appears
every sixty years, and many are the terrible stories told of her
dreadful visitations.
Although tales of headless horses are not rare in Lancashire, there
does not appear to be any tradition of hearses, or other conveyances
drawn by them, similar to the Northumberland legend of the midnight
cavalcade along the subterraneous passage between Tarset and Dalby
Castles, or to the stories told by the Irish peasants.
It is more than probable that many of the legends and stories of
headless beings of both sexes had their origin in the old Saxon belief
that if a person who was guilty of a crime for which he deserved to
lose his head, died without having paid the penalty, he was condemned
after death to travel over the earth with his head under his arm.
21.
Not very long ago it was commonly believed at Warrington, on the
authority of many persons who declared they had seen the apparition,
that a spectral white rabbit haunted Bank Quay, its appearance
invariably foretelling the early death of a relative of the person
whose misfortune it was to behold the animal.
'In Cornwall,' says Mr. Hunt, 'it is a very popular fancy that when a
maiden who has loved not wisely but too well, dies forsaken and
broken-hearted, she comes back in the shape of a white hare to haunt
her deceiver. The phantom follows the false one everywhere, mostly
invisible to all else. It sometimes saves him from danger, but
invariably the white hare causes the death of the betrayer in the
end.'
22.
Can this tradition be an offshoot of the legend of Ahasuerus, the
Wandering Jew, the man who, standing at his door, refused the cup of
water for which the Saviour, bowed down beneath the burden of the
cross, begged, but who bade the Lord walk quicker, and was answered,
'I go, but thou shalt thirst and tarry till I come'? In one shape or
another most European countries have the weird myth of this restless
being. In none of the stories, however, have I found any reference to
an animal accompanying the wanderer.
23.
The belief in the efficacy of fairy ointment appears to have been
somewhat generally held in England. A Northumberland tradition tells
of a midwife who was fetched to attend a lady, and who received a box
of ointment with which to anoint the infant. By accident the woman
touched one of her eyes with the mixture, and at once saw that she was
in a fairy palace. She had the good sense, however, to conceal her
astonishment, and reached her home in safety. Some time afterwards she
saw the lady stealing bits of butter in the market-place, and
thoughtlessly accosted her, when, after an inquiry similar to that of
the Lancashire legend, the fairy breathed upon the offending eye and
destroyed the sight. Other versions still current in Northumberland
make the thief a fairy stealing corn. Similar stories are told in
Devonshire and in both the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. In
Scotland, however, the fairy spits into the woman's eye. The Irish
fairy (Co. Wexford), a vindictive being, uses a switch.
In Cornwall a fairy bantling has to be put out to nurse, and has to be
washed regularly in water and carried to its room by its invisible
relatives. The nurse receives the marvellous sight after some of the
liquid has splashed upon her eyes, and the usual result follows. She
sees a thief in the market-place--that of St. Ives; and after he has
muttered--
'Water for elf, not water for self!
You've lost your eye, your child, and yourself!'
she becomes blind. In another Cornish legend a green ointment, made
with four-leaved clover, gathered at a certain time of the moon,
confers the wondrous gift. In Lancashire the four-leaved clover does
not require any preparation; the mere possession of it being supposed
to render fairies visible.
The Scandinavian belief appears to have been that, although the hill
folk could bestow the gift of this sight upon whom they chose, all
children born on Sunday possessed the faculty. This superstition seems
to survive in a slightly altered form in the Lancashire one that
children born during twilight can see spirits and foretell deaths,
the latter faculty, probably, having been substituted for the
prophetic power of the chosen of the elves in the Northern mythology.
It is more than probable that these ointment stories came from the
East. Who does not remember the charming history of the blind man,
Baba Abdalla, whose sight was destroyed by a little miraculous
ointment, and afterwards as wonderfully restored by a box on the ear?
24.
An old farm-labourer pointed out to me a place where the Evil One used
to meet the witches, and gambol with them until cock-crow. It was at
the junction of four cross-roads, between Stonyhurst and Ribchester;
and as I stood there at 'th' edge o' dark,' when the wind was
whispering through the fir woods on either hand, with that mysterious
sound so like the gentle wash of waves upon a sandy shore, the spot
seemed indeed a suitable one for such gatherings.
My informant, however, although very circumstantial in his account of
what had transpired at the nocturnal assemblies, scouted the idea of
anything of the sort taking place in these times, and remarked drily:
'Ther's too mich leet neaw-a-days, Mesthur, fur eawt o' that mak'. Wi'
should hev' th' caanty police after um afooar they'd time to torn
raand!'
25.
Until recently, there was an ancient British tumulus by the side of
the highway from Darwen to Bolton, where the road passes through the
domains of White Hall and Low Hill. This spot, long before the urns of
bones were disinterred, was looked upon by the country people as being
haunted by various boggarts, and Mr. Charles Hardwick says that
children were in the habit of taking off their clogs and shoes, and
walking past the heap barefooted when compelled to traverse the road
after nightfall.[E]
[E] _Vide_ Footnote [C]
26.
Mag did not wander far, for her grave is shown in the churchyard at
Woodplumpton, in which village her memory still is green. But few
people venture to rest themselves upon the huge stone which marks the
spot where her spirit was laid.
A strangely jumbled tradition tells how a priest managed to 'catch'
her and 'lay her spirit.' In Cornwall and other counties a clergyman
of the Establishment was considered qualified to 'lay' a ghost; but in
Lancashire it was believed that only a Roman Catholic priest had the
wondrous power. In Wales the magical number three is brought in, for
three clergymen are necessary to exorcise a spirit. In Normandy, as a
matter of course, only the priests have the power.
27.
Witchen or quicken, old English names of the rowan or mountain ash.
Mr. Kelly (_Indo-European Tradition and Folklore_) accounts for the
reputation of the 'wiggin' by connecting it with the Indian Palasa,
the tree that, according to the Vedas, sprang from the feather which,
together with a claw, fell from the falcon bringing the heavenly
_soma_ to earth. The same writer also compares it with the Mimosa, and
quotes a singular passage from Bishop Heber, to the effect that the
natives of Upper India are in the habit of wearing sprigs of it in
their turbans, and of suspending pieces of it over their beds, as
security against wizards, spells, the Evil Eye, etc. Naturally enough
the Bishop expresses his surprise at finding the superstitions, which
in England and Scotland attach to the rowan, applied in India to a
tree of similar form, and he asks, 'From what common centre are these
common notions derived?' The Mimosa is popularly supposed to have
sprung from the claw alluded to above.
On account of its reputed power against the 'feorin,' a rowan tree was
almost invariably planted near the moorland or mountain side
farm-house.
'Rowan, ash, and red thread
Keep the devils from their speed,'
says the old distich.
In some parts of Scotland ash sap still is given to infants as a
preservative against fairies.
28.
It was firmly believed in Lancashire, says Mr. Harland, that a great
gathering of witches assembled on this night at their general
rendezvous in the Forest of Pendle--a ruined and desolate farm-house
called the _Malkin Tower_ (Malkin being the name of a familiar demon
in Middleton's old play of _The Witch_, derived from _maca_, an equal,
a companion). This superstition led to another, that of _lighting_,
_lating_, or _leeting_ the witches (from _leoht_, A.-S., light). It
was believed that if a lighted candle were carried about the fells or
hills from eleven to twelve o'clock at night, and it burned all the
time steadily, it had so far triumphed over the evil power of the
witches, who, as they passed to the Malkin Tower, would employ their
utmost efforts to extinguish the light, that the person whom it
represented might safely defy their malice during the season; but if
by any accident the light went out, it was an omen of evil to the
luckless wight for whom the experiment was made. It was also deemed
inauspicious to cross the threshold of that person until after the
return from leeting, and not then unless the candle had preserved its
light. Mr. Milner describes the ceremony as having been recently
performed.
29.
Mr. Sullivan quotes this quaint old carol at length in his _Cumberland
and Westmoreland, Ancient and Modern_; and adds, 'This song is still
sung at Penrith, having replaced one called "Joseph and Mary," in the
early part of the century. Yet its antiquity is undoubted, and it has
probably come here from Lancashire, where it is well known.'
As, however, it is by no means so widely known as Mr. Sullivan
supposes, we may be pardoned if we reproduce it here. The second and
remaining verses are as follows:--
'I met three ships come sailing by,
Come sailing by, etc.
Who do you think was in one of them?
In one of them? etc.
The Virgin Mary and her Son,
And her Son, etc.
She combed His hair with an ivory comb,
An ivory comb, etc.
She washed His face in a silver bowl,
A silver bowl, etc.
She sent Him up to heaven to school,
To heaven to school, etc.
All the angels began to sing,
Began to sing, etc.
The bells of heaven began to ring,
Began to ring, etc.'
30.
Mr. Samuel Bamford says that Middleton Parish Church was the scene of
a procession similar to that described in the above legend, the
observer being an avaricious old sexton who was anxious to know what
fees he should receive in the following year. This worthy, on All
Souls' night, stationed himself in the sacred building, and counted
the spirits he saw enter and walk about, until he observed a double of
himself. Of course, soon afterwards there was a vacancy for a
gravedigger at Middleton, the sight having been too much for 'Old
Johnny.'
A similar superstition reigns in various parts of England and in
Wales, where, at Christmas-time, says Mr. Croker, quoting from a Welsh
authority, the relatives of the deceased listen at the church door in
the dark, 'when they sometimes fancy they hear the names called over
in church of those who are destined shortly to join their lost
relatives in the tomb.'
In Cornwall, strange to say, it is a young unmarried woman who,
standing in the church porch at midnight on Midsummer's-eve, sees the
strange gathering. 'This is so serious an affair,' says Professor
Hunt, 'that it is not, I believe, often tried. I have, however, heard
of young women who have made the experiment. But every one of the
stories relate that they have seen shadows of themselves coming last
in the procession; that pining away from that day forward, ere
Midsummer has again come round they have been laid to rest in the
village graveyard.'
Mr. Sikes says that it is a Hallow-Een custom in some parts of Wales
to listen at the church door in the dark to hear shouted by a ghostly
voice in the edifice the names of those who are shortly to be buried
in the adjoining churchyard. In other parts, he says, 'the window
serves the same purpose,' and, he adds, 'there are said to be still
extant outside some village churches steps which were constructed in
order to enable the superstitious peasantry to climb to the window to
listen.' These steps in several places seemed to me to be merely old
mounting blocks, but they may have been made use of for the less
practical purpose in question.
31.
It is asserted that at the present day dogs cannot be induced to go
near this quarry, and that even closely hunted animals will permit
themselves to be captured rather than enter its recesses.
32.
Few superstitions have a wider circle of believers in Lancashire than
that which attributes to dogs the power of foretelling death and
disaster. There are few people, however well educated, who would be
able to resist a foreboding of coming woe if they heard the howling of
a strange dog under the window of a sick person's room; and, absurd as
the dread so inspired may seem to the sceptic, there is more ground
for it than can easily be explained away. It has frequently been urged
that the animals are attracted by the lighted window, and that their
howlings are nothing more than unpleasant appeals for admittance; and
that often, by reason of the awe with which tradition has surrounded
the noises, they terrify the invalid, and produce the end they are
supposed to foretell. This plausible theory, however, does not account
in any way for the similar visitations made in the daytime, when there
is no artificial light to attract; or for the singular facts, that
generally the dog is a stranger to the locality--that it does not
loiter about, but makes its way direct to the particular house--that
it will wait until a gate is opened, so that it may get near to the
window--that it cannot be driven away before its mission has been
performed--and that, in all cases, the howling is alike, invariably
terminating in three peculiar yelping barks, which are no sooner
uttered than the animal runs off, and is no more seen in the
neighbourhood.
In Normandy the noise is considered an infallible presage of death.
Mr. Kelly says that this superstition obtains credence in France and
Germany; and that in Westphalia, a dog howling along a road is
considered a sure sign that a funeral soon will pass that way. In the
Scandinavian mythology, Hel, Goddess of Death, is visible only to
dogs.
The superstition has, at any rate, antiquity to recommend it, and it
seems evident from Exodus xi. 5-7, that even in the days of the
captivity of the Children of Israel in Egypt, the omen was firmly
believed in.
I was seated one summer evening in the drawing-room of a house in one
of the large London squares. The conversation was of the ordinary
after-dinner nature, but enlivened by the remarks of more than one
gifted guest. It was, however, suddenly interrupted in a very
startling manner by the howling of a dog, which had placed itself in
the roadway facing the house, regardless alike of the wheels of the
numerous passing carriages and cabs, and of the whips of the drivers.
The lady of the house, a north-country woman, said at once, as she
rose from her seat at the open window, 'That means death. I shall hear
of some sad trouble.' The dog would not be driven away by the angry
coachmen and cabmen, but finished the howling with three peculiar
yelps, and then trotted off rapidly; and there was much jesting during
the rest of the evening about the strange occurrence. A few days
afterwards, however, I was informed that on the evening of the
dinner-party the brother of the hostess had died in North Lancashire.
33.
'Th' Gabriel Ratchets' strike terror into the heart of many a moorland
dweller in Lancashire and Yorkshire still, presaging, as they are
believed to do, death or sorrow to every one who is so unfortunate as
to hear them. In the popular idea they are a pack of dogs yelping
through the air. Our old literature has many references to the
superstition. In more recent days, Wordsworth has introduced it in one
of his sonnets:--
'And oftentimes will start--
For overhead are sweeping GABRIEL'S HOUNDS.'
Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, in a poem dated 1849, in his _Isles of
Loch Awe and other Poems_, which he has kindly given me permission to
quote here, says of them,--
'Faintly sounds the airy note,
And the deepest bay from the staghound's throat,
Like the yelp of a cur, on the air doth float,
And hardly heard is the wild halloo.'
and--
'They fly on the blast of the forest
That whistles round the withered tree,
But where they go we may not go,
Nor see them as they fly.'
Mr. Hamerton, however, goes beyond the Lancashire peasant, at any rate
so far as I have been able to ascertain, for I never met any one in
the hill country or on the moorlands of the North who fancied that the
throng included anything but _Ratchets_, _i.e._ dogs, for the poet
goes on to sing--
'Hark! 'tis the goblin of the wood
Rushing down the dark hill-side,
With steeds that neigh and hounds that bay.'
Mr. Henderson has recorded that, about Leeds, the flight is supposed
to be that of 'the souls of unbaptized children doomed to flit
restlessly above their parents' abode.' In Germany, certainly the Wild
Hunt or Furious Host is accompanied by unbaptized children, and it has
been recorded that a woman, about the year 1800, died of grief upon
learning that the Furious Host had passed over the village where her
still-born child had died just before. Mr. Kelly (_Indo-European
Tradition_) very ably and poetically resolves all the various
superstitions of this Wild Hunt into figurative descriptions of
natural phenomena, but Mr. Yarrell, the distinguished naturalist,
reduces the cries of the Gabriel Hounds into the whistling of the Bean
Goose, _Anser Segetum_, as the flocks are flying southward in the
night, migrating from Scandinavia.
In Wales 'The Whistlers,' the cry of the golden-plover, is considered
an omen of death, but it seems to be a quite distinct superstition
from that of the _Cwn Annwn_, or Dogs of Hell, which latter is a Wild
Hunt.
I have heard the weird cry of the Gabriel Ratchets at night in several
of the northern countries, and in the loneliness and gloom of early
winter in the heart of the hills, or upon a wild bleak moorland, it
was difficult to overcome a sudden feeling of dread when the yelps
rang forth, even with Mr. Yarrell's scientific explanation fresh in my
mind.
To sketch the ramifications of the superstition of the Wild Hunt,
however, would require a volume, so numerous and various are they.
34.
In the old witch-mania records it is not unusual to find a cock
sacrificed to the Evil One, and Satan's dislike of cock-crow has
become proverbial. Brand has pointed out that the Christian poet
Prudentius (fourth century) mentions that antipathy as a tradition of
common belief. In an old German story Satan builds a house for a
peasant who agrees to pay his soul for the work. A condition is made,
however, that this house must be completed before cock-crow, and the
wily peasant, just before the last tile is put on the roof, imitates
the bird of morn, upon which all the cocks in the locality crow, and
Satan, baffled, flees.
The Evil One's appearance in the form of a cat, a goat, a pig, an old
woman, a black dog, a stylish gentleman, and the conventional shape,
with hoof and horns, have been testified to, and Calmet (_Traite sur
les apparitions des Esprits et sur les Vampires_, 1751) alludes to his
taking the shape of a raven, but I have not met with any record of his
appearance as a cock. In this case, however, that was insisted upon,
although it was suggested that it might have been some other fowl.