Part 2
A sentiment something like this, I believe, was the grand cause of the enrolment of the mummies by the Egyptians; for they thought while the body remained entire, the soul was flitting about it: and the early Christians even believed that a portion at least of the soul remained, uncorrupted by the body.
Evelyn will grant that among the Romans there was a devout wish to be buried near venerated beings and saints, an _emanation_ from whose bodies, they believed, would inspire the hearts of the believers.
And here I will relate a story from the Dinan Journal of 1840, and also the fragment of a very mysterious tale told with all the solemnity of a faithful chronicle.
“We had the curious spectacle of a long procession of girls from Pleudiheus, passing through our streets to the chapel of Saint Anne, to offer up prayers for the repose of the soul of the mother of one of them, who has been dead twenty-two years, and who every five years has appeared to her daughter, urging her to have masses said for her. This time the troubled spirit prescribed the day, hour, and place of the service, and even the precise dresses she would have the votaries wear. Consequently, they were all lightly clothed in white, although the rain fell and the streets were full of mud.—Some of the inhabitants of Dinan affirm that they saw the ghost of the deceased, marching at the head of the procession to the door of the chapel, where it remained till the mass was finished, and then suddenly vanished.”
Returning from the harbour to Cadiz with some Spanish doñas, the Baron Geramb heard a voice in French, crying, “Save me! Help, help!” but at the time he took little or no heed of the matter. On the morrow was seen on the shore of the harbour a body on a black board, with lighted tapers by its side, which was covered by the Baron’s direction. During a tempest in the evening, some secret impulse directed him again to the shore. Before his bewildered sight arose from the spot a shapeless phantom wrapped in the black winding-sheet which he had provided.
The phantom moved along with gigantic strides, assuming a globular form, and then, whirling in spiral circles, bounded off, and appeared at a distance like a giant. The spectre led the Baron to the streets of Cadiz, its course being accompanied by a noise as of the tinkling of autumnal leaves. In Cadiz a door suddenly opened with force, and the spectre rushed like lightning into the house, and plunged into the cellar. There was the sound of deep groaning, and the Baron descended into the vault: there lay the corpse naked and livid, and on it was prostrated an aged man, uttering the deep sighs of abject misery and despair. In a gloomy corner of this cave of death leaned the phantom, revolving in its spiral whirls, and then changing to a floating cloud of light; and then there beamed forth the pale features of a youth, undulating as if on the bosom of a wave, which murmured in the ear. Then came the chaunting of anthems and prayers for the dead, and a glittering young girl in white robes glided into the cellar, and knelt in devotion by the body.
The phantom—and so the legend proceeds.
There is a wondrous mystery, I grant, enveloping this story; but if there be any truth in that alchymic re-animation, _Palingenesy_—
“If chemists from a rose’s ashes, Can raise the rose itself in glasses;”
nay, if the sparkling diamond shines forth from a mass of charcoal, why may not the ashes of a body be made into a ghost, illustrative of the philosophy of substantial apparitions, adopted by Kircher,—a body _rebuilt_, after being resolved, for a time, into its constituent elements? The Parisian alchymists of the seventeenth century, indeed, demonstrated this mystery, and raised a phœnix from its ashes. They submitted to the process of distillation some earth from the cemetery of the Innocents; during which ceremony, they were scared by the appearance of perfect human shapes, struggling in the glass vessels they were employing. And, lastly, Dr. Ferriar thus deposes:—A ruffian was executed, his body dissected, and his skull pulverised by an anatomist. The student, who slept in the chamber of experiment, saw, in the night-time, a progressive getting together of the fragments, until the criminal became perfect, and glided out at the door.
And here is a legend of deeper mystery still.
There was a merry party collected in a town in France, and amongst all the gay lords and ladies there assembled, there was none who caused so great a sensation as a beautiful young lady, who danced, played, and sang in the most exquisite style. There were only two unaccountable circumstances belonging to her: one was, that she never went to church or attended family prayers; the other, that she always wore a slender, black velvet band or girdle round her waist. She was often asked about these peculiarities, but she always evaded the interrogatories; and still, by her amiable manners and beauty won all hearts. One evening, in a dance, her partner saw an opportunity of pulling the loop of her little black girdle behind: it fell to the ground, and immediately the lady became pale as a sheet; then, gradually shrunk and shrunk, till at length nothing was to be seen in her place but a small heap of grey ashes.
And what think you now, Evelyn?
EV. I think your candle burned very blue, Astrophel, when you were poring over these midnight legends; yet, I believe, I may, by and by, explain the story of your Lady of the Ashes;—all, excepting the mystery of the sable girdle. But, methinks, you should not have stopped short of the qualities by which we may recognise the _genus_ of these phantoms. There was once, as I have heard, a ghost near Cirencester, which vanished in a very nice perfume, and a melodious twang; and Master Lilly, therefore, concluded it to be a fairy: and Propertius, I know, writes of another; and he decided, that the scent diffused on her disappearance, proclaimed her to be a goddess! Glanville has set himself to argue upon, nay, demonstrate, all questions regarding materiality and immateriality, and the nature of spirits; puzzling us with mathematical diagrams, and occupying fifteen chapters on the nature of the witch of Endor: and Andrew Moreton, too, in his “Secrets,” comments, with pedantic profanation, on the “infernal _paw-wawing_ of this condemned creature.” Coleridge, and even Sir Walter, who had a mighty love of legends, propose a question, whether she was a ventriloquist or an aristocratic fortune-teller, or an astrologer or a gipsy, imposing on the credulity of Saul. And yet that same Sir Walter very shrewdly suggested to Sir William Gell the _manufacture_ of a ghost, with a thin sheet of tin, painted white, so that by half a turn the spectre would instantly vanish.
CAST. A ghost, I believe, according to the rules of phantasy, ought to be without matter or form, or indeed any sensible properties. Yet are very serious tales related of guns bursting when fired at them, and swords broken by their contact, and of loud voices issuing from filmy phantoms through which the moonbeams are seen to glimmer. A spirit ought, of course, to communicate with us in another way than that which we know, and possess those ethereal faculties of creeping through chinks or keyholes, and of resuming its airy form, like the sylph of Belinda, when the “glittering forfex” had cut it in twain. An exquisite morceau of such a phantom just now flits across my memory. It is of two old ladies dwelling in two border castles in Scotland. One of these dames was visited by the spectre _bust_ of a man; and the other by the _lower half_ of him. Which had the better bargain, I know not, but I believe—
ASTR. Nay, it were not difficult, lady, to overwhelm me with tales like yours—the idle and unmeaning gossip of a winter’s night: but there are many spectral visitations so intimately associated with events, that the faculty even of prophecy cannot be doubted. Bodine, as Burton writes, is fully satisfied that “these souls of men departed, _if_ corporeal, are of some shape, and that absolutely round, like sun and moone, because that is the most perfect form: that they can assume other aërial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves: that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise transform bodies of others into what form they please, and, with admirable celerity, remove them from place to place: that they can represent castles in the ayre, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men’s eyes; cause smells, savors, deceive all the senses; foretel future events, and do many strange miracles.”
Then the eccentric Francis Grose has thus summed up many of their wondrous attributes:—
“The spirit of a person deceased is either commissioned to return for some especial errand, such as the discovery of a murder, to procure restitution of lands, or money unjustly withheld from an orphan or widow: or, having committed some injustice whilst living, cannot rest till that is redressed. Sometimes the occasion of spirits revisiting this world is to inform their heir in what secret place or private drawer in an old trunk they had hid the title-deeds of the estate, or where, in troublesome times, they had buried the money and plate. Some ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies have been secretly buried, cannot be at ease till their bones have been taken up and deposited in sacred ground, with all the rites of Christian burial.” The ghost of Hamlet’s father walked on the platform at Elsineur, to incite his son to revenge his murder; and many modern phantoms have enlivened the legends of our local histories, bent on the same mysterious errand.
The mythology of the ancients, and the fairy superstition of our own land, are also replete with legends of these apparitions. The rites of sepulture were essential for the repose of the manes. If the body was not quietly entombed, the soul was wandering on the banks of Styx for one hundred years, ere it was permitted Charon to ferry it across the river. Thus spoke the shade of Patroclus to Achilles, in his dream:
“Thou sleep’st, Achilles, and Patroclus, erst Thy best belov’d, in death forgotten lies. Haste, give me burial: I would pass the gates Of Hades, for the shadows of the dead Now drive me from their fellowship afar.”
And this is a prevailing sentiment among the North American Indians:
“The bones of our countrymen lie uncovered, their bloody bed has not been washed clean, their spirits cry against us,—they must be appeased.”
In the letter of Pliny the Consul, to Sura, we learn that there was at Athens a house haunted by a chain-rattling ghost. Athenodorus, the philosopher, hired the house, determined to quiet the restless spirit. “When it grew towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore part of the house, and, after calling for a light, together with his pencil and tablets, he directed all his people to retire. The first part of the night passed in usual silence, when at length the chains began to rattle. However he neither lifted up his eyes, nor laid down his pencil, but diverted his observation by pursuing his studies with greater earnestness. The noise increased, and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked up and saw the ghost exactly in the manner it had been described to him—it stood before him beckoning with the finger. Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers; but the ghost, still rattling his chains in his ears, he looked up and saw him beckoning him as before. Upon this he immediately arose, and, with the light in his hand, followed it. The spectre slowly stalked along as if encumbered with his chains, and, turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus, being thus deserted, made a mark with some grass and leaves where the spirit left him. The next day he gave information to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was there found; for the body having lain a considerable time in the ground, was putrified, and had mouldered away from the fetters. The bones, being collected together, were publicly buried; and thus, after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more.”
Yet, not only to entreat the rites of sepulture, the phantom will walk according to some law of those beings remote from the fellowship of human nature,—it may be to obtain readmission to that earth from which it was, by some fairy spell, in exile.
In the wilds of Rob Roy’s country, there is many a Highlander believing still the traditions of the Daoine Shi, or Men of Peace: and among the legends of Aberfoyle there is one phantom tale that is apropos to my illustrations.
There was one Master Robert Kirke. He was one evening taking his night walk on a fairy hill, or dunshi, in the vicinity of his manse. On a sudden he fell to the ground, struck, as it appeared to many, by apoplexy: the seers, however, believed it to be a trance inflicted on him by the fairy people for thus invading the sacred bounds of their kingdom. After the interment, the phantom of the minister appeared to one of his relatives, and desired him to go to Grahame of Duchray, his cousin, and assure him that he was not dead, but was at that time a prisoner in elf land, and the only moment in which the fairy charm could be dissolved, was at the christening of his posthumous child. The counter-spell was this: that Grahame should be present at the baptism, holding a dish in his hand, and that when the infant was brought, he should throw the dish over the phantom; the appearance of which at that moment was faithfully promised.
When the child was at the font, and while the guests were seated, the apparition sat with them at the table; but fear came upon the Græme at this strange glamourie: he forgot the solemn injunction, and it is believed that Mr. Kirke, to this day, “drees his weird in fairy land.”
PROPHECY OF SPECTRES.
“I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound.” HAMLET.
EV. These are very meagre spectres, Astrophel, or accomplices, as the lawyer would say, _after_ the fact.
ASTR. I have reserved Prophecies for this evening. In the earliest profane records of our globe, we read of the frequent visitations of prophetic phantoms. Listen, Evelyn, to a story of your own Pliny;—the legend of Curtius Rufus. When he was in low circumstances, and unknown in the world, he attended the governor of Africa into that province. One evening, as he was walking in the public portico, he was extremely surprised with the apparition of a woman, whose figure and beauty were more than human. She told him she was the tutelar power who presided over Africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life: that he should go back to Rome, where he should be raised to the highest honours, should return to that province invested with the proconsular dignity, and there should die. Upon his arrival at Carthage, as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure accosted him upon the shore. It is certain, at least, that being seized with a fit of illness, though there were no symptoms in his case that led his attendants to despair, he instantly gave up all hope of recovery, and this prediction was in all its points accomplished.
The shade of Romulus appeared to Julius Proculus, a patrician, foretelling the splendour of Rome. The fate of the battle of Philippi was shown to Brutus in his tent, by the evil spirit of Cæsar; and Cassius also saw the phantom of Julius on his horse, prepared to strike him, shortly before his suicide. In the Talmud we read of the announcement of the Rabbi Samuel’s death to two of his friends, six hundred miles off. Then, the host of legends in that ‘treasure-booke’ of mystery, “Wanley’s Wonders;” the visions of Dion; of Alexander; of Crescentius; of the Pope’s legate at the Council of Trent; of Cassius Severus of Parma; and myriads of analogies to these; nay, may we not believe that the Grecian bards wrote fragments of real history, when Patroclus foretels the death of Hector, Hector that of Achilles, and Mezentius of Orodes, or when Œdipus predicts the lofty fate of his family to Theseus?
But leave we the olden classics for the proofs of later ages. In the pine-forests of Germany, and in wild Caledonia, the legends of spirits and shadows abound in the gossip of the old crones, both in the hut of the jager and the sheiling of the Highland peasant.
The _Taisch_ (like the _Bodach Glas_ of Fergus Mac Ivor,) murmurs the prophecy of death, in the voice of the _Taishtar_, to one about to die; and the _Wraith_, _Swarth_, _Waft_, or _Death-Fetch_, appears in the _Eidōlon_, or likeness, of the person so early doomed, to some loved friend of the party, or sounds of wailing and prophetic voices scream and murmur in the mountain-blast. The wild romances of Ossian, and the shadowy mysteries so brightly illustrated in the poesy of the “Lay,” the “Lady of the Lake,” and “Marmion,” prove how deeply the common mind of Scotland leans to her mysteries; how devoutly her seers foretell a doom. The evidence of Martin, the historian of the Western Isles, is clear and decisive testimony of the possession of a faculty of foresight; and in the reflecting minds of many sages, who seek not to explain it by the term _coincidence_, or to impute the vision to mere national superstition. Indeed, in their records we have rules noted down, by which the seer may overcome the imperfections of his vision. If this be filmy or indistinct, the cloak or plaid must be turned, and the sight is clear; but then the fated seer is often presented with _his own_ wraith.
In Aubrey’s “Miscellanies” we read how Sir Richard Napier, immediately before his death, was journeying from Bedfordshire to Berks, and saw his own apparition lying stark and stiff on the bed; how Lady Diana Rich, the Earl of Holland’s daughter, was met by her death-fetch in the garden at Kensington, a month ere she died of small-pox;—and listen to this legend of Aventine.
“The emperor Henry went down through the Strudel: in another vessel was Bruno, bishop of Wurtzberg, the emperor’s kinsman. There sat upon a rock, that projected out of the water, a man blacker than a Moor, of a horrible aspect, terrible to all who beheld it, who cried out, and said to Bishop Bruno, ‘Hear! hear! Bishop: I am thine evil spirit; thou art mine own; go where thou wilt, thou shalt be mine: yet, now will I do nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again.’ The bishop crossed and blessed himself; but the holy sign was powerless. At Posenbeis, where dwelt the Lady Richlita of Ebersberg, the floor of the banqueting-room fell, in the evening: it was the death-fall of the bishop.”
As the protector Seymour was walking with his duchess, at their country seat, they perceived a spectral bloody hand thrust forth from a wall; and he was soon after beheaded.
It is recorded, that, like Julius Cæsar, James of Scotland had three warnings. The saintly man in Lithgow palace, and another phantom, in Jedburgh, warned King James of his fate: the latter wrote a Latin couplet on the mantel-piece in the hall: had he read it wisely, he had not died at Flodden.
The demon, or the guardian angel of Socrates, was also a prophetic mentor—not only to the sage himself, but even to his companions in his presence; and the slighting of its counsel often brought regret to those who were the subjects of its warning.
In the minds of Xenophon and Plato its influence was devoutly believed, and from the hive of the Attic bee I steal this honied morsel:—“One Timarchus, a noble Athenian, being at dinner in company with Socrates, he rose up to go away, which Socrates observing, bade him sit down again, for, said he, the demon has just now given me the accustomed sign. Some little time after, Timarchus offered again to be gone, and Socrates once more stopped him, saying, he had the same sign repeated to him. At length, when Socrates was earnest in discourse, and did not mind him, Timarchus stole away; and, in a few minutes after, committed a murder, for which, being carried to execution, his last words were, ‘That he had come to that untimely end for not obeying the demon of Socrates.’”
When Ben Jonson was sojourning at Hawthornden, he told Mr. Drummond of his own prophetic vision, that, “about the time of the plague in London, being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton’s house, with old Camden, he saw, in a vision, his eldest son, then a young child, and at London, appear unto him, with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword; at which, amazed, he prayed unto God; and in the morning, he came to Mr. Camden’s chamber, to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension, at which he should not be dejected. In the mean time, there came letters from his wife, of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him of a manly shape, and of that growth he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”
From Walton’s Lives I select the following fragment: it is a vision of Doctor Donne, the metaphysician, whose wife died after the birth of a dead child. “Sir Robert (Drury) returned about an hour afterwards. He found his friend in a state of extasy, and so altered in his countenance, that he could not look upon him without amazement. The doctor was not able for some time to answer the question, what had befallen him; but, after a long and perplexed pause, at last said, ‘I have seen a dreadful vision since I last saw you. I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this I have seen since I saw you.’ To which Sir Robert answered, ‘Sure, Sir, you have slept since I went out, and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.’ Donne replied, ‘I cannot be more sure that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you; and am as sure, that at her second appearing, she stopped, looked me in the face, and vanished.’”
There was a _promise_ by Lord Tyrone to Lady Beresford of a visitation from the tomb. Even when the phantom appeared to her in the night, the lady expressed her diffidence in its reality, but it placed a mark upon her wrist, and adjusted her bed-curtains in some supernatural fashion, and even wrote something in her pocket-book: so that with earnestness she related to her husband in the morning this impressive vision; and it was not long ere missives came, which by announcing the death of Lord Tyrone proved the spectre prophetic.
The tragedian John Palmer died on the stage at Liverpool. At the same hour and minute, a shopman in London, sleeping under a counter, saw distinctly his shade glide through the shop, open the door, and pop into the street. This, an hour or two after, he mentioned very coolly, as if Mr. Palmer himself had been there.
Cardan saw, on the ring-finger of his right hand, the mark of a bloody sword, and heard at the same time a voice which bade him go directly to Milan. The redness progressively increased until midnight: the mark then faded gradually, and disappeared. At that midnight hour his son was beheaded at Milan.
It was told by Knowles, the governor of Lord Roscommon when a boy, that young Wentworth Dillon was one day seized with a mood of the wildest eccentricity, contrary to his usual disposition. On a sudden he exclaimed, “My father is dead!” And soon after missives came from Ireland to announce the fact.