In this ballad the reader will find traces of a singular superstition,
not yet altogether discredited in the wilder parts of Scotland. The
lykewake, or watching a dead body, in itself a melancholy office, is
rendered, in the idea of the assistants, more dismally awful, by the
mysterious horrors of superstition. In the interval betwixt death and
interment, the disembodied spirit is supposed to hover around its mortal
habitation, and, if invoked by certain rites, retains the power of
communicating, through its organs, the cause of its dissolution. Such
enquiries, however are always dangerous, and never to be resorted to
unless the deceased is suspected to have suffered _foul play_, as it
is called. It is the more unsafe to tamper with this charm, in an
unauthorized manner; because the inhabitants of the infernal regions
are, at such periods, peculiarly active. One of the most potent
ceremonies in the charm, for causing the dead body to speak, is, setting
the door ajar, or half open. On this account, the peasants of Scotland
sedulously avoid leaving the door ajar, while a corpse lies in the
house. The door must either be left wide open, or quite shut; but the
first is always preferred, on account of the exercise of hospitality
usual on such occasions. The attendants must be likewise careful never
to leave the corpse for a moment alone, or, if it is left alone, to
avoid, with a degree of superstitious horror, the first sight of it.
The following story, which is frequently related by the peasants of
Scotland, will illustrate the imaginary danger of leaving the door ajar.
In former times, a man and his wife lived in a solitary cottage, on one
of the extensive border fells. One day, the husband died suddenly; and
his wife, who was equally afraid of staying alone by the corpse, or
leaving the dead body by itself, repeatedly went to the door, and
looked anxiously over the lonely moor, for the sight of some person
approaching. In her confusion and alarm, she accidentally left the door
ajar, when the corpse suddenly started up, and sat in the bed, frowning
and grinning at her frightfully. She sat alone, crying bitterly, unable
to avoid the fascination of the dead man's eye, and too much terrified
to break the sullen silence, till a catholic priest, passing over the
wild, entered the cottage. He first set the door quite open, then put
his little finger in his mouth, and said the paternoster backwards; when
the horrid look of the corpse relaxed, it fell back on the bed, and
behaved itself as a dead man ought to do.
The ballad is given from tradition.