girls, daughter and niece of a farmer, bosom friends and bed-fellows,
became involved in a love-affair and, desperate of a happy issue,
attempted a charm to win their lovers back. On All Hallow Eve, two
hours before the sun, they went into the garden, barefoot, in their
nightgowns and circled about a stone which was believed to be
bewitched.[13] They used certain words, the Lord's prayer backward or
what not, and had an apparition. A brown man came out of the bushes
and looked at them for some time. Then he came to them, paralysed as
they may have been, and peering closely into the face of one of them
gave her a flower and disappeared. That same evening they kept the
Hallow E'en with the usual play, half-earnest, half-game, and, among
other things which they did, "peascodded" the girls. The game is a
very old one, and consists in setting the victim in a chair with her
back to the door while her companions rub her down with handfuls of
pea-shucks. During this ceremony if any man enter the room he is her
lover, and she is handed over to him. This was done, then, to one of
the girls who had dared the dawn magic; and in the midst of it a brown
man, dressed in a smock-frock tied up with green ribbons, appeared,
standing in the door. He took the girl by the hand and led her out of
the house. She was seen no more that night, nor for many days
afterward, though her parents and neighbours hunted her far and wide.
By-and-by she was reported at a village some ten or twelve miles off
on the Shropshire border, where some shepherds had found her wandering
the hill. She was brought home but could give no good account of
herself, or would not. She said that she had followed her lover,
married him, and lost him. Nothing would comfort her, nothing could
keep her in the house. She was locked in, but made her way out; she
was presently sent to the lunatic asylum, but escaped from that. Then
she got away for good and all and never came back again. No trace of
her body could be found. What are you to make of a thing of the sort?
I give it for what it is worth, with this note only, that the
apparition was manifest to several persons, though not, I fancy, to
any but the girls concerned in the peascodding.
[Footnote 13: It is said to have been the base of a Roman terminal
statue, but I have not seen it.]
The Willow-lad's is another tale of the same kind. It was described in
1787 by the Reverend Samuel Jordan in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, if I
am not mistaken.
The Willow-lad was an apparition which was believed to appear in a
withy-bed on the banks of the Ouse near Huntingdon. He could only be
seen at dusk, and only by women. He had a sinister reputation, and to
say of a girl that she had been to the withy-bed was a broad hint that
she was no better than she should be. Yet, according to Mr. Jordan,
the girls did go there in numbers, and to such effect that by an order
of the Town Council the place was stubbed up. You had to go alone to
the withy-bed between sunset and sunrise of a moonless night, to lay
your hand upon a certain stump and say, and in a loud voice:--
Willow-boy, Willow-boy, come to me soon,
After the sun and before the moon.
Hide the stars and cover my head;
Let no man see me when I be wed.
One would like to know whether the Willow-lad's powers perished with
the withy-bed. They should not, but should have been turned to
malicious uses. There are many cases in Mr. Lawson's book of the
malefical effect upon the Dryads of cutting down the trees whose
spirit they are. And most people know Landor's idyll, or if they
don't, they should.
* * * * *
There are queer doings under the sun as well as under the moon. A man
may travel far without leaving his arm-chair by the fire, in countries
where no tourist-tickets obtain, and see stranger things than are
recorded by Herr Baedeker.
The waies through which my weary steps I guide
In this delightful land of Faery
Are so exceeding spacious and wyde,
And sprinckled with such sweet variety
Of all that pleasant is to eare or eye,
That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight,
My tedious travele doe forget thereby;
And when I gin to feele decay of might,
It strength to me supplies, and chears my dulled spright.
THE END