ROCK SEPULCHRES
A noteworthy distinction exists between the countless rock-tombs in
Palestine and those equally countless in Egypt. In the former there has
not been found a single inscription to record the name of the occupant,
whereas among the latter not one was unnamed.
The reason probably was that the Jew had no expectation of existing in
a state after death, and those of his family he put away in their holes
in the rocks had ceased to be to him anything more than a recollection.
All his hopes, his ambition, were limited to this life and to the
glorification of his nation. The highest blessing he could personally
reckon on was that his days might be long in the land which the Lord
his God would give him.
The horizon of the Egyptian, on the other hand, was full of
anticipation of a life of the spirit when parted from the body.
"Instead of the acres of inscriptions which cover the tombs of Egypt,"
says Dean Stanley, "not a single letter has been found in any ancient
sepulchre of Palestine."
When the Israelites escaped from the iron furnace of Egypt, they
carried with them so intense an abhorrence of all that savoured of
Misraim that they put away from them polytheism and repudiated
idolatry; they swept away as well the doctrine of life after death,
such as dominated the Egyptian mind, that they might focus all their
desires on this present life.
"Let me bury my dead out of my sight," expressed the feeling of the
Israelite before and after the Exodus.
The patriarchs had no conception of the resurrection of the body. The
idea was unknown to them. Their faith did not even embrace a belief in
the immortality of the soul. A passage in Job (xix. 25-27) has been
adduced to prove the contrary, but it does so only because it is a
mistranslation, and was manipulated by the translators according to
their own preconceptions. Even the word rendered Redeemer has no such
signification, it means "the Avenger of Blood." It was probably through
contact with other nations that had a wider hope, that slowly and
haltingly the conception of a prolonged existence after death made its
way among the Jews.
Christianity invested the body with a sacredness undreamt of under the
Old Covenant, and gave assurance, not of a continued existence after
death alone, but of a resuscitation of the body. "If in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "As in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The Jews entertained a strong aversion towards incineration, because
the latter was a pagan usage, and they gloried in their singularity. In
Rome they had their catacombs hewn out of the rock, and the Christians
followed their example.
A short time before the Christian era, Judea had been made tributary to
Rome by the victories of Pompey, and many thousands of Jews were
transferred to Rome, where a particular district was assigned to them
on the right bank of the Tiber. We know how tenaciously Jews clung to
their religion and to their traditional practices, and they sought to
lay their departed members in rocky sepulchres, such as those of their
distant country. And, in fact, outside the Porta Portese, the gate
nearest to their quarter of the town, a Jewish catacomb exists,
discovered in 1602, excavated in Monte Verde, that contains the tombs
of the Hebrews. From this all emblems exclusively Christian are absent.
There are representations of the Ark of the Covenant, of the seven-
branched candlestick. The lamps also were impressed with the same
symbols; and in a fragment of a Greek inscription is traced the word
"Synagogue."
The catacombs of the Christians resembled those of the Jews in every
other particular.
Three different kinds of stone compose the basis of the Roman Campagna;
the _tufa litoide_, as hard and durable as granite, used extensively for
building purposes; the _tufa granolare_, which is consistent enough to
retain the form given to it by excavators, but it is useless as building
material, and lastly the _Pozzuolana_, largely employed in the making
of Roman cement. Neither the _arenaria_ or sand quarries, nor those
for the building stone were ever employed for excavation to make catacombs,
whereas the _granular tufa_ has been so largely excavated for this purpose
that if the galleries were continued in one line, it has been reckoned
that they would stretch the entire length of the Italian peninsula.
They form a labyrinth of passages and cross-passages, and are moreover in
several stages called _piani_. But they do not extend far from the
Eternal City, not beyond the third milestone. The galleries have a breadth
of from two to four feet, and their height is governed by the nature of the
rock in which they are hewn. The walls on both sides are lined with graves
dug out of the rock, in a horizontal position, one above the other, like
bunks in a cabin. In each of these reposed one or more bodies. Here and
there the sequence is broken by a cross-passage that leads to a small
chamber, and in these chambers the sides, like those of the galleries, are
perforated with graves. All these graves were originally closed by slabs
of marble or tiles. This is about the only distinction between the graves
of the rich and those of the poor, of the slave from his master. Those
who desired to set some mark on the resting-place of a relative, to
distinguish it from those around, either had the name engraved upon the
slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of a trowel in the mortar by
which the slab was secured, or else a bit of ornamented glass or a ring or
coin was impressed in the mortar while it was still wet.
The martyrs in many cases were accorded a more elaborate grave. They
were laid in a sarcophagus in an _arcossolium_, and on the
covering slab the Holy Mysteries were celebrated on the anniversary of
their martyrdom. But sometimes a wealthy family had its own chamber,
_cubiculum_, reserved for its members.
The puticoli, of which mention has already been made as ash and refuse
pits, were of a totally different description. They were funnel-shaped
shafts sunk in the rocks, the narrow orifice being on the level of the
ground. Into this were precipitated the carcases of slaves and of the
poor. Indeed, they are still in use at Naples, when a cart with a
lantern may be followed till it reaches the place of interment, where a
hole gapes. The corpse that is enveloped in a shroud only, is shot down
into the hole, without its winding sheet, that is reserved for further
use.
But to return to the catacombs. There are not only over thirteen in the
neighbourhood of Rome, but they are found also at Otricoli, Soriano,
Spoleto, Vindena, Chiusi, Lucca, Castellamare, Prata by Avellino,
Aquila, Puzzuoli, Baiæ, Nola, Canesa, Tropea, Manfredonia, Venisa--this
last perhaps Jewish. There are five sets of them at Naples. Others in
Malta. In Spain at Ancona, Siviglia, and Elvira. In France is the
hypogee opening out of the early church of S. Victor at Marseilles. In
Germany is one at Trèves. In Hungary at Fünfkirchen. One in the Greek
island of Melos, at Alexandria also, and at Cyrene. One at Salamis in
Cyprus. The catacombs of Syracuse are like those of Rome, of vast
extent. They have lofty vaults very superior to the narrow gangways of
the cemeteries of Rome. A broad gallery runs athwart the whole
labyrinth, and from this branch out innumerable passages. One large
circular hall is lighted from above. Along the sides are niches that
served as sepulchres. Paintings as at Rome decorate the walls and
vaults, all of an early Christian character, representing men and women
in the attitude of prayer, the peacock, and the sacred monogram.
Numerous inscriptions from the tombs are collected in the museum of
Syracuse.
The catacombs of Paris are not of ancient date as catacombs. They were
originally, like those of Syracuse, quarries for the construction of
the _calcaire grossier_ for building the city, down to the
seventeenth century. They extend under the communes of Vauregard,
Montrouge, and Gentilly on the left bank of the Seine, and it is said
that a tenth part of Paris is thus undermined. In 1774, and again in
1777, accidents occurred through the giving way of the crowns of the
caverns, bringing down with them the houses built above. In the
Boulevard Neuf a building near the Barrière d'Enfer suddenly sank into
a hole 80 feet deep, and this drew public attention to the danger.
Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI the principal burying-ground of
Paris had been the Cemetery of the Innocents. Originally situated
beyond the walls of the town, it had in due course been so surrounded
by the growing metropolis as to render it impossible to continue its
use as a cemetery, and in 1784 the practice of burying therein was
discontinued, the accumulated bones of Parisians were removed thence
with great precaution, on account of the insalubrity of the operation,
and they were deposited in the old quarries, and the catacombs were
solemnly consecrated for their reception by the Archbishop of Paris on
7th April 1787. A public market-place was then established on the site
of the former cemetery.
To protect the town from settling down into this necropolis, vast sums
were expended in substructures, so as to remove all danger of future
collapse.
Gradually many other cemeteries that had been encroached upon, or
surrounded, were required to yield up their dead, so that it was
estimated that the catacomb contained the remains of three million
persons. The bodies of some victims of the Revolution were placed here
as well.
For many years the bones remained as they were thrown down on their
removal, in heaps, but after 1812 they were gradually arranged in a
fantastic manner, and turned into an exhibition for the curious. Sixty-
three staircases lead from the different parts of the town into the
catacombs, and are used by workmen and agents appointed to take care of
the necropolis. Twice in the year tours of inspection are made by the
surveyors, but visitors are no longer allowed access to the catacomb.
There have occurred cases of men having been lost in the intricate
labyrinth.
The crypts in which were laid the bodies of saints gave occasion to
kings, princes, and great men employing like mausoleums.
The poor and mean might lie in the earth, but men of consequence must
have vaults in which the members of their families might be laid. What
hideous profanation of sepulchres would have been spared had the kings
of France been laid in the earth! They elected to repose in the crypt
of the splendid minster of S. Denis. When the Revolution broke out, the
Convention resolved that the tombs should be destroyed in accordance
with the motion of Barrère, 31st July 1793, "La main puissante de la
République doit éffacer impitoyablement ces épitaphes superbes, et
demolir ces mausolées qui rappeleraient des rois l'effrayant souvenir;"
and "of the coffins of our old tyrants let us make bullets to hurl at
our enemies." The decree for the destruction was sacrilegiously
executed; the coffins were opened--Henri II. and his queen in their
robes, Henri IV. in a perfect state of preservation, Louis XIV. still
recognisable. The body of Turenne, with the fatal bullet visible in it,
was preserved as a peep-show. The rest were thrown into "fosses
communes" dug in the neighbourhood. By a singular coincidence, the work
of desecration was begun on 12th October 1793, the anniversary of the
day on which, one hundred years before, Louis XIV. had caused the
demolition of the tombs of the German Emperors at Spires. Not only so,
but the agent employed by the Convention was Hentz, a namesake of the
superintendent of the work of destruction carried out at Spires.
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges--Louis XI.
escaped. He had been buried in a crypt at Cléry, and had been
forgotten. In 1889 the abbé Saget, curé of Cléry, opened the vault and
found the body intact. Louis XI. had this sepulchre made for himself
during his lifetime. Now the visitor can take in his hand the head, and
muse over it on the treachery, cunning, and cruelty that once lodged in
that little brain-pan. Scott may have been incorrect in his history in
"Quentin Durward," but he was accurate in his characterisation of the
king.
The instinct of immortality is implanted in the human breast. The
reverential care with which primeval man treated his dead, showed a
confusion of ideas between soul and body. His senses told him, and told
men in the historic period, that the body dissolved to dust, yet as a
temple of the spirit it was treated with respect. The soul to the
Egyptians was in some manner always related to the body. The "ka" must
have something to which to return, if not to the mummy, then to its
model.
The dead in the first ages were given the caves in which they had
lived, but they began to press out the living, to monopolise all caves,
and afterwards artificial dwellings were reared to receive them, stone
structures, dolmens, that were heaped over with earth, to make them
resemble their former subterranean habitations. Sometimes these
structural caves consist of a series of chambers connected by a
passage, the so-called _allées couvertes_ of France, but of which
we have fine examples in Scotland and Ireland.
Where huge slabs of granite, limestone, or sandstone were not
available, the living scooped out underground cemeteries, closely
resembling their own underground dwellings.
In the Petit Morin are many of these that have been explored and
described by the Baron de Baye. I have already spoken of the habitable
caves there found. But there were sepulchral chambers excavated in the
chalk as well. These differ from the others in that the entrances are
blocked by a large slab, and in some instances have sculptured figures
in them of the goddess of Death, or of a stone hammer.
The Norsemen buried their sea-kings in the ships in which they had
sailed on their piratical expeditions. King Ring, when he slew Harold
Hilditön, buried him in his chariot and with his horses. In Gaulish
tombs such chariots have been found. The Scandinavians seem to have had
but a confused idea of what death was; the dead were but in a condition
of suspended animation. Hervör went to the isle of Samsey where, under
a huge cairn, lay her father Angantyr and his eleven brothers who had
fallen in single combat. Angantyr had been buried along with his sword
Tyrfing.
When she reached the grave mound she sang:--
"Wake thou up, Angantyr!
Wakens thee Hervör
Thy only daughter.
Give from the grave mound
Freely thy good sword.
"Wake thou up Hervard!
Wake thou, Hjorvard!
Hrani, Angantyr!
Shake off your slumbers
Under the tree-roots."
From his grave Angantyr replies:--
"Hervör, my daughter,
Wherefore disturb me?
Full of temerity
Madly thou seekest
Dead men to waken."
But she persists. She will have the sword. Whereupon the cairn gapes,
and she sees fire therein, and from out of the mound and flame the
sword is hurled forth and falls at her feet. [Footnote: "Hervarar
Saga," Copenh. 1785.]
Grettir the Strong broke into the tomb of Karr the Old, an ancient
Viking, to obtain his sword, and had to wrestle with the dead man
before he could wrench it from him. [Footnote: "Grettir Saga," Copenh.
1859, chap. xviii.] I will quote another case of cairn-breaking that
exhibits the same conception of suspended life in the grave, and that
in Christian times. I shall slightly condense the story. "Gest started
breaking into the mound in the day. At evening, with the help of the
priest, he had got down to make a hole in the vault, but next morning
it was all closed up again." To obviate this the priest watched all
night by the cairn furnished with holy water. Next morning when Gest
returned, the mound was as he had left it, and the two continued their
operations. Gest was let down into the cavity, and the priest and other
men held the rope. It was fifty fathoms down to the floor. Gest had a
candle in his hand, and he now lighted it and looked about him. He saw
a big ship with five hundred men in it, and they were all preparing to
start up, but as the light of the (consecrated) candle fell on them
none stirred, but they stared blankly and snorted. Gest smote at them
to cut off their heads, but it was as though his sword passed through
water. He cleared the dragon-ship of all its valuables and sent them up
by the rope. Then he searched for Raknar (the Seaking whose tomb it
was). He found a descent still further underground, and there he
discovered Raknar seated on a throne. He was frightful to look upon,
and the vault was both cold and stinking. A cauldron was under his feet
full of treasure, and he had a torque about his neck, very resplendent,
and a gold ring on his arm. He was in breastplate and helmet, and had a
sword in his hand. Gest went up to Raknar and saluted him courteously
in a song, and Raknar bowed in acknowledgment. Gest said to him: "I
cannot commend your appearance at present though I can praise your
achievements. I have come a long way in quest of you, and I am not
going away unrewarded for my trouble. Give me some of what you have,
and I will sing your renown far and wide." Raknar bowed his head to
him, and allowed him to remove his helmet and breastplate. But when
Gest attempted to deprive him of his sword, Raknar sprang up and
attacked Gest. He found him neither old nor stiff. And now the
consecrated candle went out. Raknar became so strong that Gest could
hardly bear up against him; and all the men in the ship now rose up.
Then Gest invoked his father Bard who appeared, but availed naught,
then he called upon Him who had created heaven and earth, and vowed to
accept the faith which King Olaf was preaching. Thereupon Olaf appeared
in a blaze of light, and Raknar collapsed, with all his men. His power
was gone from him. Whereupon Gest cut off his head and laid it at his
thigh. At the apparition of King Olaf all the dead men who had stood up
reseated themselves on their benches. After that Gest removed all the
treasures out of the tomb. [Footnote: "Bartða Saga," Copenh. 1860,
chap. xx.] The cairn of the outlaw Gunnar was seen open occasionally.
"Sharphedin and Hogni were out of doors one evening by Gunnar's cairn
on the south side. The moon and stars were shining clear and bright,
but every now and then the clouds drove over them. Then all at once
they thought they saw the cairn standing open, and lo! Gunnar had
turned himself in the grave-mound and was looking at the moon. They
thought they saw four lights burning within, and none of them threw a
shadow. They saw Gunnar, that he was merry, and wore a right joyful
face. He sang a song, and that so loud it might have been heard though
they had been further off." The song of the dead man is given, and then
it is added: "After that the cairn was shut up again." [Footnote: "Nials
Saga," chap. lxxix., trans, by Dasent, Edin. 1861, chap. lxxvii.]
Helgi Hundingsbane was visited in his grave-mound by his wife Sigrun,
who spent a night there with him. He informed her that all her tears
fell on and moistened him. "Here Helgi have I prepared for thee in thy
mound a peaceful bed. On thy breast, chieftain, I will repose as I was
wont in thy lifetime." To which the dead Helgi replies: "Nothing is to
be regarded as unexpected, since thou, living, a king's daughter,
sleepest in a grave-mound, in the arms of a corpse." Next morning
Sigrun departs. [Footnote: "Helgi Kv. Hundingsbana," ii. 45-47.]
Saxo Grammaticus tells us a grimly tale. Asmund and Asvid, brothers in
arms, had vowed not to be separated in death. It fell out that Asvid
died, and was buried along with his horse and dog in a cairn. And
Asmund, because of his oath of friendship, had courage to be buried
with him, food being put in for him to eat. Now just at this time, Eric
(King of Sweden) happened to pass nigh the barrow of Asvid, and the
Swedes thinking it might contain treasure, broke into it with mattocks,
and saw disclosed a cave deeper than they had anticipated. To explore
this, a youth, chosen by lot, was let down in a basket. But Asmund,
when he saw the boy descend, cast him out, and got into it himself.
Then he gave the signal to draw up. Those above drew in the basket,
thinking by the weight that it contained much treasure. But when they
saw the unknown figure of a man emerge, scared by his strange
appearance, and thinking that the dead had come to life again, they
flung down the rope and fled. For Asmund looked ghastly, covered with
the corruption of the charnel-house. He tried to recall them, and
assured them that they were needlessly alarmed. And when Eric saw him,
he marvelled at the aspect of his bloody face, the blood flowing freely
and spurting out. Then Asmund told his story. He had been buried with
his friend Asvid, but Asvid came to life again every night, and being
ravenously hungry, fell on and devoured his horse. That eaten, he had
treated his dog in the same manner, and having consumed that he turned
on his friend, and with his sharp nails tore his cheek and ripped off
one of his ears. Asmund, who had no ambition to be eaten, made a
desperate resistance, and finally succeeded in driving a stake through
the body of the vampire. Out of delicacy due to old friendship, Asmund
did not have recourse to the usual means of quelling the posthumous
vivacity and vitality of a corpse, which was to cut off the head and
make the dead man sit on it. [Footnote: "Saxo Gramm.," V., chap, clxii-
iii.]
The notion of suspended animation after death by no means expired with
paganism. When Severus, Bishop of Ravenna, was about to die, he went in
full pontificals to the tomb of his wife and daughter, had the stone
removed, and bade the dead ones make room for him between them, and
they obeyed. When S. Meven died, and his faithful friend Austell
followed him shortly after, the dead body moved on one side in the
sarcophagus to accommodate his companion. When an irreverent man struck
the coffin of S. Cadoc with a staff, the incensed Saint "roared like a
bull." In the Life of S. Germanus of Auxerre is a curious episode. A
pagan named Mamertinus being overtaken by night and a storm, took
refuge in a solitary building in which was a sarcophagus. He put his
knapsack under his head on the upper slab of the tomb, and lying down
there went to sleep. At midnight he was roused by a young man at the
door of the cell, who called out, "Corcodemus, Corcodemus, levite of
Christ, arise!" whereupon a voice answered from the tomb, "What do you
want?" The youth replied, "Bishop Perigrinus and Bishop Amator want you
at the church, where they are holding vigil." "I can't go," replied the
dead man, "I have a visitor here and I must show him hospitality."
After an interval the young man returned with two others and again
summoned Corcodemus, who now got out of his grave and said to one of
those who was at the door, "I will go with you, but you must abide here
and protect my visitor, for there is a bitch with her young, to the
number of seven, ready to tear him to pieces."
So late as 1680 a book appeared, _De Miraculis Mortuorum_, by L.
C. F. Garmann, published at Leipzig, opposing opinions not merely of
the ignorant but of the learned as to a kind of prolongation of
physical life in the dead--their issuing from the graves to suck the
blood of the living, their continuing their wonted avocations
underground, as a shoemaker being heard cobbling in his coffin, of
infants shedding their milk teeth and growing second teeth, of gnawing
their grave clothes, and many other horrible superstitions--showing how
persistent the belief was that the dead did continue to live in their
sepulchres. [Footnote: The confusion between the ghost and the corpse
is exemplified in "Hamlet."
"Tell
Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again."
Act I. sc. 5.]
The idea that by symbolic burial a man became regenerate, that he put
off the old condition and entered into another that was new, by passing
through the earth or a hole in the rocks, was very general, and it has
continued to the present day in the modified form of enabling a
sufferer by this means to leave behind his infirmities and pass into a
condition of robust health, or of one charged with a crime clearing
himself by this ordeal.
The passing of a child through the earth was forbidden by the Canons of
Edgar (A.D. 969). [Footnote: Thorpe, "Ancient Laws and Institutes,"
Lond. 1840.] Women who had crying children dug a hole in the earth and
thrust the child through, drawing it out at a further hole. Men were
forbidden also to pass cattle through a hollow tree or _per terram
foratam transire_. In France weak children were passed through a
hollow stone of S. Tessé. In the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole in
the rock through which young women crept to establish their innocence
when charged with incontinence. In Iceland a long turf was cut attached
to the soil at both ends, and such as would pass out of a condition of
hostility into one of brotherhood crawled through the gap. At Ilefeld,
in the Harz, is a holed stone called the Nadelöhr. Any one coming to
settle in the Harz for the first time is required to creep twice
through the perforation. In a good many places in Germany a similar
process is gone through to cure lumbago. Indra, the god of Thunder
among the Hindoos, drew a sick man thrice through a hole, and thereby
gave him health and new birth. The many Helfensteins that are found in
Germany were in like manner stones of Help, by traversing which the old
man was put off and the new man put on. [Footnote: Sepp,
_Altbayerischer Sagenschatz_, Munich, 1876, p. 87 _et seq_.]
Creeping through a holed stone, or under one suspended over another, is
still practised in Ireland as a cure for disorders. From passing under
the earth the custom passed to going through a split tree, the tree
representing the coffin. An interesting account of this usage will be
found in White's "Selborne."
And now let us turn to something else.
A religion of the worship of ancestors formed the ground-work of many
religions that in process of time have totally changed their character.
It lies at the root of the creeds and practices of most peoples in east
and west. It was in Greece before its religion passed into the stage of
the deification of natural forces. The Assyrians and Chaldeans clung to
it in Western Asia. The Egyptians in the valley of the Nile, the
Etruscans in Italy. At the other extremity of the world, the Chinese
and Anamites perform its rites to this day from Saghalien to Cambodia.
But in Western Asia and in Europe the primitive religion became
modified little by little. On the borders of the Tigris and the
Euphrates, as well as on the banks of the Nile, appeared the beginnings
of a different eschatology and a vague expectation of a resurrection of
the dead. The Hellenes and Romans, under the influence of philosophy,
acquired another conception of immortality, and their institutions,
issuing from collectivism, broke up into individualism.
In the extreme East, on the other hand, the ancient beliefs and
institutions remained stationary, and Buddhism was unable materially to
disturb them. It introduced its doctrine of Metampsichosis, its
Nirvana, and its hell; but these notions did not modify, they got mixed
up with the old conceptions in a jumble of heterogeneous and
contradictory beliefs. To the present day the family remains the unit
in the State; it is under the patriarchal despotism of the head of the
line, the priest of the domestic hearth, the proprietor for the time
being of the family estate. Every household has its particular gods and
protectors--the ancestors thus sublimated, and the master of the
family, the prospective god. The condition beyond the grave in no way
depends on conduct during life, it is determined by the descendants. If
the defunct be honoured, enriched with sacrifices, he becomes a
beneficent protector and is happy; neglected and abandoned, he avenges
his unfortunate condition on his forgetful posterity. To transmit the
family cult and the patrimonial field to an heir is the first duty of
man. We inherit unconsciously, not the physical character of our
ancestors only, but also their ideas and prejudices. Our practices are
often dictated by custom of very ancient date, not at all by reason or
by conviction. Expense and trouble are incurred to convey a corpse from
one end of Europe to England, that it may repose in the family vault.
We decorate our graves with flowers as though the dead appreciated
them; they are but the representatives of the ancient sacrifice to the
dead. We drink to the memory of the deceased as though pouring out
libations to them. Our tombstones are direct descendants of the menhir
and the obelisk, our altar-tombs of the dolmen, our family vault of the
primeval cave ossuary.
But in one point we have diverged very far from the path of old
beliefs. We have lost touch with the invisible world; we put our dead
out of sight and remember them no more, as though no part of the
community to which we belong, nor links in a chain of which every link
is living.
It was one of the sayings of Swedenborg, that the Aryan West had
something to learn from the Turanian East. It is so--the reverend
thought of the dead as still forming a part of the organism of the
family. With the revolt at the Reformation at the trade made out of the
feelings of the bereaved, the coining of their tears into cash to line
the pockets of the priests, came an unwarranted oblivion of the dead, a
dissociation from them. The thought that the departed had still a claim
on our sympathy and on our prayers was banished as smacking of the
discarded abuse. Prayer for the dying was legitimate and obligatory at
ten minutes to three, but prohibited at five minutes to three when the
breath had passed away. We have gone too far in this direction. We live
in an immaterial as well as in a material world. We are planted at the
overlap of two spheres, that which is spiritual and that which is
physical, and we gravitate so sensibly and so rapidly to the latter as
to lose touch with the former, and finally to disbelieve in the
existence of such a sphere.
The earth can radiate its heat, and receive and be steeped in the
falling dew only when the sky is not overcast; but our heavens are so
thick with clouds that our spirits can exhale no warmth into the
Infinite, nor drink in any balm descending from the Unseen. It is only
by detachment from the routine of vulgar life that we can enter into
any relation with the spiritual world. Political interests, social
obligations, financial concerns, choke the spiracles of our inner
being, and we lose all concern about what is supersensible, and hold no
communication with it. There are stars and planets overhead, Orion with
his spangled belt, Cassiopeia in her glittering chair, and Pleiades in
their web of silver, but we cannot see them because of the fog that
envelops us.
According to an Indian legend, the first men were bred like maggots in
the heart of the earth, but laying hold of some depending fibres drew
themselves up into the light of day. We reverse the order, and from the
bright spiritual sphere crawl underground by the thousand tendrils of
daily life.
The early Methodists and the Quakers broke away from the low material
conception of life common in their day, and asserted the reality of the
spiritual world, and the duty of living for it, as also the certainty
of holding intercommunion with the spirits. The 'Other worldliness' of
the mediaeval monastic mysticism had produced a revolt against a
conception of life that was false, its passive hostility to
civilisation, the hollowness of its ideal existence, its exaggerated
asceticism, its disparagement of the family life, and the result was
the swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. The recoil came
with the Methodists. But we cannot live wholly in the world of spirit,
any more than we ought to live wholly in the world of matter, for our
nature is double, and no portion of it should be atrophied. Extreme
mysticism is as falsifying of our nature as is extreme worldliness. The
stupidity and charlatanism of modern spiritualism is the rebellion of
men and women against the materialism of present conception of life.
Where natural expression of a need is checked, it breaks out in a
disordered form, just as arrested perspiration and circulation of the
blood produce fever. If all recognition of supersensible existence be
denied, the assertion that it does, has its place, and makes its
demands on us, will call forth, if not a wholesome, then a diseased
expression.
We are intended to rise at times and breathe the atmosphere above us,
and then to descend again to the lower region. It is only the dab and
the common plaice that are content to lie ever on the bottom, and they
are but one-sided fish. They see with one eye only, the other has been
absorbed and become dead. Every creature has in it a promise of
something better than what it is. The slow-worm has rudimentary legs,
but they are never developed; the oyster has rudimentary eyes, but they
come to nothing. The larva has in it the promise of wings, and it grows
into a butterfly or dies a grub. The soul of man has its wings so
battered by its cage and is so enamoured of its groundsel and bit of
sugar, that even if the door be left open it will not look forth,
certainly not break away. Yet there is a world beyond the bars, and a
world peopled by happy spirits, and if it cannot at once join them, it
can call to them and unite with them in rapturous song. The old
turnspit was bred in the kitchen, and its daily task was to run in the
revolving drum that helped to roast the meat. Its legs became deformed
like those of the dachshund. It cared not to romp in the green meadows,
to run with the hounds, it waddled about the kitchen floor looking out
for the bones and scraps of fat cast to it, as payment for its toil.
And that is what we are becoming through unremitting neglect of our
spiritual avocation.
More than fifty years ago I was walking at night through lanes near
Dartmoor, and caught up a trudging postman who daily, nightly, measured
long distances. I soon found that he was a man who had his spiritual
eye open.
"Do you not feel lonely in these long walks in the dark?" I inquired.
"I am never alone," he replied, "the spirits are always with me."
"Your thoughts," I suggested.
"My thoughts are indeed within me, humming in my head. I must go forth
to meet the spirits. Look here," he went on, "the soul of man is like a
fly in a cobweb. It can't spread its wings till it breaks loose, and
then it very often carries away some of the threads with it."
Mr. Jacks gives us, in his "Human Studies," one of a shepherd on the
Wolds, the counterpart of my postman. There be more of these men than
is generally supposed. But he who would deal with this subject would be
constrained to say with the knight in the "Canterbury Pilgrims"--
"I have, God wot, a large field to ere
And wayke ben the oxen in the plough."
I have broken away from my caves, and have rambled--I know not whither.
Vive, vale: si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.
--HORACE, Epist. i. 6.
APPENDIX
Owing to the great kindness of Mr. Wm. Stevenson, author of "Bygone
Nottinghamshire," I am able to give some additional matter that must be
of interest, with which he has supplied me.
(p. 32.) "Your account reminds me of a rock excavation of great extent
with turns and windings on the old time 'Way to the Gallows,' in
Nottingham, where a number of cave-dwellings existed down to a century
ago. The last tenant was a sandman who stabled his ass in the cave
behind. He passed the greater part of his life in selling sand about
the town, carrying it in a sack across the back of his ass. Time wore
him out, and he had to enter the workhouse. His cave was then explored,
and it was found of enormous extent, in two storeys. It is supposed to
have been mainly wrought day after day and year after year by this
sandman. It is still to be seen, but dangerous to explore. One party of
investigators a few years ago carried a string with them as a clue by
means of which to find their way out again. There is a story of it
becoming a lurking place of robbers after the sandman's day. A number
of the excavations under the town are held to have been made or
extended by the tenants above, obtaining their supply of sand from
below. Formerly floors were sanded."
(p. 35.) Puticoli. Slave pits have been found in South Africa. "When
the old town hall and town prison at Nottingham was demolished a few
years ago, and the site was excavated for the advance of the Great
Central Railway, seven or more pits were found, one with a rusty chain
in it. They were about four feet in diameter at the top, and seven feet
at the bottom, with dished floors. They varied from about twelve to
eighteen feet in depth. We had no knowledge of anything of the kind in
local history. Two others were found a distance away that could have
had no connection with the prison site."
Formerly at Monte Carlo the bodies of suicides were thrust into the
holes that riddle the limestone rock and gave it the name of Les
Spelunges. But the conditions became insanitary, and Italian workmen
were employed to get them out, and carry them away to sea and there
sink them.
(p. 50.) "Formerly it was the way in which wells were ascended and
descended in Nottingham, by means of notches cut in the side for the
insertion of toes and fingers. I have had to do with the exploration of
the base of Edward IV.'s Tower at Nottingham Castle, destroyed with
gunpowder during the Civil War. In one corner of the basement we found
a well filled with rubbish. This the workmen cleared out for over fifty
feet, and all the way down were notches in the wall, and the men went
up and down like monkeys, using no other means for ascending and
descending."
(p. 83.) Ventholes for smoke were common in Nottingham, Sneinton, and
Mansfield.
(p. 82.) SOUTERRAINS. Mr. Stevenson writes relative to the pits before
the entrance doors of refuges: "Some years ago I had a part in
exploring the Norman Keep of Scarborough Castle, erected early in the
reign of Henry II.; we worked under the entrance staircase, and found a
pit arched over at a later period and covered with a stone landing, but
originally it must have been a pit or well in front of the only
entrance door. It was partly cleared out of fallen masonry and rubbish,
but not properly explored. Overhead was a shoot for stones or molten
lead. It would appear that the pit system was abandoned about the close
of the Middle Ages."
(p. 98.) "It is fairly well determined in the 'History of Nottingham'
that the Roman Catholics in Elizabeth's and James I.'s reign met
secretly in the caves in the rock of the town. They were also refuges
of the Dissenters in the days of Charles II."
(p. 153.) NOTTINGHAM. "There have been several falls of the rock, both
at Nottingham itself and at Sneinton. Mortimer's Hole, under the
Castle, is only one of four that are known to exist, three of which can
be traversed, one wholly and two in part; one of these latter is by
many regarded as the true historical passage. It started at the meadow
level, and was partially closed by a wall; the rock wasted with time,
and the thin wall gave way, bringing down a vast amount of rock above,
and leaving the cavern in this part an open alley. The cave was then
converted into malt offices, which yet remain in the higher and perfect
part. The rock-caverns in the park, the old cell of S. Mary-le-rocke,
formed possibly the parent of Lenton priory, just as those at Ligugé
were the parent of the abbey on the further side of the river. The rock
monastery, the 'Papists' Holes' has long ago lost most of its front by
falls of rock and the destruction wrought by the Roundheads. A huge
artificial pillar has of recent years been erected to prevent further
falls. A fall in 1829 brought down from 1000 to 1400 tons, a mass some
seven or eight feet thick. On 10th May in the same year, evidently due
to an earth tremor, a like great fall occurred at the rock habitations
at Sneinton. The inhabitants escaped as by a miracle. A dog barked
furiously in the night, and the inhabitants of the cave dwellings
rushed forth, fancying that robbers were at work there. In 1830 a
portion of the town cliff fell, as did also some of that in the park.
"The county or sheriff prison for Notts and Derby was, as far as can be
traced back by records, half-way up the over ninety feet cliff of the
town of Nottingham, and was entered from the King's hall at the top.
Light holes were made in the face of the rock to the south. In these
vaults, now closed, men and women were confined like wild beasts, on
straw. The prior and monks were enclosed here in the time of Henry
VIII., and were marched thence to the gallows. The inhabitants of the
lower part of the town under the prison complained of the ordure
exuding from the prison and trickling down the rock. There are records
of marvellous escapes of prisoners, both male and female, down the face
of the rock, till comparatively recently. As may well be supposed,
gaol-fever raged in these horrible dens. One vault is still shown under
the castle. Leland and Camden both speak of an underground dungeon in
which tradition (this time falsely) says that King David of Scotland
was confined, and on the walls of which with a nail he carved a
crucifix. These travellers do not say that they actually saw it; but
Thomas Bailey, in publishing his 'Annals of Notts,' employed a local
artist to depict the scene. After the erection in the seventeenth
century of the Italian castle, the vault was converted into a wine-
cellar. Leland says that there had been three chapels in the castle,
but he does not say where.
"In the town of Nottingham are two rock-hewn stairs. The most important
is called the 'Long Stairs,' they begin, cut out of the perpendicular
face of the rock, at its highest point, landing opposite the old mother
church. The steps are now faced with harder material than the local
sandstone. On the side there are houses, and indeed houses on the tops
of houses, a tenant at a lower level, another at a higher, each
obtaining entry from the stairs. The 'Short Stairs' are not wrought in
the face of the cliff, and have houses on both sides. These are clearly
in a prehistoric quarter of the town, where was once a hill-fort."
(p. 159.) FORD CASTLES. The ancient ford at Retford, Notts, was more
north than the present, and beside it is a red cliff largely cut into
with joist-holes, &c., for floors and roofs, and give indications of
former habitations.
Radford, a name borrowed by the priory, _alias_ Worksop, is a hill
of red sandstone that dominated the ford. On the hill is an
entrenchment.
(p. 160.) Mr. Stevenson remarks on the holes in the floor at
Rochebrune; "This is what I should expect to find in a maltery, which
must be of two floors, the lower one for steeping and sprouting the
corn, and holding the fire-crates, the higher one for drying and
storing the malt. The higher floors are now made of perforated tiles,
the holes too small for the grains to pass through, but in old times I
think the malt was dried in braziers something like large frying-pans.
Drying rooms for wheat were attached to corn-mills to dry the corn
before grinding. In some seasons corn is difficult to dry; perhaps in
France they did not make malt, but they may have dried grapes." Malt
was not made in Perigord, I believe; and the indications at Rochebrune
are strongly those of defence against assailants. Grapes would hardly
be dried in a cavern, but in the sun, and there is plenty of sun in the
South of France.
THE END