vice now most rigorously frowned down by polite society. Daring
spirits, like Mr. Besant, may still urge its claims upon our reluctant
consideration; Mr. Andrew Lang may pronounce it an essential element of
humor; or a purely speculative genius, like Mr. Pater, may venture to
show how adroitly it can be used as a help to religious sentiment; but
every age has pet vices of its own, and, being singularly intolerant
of those it has discarded, is not inclined to listen to any arguments
in their favor. Superstition burned old women for witches, dotards
for warlocks, and idiots for were-wolves; but in its gentler aspect
it often threw a veil of charity over both man and beast. The Greek
rustic, who found a water-newt wriggling in his gourd, tossed the
little creature back into the stream, remembering that it was the
unfortunate Ascalaphus, whom the wrath of Demeter had consigned to this
loathsome doom. The mediæval housewife, when startled by a gaunt wolf
gazing through her kitchen window, bethought her that this might be her
lost husband, roaming helpless and bewitched, and so gave the starving
creature food.
“O was it war-wolf in the wood?
Or was it mermaid in the sea?
Or was it man, or vile woman,
My ain true love, that misshaped thee?”
The West Indian negress still bestows chicken-soup instead of scalding
water on the invading army of black ants, believing that if kindly
treated they will show their gratitude in the only way that ants can
manifest it,--by taking their departure.
Granted that in these acts of gentleness there are traces of fear and
self-consideration; but who shall say that all our good deeds are not
built up on some such trestle-work of foibles? “La vertu n’iroit pas
si loin, si la vanité ne lui tenoit pas compagnie.” And what universal
politeness has been fostered by the terror that superstition breeds,
what delicate euphemisms containing the very soul of courtesy! Consider
the Greeks, who christened the dread furies “Eumenides,” or “gracious
ones;” the Scotch who warily spoke of the devil as the “good man,”
lest his sharp ears should catch a more unflattering title; the Dyak
who respectfully mentions the small-pox as “the chief;” the East Indian
who calls the tiger “lord” or “grandfather;” and the Laplander, who
gracefully alludes to the white bear as “the fur-clad one,” and then
realize what perfection of breeding was involved in what we are wont to
call ignorant credulity.
Again, in the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that
most comfortable vanity which whispers in our ears that failures are
not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall
upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means
ruin. But before the world had grown so pitilessly logical there was
no lack of excuses for the defeated, and of unflattering comments for
the strong. Did some shrewd Cornish miner open a rich vein of ore, then
it was apparent to his fellow-toilers that the knackers had been at
work, leading him on by their mysterious tapping to this more fruitful
field. But let him proceed warily, for the knacker, like its German
brother, the kobold, is but a capricious sprite, and some day may
beguile him into a mysterious passage or long-forgotten chamber in the
mine, whence he shall never more return. His bones will whiten in their
prison, while his spirit, wandering restlessly among the subterranean
corridors, will be heard on Christmas Eve, hammering wearily away till
the gray dawn brightens in the east. Or did some prosperous farmer save
his crop while his neighbors’ corn was blighted, and raise upon his
small estate more than their broader acres could be forced to yield,
there was no opportunity afforded him for pride or self-congratulation.
Only the witch’s art could bring about such strange results, and the
same sorceries that had aided him had, doubtless, been the ruin of his
friends. He was a lucky man if their indignation went no further than
muttered phrases and averted heads. Does not Pliny tell us the story of
Caius Furius Cresinus, whose heavy crops awoke such mingled anger and
suspicion in his neighbors’ hearts that he was accused in the courts of
conjuring their grain and fruit into his own scanty ground? If a woman
aspired to be neater than her gossips, or to spin more wool than they
were able to display, it was only because the pixies labored for her
at night; turning her wheel briskly in the moonlight, splitting the
wood, and drawing the water, while she drowsed idly in her bed.
“And every night the pixies good
Drive round the wheel with sound subdued,
And leave--in this they never fail--
A silver penny in the pail.”
Even to the clergy this engaging theory brought its consolations.
When the Reverend Lucas Jacobson Debes, pastor of Thorshaven in 1670,
found that his congregation was growing slim, he was not forced,
in bitterness of spirit, to ask himself were his sermons dull, but
promptly laid all the blame upon the _biergen-trold_, the spectres
of the mountains, whom he angrily accused, in a lengthy homily, of
disturbing his flock, and even pushing their discourtesy so far as to
carry them off bodily before his discourse was completed.
Indeed, it is to the clergy that we are indebted for much interesting
information concerning the habits of goblins, witches, and gnomes.
The Reverend Robert Kirke, of Aberfoyle, Perthshire, divided his
literary labors impartially between a translation of the Psalms into
Gaelic verse and an elaborate treatise on the “Subterranean and for the
most part Invisible People, heretofore going under the name of Elves,
Faunes, and Fairies, or the like,” which was printed, with the author’s
name attached, in 1691. Here, unsullied by any taint of skepticism,
we have an array of curious facts that would suggest the closest
intimacy between the rector and the “Invisible People,” who at any rate
concealed nothing from _his_ eyes. He tells us gravely that they marry,
have children, die, and are buried, very much like ordinary mortals;
that they are inveterate thieves, stealing everything, from the milk
in the dairy to the baby lying on its mother’s breast; that they can
fire their elfin arrow-heads so adroitly that the weapon penetrates to
the heart without breaking the skin, and he himself has seen animals
wounded in this manner; that iron in any shape or form is a terror to
them, not for the same reason that Solomon misliked it, but on account
of the proximity of the great iron mines to the place of eternal
punishment; and--strangest of all--that they can read and write, and
have extensive libraries, where light and toyish books alternate with
ponderous volumes on abstruse mystical subjects. Only the Bible may not
be found among them.
How Mr. Kirke acquired all these particulars--whether, like John
Dietrich, he lived in the Elfin Mound and grew wise on elfin wisdom,
or whether he adopted a less laborious and secluded method--does not
transpire. But one thing is certain: he was destined to pay a heavy
price for his unhallowed knowledge. The fairies, justly irritated at
such an open revelation of their secrets, revenged themselves signally
by carrying off the offender, and imprisoning him beneath the dun-shi,
or goblin hill, where he has since had ample opportunity to pursue
his investigations. It is true, his parishioners supposed he had died
of apoplexy, and, under that impression, buried him in Aberfoyle
churchyard; but his successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, informs us of the
widespread belief concerning his true fate. An effort was even made
to rescue him from his captivity, but it failed through the neglect
of a kinsman, Grahame of Duchray; and Robert Kirke, like Thomas of
Ercildoune and the three miners of the Kuttenberg, still “drees his
weird” in the enchanted halls of elfland.
When the unfortunate witches of Warbois were condemned to death, on
the testimony of the Throgmorton children, Sir Samuel Cromwell, as
lord of the manor, received forty pounds out of their estate; which
sum he turned into a rent-charge of forty shillings yearly, for the
endowment of an annual lecture on witchcraft, to be preached by a
doctor or bachelor of divinity, of Queen’s College, Cambridge. Thus
he provided for his tenants a good sound church doctrine on this
interesting subject, and we may rest assured that the sermons were
far from quieting their fears, or lulling them into a skeptical
indifference. Indeed, more imposing names than Sir Samuel Cromwell’s
appear in the lists to do battle for cherished superstitions. Did not
the devout and conscientious Baxter firmly believe in the powers of
witches, especially after “hearing their sad confessions;” and was
not the gentle and learned Addison more than half disposed to believe
in them, too? Does not Bacon avow that a “well-regulated” astrology
might become the medium of many beneficial truths; and did not the
scholarly Dominican, Stephen of Lusignan, expand the legend of Melusina
into so noble a history, that the great houses of Luxembourg, Rohan,
and Sassenaye altered their pedigrees, so as to claim descent from
that illustrious nymph? Even the Emperor Henry VII. was as proud of
his fishy ancestress as was Godfrey de Bouillon of his mysterious
grandsire, Helias, the Knight of the Swan, better known to us as the
Lohengrin of Wagner’s opera; while among more modest annals appear the
families of Fantome and Dobie, each bearing a goblin on their crest, in
witness of their claim to some shadowy supernatural kinship.
There is often a marked contrast between the same superstition as
developed in different countries, and in the same elfin folk, who
please or terrify us according to the gay or serious bent of their
mortal interpreters. While the Keltic ourisk is bright and friendly,
with a tinge of malice and a strong propensity to blunder, the English
brownie is a more clever and audacious sprite, the Scottish bogle is a
sombre and dangerous acquaintance, and the Dutch Hudikin an ungainly
counterpart of Puck, with hardly a redeeming quality, save a lumbering
fashion of telling the truth when it is least expected. It was Hudikin
who foretold the murder of James I. of Scotland; though why he should
have left the dikes of Holland for the bleak Highland hills it is hard
to say, more especially as there were murders enough at home to keep
him as busy as Cassandra. So, too, when the English witches rode up the
chimney and through the storm-gusts to their unhallowed meetings, they
apparently confined their attention to the business in hand, having
perhaps enough to occupy them in managing their broomstick steeds.
But when the Scottish hags cried, “Horse and hattock in the devil’s
name!” and rushed fiercely through the tempestuous night, the unlucky
traveler crossed himself and trembled, lest in very wantonness they
aim their magic arrows at his heart. Isobel Gowdie confessed at her
trial to having fired in this manner at the Laird of the Park, as he
rode through a ford; but the influence of the running water turned her
dart aside, and she was soundly cuffed by Bessie Hay, another witch,
for her awkwardness in choosing such an unpropitious moment.[3] In
one respect alone this evil sisterhood were all in harmony. By charms
and spells they revenged themselves terribly on their enemies, and
inflicted malicious injuries on their friends. It was as easy for them
to sink a ship in mid-ocean as to dry the milk in a cow’s udder, or to
make a strong man pine away while his waxen image was consumed inch by
inch on the witch’s smouldering hearth.
This instinctive belief in evil spells is the essence, not of
witchcraft only, but of every form of superstition, from the days of
Thessalian magic to the brutish rites of the Louisiana Voodoo. It has
brought to the scaffold women of gentle blood, like Janet Douglas,
Lady Glamis, and to the stake visionary enthusiasts like Jeanne d’Arc.
It confronts us from every page of history, it stares at us from the
columns of the daily press. It has provided an outlet for fear, hope,
love, and hatred, and a weapon for every passion that stirs the soul of
man. It is equally at home in all parts of the world, and has entered
freely into the religion, the traditions, and the folk-lore of all
nations. Actæon flying as a stag from the pursuit of his own hounds;
Circe’s swinish captives groveling at their troughs; Björn turned into
a bear through the malice of his stepmother, and hunted to death by
his father, King Hring; the Swans of Lir floating mournfully on the
icy waters of the Moyle; the _loup-garou_ lurking in the forests of
Brittany, and the _oborot_ coursing over the Russian steppes; Merlin
sleeping in the gloomy depths of Broceliande, and Raknar buried fifty
fathoms below the coast of Helluland, are alike the victims
“Of woven paces and of waving hands.”
whether the spell be cast by an outraged divinity, or by the cruel hand
of a malignant foe.
In 1857, Mr. Newton discovered at Cnidos fragments of a buried and
ruined chapel, sacred to Demeter and Persephone. In it were three
marble figures of great beauty, some small votive images of baked
earth, several bronze lamps, and a number of thin leaden rolls, pierced
with holes for the convenience of hanging them around the chapel walls.
On these rolls were inscribed the diræ, or spells, devoting some enemy
to the infernal gods, and the motive for the suppliant’s ill-will was
given with great _naïveté_ and earnestness. One woman binds another who
has lured away her lover; a second, the enemy who has accused her of
poisoning her husband; a third, the thief who has stolen her bracelet;
a fourth, the man who has robbed her of a favorite drinking-horn; a
fifth, the acquaintance who has failed to return a borrowed garment;
and so on through a long list of grievances.[4] It is evident this
form of prayer was quite a common occurrence, and, as combining a
religious rite with a comfortable sense of retaliation, must have been
exceptionally soothing to the worshiper’s mind. Persephone was appeased
and their own wrongs atoned for by this simple act of devotion; and
would that it were given to us now to inscribe, and by inscribing doom,
all those who have borrowed and failed to return our books; would
that by scribbling some strong language on a piece of lead we could
avenge the lamentable gaps on our shelves, and send the ghosts of the
wrong-doers howling dismally into the eternal shades of Tartarus.
The saddest thing about these faded superstitions is that the very
men who have studied them most accurately are often least susceptible
to their charms. In their eagerness to trace back every myth to a
common origin, and to prove, with or without reason, that they one
and all arose from the observation of natural phenomena, too many
writers either overlook entirely the beauty and meaning of the tale,
or treat it with a contemptuous indifference very hard to understand.
Mr. Baring-Gould, a most honorable exception to this evil rule, takes
occasion now and then to deal some telling blows at the extravagant
theorists who persist in maintaining that every tradition bears its
significance on its surface, and who, following up their preconceived
opinions, cruelly overtax the credulity of their readers. He himself
has shown conclusively that many Aryan myths are but allegorical
representations of natural forces; but in these cases the connection
is always distinctly traced and easily understood. It is not hard for
any of us to perceive the likeness between the worm Schamir, the hand
of glory, and the lightning, when their peculiar properties are so
much alike; or to behold in the Sleeping Beauty or Thorn-Rose the
ice-bound earth slumbering through the long winter months, until the
sun-god’s kisses win her back to life and warmth. But when we are
asked to believe that William Tell is the storm-cloud, with his arrow
of lightning and his iris bow bent against the sun, which is resting
like a coin or a golden apple on the edge of the horizon, we cannot
but feel, with the author of Curious Myths, that a little too much is
exacted from us. “I must protest,” he says, “against the manner in
which our German friends fasten rapaciously upon every atom of history,
sacred and profane, and demonstrate all heroes to represent the sun;
all villains to be the demons of night or winter; all sticks and spears
and arrows to be the lightning; all cows and sheep and dragons and
swans to be clouds.”
But then it must be remembered that Mr. Baring-Gould is the most
tolerant and catholic of writers, with hardly a hobby he can call his
own. Sympathizing with the sad destruction of William Tell, he casts
a lance in honor of Saint George against Reynolds and Gibbon, and
manifests a lurking weakness for mermaids, divining-rods, and the
Wandering Jew. He is to be congratulated on his early training, for he
assures us he believed, on the testimony of his Devonshire nurse, that
all Cornishmen had tails, until a Cornish bookseller stoutly denied the
imputation, and enlightened his infant mind. He has the rare and happy
faculty of writing upon all mythical subjects with grace, sympathy,
and _vraisemblance_. Even when there can be no question of credulity
either with himself or with his readers, he is yet content to write as
though for the time he believes. Just as Mr. Birrell advises us to lay
aside our moral sense when we begin the memoirs of an attractive scamp,
and to recall it carefully when we have finished, so Mr. Baring-Gould
generously lays aside his enlightened skepticism when he undertakes to
tell us about sirens and were-wolves, and remembers that he is of the
nineteenth century only when his task is done.
This is precisely what Mr. John Fiske is unable or unwilling to
accomplish. He cannot for a moment forget how much better he knows;
and instead of an indulgent smile at the delightful follies of our
ancestors, we detect here and there through his very valuable pages
something unpleasantly like a sneer. “Where the modern calmly taps
his forehead,” explains Mr. Fiske, “and says, ‘Arrested development!’
the terrified ancient made the sign of the cross, and cried,
‘Were-wolf!’”[5] Now a more disagreeable object than the “modern”
tapping his forehead, like Dr. Blimber, and offering a sensible
elucidation of every mystery, it would be hard to find. The ignorant
peasant making his sign of the cross is not only more picturesque,
but he is more companionable,--in books, at least,--and it is of far
greater interest to try to realize how _he_ felt when the specimen
of “arrested development” stole past him in the shadow of the woods.
There is, after all, a mysterious horror about the lame boy,--some
impish changeling of evil parentage, foisted on hell, perhaps, as
Nadir thrust his earth-born baby into heaven,--who every Midsummer
Night and every Christmas Eve summoned the were-wolves to their secret
meeting, whence they rushed ravenously over the German forests. The
girdle of human skin, three finger-breadths wide, which wrought the
transformation; the telltale hairs in the hollow of the hand which
betrayed the wolfish nature; the fatality which doomed one of every
seven sisters to this dreadful enchantment, and the trifling accidents
which brought about the same undesirable result are so many handles
by which we grasp the strange emotions that swayed the mediæval man.
Jacques Roulet and Jean Grenier,[6] as mere maniacs and cannibals, fill
every heart with disgust; but as were-wolves an awful mystery wraps
them round, and the mind is distracted from pity for their victims to
a fascinated consideration of their own tragic doom. A blood-thirsty
idiot is an object that no one cares to think about; but a wolf-fiend,
urged to deeds of violence by an impulse he cannot resist, is one of
those ghastly creations that the folk-lore of every country has placed
sharply and persistently before our startled eyes. Yet surely there
is a touch of comedy in the story told by Van Hahn, of an unlucky
freemason, who, having divulged the secrets of his order, was pursued
across the Pyrenees by the master of his lodge in the form of a
were-wolf, and escaped only by taking refuge in an empty cottage, and
hiding under the bed.
“To us who are nourished from childhood,” says Mr. Fiske again, “on
the truths revealed by science, the sky is known to be merely an
optical appearance, due to the partial absorption of the solar rays
in passing through a thick stratum of atmospheric air; the clouds are
known to be large masses of watery vapor, which descend in rain-drops
when sufficiently condensed; and the lightning is known to be a flash
of light accompanying an electric discharge.” But the blue sky-sea of
Aryan folk-lore, in which the cloud-flakes floated as stately swans,
drew many an eye to the contemplation of its loveliness, and touched
many a heart with the sacred charm of beauty. On that mysterious sea
strange vessels sailed from unknown shores, and once a mighty anchor
was dropped by the sky mariners, and fell right into a little English
graveyard, to the great amazement of the humble congregation just
coming out from church. The sensation of freedom and space afforded by
this conception of the heavens is a delicious contrast to the conceit
of the Persian poet,--
“That inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die;”
or to the Semitic legend, which described the firmament as made of
hammered plate, with little windows for rain,--a device so poor and
barbaric, that we wonder how any man could look up into the melting
blue and admit such a sordid fancy into his soul.
“Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest men,” confesses Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “has mingled with it something which partakes of
insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep
company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.” Such an
admission from so genial and kindly a source should suffice to put us
all on the defensive. It is not agreeable to be bullied even upon those
matters which are commonly classed as facts; but when we come to the
misty region of dreams and myths and superstitions, let us remember,
with Lamb, that “we do not know the laws of that country,” and with him
generously forbear to “set down our ancestors in the gross for fools.”
We have lost forever the fantasies that enriched them. Not for us are
the pink and white lions that gamboled in the land of Prester John,
nor his onyx floors, imparting courage to all who trod on them. Not for
us the Terrestrial Paradise, with its “Welle of Youthe, whereat thei
that drynken semen alle weys yongly, and lyven withouten sykeness;”[7]
nor the Fortunate Isles beyond the Western Sea, where spring was ever
green; where youths and maidens danced hand in hand on the dewy grass,
where the cows ungrudgingly gave milk enough to fill whole ponds
instead of milking-pails, and where wizards and usurers could never
hope to enter. The doors of these enchanted spots are closed upon us,
and their key, like Excalibur, lies hidden where no hand can grasp it.
“The whole wide world is painted gray on gray,
And Wonderland forever is gone past.”
All we can do is to realize our loss with becoming modesty, and now and
then cast back a wistful glance
“where underneath
The shelter of the quaint kiosk, there sigh
A troup of Fancy’s little China Dolls,
Who dream and dream, with damask round their loins,
And in their hands a golden tulip flower.”
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _The Highlands of Central India._ By Captain James Forsyth.
[3] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_. By Sir Walter Scott.
[4] _The Myth of Demeter and Persephone._ By Walter Pater.
[5] _Myths and Mythmakers._
[6] _Book of Were-Wolves._ By Baring-Gould.
[7] _Travels of Sir John Mandeville._
WHAT CHILDREN READ.