The Fairy belief, we have said, is a composite thing. On the
materials given by tradition, such as the memory, perhaps, of a
pre-historic race, and by old religion, as in the thoughts about
the pre-Christian Hades, poetry and fancy have been at work.
Consumption, lingering disease, unexplained disappearances, sudden
deaths, have been accounted for by the agency of the Fairies, or
People of Peace. If the superstition included no more than this, we
might regard it as a natural result of imagination, dealing with
facts quite natural in the ordinary course of things. But there are
elements in the belief which cannot be so easily dismissed. We must
ask whether the abnormal phenomena which have been so frequently
discussed, fought over, forgotten, and revived, do not enter into
the general mass of folk-lore. They appear most notably in the two
branches of Browniedom—of “Pixies,” as they say in Devonshire, who
haunt the house, and in the alleged examples of the second sight.
The former topic is the more obscure, if not the more curious. Let us
examine the occurrences, then, which may have begotten the belief in
Brownies, and in house-haunting Pixies or Fairies. These appearances
may be alleged, on one hand, to be actual facts in Nature, the
workings of some yet unexplained forces; or they may merely be the
consequences of some very old traditional method of imposture,
vulgar in itself, but still historical. That form of imposture,
again, may be wrought either by conscious agents, or unconsciously
and automatically by persons under the influence of somnambulism;
or, finally, the phenomena may in various cases be due to any one of
these three agencies, all of which may possibly be _veræ causæ_, as
conscious imposture and trickery is certainly one _vera causa_.
In Mr. Kirk’s book we meet “the invisible Wights which haunt Houses,
... throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood at the Inhabitants,”
but “hurt them not at all.” As we have said, Major (1518) calls
these wights “Fauni or Brobne”—that is, Brownies—and says that they
thrash as much grain in one night as twenty men could do, and throw
stones about. The legend of their working was common in Scotland,
and a correspondent says that in Devonshire the belief in Pixies who
set the house in order exists among the grand-parents of the present
generation. But the sportive is more common than the kindly aspect
of Brownies. Through history we constantly find them causing objects
to move without visible contact, and “acting in sport, like Buffoons
and Drolls.” In his _Letters on Demonology_ (p. 377) Scott gives
instances where the buffoon or droll was detected, and confessed
that the rattlings of plates and movements of objects were caused
by an apparatus of threads or horse-hair. He also quotes the famous
doings of “The Just Devil of Woodstock” in 1649, which so perplexed
and discomfited the Cromwellian Commissioners. He accounts for those
annoyances by the confessions of Joe Collins of Oxford, “Funny Joe,”
which he quotes from Hone’s _Every-Day Book_, while Hone quotes
from the _British Magazine_ of 1747. But the writer in the _British
Magazine_ gives no references or authorities for the authenticity
of Funny Joe’s confessions, nor even for the existence of Joseph.
Scott could not find his original in the pamphlets of the British
Museum, and some of the statements attributed to Joe do not tally
with the official account, and other contemporary documents collected
in Sir Walter’s _Woodstock_. Joe pretends, for example, to have been
secretary to the Commission under the name of Giles Sharpe; but in
the other accounts the secretary is named Browne. A Royalist Brownie
or Polter-geist lies under shrewd suspicion, but Joe’s own existence
is unproved, and his alleged evidence is of no value. However, no
sane person can dream of doubting that many a Brownie has been as
much in flesh and blood as the Brownie of Bodsbeck in Hogg’s story.
There remain the less easily explicable tales of strange and humorous
disturbances, accompanied by loud sounds, rappings, the moving of
objects without visible contact, and so forth.[7] Perhaps we may best
examine these by taking modern instances, collected by the Psychical
Society, in the first place, and then comparing them with cases
recorded at distant times and in remote places. Some curious common
features will be observed, and the evidence has at least the value
of undesigned coincidence. Glanvil, Telfair (minister of Rerrick),
the Wesleys, Dr. Adam Clarke, Increase Mather, were not modern
students of psychical research. The modern Psychical Researchers,
we fear, are not students of old legendary lore, which they dismiss
on evidence not first-hand nor scientifically valid. Thus they do
not seem to be aware that they are describing, almost in identical
terms, phenomena identical with those noted by Telfair, Mather,
Lavater, and the rest, and by those ancients attributed to devils.
The modern recorders are not consciously copying from old accounts;
the coincidences therefore have their value, as proving that certain
phenomena have occurred and recurred. Now those phenomena may be due
to conscious or to hysterical imposture, but they have been frequent
and common enough to keep alive, and probably to originate, a part
of the Fairy belief—that part which is concerned with Brownies and
house-haunting Pixies, or Domovoys. These, again, correspond to the
tricky beings described by Mr. Leland in his _Etruscan Remains_ as
survivals of old Roman and Etruscan popular religions, while we find
similar occurrences in the Empire of the Incas not long after the
Spanish conquest of Peru.[8]
Beginning, then, with what is nearest to us in time, we take Mr. F.
W. H. Myers’s essays “On the Alleged Movement of Objects without
Contact, occurring not in the Presence of a Paid Medium.”[9] The
alleged phenomena are, of course, as common as blackberries in the
presence of paid mediums, but are to the last degree untrustworthy.
Even when there is no paid medium present, the mere contagious
excitement which is said to be developed at _séances_ makes all
that is thought to occur there a story to be taken with plenty of
salt.[10] One of Mr. Myers’s examples was the result of _séances_,
but it had features of great importance for the argument. It will
be found in _Proc. S. P. R._, vol. xix. p. 189, July 1891. The
performers are Mr. C., Mrs. C., and Mr. H. Mr. C. and Mrs. C. are
spoken of as good witnesses, known to Mr. Myers and Professor
Barrett. Mr. H.’s health has suffered so much that he cannot be
examined, and Mr. H. is the person who interests us here, for
reasons which will be given later. All three were “unbelievers” in
these matters. On the second evening “lights floated about the room,”
which was lit, apparently, by a full moon. “F.” (who is also “H.”)
felt cold hands touching, and “hands” recur in the old pre-scientific
accounts. The three mages were holding hands tightly at the time. Now
Mr. H. had hitherto been in excellent health, but after his chair
was dragged from under him, and he was “thrown down on the ground,”
he went into “a trance.” His watch and ring (on the finger of a hand
held by Mrs. C.) were carried to a remote part of the room. H. leaves
the circle and sits at the window. Another figure walks through the
room. H. returns, is “thrown down,” his coat is dragged off, and his
boots are discovered on a distant sofa. He asks for “something from
home,” goes into a trance, a photograph locked up by him at home is
found on the table. His wife, in town, “being quite ignorant of our
having had _séances_, told us that, at that very hour, a fearful
crash occurred in his bedroom. The photograph vanished, and returned
last night, when H. was in a trance.” He is “thrown down” again.
He has “alternate fits of unconsciousness and raving delirium.” The
home of Mr. and Mrs. C. (not the house where they sat) is vexed by
“figures,” noises, knockings; “we were sprinkled with water in the
night,” haunted by sounds of drums and horns, and so forth. Before a
“manifestation,” “we all felt a sudden chill, like either a wave of
intensely cold air passing, or a rapid decrease of temperature.”[11]
This is a disgusting story if Mr. H.’s health was ruined by his
presence at the performances. The point, however, is that he did
behave in epileptic fashion while these events were in progress.
It is natural to suppose that, in his “trances,” he may have been
capable, unconsciously, of feats physically and morally impossible to
him in his normal condition. This explanation would not cover all the
alleged occurrences, but would account for many of them.
We now take an ancient instance, similar disturbances at Newberry,
in New England, in 1679, similarly accompanied by the presence of
an epileptic patient.[12] The house of William Morse was “strangely
disquieted by a dæmon.” The inmates were Morse, his wife, and their
grandson, a boy whose age is not given. The trouble began on December
3, with a sound of heavy objects falling on the roof. On December 8,
large stones and bricks “were thrown in at the west end of the house
... the bedstead was lifted up from the floor, and the bed-staff
flung out of the window, and a cat was hurled at the wife. A long
staff danced up and down in the chimney. The man’s wife put the staff
in the fire, but she could not hold it there, inasmuch as it would
forcibly fly out; yet after much ado, with joynt strength, they made
it to burn.... A chair flew about, and at last lighted on the table,
where victuals stood ready to eat, and was likely to spoil all, only
by a nimble catching they saved some of their meat.... A chest was
removed from place to place, no hand touching it. Two keys would
fly about, making a loud noise by knocking against each other.... As
they lay in bed with their little boy between them, a great stone
from the floor of the loft was thrown upon the man’s stomach, and he
turning it down upon the floor, it was once more thrown upon him.”
On January 23, 1680, “his ink-horn was taken away from him while he
was writing” (he was keeping a diary of these events), “and when by
all his seeking he could not find it, at last he saw it drop out of
the air, down by the fire.... February 2, while he and his boy were
eating of cheese, the pieces which he cut were wrested from them....
But as for the boy, he was a great sufferer in these afflictions, for
on the 18th of December he, sitting by his grandfather, was hurried
into great motions. The man made him stand between his legs, but the
chair danced up and down, and was like to have cast both man and boy
into the fire, and the child was tossed about in such a manner as
that they feared his brains would have been beaten out.”
All these contortions of the boy were apparently what M. Charcot
calls _clownisms_.[13] When taken to a doctor’s house the boy “was
free of disturbances,” which returned with his return home. He barked
like a dog, clucked like a hen, talked nonsense about “Powel,” who
pinched and bullied him. While he was in bed with the old people, “a
pot with its contents was thrown upon them.” They were clutched by
hands, like Mr. and Mrs. C. Once a voice was heard singing, “Revenge,
revenge is sweet.” Finally a mate of a ship came, declared that the
grandmother was not rightly suspected as a witch, and offered, if
he were left alone with the boy, to cure him. “The mate came next
day betimes, and the boy was with him till night; since which time
his house, Morse saith, has not been molested with evil spirits.”
Probably the mate used a rope’s end: the boy was more speedily cured
than Mr. H.
The phenomena are those of droll or buffooning wights, as Mr. Kirk
says, and no man can doubt that the boy was at the bottom of the
whole affair. But whether he was capable, when well and conscious, of
such diversions, is another question. Children like him produced the
famous witch-mania in New England.
We have here, undeniably, a well-recorded case, analogous to that of
Mr. H. In a modern case of bell-ringing, heavy thumps, and movement
of objects, the agent was “a young girl who had never been out to
service before,” and who passed the night in a state of wildly
agitated somnambulism, repeating the whole of the Service for the
day.[14] Mather gives several other examples, in which motives for
trickery are manifest, while we hear nothing of an epileptic or
hysterical patient.
In the majority of instances, ancient or modern, children are the
agents. Thus we have “Physical Phenomena obtained in a Family
Circle,” that of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, with their children, at Rio
Janeiro.[15] The time was 1888. Curiosity had been caused by “the
notorious Henry Slade.” There were “touches and grasps of hands.”
A table “ran after me” (Professor Alexander) “and attempted to hem
me in,” when only C., a little girl, was in the room. “As far as
I could see, she did not even touch the table.” The chair of Amy
(aged thirteen months) was moved about, like that of Master Morse
two hundred years earlier. A table jumped into the laps of the
public. There were raps and thumps, which “seemed to shake the whole
building.” Lights floated about. A slate, covered with flour, was
placed on C.’s lap; her hands lay on the table. Marks of fingers came
on the flour, and, in answer to request, the mark of “a naked baby
foot.” The children present were wearing laced boots, and we are
not told that little Amy was under the table. Bluish lights and the
phantasm of a dog were seen.
All this answers to an ancient example—the disturbances in Mr.
Wesley’s house at Epworth, December 1715 to January 1716.[16] The
house was a new one, rebuilt in 1709. We have Mr. Samuel Wesley’s
Journal, with many contemporary letters from members of the family,
and later reminiscences. There were many lively girls in the house,
and two servants—a maid and a man, recently engaged. The disturbances
began with groanings; then came knockings, which flitted about the
house. Mr. Wesley heard nothing till December 21. The knocks replied
to those made by the family, but they never could imitate the sounds.
Mrs. Wesley and Emily saw an object “like a badger” run from under
a bed and vanish. The mastiff was much alarmed by the sounds. Mr.
Wesley was “thrice pushed by invisible power.” The bogie was a
Jacobite, as was Mrs. Wesley: Mr. Wesley was for King George. The
knocks were violent when that usurper was prayed for. They did not
try praying for King James. Robin, the servant, saw a hand-mill work
violently. “Naught vexed me but that it was empty. I thought, had it
but been full of malt, he might have ground his heart out for me.”
But this was a jocose, not an industrious devil. Robin called it
“old Jeffries,” after a gentleman lately dead; the family called it
“Jeffrey,” unless one name is a mere misspelling. It “seemed to sweep
after” Nancy Wesley, when she swept the chambers. “She thought he
might have done it for her, and saved her the trouble.” Mrs. Wesley
concealed the matter from her husband, “lest he should fancy it was
against his own death” (Letter of January 12, 1716-17). This belief
in noises foretelling death is very common; compare Scott’s nocturnal
disturbances at Abbotsford when Bullock, his agent in building it,
was dying in London. The racket occurred on April 28 and 29, 1818,
and Scott examined the scene “with Beardie’s broadsword under my
arm.”[17] Bullock died in Tenterden Street, in London, whether on
April 28 or 29 is not easily to be ascertained. “The noise resembled
half a dozen men putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can
be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the
time.”[18] The noises used to follow Hetty Wesley, and thump under
her feet, as under those of C. in Professor Alexander’s narrative.
Mr. Wesley’s plate “danced before him on the table a pretty while,
without anybody’s stirring the table.”[19] The disturbances quieted
down in January, but recurred on March 31. Similar phenomena had
occurred “long before” in the family.[20] “The sound very often
seemed in the air, in the middle of a room, nor could they ever make
any such themselves by any contrivance.”[21] On February 16, 1740,
twenty-three years later, Emily writes to Jack about “that _wonderful
thing_ called by us _Jeffrey_.... That something calls on me against
any extraordinary new affliction.”
Priestley styles this affair “the best-authenticated that is anywhere
extant.” He supposes it to have been “a trick of the servants, for
mere amusement.” The _modus operandi_ is difficult to explain. We
hear nothing of bad health or hysterics in the household.[22] For
our purpose it is enough that a few incidents of this kind, however
produced, might originate and keep alive the belief in Brownies, and
“That shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow,”
who
“Frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern.”
By a curious coincidence, we can show a case in which phenomena of
the kind usually reported as occurring at _séances_, and in examples
like that of William Morse, were actually accepted as manifestations
of the _Sleagh Maith_, or Fairies. In his account of the disturbances
in the Wesley family, Dr. Clarke, the author, averred that he had
himself witnessed similar events. It thus became necessary to consult
his _Life_ (London, 1833). “In the history of my own life,” says
Dr. Clarke, “I have related this matter in sufficient detail.”[23]
Unluckily, in his _Life_ (pp. 76, 77) he gives scarce any details.
Previous to sudden deaths in a family called Church, the phenomena of
falling plates, heavy tread, and other noises occurred. Mr. Clarke
“sat up one whole night in the kitchen, and most distinctly heard
the above noises.” He was a born mystic, and even in childhood a
reader of Cornelius Agrippa, and, later, of the alchemists. But he
records the instance of a woman, who solemnly declared to Mrs. Clarke
that a number of the _gentle people_ (_Sleagh Maith_) “occasionally
frequented her house; that they often conversed with her, one of
them putting its hands on her eyes during the time, which hands she
represented, from the sensation she had, to be about the size of
those of a child of four or five years of age.” The family were “worn
down” with these visits, and from the mention of touches of hands it
is pretty plain that we have to do with the kind of sprite who paws
people at _séances_. But these sprites are recognised (the scene is
the North of Ireland) as “gentle people,” Folk of Peace. The amusing
thing is, that Mr. Clarke, while he believes in Mr. Wesley’s Jeffrey,
and in the supernatural origin of a noise in a kitchen, laughs at
similar phenomena when assigned to Fairies. It is a mere difference
of terminology.
Another old example may be given. It is Alexander Telfair’s “True
Relation” of disturbances at Ringcroft, in the parish of Rerrick.[24]
The story is attested by the signatures of Ewart, minister of Kells,
in Galloway; Monteith, minister of Borg; Murdoch, minister of
Crosmichael, on Loch Ken; Spalding, minister at Parton, also by Loch
Ken; Falconer, minister at Keltown; Mr. M‘Lellan of Colline, Lennox
of Milhouse, and a number of farmers. These were all neighbours,
and all attested what they saw and heard. Robert Chambers says,
“There never, perhaps, was any mystic history better attested. Few
narrations of the kind have included occurrences and appearances
which it was more difficult to reconcile with the theory of trick or
imposture.” Mr. Telfair himself had been chaplain, in 1687, to Sir
Thomas Kirkpatrick of Closeburn. He was then an Episcopalian.
Andrew Mackie was a stone-mason at Rerrick. On March 7 (1695?), and
for long after, stones began to fly about in his house by night and
day. “The stones which hit any person had not half their natural
weight.” Mackie complained to Telfair, his minister, who entered
the house and prayed: nothing odd occurred. As he stood outside, he
“saw two little stones drop down on the croft;” then he was asked
to return, and was pelted inside the cottage. This was March 11.
For a week there was no more trouble, then the disturbances began
again. Mr. Telfair was sent for, and was pelted, beaten with a staff,
and heard loud knockings. “That night, as I was at prayer, leaning
on a bedside, I felt something lifting up my arm. I, casting my
eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and arm from the elbow
down, but presently it evanished.” “There was never anything seen
except that hand I saw,” and an apparition of a boy in grey clothes.
Sometimes the stoning went on in the open air.[25] There were plenty
of touchings, grippings, and scratchings. “The door-bar” (a long,
heavy piece of squared wood) “would go thorow the house as if a
person were carrying it in their hand, yet nothing seen doing it.”
Here we compare, in _Proc. S. P. R._, February 1892, the story of a
carpenter’s shop at Swanland, in Yorkshire, where pieces of wood were
“levitated” into abnormal flight. No imposture was discovered, nor
was the presence of any one person necessary.
The ministers of Kells and Crosmichael were pelted with stones of
eight pounds weight. On April 6, fire-balls floated through the
cottage. When five ministers were present, “it made all the house
shake, brake a hole through the thatch, and poured in great stones.”
“It handled the legs of some as with a man’s hand;” it hoisted Mr.
Telfair, Lennox of Millhouse, and others off the ground! A sieve
flew through the house; Mackie caught it; a force gripped it, and
pulled the interior part out of the rim. A day of humiliation was
solemnly kept in the parish, which only excited the emulation
of the disturbing agent; “it continued in a most fearful manner
without intermission.” Voices were heard, which talked nonsense of a
semi-scriptural kind; finally the thing died out early in May. By
the way, on April 28, “it pulled down the end of the house, all the
stone-work thereof.”
This is a very odd case, as no suspicion is thrown on the children.
The attestations of several witnesses are given, not only at the
close, but for almost every separate incident. The vision of the
white hand is agreeable.
_The Devil of Glen Luce_, in Galloway, was published by Sinclair in
his _Hydrostaticks_, of all places, in 1672, and again in _Satan’s
Invisible World_, and by Glanvil in _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. In
this affair a boy called Thomas, a son of the unlucky householder,
was clearly the agent. The phenomena were stone-throwing, beating
with sticks, levitation of a plate, and a great deal of voices,
probably uttered by the aforesaid Thomas. The Synod ordered a day of
humiliation (1655-56).
The affair of the Drummer of Tedworth (1661) is, or ought to be, too
well known for quotation. The troubles began after Mr. Mompesson
seized the drum of a vagrant musician. In the presence of a
clergyman, chairs walked about the room of themselves, “a bed-staff
was thrown at the minister, but so favourably that a lock of wool
could not have fallen more softly.” The children, as usual, were
especially haunted. A jingling of money was common, as it also was
at Epworth. Lights wandered about the house, “blue and glimmering.”
The noise was persistent in the woodwork of the children’s beds,
while their hands were outside. The knocks answered knocks made by
visitors. There were divers other marvels. The Drummer was suspected,
but, consciously or not, the children were probably the agents. They
seem to have been in their usual health.[26] In Galashiels (date not
given), loud knocks on the floor accompanied a hystero-epileptic
girl wherever she sat. In bed, “her body was so lifted up that many
strong men were not able to keep it down.” The minister, who could
make nothing of her, was Mr. Wilkie; the girl was Margaret Wilson
(Sinclair, p. 200).
This little parcel of strange stories may suffice to show that part
of the Fairy belief is based on such incidents as still occur, or are
reported to occur, just in the old fashion. It is for psychologists
and physicians to ascertain how far, if at all, the incidents are
produced by hysterical, or epileptic, or somnambulistic patients.
Common forthright trickery is usually detected in paid mediums. But
the trickery simulates real events, or continues an old traditional
form of imposture. The moral that parents should not allow their
children to be present at _séances_ hardly needs enforcing. Some of
them may escape unharmed, but frightful injuries may be inflicted on
health and on character.[27]