CHAPTER IX.

Prophetic Warnings and Ghosts.

“Now there spreaden a rumour that everich night The rooms ihaunted been by many a Sprite, The Miller avoucheth, and all thereabout That they full oft hearen the Hellish Rout, Some faine they hear the gingling of Chains, And some hath heard the Psautries straines, At midnight some the headless Horse i meet, And some espien a Corse in a white Sheet; And other things, Faye, Elfin and Elfe, And shapes that Fear createn to itself.”

--_Gay._

“Et chacun croit fort aisément ce qu’il craint.”

--_La Fontaine._

“Now I remember those old women’s words Who in my youth would tell me winter’s tales And speak of sprites and ghosts that glide by night About the place where treasure hath been hid.”

--_Marlowe’s “Jew of Venice.”_

Prophetic Warnings.

“These true shadows.… Forerunning thus their bodies, may approve That all things to be done, as here we live, Are done before all times in th’other life.”

--_Chapman._

It is a very common belief that events, particularly those of a melancholy nature, are foreshadowed. Unusual noises in or about a house, such as cannot easily be accounted for, the howling of a dog, the crowing of cocks at unaccustomed hours, the hooting of owls, and many other things are looked upon as warnings of evil to come, or, as they are locally termed, “_avertissements_.” This term is also applied to a sort of second-sight, in which a person fancies he sees an image of himself, or, to make use of a Scotch word, his own “wraith.” This illusion, arising no doubt from a derangement of the optic nerve consequent on the weakness produced by ill-health, is considered a sure forerunner of death. Two instances of this, both occurring towards the end of the last century, have come to my knowledge. In the one case, a young gentleman, slowly dying of decline, was seated near a window, which commanded a view of the avenue leading to the country house in which he resided. Suddenly he saw a figure, which he recognised as his own, standing at the corner of a pathway which led into a cherry-orchard, a favourite resort of his when in health. His sister was every moment expected to return home from a ride, and, fearing that her horse might take fright at the apparition, he immediately dispatched a servant to meet her, and cause her to return to the house by another way. He died not many hours afterwards.

In the other instance, a young lady, who was known to be very fragile and delicate, was spending the day at her brother’s country-house. It was summer, and the room in which she was seated with the other members of the family looked out on a parterre gay with flowers. Suddenly she interrupted the conversation which was going on, by exclaiming:--

“How singular! I see myself yonder in the garden gathering flowers.”

Her friends tried to laugh her out of her fancy, but neither ridicule nor reason prevailed. She persisted in saying that she had seen her own likeness in the garden. She grew rapidly worse, and before the autumn was over she passed away.

It occasionally happens that both fruit and blossoms are to be seen at the same time on apple and pear trees. When this occurs it is believed to be a sure presage that a death will follow in the family of the proprietor of the tree within the year.[140]

Great faith is also put in dreams by our country people, as the following stories will show. They make use of many charms and spells to invoke certain dreams, and those will be told in a future chapter, but the following show the belief that exists in the truth of dreams.

During the late war with France many privateers were fitted out. A man dreamt that if a vessel were sent out to a certain latitude and longitude, that on a certain day it would meet with a rich prize and take it. He realised all his property, bought a ship, equipped and manned it, and sent it out to cruise, in full faith that his dream would come to pass. Time rolled on, and the ship did not appear. The man’s friends and neighbours began to jeer at him, but he still felt confident that all would turn out as he had dreamt. His faith was at last rewarded, for one day, when all but he had given up any hope of seeing the vessel again, two vessels were seen in the offing. As they drew near one was recognised as the missing ship, and the other was soon made out, by its rig, to be a foreigner. They came safely into St. Peter Port, and it was then found that the latter was a Spaniard, with a very rich cargo. It turned out that the capture had been made in the very place and at the very time that had been dreamt of.

A country gentleman had occasion to make some alterations in the level of a road in the neighbourhood of his house. He employed two men in the work, a father and son. The materials for the work were to be taken from a gravel pit on the estate, and the work was progressing favourably, when, one morning, the gentleman, on coming down to breakfast, said to his wife that he had had an unpleasant dream, and feared that some accident would happen to the workmen before the day was out. He went out shortly afterwards and cautioned the men, as he had done previously, to be very careful in digging out the materials they were in want of from the overhanging banks of the gravel pit. They made light of his admonition, and he left them. Towards noon the elder of the two workmen left the place to go home to dinner, leaving his son behind. On his return, about an hour later, he found that the bank had given way and buried his son in the rubbish. When, after a considerable time, he was dug out, he was found to be quite dead.

[140] From Mr. Thomas Lenfestey and Mr. George Allez.

See _Notes and Queries_, VI. Series, IV., 55.

Ghosts.

“That the dead are seen no more, I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or unlearned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth. Those who never heard of another, would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it with their fears.”--_Dr. Samuel Johnson._

The belief that the spirits of the dead are, under certain circumstances, permitted to revisit the places which they were in the habit of frequenting, and the persons with whom they were acquainted while in the body, has too strong a hold on the human mind not to be still an article of popular faith in this island; but the doings of these disembodied spirits do not differ sensibly from what is attributed to them in other European countries.

The ghost of the murdered man still haunts the spot where he was foully deprived of life, crying for vengeance on his assassin. The murderer’s form is seen at the foot of the gibbet where he expiated his crime. The shade of the suicide lingers about the spot where he committed his rash act. The spirit of the tender mother is seen bending over the cradles of her darling children, smoothing their tangled locks, washing their begrimed faces, and lamenting over the neglected state in which they are allowed to remain by a careless or unkind step-dame. The acquirer of ill-gotten wealth wanders about, vainly endeavouring to make restitution. And the ghosts of the shipwrecked mariners who have perished in the waves, roam along the fatal shore, and, with loud wailings, claim a resting place for their remains in their mother-earth.

Some also say that the departing spirit occasionally takes the form of a bird, and, from a story told us, it would seem that it also sometimes puts on the form of a mouse.

An elderly woman who lived alone in a house in the neighbourhood of Ste. Hélène was found one morning dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. From the evidence at the inquest it appeared that she had entrusted the latch key of the front door to a workman, who was to come early to the house next morning to do some small job in the way of plastering. It was supposed that before retiring to rest, at her usual hour between nine and ten, she had intended to go to the door to see whether the door was properly latched, and that, in descending the stairs, she had slipped, and, falling forward, had broken her neck.

She had a first cousin, within a week or two of the same age as herself, with whom she had been brought up, and between whom and herself great affection had always existed. About the time that the accident must have happened, this cousin was sitting with his wife, by whom the story was related to me, warming themselves before the fire, previously to getting into bed. They were speaking of the old woman, and the husband remarked that he had not seen her for some days, and hoped she was well, and then immediately made the remark that he had seen a mouse run across the room, coming from the door towards them. His eyesight was very defective, and his wife endeavoured to persuade him that it was impossible that he could have seen anything of the kind, and that, moreover, she had never seen a mouse in that room.

They went to bed and nothing more was thought about it until the next morning, when the wife, passing the house where the old woman lived, saw a crowd of neighbours assembled round the door, and found that the dead body of her husband’s cousin had just been discovered lying at the foot of the stairs.

The accident in all probability had occurred at the very time she and her husband were speaking of the deceased, and when the old man declared he saw the mouse. She was fully convinced that the spirit of the old woman had come in that shape to take a last look and farewell of her kinsman.[141]

[141] Related to me by Mrs. Andrew Thorn, wife of the old man.

“In many Teutonic myths, we find that the soul leaves the body in the shape of a mouse.”--_Folk-Lore Journal_, Vol. II., Part VII., p. 208.

THE ROBBER OF THE POOR BOX.

It is not many years since, that in making some alterations in the parsonage of St. Michel du Valle, the workmen found under the flooring of one of the rooms a few small coins. They remembered that in the last century, a French priest, who had renounced his own religion, had been appointed curate of the parish by a non-resident Rector after having been duly licensed by the Bishop of Winchester; that, after leading a most irregular life to the great scandal of the parishioners, he had one day disappeared suddenly, and that after his departure the poor box in the church was found to have been broken open and robbed of its contents. It was not long before it was rumoured abroad that mysterious noises were heard in the dead of the night in the parsonage, as of someone walking through the rooms and dropping money as he went. No one doubted that the sacrilegious robber had left this mortal life, and that his ghost was doomed to revisit the scene of his iniquity, vainly endeavouring to make restitution to the widows and orphans, and to the aged and infirm pensioners of the church, of the money of which he had so unfeelingly deprived them.

The workmen were fully convinced that the coins which they had found were part of those which had been so sacrilegiously abstracted. They dared not retain them for their own use, but brought them to the Rector with a request that they might be given to the poor.[142]

[142] From Mrs. Thomas Bell, wife of the Rector of the Vale parish.

BURIAL OF THE DROWNED.

In all ages and among all nations the burial of the dead has been looked upon as a sacred duty; and the belief is not yet extinct that until the body is consigned to the earth the spirit is doomed to wander about, seeking rest and finding none.

Great therefore is the guilt of him who, having found a corpse, neglects to provide for its sepulture. “_Les morts recllament la terre, et ch’est leû derouait._” (The dead claim the earth, and it is their right).

A man who had gone down at low water to visit his nets, found a dead body stretched out on the sands. It was not that of any of his neighbours. A violent storm had raged a day or two previously, and there could be no doubt that some unfortunate vessel had gone down in the gale, and that the body before him was that of one of the crew. It was handsomely dressed, the clothes being of velvet, richly laced with gold. The avarice of the fisherman was excited, and his first thought was to search the pockets. A purse, containing what to a poor man was a considerable sum, was found, and, content with his morning’s work, the man hastened home, leaving the body to be carried away by the next tide. Great was his astonishment and affright, on entering his cottage, to see the dead man seated by the fireside, and looking sternly and reproachfully at him. His wife, to whom the phantom was not visible, perceived his trouble, and, pressed by her, he confessed what he had done. She upbraided him with his inhuman conduct, and, kneeling down with him, prayed the Almighty to forgive him his sin. They then hastened down to the beach, drew the corpse to shore, and buried it in a neighbouring field. On their return home the ghost of the drowned man had disappeared and was never more seen.[143]

[143] From Mrs. Savidan.

EDITOR’S NOTE.--An old fisherman named Mansell told Major Macleane, my informant, that it is most unlucky to keep a suit of clothes belonging to a drowned man, whether they have been washed ashore, or by whatever means they have entered your possession; for his spirit is sure to come back and reanimate his clothes and haunt you. The clothes should always be burnt or buried immediately.

“LA GRAND’ GARCE.”

“_Qu’est qu’tu ’as? Non dirait qu’tu ’as veu la grand’ garce._” (“What is the matter with you? One would suppose you had seen the great girl.”)

Such were the words with which a gentleman (Mr. Peter Le Pelley, Seigneur of Sark), in the last century greeted his sister-in-law, (Miss Frances Carey, daughter of Mr. John Carey), who had come to spend a few days with him at his manorial residence in Sark, on her appearance at the breakfast table the morning after her arrival. He meant to banter her on her anxious and haggard look, which she attributed to a restless night and headache, occasioned in all probability by crossing the water on the previous day.

In reality, although she did not like to acknowledge it at the time, her rest had been disturbed. Having previously locked her door, as was her habit, she had fallen asleep almost as soon as she laid her head on the pillow, but was awakened suddenly,--about midnight, as far as she could judge,--by someone drawing aside the curtains at the foot of her bed. She started up, and saw plainly an elderly lady standing there. She fell back fainting, and when she recovered her senses the figure had disappeared.

It was probably nothing more than a very vivid nightmare, and was followed by no results beyond the effects of the fright which a few days sufficed to remove, but she never again revisited Sark. The question, however, is one which is not unfrequently addressed to a person who has an anxious or startled look, and refers to the apparition of a tall maiden, which is supposed to presage the death of the person who sees it, or that of some near connection.[144]

[144] From Rachel du Port, who was formerly a servant of Mr. John Carey, and heard it from Miss Fanny Carey herself.

EDITOR’S NOTES.

My cousin, Miss E. Le Pelley, whose great-uncle Peter was Seigneur of Sark, and whose old servant Caroline is still alive and in the service of the Le Pelley family, sends me the following confirmation of the above, which she wrote down from the lips of old Caroline herself. Caroline, as a girl, had one day been teased by some of her fellow servants on the Seigneurie farm, who told her that they would come in and awake her during the night. So she, to prevent such disturbance, locked her door. In the middle of the night she awoke and saw a lady standing at the foot of her bed. She was so frightened that she shut her eyes, but twice curiosity prevailed and she opened them again, and saw the lady gliding away. She had on a crossover shawl, and a beautifully gauffred white cap. Caroline was just going to look again, when she felt something heavy fall on her feet “with a great thump,” which so frightened her that she put her head under the clothes, and did not uncover it until the morning, though she could not sleep again. The lady is supposed to be a Miss de Carteret, sister of one of the original Seigneurs of Sark. She had unaccountably disappeared from that room, which was the last spot in which she had been seen.

Old Caroline went on to say that many others besides herself had seen the ghost. Fifty years previously, an old woman living at Havre Gosselin had been terrified by it. The cook, who was fellow-servant with Caroline, had seen it three times.

Henri, an old man-servant, had also often seen it. But the curious thing about the ghost is that it only appears in the room if the door is _locked_.

Caroline was very anxious to tell her mistress, Mrs. Le Pelley, what she had seen, but the other servants dissuaded her, and told her that she had brought it all on herself by locking her door, which she never again dared to do.

“Now,” said Caroline, “if only someone had said to her ‘In the name of the Great God what tortures you?’ the poor lady would have unburdened her soul, and her spirit could have found rest, but no one had the wit or the courage to do it.”

As Caroline always ends up her story:--“_Oh mon Dou donc, que j’tai effrâïe!_” (Oh my goodness, how frightened I was!).--_From Miss E. Le Pelley._

Old Mrs. Le Messurier, who used frequently to go in and “help” at the Seigneurie when the Le Pelleys were there, told me that she was there in February, 1839, the time that Peter Le Pelley was drowned, and the night before “La Grande Garce” was seen walking through the passages, and the tapping of her high heels was heard through the house, while some said she was wringing her hands. Knowing that her appearance in this manner was a sure presage of misfortune, the servants all begged Mr. Le Pelley next day not to set sail for Guernsey, especially as there was a strong south wind blowing, but he would go, and the boat was swamped off the Pointe du Nez, and all perished.--_From Mrs. Le Messurier, of Sark._

Mr. de Garis, of the Rouvets, told me that he had an old servant who came from Sark, who told him of a lady who appeared at the Seigneurie, if the bedroom door was locked.

In 1565 Queen Elizabeth “conferred on Helier de Carteret and his heirs for ever, in reward of the many services received by herself and her royal ancestors from this family, the aforesaid island of Sark, to be held _in capite_, as a fief haubert, on the payment of an annual rent of fifty shillings.” Sir Charles de Carteret, Seigneur of St. Ouen, and of Sark, being heavily in debt, made a provision in his will for the settling of his debts by ordering that at his death the Seigneurie of Sark should be sold. This will bears the date of 1713. During his lifetime he obtained a patent from Queen Anne authorising the above sale. And in 1730 it was bought by Dame Susan Le Gros, widow of Mr. Nicholas Le Pelley. Her son Nicholas inherited it, and it remained in the Le Pelleys’ possession until 1852, when, owing to heavy losses incurred in the working of the silver mines in Little Sark, they sold it to Mrs. T. G. Collings, and it is now in the possession of the Collings family.

“LA FLLIEUR DE JAON.”

There is an English saying that “when the gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion.” This is expanded in Guernsey into the following tales.

A man, who had been long suffering from a lingering illness, was at last lying on his death-bed. His wife was unremitting in her attentions, and profuse in her expressions of sorrow at the thoughts of losing him. He did not doubt her affection for him, but ventured to hint at the probability of her looking out for a second husband before the first year of her widowhood should be expired. She warmly repudiated the bare possibility of such a thought entering her mind, and was ready to make a vow that she would never again enter into the married state.

“Well,” said the man mildly, “I ask no more than that you should promise me not to wed again while any blossom can be found on the furze.”

She gladly made promise. The man died, but it is affirmed that the disconsolate widow, at the end of twelve months, had discovered by close observation, and to her great disappointment, that she had made a rash promise, and that there was not a day in the whole year when flowers might not be found on the prickly gorse.

EDITOR’S NOTE.

Other Editor’s notes on this subject will be found in Appendix A.

In the Castel parish they tell another story based on the same proverb. Here is a house called Les Mourains, in that parish, belonging to the Ozannes. In the middle of the last century, a Mr. Ozanne married a young wife, who died after having given birth to two sons. On her death-bed she made her husband promise that he would never marry, “_lorsqu’il y avait des fllieurs sur l’ jan_.” He promised, but after her death he married again.

But the poor spirit had not found rest. The nurse, while she dressed and undressed the children, frequently saw her late mistress watching her. The other servants, when in the evenings they stood at the back door talking to their friends and acquaintances, heard the rustling of her silk dress along the passages.

And she so habitually haunted the drawing room that for years it had to be kept locked up, and finally the Rector of the parish had to be sent for, to lay the ghost, which he did, and it was boarded up in a cupboard. The place may be conjectured, for in the drawing room there is still a part boarded up, and at times strange noises are heard, as of a spirit ill at rest.[145]

[145] From Miss E. Le Pelley.