Part 12

I remember, when I was a child, the prevalent belief in Horsham, that, at a certain hour of the night, the ghost of Mrs. Hamel was heard groaning in her vault, beneath the great eastern window, and it required some self-possession to walk, at midnight, around this haunted tomb; for few would believe that the noises were nothing more than the wind sweeping along the vaulted aisles of the church.

Those very extraordinary impositions on the sense of hearing at Woodstock, in the truth of which, Astrophel, your faith was so firm, were resorted to to create terror, and effect a political purpose. In “the genuine History of the good Devil of Woodstock,” written in 1649, we are told of the pealing of cannon, the barking of dogs, and neighing of horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certainly created the greatest wonder and anxiety, until “funny Joe Collins” explained and demonstrated all the mechanical process of this imposture. You will find also the account of these gems of marvellous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chronicles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny.

In the 16th century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole question regarding these haunted houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in the reality of apparitions, in his work published at Francofurt, “De Jure Spectrorum,” and thus he runs up the question of damages: “If the house be haunted, the tenant might bring in a set-off against his rent, thus—‘Deduct for spectres in bed and bed-room, and elsewhere, 5_l._ 10_s._’”

The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I believe was founded on the mystery of the “Demon of Tedworth,” which beat the drum in the house of Mr. Mompesson. This also was the source of extreme wonder, until the drummer was tried, and convicted, and Mr. Mompesson confessed that the mystery was the effect of contrivance.

The author of the Pandemonium, or Devils’ Cloyster, garnished his book with tales of this nature. In 1667, when he slept in “my Lady chamber,” in the house of a nobleman, he was waited on by a succession of spectral visitors; the explanation of which Ferriar and Hibbert, and others, have wrought for you, if you deign to turn over the leaves of their natural philosophy.

The impostures of the Stockwell miracles of 1772 are recorded, with other curiosities, in the “Every-day Book” of Hone, the skilful and unwearied collector of our ancient mysteries.

The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illusion in the ears of the credulous. Although Dr. Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and other learned Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develop its mystery, I believe many were so in love with the marvellous, that they regretted the unravelling of the plot, and still believed; as Commodore Trunnion, in despite of evidence as to the fluttering in his chimney, swore that he knew a devil from a jackdaw, as well as any man in the kingdom.

ASTR. I wonder, Evelyn, at your veneration for the classics; for are they not replete with stories, which, if true, (and I believe them so,) will undermine all your philosophy? When Pausanias writes of the ghosts at Marathon, of horses and men who were heard rushing on to battle four hundred years after they were slain; and Plutarch of the spectres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chæronea, the scene of bloodshed and murder;—what may be their motives, but the record of acknowledged incidents?

EV. The classics, if they might rise up and listen, would believe me, dear Astrophel, so clear and simple is the source of these illusions.

Of the credulity of the Romans I have spoken; but even in minds not prone to superstition, deep mental impression, or constant dwelling on a subject of interest, will effect this illusion of a sense.

In Holy Island, near the ruins of the convent (in the dungeons of which romance has decided the fate of Constance Beverley), was a small fortress of invalid soldiers. One of them once conducted a visitor to a steep rock, under which, he said, there must be a profound cavern, as the sound of a bell was distinctly heard every night at twelve o’clock, deep in the bowels of the earth. The traveller soon discovered that the mysterious sound had _never been heard_ by the oldest inmates, _until_ the poem of “Marmion” appeared, in which the condemnation and the death of Constance in the dungeons of the cathedral are so forcibly described. This is, however, a _metaphysical_ source of mystery.

In volcanic regions, as in that of the Solfatara, near Naples, these strange and subterranean sounds are not unfrequently heard; and in the rocky and caverned coasts of our own island also, where dwell the unlettered and the superstitious, by whose wild and romantic fancy these noises are readily magnified into the supernatural.

Camden, in his “Britannia,” informs us,—“In a rock in the island of Barry, in Glamorganshire, there is a narrow chink, or cleft, to which if you put your ear you shall perceive all such sorts of noises as you may fancy smiths at work under ground, strokes of hammers, blowing of bellows, grinding of tools.” At Worm’s Head, in the peninsula of Gower in Glamorganshire, these sounds are, even now, often heard; and it requires but a moderate stretch of imagination to create all this cyclopean imagery, when the sea is rolling in cavities under our feet, and the tone of its voice is magnified by confinement and repercussion. From some such source probably sprung the fable of “the Syrens,” two solitary maidens, who, by their dulcet voices, so enchanted the navigators who sailed by their rocks, that they forgot home and the purpose of their voyage, and died of starvation. Ulysses, instructed by his mother Circe, broke the spell, and the ladies threw themselves into the sea with vexation. This fable, like many of the classic mysteries, may be thus topographically explained.

In the grand duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is a very curious example of an Æolian lyre, constructed, as the traditions of the mountains will have it, by the very _genius loci_ himself.

In a romantic chasm of these mountains, most melodious sounds are sometimes heard from the top of fir-trees overhanging a waterfall. The current of air, ascending and descending through the chasm, receives a counter impulse from an abrupt angle of the rock, and, acting on the tops of the string-like branches of the trees, produces the soft tones of the Æolian harp, the effect of which is much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall.

There may be in these natural sounds the source of many fables of the ancients: the moaning of the wind among the branches of a pine-grove might be the wailing of a hamadryad.

Among the granite rocks on the Orinoco, Baron Humboldt heard the strangest subterranean sounds; and at the palace of Carnac, some of Napoleon’s _savans_ heard noises exactly resembling the breaking of a string. It is curious that Pausanias applies exactly this expression to the sounds of the Memnonian granite,—the colossal head of Memnon, which was believed to speak at sunrise. He writes,—“It emits sounds every morning at sunrise, which can be compared only to that of the breaking of the string of a lyre.”

Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multiplied the sounds.

The mystery of Memnon may be readily explained, by the temperature and density of the _external_ air differing from that _within_ the crevices, and the effort of the current to promote an equilibrium; yet these simple sounds were in course of time warped into articulate syllables, and at length obtained the dignity of an oracular voice. And in these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clue to all the mysteries of demonia and fairyland.

To these natural illusions, let me add the triumphs of phonic mechanism and the peculiar faculty of the ventriloquist, the secrets of which the science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly developed. The wondrous heads of Memnon, and Orpheus, and Æsculapius, the machines of Albertus Magnus, and Sylvester, are now held but as curious specimens of art, and are indeed eclipsed by the speaking toys of Kratzenstein, and Kempelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the ingenious instruments of Wheatstone.

Of ventriloquism, it is not my purpose to speak; but there is a wonder of our time in the person of young Richmond, which, with many distinguished physiologists, I examined at the _conversazione_ of Dr. E——, in C—— Street.

When Richmond sat himself to _perform_, we heard a subdued murmur in his throat for about half-a-minute, when suddenly a sound issued of the most exquisite and perfect melody, closely resembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest musical box. The mouth was widely open, and the performance was one of considerable effort. The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satisfactorily explained. It is decided, however, by some, that the upper opening of the windpipe may be considered as a Jew’s-harp, or Æolina, of very exquisite power, _behind_ the cavity of the mouth, instead of being placed _between the teeth_.

ASTR. And thus concludes our lecture on special mechanics.

EV. I professed no more, Astrophel. It may be the privilege of the _sacred poet_ to soar beyond the confines of our own planetary system:

“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”

But the study of philosophy is nature and nature’s _known laws_. If we lean, for one moment, to the credence of a _modern_ miracle, there is an end to our philosophy. Revealed truth, and the immaterial nature of the mystical essence within us, we may not lightly discourse on. The sacred histories of Holy Writ, and the miracles recorded in its pages—the hand-writing in the hall of Belshazzar, the budding of Aaron’s rod, the standing still of the sun upon Gibeon, and, above all, the miracles of the Redeemer, are of too holy a nature to be submitted to the test of philosophical speculation: they rest on the _conviction_ of conscience and the heart; a proof far more sublime than may ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the workings of his sovereign reason.

FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.

“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.” MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.

ASTR. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly? I fear Evelyn has clipped your sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you.

CAST. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel; for the world, not a syllable of confession to Evelyn.

I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming up to earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial sovereignty by this matter-of-fact scholar.

ASTR. Why did we listen to his philosophy? why not still believe the volumes of our antique legends; that those which tell the influence of fairies and demons on man’s life, have their source in the real history of a little world of creatures more ethereal than ourselves? Perhaps even the bright thoughts of a poet’s fancy are not his own creation.

CAST. We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert syrens into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the rocks; let us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of faëry. Even now, are we not in a realm of Peristan? Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, strewed with pearls and gold, may be the presence-chamber of Titania; and fays are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o’ercanopies so shadily; and the chaunting of their _viralays_, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a zephyr’s wing flitting o’er the mouth of a lily. Ariel is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays are feeding on their fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine; and Oberon quaffs to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the violet, or glitter in the honied bell of the hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or the liquid treasure of the _nepenthe_.

We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits; for you have dipped deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries.

ASTR. Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography; indeed, the _romance_ of the moderns was with the ancients _truth_. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus.

From the climes of the sun came the orient tales of genie, and deeves, and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad, from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the promised houris of Mahomet’s paradise; and its mysteries were echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion.

From the legends of the East, spring the fairy romances of our own days. The _Peri_ of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the _Ginn_ of Arabia was of Ginnistan, and the _Fairy_ of England of Fairyland; and we have their synonyms in the _Fata_ of Italy and the _Duerga_ of northern Europe.

These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith the “Golden Legend:” that “the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre.”

The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with life; the air with _sylphs_ and _sylvains_, the water with _ondines_, the earth with _gnomes_, and the fire with _salamanders_. And Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross of Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming inorganic mass?

The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic, Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his brother; and Spenser has left a very interesting genealogical record of the faëry brood, in that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the “Faëry Queen.” Elf, the man fashioned and inspired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty—Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prowess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of Cleopolis; Elfine conquered the Gobbelines; Elfant built Panthea, of purest crystal; Elfan slew the giant twins; and Elfinor spanned the sea with a bridge of glass.

CAST. Spenser, I presume, borrowed _his_ romance from Italy. We read that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to frighten the children into obedience with these hated names, which, corrupted to the epithets of elf and goblin, were hence-forth applied to fairies and phantoms.

ASTR. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these feuds of party, the term _Elfen_ (and Dance identifies this with the Teutonic _Helfen_,) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits: Weld-elfen were their dryads; Zeld-elfen their field-fairies, &c.

The American Indians to this day have faith in the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The orient Indian, too, at this hour, peoples the forests with his gods; and peacocks, and squirrels, and other wild creatures, are thus profanely deified.

The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the Prince of Fairies; and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie; and, in the romance of the Nine Champions, Proserpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes in his Natural History, that “you often encounter fairies that vanish away like phantasies.” And Baxter believed that “fairies and goblins might be as common in the air, as fishes in the sea.”

As the Peri could not enter Paradise in consequence of the errors of her “recreant race,” so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a Christian; and on this plea they came up to the daughters of men. And we read, in the tenets of the Cabala, that, by these earthly weddings, they could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each other’s nature. But these unnatural unions were not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts of Anjou and a fair demonia, which entailed misery and commission of crime on the noble house of Plantagenet.

Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse, among the American Indians and the African blacks; in Ireland, it is the feast of the Beltane; in Scotland, this immunity came over the mortal life on Hogmanay, or New-year’s Eve, and during the _general assemblies_ of these mystic spirits of the world.

In Britain, it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of November, and on All Souls’ Day. At these times, indeed, they might be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freemasonry.

In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts.

If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi, in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second-sighted eye, if once they are recognized on earth by a mortal.

In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends of _Kobolds_, and _Umbriels_, and _Wehrwolves_, the _Holts Konig_, the _Waldebach_, the _Reiberzahl_, and the _Schattenman_, the _Hudekin_, the _Erl Konig_, and the beautiful naiad, the _Nixa_. The devil himself was believed to be a gnome king; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the profit of a mine, he refused it, “lest by accepting it he should tempt the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to tempt _him_.”

Then we have the _Putseet_, or Puck of the Samogitæ, on the Baltic; the _Biergen Trold_, or _Skow_, of Iceland; and those mermaids which gambol around the Faroe Islands. We read in the _Danske Folksaga_, that these “merrows” cast their skins like the boa, and in that condition are changed into human beings, till their scales are restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly arise on the murder of one of these sea-maids.

There was the Norse goddess, Freya, which, like the Dragon of Wantley, and the Caliban of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” blasted the fair face of nature, and far eclipsed the giant-serpent off Cape Saint Anne, or the _kraken_ of Norway; and even that monstrous sea-snake, the _jormungandz_ (so conspicuous among the wild romances of the Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor angled for this snake with a bull’s head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid achievement in the grand conflict which is to herald the _Ragnarockr_,—the twilight of the gods.

Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse legion. In Wales, the _Tylwth Tag_ and the Pooka; and many a hollow in the mountain where these strange animals resort, is called _Cwm Pooka_; and the wondrous cavern of the Meltè, in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted by this little pony.

In Ireland, they have a _Merrow_, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; the _Banshee_, or fairy prophet; the _Fear-Dearg_, the Irish Puck; the _Clurricane_, a sottish pigmy; and the _Pooke_, the wild pony.

CAST. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for I also have seen many caverns in the rocky districts, called _Poola Phouka_, in which these mischievous little creatures concealed themselves.

ASTR. In Man there is a hill called the “Fairy Hill,” a tumulus of the Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man fairies which preside over their fisheries.

Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters: the _Ourisks_ or _Uriskin_, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men; the _Brownies_; the _Kelpies_, or river-demons; the _Bargheists_; the _Red-cap_; the _Daoine Shi_, or Men of Peace; the _Glaslic_, or noontide hag, which haunted the district of Knoidart; and the _Lham-Dearg_, or red-hand, in the forests of Glenmore, and Rothiemurchus; the _Bodach-Glas_; and the _Pixies_, or small grey men.

CAST. There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, which is called the Isle of Pigmies; and I remember a chapel there, in which very minute human bones were some time ago discovered. Think you, Astrophel, that these were the skeletons of pixies?

ASTR. I cannot think the notion irrational; there are dwarfs and giants even in our days. The _Bosgis-men_ of the Cape, and the Patagonians of South America, prove the existence of beings of another stature; and perchance of another _nature_, in days long agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the Cape are little more than three feet high; and that there were giants _too_, is proved by the fossil bones which have been found in the strata of our earth.

CAST. Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was really a hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are solemnly informed by our profane chronicles? Nay, even the story may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock, with which some slave of science was opening his coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation: “I see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger.”

IDA. If Evelyn were here, he would ask why we have no skeletons of giants as of lizards in our secondary rocks; and he would tell this learned Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, which seemed to be the _débris_ of a giant race, to be the bones of elephants. The legends of Athenæus are probably a fable, and the fossils of the pigmies were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons of “span-long, wee unchristen’d bairns.”

Your allusion to the brownies, reminds me of the monstrous errors which have crept into our legends from the mingling of _two stories_, or the warping of plain facts in natural history. And indeed I interrupt you to recount, in proof of this, some fragments from “Surtees’ Durham.”