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CHAPTER XXVII
GHOSTLY TIMES AND SEASONS
Shakespeare, quoting from an early legend, has reminded us that at Christmastide ‘no spirit dares stir abroad.’ And yet, in spite of this time-honoured belief, Christmas would seem to be one of the favourite seasons of the year for ghosts to make their presence felt in all kinds of odd ways. Many an old baronial hall, with its romantic associations and historic legends, is occasionally, as Christmastime comes round, disturbed by certain uncanny sounds, which timidity is only too ready to invest with the most mysterious and unaccountable associations. One reason for this nervous credulity may be ascribed to the fact that, as numerous old country seats are supposed to be haunted, Christmas is a fitting opportunity for the ghost to catch a glimpse of the family revelry and mirth. But, judging from the many legendary tales which have been handed down in connection with Christmas, it would seem that these spirit-members of the family intrude their presence on their relatives in the flesh in various ways. In Ireland, the ill-fated Banshee has selected this season on more than one occasion, to warn the family of coming trouble. According to one tale told from Ireland, one Christmas Eve, when the family party were gathered round the festive board in an old castle in the South of Ireland, the prancing of horses was suddenly heard, and the sharp cracking of the driver’s whip. Imagining that one of the absent members of the family had arrived, some of the young people moved to the door, but found that it was the weird apparition of the ‘headless coach and horseman.’
Many such stories might be enumerated, which, under one form or another, have imparted a dramatic element to the season. With some of our country peasantry, there is a deep-rooted dread of encountering anything either bordering on, or resembling, the supernatural, as sometimes spirits are supposed at Christmastide to be unfriendly towards mankind. In Northamptonshire, for instance, there is a strange notion that the ghosts of unfortunate individuals buried at cross-roads have a particular license to wander about on Christmas Eve, at which time they wreak their evil designs upon defenceless and unsuspecting persons. But conduct of this kind seems to be the exception, and ghosts are oftentimes invoked at Christmastide by those anxious to have a foretaste of events in store for them. Thus, the anxious maiden, in her eager desire to know something of her matrimonial prospects, has often subjected herself to the most trying ordeal of ‘courting a ghost.’ In many countries, at the ‘witching hour of midnight, on Christmas Eve,’ the candidate for marriage goes into the garden and plucks twelve sage leaves, ‘under a firm conviction that she will be favoured with a glimpse of the shadowy form of her future husband as he approaches her from the opposite end of the garden.’ But a ceremony observed in Sweden, in years past, must have required a still more strong-minded person to take advantage of its prophetic powers. It was customary in the morning twilight of Christmas Day, to go into a wood, without making the slightest noise, or uttering a word; total abstinence from eating and drinking being another necessary requirement. If these rules were observed, it was supposed that the individual as he went along the path leading to the church, would be favoured with a sight of as many funerals as would pass that way during the ensuing year. With this practice may be compared one current in Denmark, where, it is said, when a family are sitting together on Christmas Eve, if anyone is desirous of knowing whether a death will occur amongst them during the ensuing year, he must go outside, and peep silently through the window, and the person who appears at table sitting without a head, will die before Christmas comes round again. The feast of St. Agnes was formerly held in high veneration by women who wished to know when and whom they should marry. It was required that on this day they should not eat – which was called ‘fasting St. Agnes’ fast’ – if they wished to have visions of delight, a piece of superstition on which Keats has founded his poem, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes:’
They told me how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their love receive,
Upon the honey’d middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white,
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of heaven, with upward eyes, for all that they desire.
Laying down on her back that night, with her hands under her head, the anxious maiden was led to expect that her future spouse would appear in a dream, and salute her with a kiss. Various charms have long been observed on St. Valentine’s Eve, and Poor Robin’s Almanack tells us how:
On St. Mark’s Eve, at twelve o’clock,
The fair maid will watch her smock,
To find her husband in the dark,
By praying unto good St. Mark.
But St. Mark’s Eve was a great day for apparitions. Allusion has been made in a previous chapter to watching in the church porch for the ghosts of those who are to be buried in the churchyard during the following months; and Jamieson tells us of a practice kept up in the northern counties, known as ‘ash-ridlin.’ The ashes being sifted, or riddled, on the hearth, if any one of the family ‘be to die within the year, the mark of the shoe, it is supposed, will be impressed on the ashes; and many a mischievous wight has made some of the credulous family miserable, by slyly coming downstairs after the rest have retired to bed, and marking the ashes with the shoe of one of the members.’
In Peru it is interesting to trace a similar superstitious usage. As soon as a dying man draws his last breath, ashes are strewed on the floor of the room, and the door is securely fastened. Next morning the ashes are carefully examined to ascertain whether they show any impression of footsteps, and imagination readily traces marks, which are alleged to have been produced by the feet of birds, dogs, cats, oxen, or llamas. The destiny of the dead person is construed by the footmarks which are supposed to be discernible. The soul has assumed the form of that animal whose tracks are found.318
There is St. John’s, or Midsummer Eve, around which many weird and ghostly superstitions have clustered. Grose informs us that if anyone sit in the church porch, he will see the spirits of those destined to die that year come and knock at the church door in the order of their decease. In Ireland there is a popular belief that on St. John’s Eve the souls of all persons leave their bodies, and wander to the place, by land or sea, where death shall finally separate them from the tenement of the clay. The same notion of a temporary liberation of the soul gave rise to a host of superstitious observances at this time, resembling those connected with Hallow Eve. Indeed, this latter night is supposed to be the time of all others when supernatural influences prevail. ‘It is the night,’ we are told, ‘set apart for a universal walking abroad of spirits, both of the visible and invisible world; for one of the special characteristics attributed to this mystic evening is the faculty conferred on the immaterial principle in humanity to detach itself from its corporeal tenement and wander abroad through the realms of space. Divination is then believed to attain its highest power, and the gift asserted by Glendower of calling spirits “from the vast deep” becomes available to all who choose to avail themselves of the privileges of the occasion.’319 Similarly, in Germany on St. Andrew’s Eve, young women try various charms in the hope of seeing the shadow of their sweethearts; one of the rhymes used on the occasion being this:
St. Andrew’s Eve is to-day;
Sleep all people,
Sleep all children of men
Who are between heaven and earth,
Except this only man,
Who may be mine in marriage.
The story goes that a girl once summoned the shadow of her future husband. Precisely as the clock struck twelve he appeared, drank some wine, laid a three-edged dagger on the table and vanished. The girl put the dagger into her trunk. Some years afterwards there came a man from a distant part to the town where the girl dwelt, bought property there, and married her. He was, in fact, the identical person whose form had appeared to her. Some time after their marriage the husband by chance opened the trunk, and there found the dagger, at the sight of which he became furious. ‘Thou art the girl,’ said he, ‘who years ago forced me to come hither from afar in the night, and it was no dream. Die, therefore!’ and with these words he thrust the dagger into her heart.320
It may be added, that by general consent night-time is the season when spirits wander abroad. The appearance of morning is the signal for their dispersion.
The flocking shadows pale,
Troop to the infernal jail;
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow skirted fays,
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their noon-loved maze.
The ghost of Hamlet’s father says, ‘Methinks I scent the morning air,’ and adds:
‘Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matins to be near.’
According to a popular notion formerly current, the presence of unearthly beings was announced by an alteration in the tints of the lights which happened to be burning – a superstition alluded to in ‘Richard III.’ (Act v. sc. 3) – where the tyrant exclaims as he awakens:
‘The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
…
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent.’
So in ‘Julius Cæsar’ (Act iv. sc. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Cæsar, exclaims:
‘How ill this taper burns. Ha! who comes here?’
CHAPTER XXVIII
SPIRIT-HAUNTED TREES
According to Empedocles ‘there are two destinies for the souls of highest virtue – to pass into trees or into the bodies of lions,’ this conception of plants as the habitation of the departing soul being founded on the old idea of transmigration. Illustrations of the primitive belief meet us in all ages, reminding us how Dante passed through that leafless wood, in the bark of every tree of which was confined a suicide; and of Ariel’s imprisonment:
Into a cloven pine, within which rift
Imprison’d, thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years…
… Where thou didst vent thy groans,
As fast as mill-wheels strike.
In German folk-lore the soul is supposed occasionally to take the form of a flower, as a lily or white rose; and, according to a popular belief, one of these flowers appears on the chairs of those about to die. Grimm321 tells a pretty tale of a child who ‘carries home a bud which the angel had given him in the wood; when the rose blooms the child is dead.’ Similarly, from the grave of one unjustly executed white lilies are said to spring as a token of the person’s innocence, and from that of a maiden three lilies, which no one save her lover must gather, a superstition which, under one form or another, has largely prevailed both amongst civilised and savage communities. In Iceland it is said that when innocent persons are put to death, the sorb or mountain ash will spring over their grave, and the Lay of Runzifal makes a blackthorn shoot out of the bodies of slain heathens, and a white flower by the heads of fallen Christians. The well-known story of ‘Tristram and Ysonde’ tells how ‘from his grave there grew an eglantine which twined about the statue, a marvel for all men to see; and though three times they cut it down, it grew again, and ever wound its arms about the image of the fair Ysonde.’ With which legend may be compared the old Scottish ballad of ‘Fair Margaret and Sweet William’:
Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
And out of his a briar;
They grew till they grew to the church top,
And there they tied in a true lover’s knot.
It is to this time-honoured fancy that Laertes refers when he wishes that violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia,322 and Lord Tennyson has borrowed the same idea:
Some of the North-Western Indians believed that those who died a natural death would be compelled to dwell among the branches of tall trees, and the Brazilians have a mythological character called Mani324– a child who died and was buried in the house of her mother. Soon a plant – the Mandioca – sprang out of the grave, which grew, flourished, and bore fruit. According to the Iroquois, the spirits of certain trees are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females; recalling, writes Mr. Herbert Spencer,325 ‘the dryads of classic mythology, who, similarly conceived as human-shaped female spirits, were sacrificed to in the same ways that human spirits in general were sacrificed to.’ ‘By the Santals,’ he adds, ‘these spirits or ghosts are individualised. At their festivals the separate families dance round the particular trees which they fancy their domestic lares chiefly haunt.’
In modern Greece certain trees are supposed to have their ‘stichios,’ a being variously described as a spectre, a wandering soul, a vague phantom, occasionally invisible, and sometimes assuming the most widely different forms. When a tree is ‘stichimonious,’ it is generally considered dangerous for anyone ‘to sleep beneath its shade, and the woodcutters employed to cut it down will lie upon the ground and hide themselves, motionless, and holding their breath, at the moment when it is about to fall, dreading lest the stichio at whose life the blow is aimed with each blow of the axe, should avenge itself at the precise moment when it is dislodged.’326 This idea is abundantly illustrated in European folk-lore, and a Swedish legend tells how, when a man was on the point of cutting down a juniper tree, a voice was heard saying, ‘Friend, hew me not.’ But he gave another blow, when, to his horror and amazement, blood gushed from the root.
Such spirit-haunted trees have been supposed to give proof of their peculiar character by certain weird and mysterious signs. Thus the Australian bush-demons whistle in the branches, and Mr. Schoolcraft mentions an Indian tradition of a hollow tree, from the recesses of which there issued on a calm day a sound like the voice of a spirit. Hence it was considered to be inhabited by some powerful spirit, and was deemed sacred. The holes in trees have been supposed to be the doors through which the spirits pass, a belief which reappears in the German idea that the holes in the oak are the pathways for elves, and that various diseases may be cured by contact with these holes. It is not surprising, too, that the idea of spirit-haunted trees caused them to be regarded by the superstitious with feelings of awe. Mr. Dorman tells us327 of certain West Indian tribes, that if any person going through a wood perceived a motion in the trees which he regarded as supernatural, frightened at the strange prodigy, he would address himself to that tree which shook the most. Similarly, when the wind blows the long grass or waving corn, the German peasant is wont to say that the ‘Grass-wolf,’ or the ‘Corn-wolf’ is abroad. Under a variety of forms this animistic conception is found in different parts of the world, and has been embodied in many a folk-tale – an Austrian Märchen relating, for instance, how there sits in a stately fir-tree a fairy maiden waited on by a dwarf, rewarding the innocent and plaguing the guilty; and there is the German song of the maiden in the pine, whose bark the boy split with a gold and silver horn.
CHAPTER XXIX
GHOSTS AND HIDDEN TREASURES
The presence of troubled phantoms in certain localities has long been attributed to their being interested in the whereabouts of certain secreted treasures, the disposal of which to the rightful owner having been frustrated through death having prematurely summoned them from their mortal existence. Traditions of the existence of large sums of hidden money are associated with many of our own country mansions. Such a legend was long connected with Hulme Castle, formerly a seat of a branch of the Prestwich family. The hoard was generally supposed to have been hidden either in the hall itself or in the grounds adjoining, and was said to be protected by spells and incantations. Many years ago the hall was pulled down, but, although considerable care was taken to search every spot, no money was discovered. Secreted treasure is associated with the apparition of Madame Beswick, who used to haunt Birchen Tower, Hollinwood;328 and an eccentric spectre known as ‘Silky,’ which used to play all kinds of strange pranks in the village of Black Heddon, Northumberland, was commonly supposed to be the troubled phantom of a certain lady who had died before having an opportunity of disclosing the whereabouts of some hoarded money. With the discovery of the gold, this unhappy spirit is said to have disappeared. The story goes that one day, in a house at Black Heddon, a terrific noise was heard, which caused the servant to exclaim, ‘The deevil’s in the house! the deevil’s in the house! He’s come through the ceiling!’ But on the room being examined where the noise occurred, a great dog’s skin was found on the floor, filled with gold, after which time ‘Silky’ was neither seen nor heard.
Equally strange is the legend related of Swinsty Hall, which tells how its original founder was a poor weaver, who travelled to London at a time when the plague was raging, and finding many houses desolate and uninhabited, took possession of the money left without an owner, to such an extent that he loaded a waggon with the wealth thus acquired, and, returning to his home, he built Swinsty Hall. But he cannot cleanse himself from the contamination of the ill-acquired gold, and at times, it is said, his unquiet spirit has been seen bending over the Greenwell Spring rubbing away at his ghastly spoil. Mr. Henderson329 gives the history of an apparition which, with retributive justice, once haunted a certain Yorkshire farmer. An old woman of Sexhow, near Stokesley, appeared after her death to a farmer of the place, and informed him that beneath a certain tree in his apple orchard he would find a hoard of gold and silver which she had buried there; the silver he was to keep for his trouble, but the gold he was to give to a niece of hers living in great poverty. The farmer went to the spot indicated, found the money, and kept it all to himself. But from that day his conscience gave him no rest, and every night, at home or abroad, old Nanny’s ghost dogged his steps. At last one evening the neighbours heard him returning from Stokesley market very late; his horse was galloping furiously, and as he passed a neighbour’s house, its inmates heard him screaming out, ‘I will, I will, I will!’ and looking out they saw a little old woman in black, with a large straw hat on her head, clinging to him. The farmer’s hat was off, his hair stood on end, as he fled past them uttering his fearful cry, ‘I will, I will, I will!’ But when the horse reached the farm all was still, for the rider was a corpse.
Tradition asserts that the ‘white lady’ who long haunted Blenkinsopp Castle, is the ghost of the wife of Bryan de Blenkinsopp, who quarrelled with her husband, and in a fit of spite she concealed a chest of gold that took twelve of the strongest men to carry into the castle. Filled with remorse for her undutiful conduct, the unhappy woman cannot rest in her grave, but her spirit is doomed to wander back to the old castle, and to mourn over the accursed wealth of which its rightful owner was defrauded.
An old farm, popularly known in the neighbourhood as ‘Sykes’ Lumb Farm,’ from having been inhabited for many generations by a family of the name of Sykes, was long haunted by an old wrinkled woman who, one night, being interrogated by an occupier of the farm as to the cause of her wandering about, made no reply, but proceeding towards the stump of an old apple tree in the orchard, pointed significantly to the ground beneath. On search being made, there was found buried deep in the earth a jar of money, on the discovery of which the phantom vanished.
Anecdotes of treasures concealed at the bottom of wells are of frequent occurrence, and the ‘white ladies’ who dwell in the lakes, wells, and seas of so many countries, are owners of vast treasures, which they occasionally offer to mortals. Tradition says that in a pool known as Wimbell Pond at Acton, Suffolk, is concealed an iron chest of money, and if any person approach the pond and throw a stone into the water, it will ring against the chest – a small white figure having been heard to cry in accents of distress, ‘That’s mine.’330
Scotland has many such stories. It is popularly believed that for many ages past a pot of gold has lain at the bottom of a pool beneath a fall of the rivulet underneath Craufurdland Bridge, about three miles from Kilmarnock. Many attempts have been made to recover this treasure, but something unforeseen has always happened to prevent a successful issue. ‘The last effort made, by the Laird of Craufurdland himself,’ writes Mr. Chambers,331 ‘was early in the last century, at the head of a party of his domestics, who first dammed up the water, then emptied the pool of its contents, and had heard their instruments clink on the kettle, when a voice was heard saying:
Pow, pow!
Craufurdland tower’s a’ in a low!
Whereupon the laird left the scene, followed by his servants, and ran home to save what he could. Of course, there was no fire in the house, and when they came back to renew their operations, they found the water falling over the lin in full force. Being now convinced that a power above that of mortals was opposed to their researches, the laird and his people gave up the attempt. Such is the traditionary story, whether,’ adds Mr. Chambers, ‘founded on any actual occurrence, or a mere fiction of the peasants’ brain, cannot be ascertained; but it is curious that a later and well authenticated effort to recover the treasure was interrupted by a natural occurrence in some respects similar.’
Vast treasures are said to be concealed beneath the ruins of Hermitage Castle, but, as they are in the keeping of the Evil One, they are considered beyond redemption. Venturesome persons have occasionally made the attempt to dig for them, but a storm of thunder and lightning has generally deterred the adventurers from proceeding, otherwise, of course, the money would have long ago been found. It is ever, we are told, that such supernatural obstacles come in the way of these interesting discoveries. Mr. Chambers relates how ‘an honest man in Perthshire, named Finlay Robertson, about a hundred years ago, went with some stout-hearted companions to seek for the treasures which were supposed to be concealed in the darksome cave of a deceased Highland robber, but just as they had commenced operations with their mattocks, the whole party were instantaneously struck, as by an electric shock, which sent them home with fear and trembling, and they were ever after remarked as silent, mysterious men, very apt to take offence when allusion was made to their unsuccessful enterprise.’332
In Scotland and the North of England, the Brownie was regarded as a guardian of hidden treasure, and ‘to him did the Borderers commit their money or goods, when, according to the custom prevalent in wild insecure countries, they concealed them in the earth.’ Some form of incantation was practised on the occasion, such as the dropping upon the treasure the blood of a slaughtered animal, or burying the slain animal with it.333
According to the Welsh belief, if a person die while any hoarded money – or, indeed, metal of any kind, were it nothing more than old iron – is still secretly hidden, the spirit of that person cannot rest. Others affirm that it is only ill-gotten treasure which creates this disturbance of the grave’s repose; but it is generally agreed that the soul’s unquiet condition can only be relieved by finding a human hand to take the hidden metal, and throw it down the stream of a river. To throw it up a stream is useless. The spirit ‘selects a particular person as the subject of its attentions, and haunts that person till asked what it wants.’ A story is told of a tailor’s wife at Llantwit Major, a stout and jolly dame, who was thus haunted until she was worn to the semblance of a skeleton, ‘for not choosing to take a hoard honestly to the Ogmore’ – the favourite river in Glamorganshire for this purpose. To quote her own words, ‘I at last consented, for the sake of quiet, to take the treasure to the river, and the spirit wafted me through the air so high that I saw below me the church loft and all the houses, as if I had leaned out of a balloon. When I took the treasure to throw it into the river, in my flurry I flung it up stream instead of down, and on this the spirit, with a savage look, tossed me into a whirlwind, and how ever I got back to my home I know not.’ The bell-ringers found her lying insensible in the Church lane, on their return from church, late in the evening.334
No piece of folk-lore is more general in Ireland than that gold or silver may be found under nearly all the raths, cairns, or old castles throughout the island. It is always a difficult task to exhume such buried treasure, for some preternatural guardian or other will be found on the alert. These buried treasures are usually deposited in ‘a crock,’ but whenever an attempt is made to lift it, some awful gorgon, or monster, appears. Sometimes a rushing wind sweeps over the plain, or from the opening made, with destructive force, carrying away the gold-seeker’s hat or spade, or even, in various instances, the adventurer himself, who is deposited with broken bones, or a paralysed frame, at a respectful distance from the object of his quest. ‘On the banks of a northern river, and near a small eminence,’ writes a correspondent of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’335 ‘is a beautiful green plot, on which two large, moss-covered stones over six hundred feet apart are shown. It is said two immense “crocks” of gold lie buried under these conspicuous landmarks, and that various attempts have been made to dig round and beneath them. In all those instances when a persistent effort has been made, a monk appeared in full habit, with a cross in his hand to warn off sacrilegious offenders.’
Similar legends are found in different parts of the world. ‘The Isle of Yellow Sands,’ says Mr. Dorman,336 ‘derives its chief interest from the traditions and fanciful tales which the Indians relate concerning its mineral treasures and their supernatural guardians. They pretend that its shores are covered with a heavy, shining, yellow sand, which they are persuaded is gold, but that the guardian spirit of the island will not permit any to be carried away. To enforce his commands, he has drawn together upon it myriads of eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey, who, by their cries warn him of any intrusions upon the domain, and assist with their claws and beaks to expel the enemy. He has also called from the depths of the lake, large serpents of the most hideous forms, who lie thickly coiled upon the golden sands, and hiss defiance to the steps of the intruder. A great many years ago, they say, some people driven by stress of weather upon the island, put a large quantity of the glittering treasure in their canoes and attempted to carry it off; but a gigantic spirit strode into the water and in a tone of thunder commanded them to bring it back’ —
Listen, white man, go not there!
Unseen spirits stalk the air;
Ravenous birds their influence lend,
Snakes defy, and kites defend…
Touch not, then, the guarded lands,
Of the Isle of Yellow Sands.
The ‘Ceylon Times’ records a remarkable instance of superstition among the Tamul population employed as labourers on a coffee estate. ‘It is the belief of all Orientals,’ says the writer, ‘that hidden treasures are under the guardianship of supernatural beings. The Singhalese, however, divide the charge between demons and cobra da capellos. Various charms are resorted to by those who wish to gain the treasures, the demons requiring a sacrifice. Blood of a human being is the most important, but, as far as it is known, the Cappowas have hitherto confined themselves to the sacrifice of a white cock, combining its blood with their own, drawn by a slight puncture in the hand or foot.’
Many curious stories are on record of persons having been informed by ghosts of the whereabouts of hidden money, and of their having been directed to the spot where the hoarded treasure has lain for years secreted in its undetected recess.
In the ‘Antiquarian Repertory’ is a singular narrative of a man named Richard Clarke, a farm-labourer at Hamington, Northamptonshire, who was haunted by the ghost of a man who declared that he had been murdered near his own house 267 years, 9 months, and 2 days ago, and buried in an orchard. He added that his wife and children, who had lived in Southwark, never knew what became of him; that he had some treasures and papers buried in the cellar of a house near London, and that he (Clarke) must seek for it, and that he (the ghost) would meet him in the cellar, to assist him in the search. The ghost added that as soon as the money and the writings were found, and duly delivered to certain relatives of his in Southwark, at such an address, removed from him in the fourth generation, he would cease to visit him, and would leave him in peace. Clarke went to town, and on London Bridge the ghost passed him, and conducted him to the house, where his wife had lived four generations before. Clarke found everything answering the description which the ghost had given him; the money and the documents were discovered, the writings on vellum found, but those on paper decayed. Clarke divided the money, and acted as the ghost of the murdered man directed him to do; and the latter ‘lookt chearfully upon him, and gave him thankes, and said now he should be at rest, and spoke to those other persons which were of his generation, relations, but they had not courage to answer, but Clarke talkt for them.’
