Chapter II (4)

“Except for me, you need not be lying here at all,” and after that he could only hold his tongue, and try to take everything graciously, owning to himself that the least he could do was this; and not owning what he perhaps scarcely knew, that all this kindness would lose its charm if she were no longer the minister. But the more the charm grew upon him the more shy and silent he became with her; and, perversely, the more he longed to see her, or at least to know that she was near, the less dared he raise his eyes or speak a word. And then he felt beyond all hiding that, to part and see her no more would be the bitterest pain he could ever know—such pain as a man must carry to his grave. He knew that he was sorry to be getting strong, and so drawing near the hour he dreaded; and then, because he felt such utter reluctance to return to his old life—the life he would feel to be so desperately lonely henceforth—he resolved to go at once.

That very day he spoke to Mrs. Echalaz alone, when the evening twilight made it easier to say what he knew she would oppose with the pretty tyranny which they all exercised upon him, and which his natural shyness made it very hard for him to resist.

“As if I should listen to such nonsense,” said Mrs. Echalaz, just as he had felt that she would. “You are not going for at least a week.”

His thin, brown hand twitched nervously on the arm of his chair.

“You are very kind,” he said, huskily—“much too kind; but I _must_ go. Please do not urge me to stay—you don’t know how hard you make it to me.”

Mrs. Echalaz laid her pretty jewelled fingers on his restless hand.

“Now tell me why you _must_ go,” she said, kindly; “and if it is a good reason I will allow it.”

He hesitated long enough for her to divine that his answer, when it came, was an evasion.

“I know it is my duty,” he said, looking down. “I shall do wrong to stay here—doing nothing.” The last two words he added rather hastily, after an instant’s embarrassment.

“So you will not tell me?” said Mrs. Echalaz, reproachfully.

He raised his eyes, doubting, to her face, with a strong impulse to tell her all; then he smiled faintly.

“Do you not think duty the highest possible reason?” he asked, resolving to keep silence.

Mrs. Echalaz looked at him.

“I think I could tell you a nearer one,” she said, with a gentle pressure of her hand on his, that told him she read his very heart; and then she added, with grave kindness, “Then I suppose we must let duty carry the day. We shall miss you dreadfully.”

Macpherson raised her hand with reverent affection to his lips, but he could not say a word.

When the rest came home from their walk he was gone.

Privately Mrs. Echalaz told Robert what had passed, and what she construed it to mean.

“Well, why not?” was his comment.

“Why not!” echoed his mother, raising hands and eyes. “Of course I like him. I never met a man to whom I would sooner have trusted Lily’s happiness, but _of course_ it’s impossible.”

“Why?” asked Robert, simply.

“My dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Echalaz, “you know he has nothing. And think of the connection! Preposterous!”

“A fig for the connection!” rejoined Robert, coolly; “and as for money, Lily has quite enough, I suppose. Ask _her_.”

“Oh, you’re perfectly ridiculous!” cried his mother, with a vehemence that convinced him she was already wavering in her own mind, and he said no more.

Meanwhile Macpherson went home, and the first thing that recalled him unmistakably to common earth was the sight of his one servant, a ragged, barefooted, scantily clad, unkempt lassie of eleven or so, who opened the door to him with exceedingly dirty hands, a grin of cheerful welcome on her broad unwashed face. It was like waking from a sunny dream to find oneself lying in the dark; rain beating on the window, the gusty night wind shaking the door; and to feel the thrill of some sharp pain—pain that makes a loneliness for flesh and spirit such as no human heart may share, but is known to God alone.

He nodded to the child, and going past her into his study, shut the door behind him. The sand slipped and grated under his feet, the smell of peat-smoke and cookery was unabated. He sat down at his table, where in that long past other life of his he had spent so many busy happy hours, and hid his face on his folded arms, trying to let the influence and memory of the last weeks go by; trying hard to put it away and brace himself to the old work again.

The girl tapped at the door and said his tea was ready, and he went into the smoky kitchen and sat down before a rather smeary cup and plate, a pile of singed oatcakes, and a small teapot, but the food stuck in his throat. He could not touch it, and by way of getting to work at once he went away to visit a poor family half a mile off. On his way home he found his strength exhausted. He could hardly drag himself along, and even when at last in sight of his own door he leaned against the low kirkyard wall and wondered whether he could reach it, while his tired eyes dwelt listlessly on the lovely evening landscape. The grey birches leaned motionless down over the mossy knolls, and the dark ranks of larch and fir by the loch looked down into their dark glassy shadows in the deep water. The great hills are growing dim through the mist of evening, the clouds have crept away, and all the sky shines with a faint rosy glow through the veil of rising vapor; the long grass in the hollows there beside the lake and all the folded flowers in yonder meadows are drinking in the gracious dew. Far through the stillness comes the voice of many waters—of the river leaping down the rocks. Through Macpherson’s fancy comes a vision of it sparkling in the glory of a summer day, of himself too walking there, fenced about with daylight and companionship, plovers calling and crying overhead, flowers glowing under foot, merry gnats dancing in the yellow gleams under the alder boughs, light and shadow flying over the fields and flickering among the pools and waterfalls. But now the ghostly mist creeps on and folds it all out of sight, and he is alone.

Mournfully, and yet with what deep longing, it brings to his heart thoughts of that dim night that shall be when the day is past to come no more; of the many morrows that shall dawn and set with their sun and shadow, the many evenings with their tender mist and dew, when he will have nor part nor lot in the beautiful earth save a narrow grave he knows not where. Oh, life, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle! vanishing as a dream! Shall he not bear its utmost burden to the end?

Strength and patience came to him beside those quiet graves. Feeling forward into the future he could divine a coming hour when he would be fain to ask a harder trial, longer probation, ere he see the face of the Master he has followed with such faltering feet; that he may suffer a little more for the dear sake of Him whom he has loved so unworthily, ere the day for suffering go by for evermore.

The next day, having made up his mind to avoid the villa entirely, he sent Mrs. Echalaz a basket of water-lilies from the loch, with a message to the effect that he hoped his long arrears of work might be his excuse for not coming in person.

He only longed now to hear that they were gone, and went in daily fear of meeting some of them. He thought and hoped that his fever of unrest might pass into dull pain when she was gone, a pain he might be able to bear more quietly, and in time, perhaps, ignore. Hard work was the only anodyne; but he was not very fit yet for all he tried to do, and the sore trouble of his heart weighed down his spirit and sapped his energy in spite of his best efforts, so that even to himself he grew changed and strange.

He was coming home one evening through the birch wood above the loch, about a week after he had left the villa, with weary, lagging steps, and his eyes upon the ground, when the consciousness of another presence, though he heard no sound, made him look up to find himself face to face with Lily standing alone on the narrow path just in front of him. She had been sitting there under the trees and had just risen to her feet; her hands were full of white scented orchis, her hat lay on the ground, and the evening sunlight fell on her fair hair and showed him that her face was paler than when he saw it last—paler and almost, he thought, a little sad. He forgot how his behavior might appear to her; his one idea was to escape, that she might never guess the fatal shipwreck he had made.

His eyes fell directly, and with a few inarticulate words he lifted his hat and stood aside to let her pass. But Lily did not move. Perhaps if he had not looked so very ill, and something more than ill, she might have lacked courage to disregard his gesture; as it was, pity held her there.

“Mr. Macpherson,” she said, in a low, grieved voice, “am I to pass by without a word?”

He could not speak. It was like the last glimpse of light to the prisoner condemned to life-long darkness to have her standing there. How was he to bid her go?

“What have we done?” Lily asked. “What has happened?”

Macpherson looked up, pale and agitated. “I am not ungrateful,” he said, barely able to control his voice. “Oh, don’t think that, Miss Echalaz.”

“I can’t think that,” said Lily, simply; “but something is wrong if, after all that has happened, you try to treat me as an utter stranger.”

He felt she was hurt, and looked up melted, penitent, ready to give himself any pain, undergo any humiliation, to heal the wound he had made.

“Miss Echalaz,” he said, “I wanted to spare you—and myself too—I—I am blind and bewildered—I have been very selfish—perhaps it is wrong now to tell you—I don’t know—I can’t tell—” he stopped, and there was a moment’s absolute silence covering wild confusion and conflict in his heart, and then he looked up and the words came, he knew not how, steady and clear, “I love you, Miss Echalaz.” They were scarcely spoken before he was condemning himself again. “Oh! Laugh at me—” He laughed too as he spoke, not knowing what he did till he saw her face change and the tears start from her eyes.

“Does it seem to _you_ a thing for laughter?” she asked, passionately. “Have you judged me a woman to laugh at the love of the noblest man I know? To hold it so very cheap that you need not even tell me—”

“How could I tell you?” he broke out. “What could I offer in exchange for all I would ask you to lay down? _Could_ I ask you to come and live in this wilderness in the barest poverty, where half the year is winter, where there is no—no society, nothing but work and hardship and loneliness?”

“If those were all you had to offer, you were right,” Lily answered, tremulously. “You yourself do not live that life for nothing. There is something that so far outweighs all those things that you count them as naught.”

“Oh, I love my people!” said Macpherson at once, and even as he uttered the word it told him what she meant. “My love was such a poor thing to offer,” he faltered humbly, “and I have nothing else.”

The tears brimmed over in Lily’s eyes. “And would you take anything else in exchange?” she said—“would money do instead, or rank, or any other thing?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously; “only love, and only yours! Can love—such love as mine—outweigh all the rest?” His voice failed, and as he raised his earnest, searching eyes to her face, the last words came in a hoarse whisper, “Oh, is it enough for me to dare offer you that alone?”

Lily crossed the narrow pathway that divided them, letting all her flowers fall at their feet, and laid her hands in his.

“Would you really have let me go away without telling me?” she asked, bravely, while the rosy color deepened in her cheeks. “Less than love, for you and me, is nothing; and more than love there cannot be;” and then she was fain to hide her face and fast-falling tears upon his breast. “Oh, if only I were less unworthy!”

Macpherson trembled as he drew her to him. “God bless you, darling!” he murmured, brokenly; and again and again, thinking over the past, she heard him whisper, “Thank God! thank God!”—_Leisure Hour._

WHEN SHALL WE LOSE OUR POLE-STAR?

This may be to some of our readers a startling question; for most of us have had that star pointed out to us many years; and perhaps those who directed our eyes to it little thought that there would ever be any other pole-star. It is well known that if the northern extremity of the axis of our earth were lengthened until it met the imaginary sphere of the heavens, it would come very near to our present pole-star, hence called Polaris; and if, for any cause, the direction of that axis were materially altered, that star would no longer be a true index of the north. We now propose to show that such a change of the direction of the earth’s axis is continually taking place; and that the terrestrial axis when thus lengthened describes a cone, the apex of which is the centre of the earth; and the circumference of the base of the cone is a circle described amongst the stars. When the axis has described one-half of its course, the angle between the two positions it occupies at the beginning and at the middle of the rotation is about forty-seven degrees. And thus the extremity of the axis will successively come near to other stars than our present pole-star; and in about twelve thousand years it will have as the Polaris the very conspicuous star Vega, or α in the constellation Lyra.

We now proceed to explain the reason of this movement of the earth’s axis. It is well known that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but is flattened at the poles, being what astronomers call an oblate spheroid. Now, the sun’s attraction upon such a spheroidal body is not quite the same as it would be upon a perfect sphere. When the sun is at either equinox—that is, just over the equator—the attraction exercised upon our earth is the same as if that body were spherical; but when the sun is at or near the upper tropic, its action upon the terrestrial matter which bulges at the equator has a tendency to pull that matter towards the ecliptic, and to make the axis of the earth approach to a vertical to the ecliptic. The same influence is at work when the sun is near the lower tropic. And if this influence were not counteracted, the effect would be to cause the ecliptic and equator ultimately to coincide; and our annual succession of seasons would be done away with. But as no such catastrophe is threatening us, and the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator remains about twenty-three and a half degrees, there must be some force which neutralises the above tendency: this is the rotation of the earth on its own axis. No one but a good mathematician could _a priori_ tell the exact effect of these two forces combined. But any one may see how rotation may effect the motion of a body acted on by another force, by observing how a pegtop is kept upright by the rotation, whilst it falls as the rotation ceases. The influence of this rotation to keep a body from falling may be noticed by any one who carefully observes a spinning coin when about to fall. While the coin spins rapidly, its uppermost part appears as a point. As it falls, the point becomes a small circle, increasing as the rotation slackens. But if the coin be very closely watched, when beginning to fall, it will be seen that the small circle is for a moment diminished, showing that the coin had partially recovered its upright position. This recovery is entirely due to the rotation. Similarly, a bicycle is kept from falling by its horizontal motion; and a conical bullet, which has gained a great rapidity of rotation from a rifled barrel, keeps the direction of its axis without deflection to the right or left. And thus we find that the present position of the earth’s axis with respect to the ecliptic is not altered; but the two forces acting upon the earth cause the axis to rotate, as above described, so that the north pole describes a circle in the heavens. But as the period of this rotation is very great, it was not easy to detect such a result, except after a long period of observation. It was discovered thus. The point where the ecliptic and equator cut is called the first point of the constellation Aries, one of the well-known twelve signs of the zodiac. From this point all celestial measurements are made eastwards. Each star of importance has had its distance east of that point—called its right ascension—recorded. In the course of time, the tables of these numbers so recorded appeared to be erroneous; but the error was so regular, and all in one direction, that it was conjectured that the point from which these right ascensions were reckoned had itself shifted its place. And so it proved; and if any one looks at a celestial globe, he will see that Aries no longer occupies the position where the equinox is, but is somewhat to the east, or right, because the point of intersection of the ecliptic and equator has slipped back. But as the sun appears to take a shorter time to come back to the equinox than to arrive at the same stars, which were once close to that point of intersection, this slow retrograde motion is termed the _precession_ of the equinoxes. The distance on the equator caused by this retrograde motion would, if not otherwise modified, be 50″·41 annually. But the attraction of the planets on each other produces a very small motion of the equinox in the other direction; and so the resulting precession is about 50″·1 annually. If we divide the three hundred and sixty degrees in every circle by the above small quantity, we shall find that the period of the revolution of the earth’s axis is twenty-five thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight years.

Of course the moon has an influence on the extra mass at the earth’s equator, as the sun has, similar in kind, but far less in quantity. This influence would cause the earth’s axis to describe very small cones of the same nature as the large cone above described; and the period of every rotation would be about nineteen years. The effect of this second or lunar influence is to cause the earth’s axis to dip a little towards the equator, and then to resume its position; and this nodding motion is termed _nutation_, from the Latin word _nuto_, to nod. Thus the axis of the earth describes a cone not of uniform surface, but as it were fluted, and completes its majestic round in nearly twenty-six thousand years, pointing to a various succession of stars which will in their turns be honored by future astronomers as the pole-stars of their respective generations.—_Chambers’s Journal._

LAUREL.

A pictured face, in frame of gold,
Large, tender eyes, and forehead bold,
And firm, unflinching mouth;
A face that tells of mingled birth—
The calmness of the northern earth,
The passion of the south!

The one face in the world to me,
The face I never more shall see
Until God’s kingdom come!
Oh, tender eyes! oh, firm strong lips!
What comfort in my life’s eclipse?
What succor? Ye are dumb!

I brought the blossoms of the Spring
To deck my true love’s offering
While he was far away:
With rose’s bloom, with pansy’s grace
I wreathed the well-beloved face;
I have no flowers to-day.

But laurel, laurel for my brave
My hero lying in his grave
Upon that foreign sod!
He passed amid the crash of guns,
Beyond the farthest sun of suns,
A kingly soul, to God!

He died upon the battlefield,
He knew not, he, to fly nor yield,
Bold Britain’s worthy son!
And I will wreathe his laurel crown,
Although the bitter tears run down—
I was his chosen one.

He loved his country, so did I;
He parted forth to do or die,
And I—I let him go;
Oh dear, dear land! we gave thee all,
God bless the banner, and the pall,
God help the mourner’s woe!

I hear the bells ring loud and sweet,
I hear the shouting in the street,
For joy of victory;
The very children cease their play,
To babble of the victor’s bay,
And pennons flutter free.

I hear the vivas long and loud,
As they ride onward through the crowd,
His comrades bold and brave;
The shouts of triumph rend the air,
Oh, he must hear them lying there,
My hero in his grave!

I do not grudge thee, darling mine!
I, the last daughter of a line
Whose warrior blood ran free
Upon the battlefields of old;
Thou wast not mine to have and hold,
The land hath need of thee.

I do not grudge thee; I shall smile,
Beloved, in a little while,
And glory in thy name;
I hold love’s laurel in my hand,
But take thou from the grateful land
Thy wreath of deathless fame!
—_All the Year Round._

THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GHOST STORIES.

BY ANDREW LANG.

We seem to need a name for a new branch of the science of Man, the Comparative Study of Ghost Stories. Neither sciology, from σκιά, nor idolology, from εἴδωλον, appears a very convenient term, and as the science is yet in its infancy, perhaps it may go unnamed, for the time, like a colt before it has won its maiden race. But, though nameless, the researches which I wish to introduce are by no means lacking in curious interest. It may be objected that the comparative study of ghost stories is already well known, and practised by two very different sets of inquirers, anthropologists and the Society for Psychical Research; but neither Mr. Tylor and Mr. Herbert Spencer nor “those about” Mr. Gurney and Mr. Myers work, as it seems to me, exactly on the topics and in the manner which I wish to indicate. Mr. Herbert Spencer, as we all know, traces religion to the belief in and worship of the ghosts of ancestors. Mr. Tylor, again, has learnedly examined the probable origin of the belief in ghosts, deriving that belief from the phenomena of dreams, of fainting, of shadows, of visions induced by hunger or by narcotics, and of death. To state Mr. Tylor’s theory briefly, and by way of an example, men reasoned themselves into a theory of ghosts after the manner of Achilles in the _Iliad_ (xxiii. 70-110). The unburied Patroclus appeared to his friend in a dream, and passed away, “And Achilles sprang up marvelling, and smote his hands together, and spake a word of woe: ‘Ay me, there remaineth then even in the house of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life be not anywise therein; for all night long hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me, wailing and making moan, and charged me everything that I should do, and wondrous like his living self it seemed.’”

Here we find Achilles in the moment of inferring from his dream the actual existence of a spirit surviving the death of the body. No doubt a belief in ghosts might well have been developed by early thinkers, as Mr. Tylor holds, out of arguments like these of Achilles. It is certain, too, that many of the social and religious institutions of savages (if writers in the English language are to be allowed the use of that word) have been based on the opinion that the spirits of the dead are still active among the living. All this branch of the subject has been exhaustively treated by Mr. Tylor in his _Primitive Culture_. But I do not observe that Mr. Tylor has paid very much attention to what we may call the actual ghost stories of savages—that is, the more or less well-authenticated cases in which savages have seen the ordinary ghost of modern society. Here, for the purposes of clearness, I will discriminate certain kinds of ghost stories, all of them current among races as low as the Australians, and lower than the Fijians, all of them current, too, in contemporary European civilisation. First, let us place the well-known savage belief that the spirits of the dead reappear in the form of the lower animals often of that animal which is the totem or ancestral friend and guardian of the kinship. This kind of ghost story one seldom or never hears in drawing-rooms, but it is the prevalent and fashionable kind among the peasantry for example, in Shropshire. In the second class, we may reckon the more or less professional ghosts that appear obedient to the medium’s or conjurer’s command at _séances_. These spirits, which come “when you do call them,” behave in much the same manner, and perform the same sorts of antics or miracles, in Australian _gunyehs_, in Maori _pahs_, and at the exhibition of Mr. Sludge, or of the esoteric Buddhists. Thirdly, we arrange the non-professional ghost, which does not come at the magician’s call, but appears unexpected, and apparently irresponsible. This sort also haunts houses and forests; other members of the species manifest themselves at the moment of death, or become visible for the purpose of warning friends of their own approaching decease. Such phenomena as a sudden flash of supernatural light, or the presence of a white bird, or other ghostly creatures prophesying death, may perhaps be allotted to this class of apparitions.

These things are as well known to contemporary savages as they were to the classical people of Lucian’s day, or as they are, doubtless, to the secretaries of the Society for Psychical Research. Once more, we ought to notice the “well-authenticated” modern ghost story, which on examination proves to be really a parallel to the William Tell myth, and to recur in many ages, always attached to different names, and provided with fresh properties. To look into these ghost stories cannot be wholly idle. Apparently there is either some internal groundwork of fact at the bottom of a belief which savages share with Fellows of the Royal Society, or liability to certain recurring hallucinations must be inherited by civilised man from his untutored ancestors, or the mythopœic faculty, to use no harder term, is common to all stages of culture. As to habits of hasty inference and false reasoning, these, of course, were bequeathed to us by our pre-scientific parents, and these, with our own vain hopes and foolish fears, afford the stuff for most ghosts and ghost stories. The whole topic, in the meanwhile, has only been touched at either end, so to speak. The anthropologists have established their own theory of the origin of a belief in ghosts, without asking whether the actual appearance of apparitions may not have helped to start or confirm that belief. The friends of psychical research have collected modern stories of the actual appearance of apparitions without paying much attention, as far as I am aware, to their parallels among the most backward races, or to their mediæval and classical variants.

It is not necessary to occupy much space with the savage and modern ghosts of men that reappear in the guise of the lower animals. Among savages, who believe themselves to be descended from beasts, nothing can be more natural than the hypothesis that the souls revert to bestial shapes. The Zulus say their ancestors were serpents, and in harmless serpents they recognise the dead friend or kinsman returning to the family kraal. The Indian tribes of North-Western America claim descent from various creatures, and under the shape of these creatures their dead reappear. The lack of distinction, in the savage mind, between man and beast makes ghost stories of this species natural among savages. But it is curious, in Miss Burne’s volume on _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, to find that almost all the Shropshire ghosts, even of known persons recently deceased, display themselves in the form of beasts, while ghosts in human guise are comparatively rare exceptions. Thus (p. 111) the wicked squire of Bagley, after his death, _came_ as a monstrous and savage bull. He was “laid” in church, where he cracked the walls by the vigor of his resistance. “There are believers in this story who affirm that, were the stone to be loosened, the bull would come forth again by many degrees worse than he was at the first.” “It is not an invariable rule that ghosts should take the form of animals.... A road near Hodnet is haunted by the ghost of a farmer who, for no known reason, comes again with a horse’s head,” like the Phigalian Demeter! The ghost (limited) of seven illegitimate children _came_ as a cat! A man drowned in the Birmingham and Liverpool Canal appears (p. 107) as a monkey; and so on. So common, in France, are human ghosts in bestial form, that M. D’Assier has invented a Darwinian way of accounting for the phenomena. M. D’Assier, a Positivist, is a believer in ghosts, but not in the immortality of the soul. He suggests that the human _revenants_ in the guise of sheep, cows, and shadowy creatures may be accounted for by a kind of Atavism, or “throwing back,” on the side of the spirit to the lower animal forms out of which humanity was developed!

The chief or only interest of these bogies in bestial shape lies in the proof they afford of the tenacity of tradition. It is impossible to imagine the amount of evidence capable of proving that what seems a bull is really the ghost of a wicked squire, as people think in Shropshire. But the prevalence of a superstition like this demonstrates that ideas originally conceived by savages, and natural or inevitable in the savage mental condition, may survive in the rustic peoples of the most civilised nations.

The second class of ghost stories, tales of what we may call “professional” spirits that come and go at the sorcerer’s command, need not detain us long. This branch of the subject has been examined by the anthropologists. Mr. Tylor has provided many examples of the savage _séance_, the Shaman or medicine man bound and tied in a darkened room, and then released by the spirits whose voices are heard chattering around him. “Suppose a wild North American Indian looking on at a spirit _séance_ in London. As to the presence of disembodied spirits manifesting themselves by raps, noises, voices, and other physical actions, the savage would be perfectly at home in the proceedings, for such things are part and parcel of his recognised system of nature.” I doubt if any modern medium could quite rival the following feat of an Australian Birraark or sorcerer, as vouched for by one of the Tatungolung tribe. “The fires were allowed to go down,” the Birraark began his invocation. At intervals he uttered the cry, _Coo’ee!_ “At length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons jumping on the ground in succession. This was supposed to be the spirit Baukan followed by the ghosts. A voice was then heard in the gloom asking in a strange intonation, “What is wanted?” Questions were put by the Birraark, and replies given. At the termination of the _séance_, the spirit voices said, “We are going.” Finally the Birraark was found in the _top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep_. It was alleged that the ghosts had transported him there at their departure.[39] If as good a _séance_ could be given in Hyde Park, and if Mr. Sludge could be found at the close in the top of one of the Scotch pines in Kensington Gardens, we might admit that the civilised is on a level with savage spiritualism. Yet even this _séance_ was very much less impressive than what the author of _Old New Zealand_ witnessed in a Maori pah, when the spirit of a dead native friend of his own was present and “manifested” rarely.

[39] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 254.

The curious coincidences between savage and civilised “spiritualism” have still to be explained. Mr. Tylor says that “the ethnographic view” finds “modern spiritualism to be in great measure a direct revival from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folk-lore.” But in a really comparative study of the topic, this theory would need to be proved by historical facts. Let us grant that Eskimo and Australian spiritualism are a savage imposture. Let us grant that peasants, little advanced from the savage intellectual condition, retained a good deal of savage spiritualism. To complete the proof it would be necessary to adduce many examples of peasant _séances_, to show that these were nearly identical with savage _séances_, and then to demonstrate that the introducers of the civilised modern _séance_ had been in touch with the savage or peasant performances. For the better explanation of the facts, the Psychical Society might send missionaries to investigate and test the exhibitions of Australian Birraarks, and Maori Tohungas, and Eskimo Angekoks. Mr. Im Thurm, in Guiana, has made experiments in Peayism, or local magic, but felt no more than a drowsy mesmeric sensation, and a headache, after the treatment. While those things are neglected, psychical research is remiss in attention to her elevating task.

In the third class of ghosts we propose to place those which are independent of the invocations of the sorcerer, which come and go, or stay, at their own will. As to “haunted houses,” savages, who have no houses, are naturally not much troubled by them. It is easy to leave one _gungeh_ or bark shelter for another; and this is generally done after a death among the Australians. Races with more permanent habitations have other ways of exorcising the haunters—by feeding the ghosts, for example, at their graves, so that they are comfortable there, and do not wish to emerge. Two curious instances of haunted forests may be given here. To one I have already referred in a little volume, _Custom and Myth_, recently published. Mrs. Edwards, in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, printed a paper called “The Mystery of the Pezazi.” To be brief, the mystery lay in the constant disturbing sounds of nocturnal tree-felling near a bungalow in Ceylon, where examination proved that no trees had been felled. Mrs. Edwards, her husband, and their servants were on several occasions disturbed by these sounds, which were unmistakable and distinct. The Cingalese attribute the noises to a Pezazi or spirit. I find a description of precisely the same disturbances in Sahagun’s account of the superstitions of the Aztecs. Brother Sahagun was one of the earliest Spanish missionaries in Mexico, and his account of Aztec notions is most intelligently written. In Mexico, too, “the Midnight Axe” is supposed to be a phenomenon produced by woodland spectres. A critic in the _Athenæum_ suggested that the fact of the noise, attested by English witnesses in Ceylon who knew not Sahagun, was matter for the Psychical Society. Perhaps some physical examination would be more likely to discover the actual origin of the sounds of tree-felling. I was not aware, however, till Mr. Leslie Stephen pointed it out, that the Galapagos Islands, “suthard of the line,” were haunted by the Midnight Axe. De Quincey, who certainly had not heard the Ceylon story, and who probably would have mentioned Sahagun’s had he known it, describes the effect produced by the Midnight Axe on the nerves of his brother, Pink:—

So it was, and attested by generations of sea-vagabonds, that every night, duly as the sun went down and the twilight began to prevail, a sound arose—audible to other islands and to every ship lying quietly at anchor in that neighborhood—of a woodcutter’s axe.... The close of the story was that after, I suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash was heard, announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet was made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old woodman’s persecution.... The woodcutter’s axe began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn, and, as light strengthened, it ceased entirely, after poor Pink’s ghostly panic grew insupportable.[40]

[40] _Autobiographic Sketches_, p. 337.

I offer no explanation of the Midnight Axe, which appears (to superstitious minds) to be produced by the _Poltergeist_ of the forests.

A much more romantic instance, savage and civilised, of a haunted woodland may perhaps be regarded as a superstition transmitted by French settlers to the natives of New Caledonia. The authority for the following anecdote is my friend and kinsman, Mr. J. J. Atkinson, of Viewfield, Noumea, New Caledonia.

Mr. Atkinson has lived for twenty years remote from books, and in the company of savage men. He informs me that a friendly Kaneka came to visit him one day, and seemed unusually loth to go. After one affectionate farewell he came back and took another, and then a third, till Mr. Atkinson asked him why he was so demonstrative. The native then replied that this would be their last meeting; that in a day or two he would be dead. As he seemed in perfect health, the Englishman rallied him on his fears. But he very gravely explained that he had met in the woods one whom he took for the girl of his heart. It was not till too late that he recognised the woman for a forest-haunting spirit. To have to do with these is death in three days, and their caresses are mortal. As he said, so it happened, for the unlucky fellow shortly afterwards died. I do not think my informant had ever heard of Le Sieur Nann and the Korrigan, the well-known Breton folk-song of the knight who met the forest fairy, and died in three days. A version of the ballad is printed by De la Villemarque, Barzaz-Breiz (i. 41). Variants exist in Swedish, French, and even in a Lowland Scotch version, sung by children in a kind of dancing game. In this case, what we want to know is whether the Kaneka belief is native, or borrowed from the French. That there really exist fair and deadly women of the woods perhaps the most imaginative student will decline to believe. Among savages men often sicken, and even die, because they consider themselves bewitched, and the luckless Kaneka must have been the victim of a dream or hallucination reacting on the nervous system. But that does not account for the existence of the superstition.

The ghosts which at present excite most interest are ghosts beheld at the moment of their owner’s decease by persons at a distance from the scene of death. Thus Baronius relates how “that eximious Platonist, Marsilius Ficinus,” appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse to Michael Mercatus, and rode away, crying “O Michael, Michael, vera, vera sunt illa,” that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Lord Brougham was similarly favored. Among savages I have not encountered more than one example, and that rather sketchy, of a warning conveyed to a man by a ghost as to the death of a friend. The tale is in FitzRoy’s _Voyage of the ‘Adventurer’ and the ‘Beagle’_ (ii. 118). Jemmy Button was a young Fuegian whom his uncle had sold to the ‘Beagle’ for a few buttons.

While at sea, on board the “Beagle,” about the middle of the year 1842, he said one morning to Mr. Byno, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Byno tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously.

Another kind of ghost, again, that of a dead relative who comes to warn a man of his own approaching decease, appears to be quite common among savages. In his interesting account of the Kurnai, an Australian tribe, Mr. Howitt writes:—

Mr. C. J. Du Vé, a gentleman of much experience with the Aborigines, tells me that, in the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died while with him. The day before he died, having been ill for some time, he said that, in the night, his father, his father’s friend, and a female spirit he could not recognize, had come to him, and said that he would die next day, and that they would wait for him.

To this statement the Rev. Lorimer Fison appends a note which ought to interest psychical inquirers. “I could give many similar instances which have come within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange to say, the dying man, in all these cases, kept his appointment with the ghosts to the very day.” A civilised example recorded by Henry More is printed in the _Remains_ of the late Dr. Symonds. In that narrative a young lady was wakened by a bright light in her bedroom. Her dead mother appeared to her, exactly as the father of the Maneroo black fellow did, and warned her that she was to die on the following midnight. The girl made all her preparations, and, with Fijian punctuality, “kept her appointment with the ghosts to the very day.” The peculiarity of More’s tale seems to be the brilliance of the light which attended the presence of the supernatural. This strange fire is widely diffused in folk-lore. If we look at the Eskimo we find them convinced that the Inue, or powerful spirits, “generally have the appearance of a fire or bright light, and to see them is very dangerous ... _partly as foreshadowing the death of a relation_.”[41] In the story repeated by More, not a kinsman of the visionary, but the visionary herself was in danger. In the _Odyssey_, when Athene was mystically present as Odysseus and Telemachus were moving the weapons out of the hall (xix. 21-50), Telemachus exclaims, “Father, surely a great marvel is this I behold! Meseemeth that the walls of the hall, and the fair spaces between the pillars, and the beams of pine, and the columns that run aloft are bright as it were with flaming fire. Verily some god is within of them that hold the wide heaven.” Odysseus answers, “Lo, this is the wont of the gods that possess Olympus.” Again, in Theocritus, when Hera sends the snakes to attack the infant Heracles, a mysterious flame shines forth, φάος δ’ ἀνἀ οἶκον ἐτύχθη.[42] The same phenomenon occurs in the saga of Burnt Njal when Gunnar sings within his tomb. Philosophers may dispute whether any objective fact lies at the bottom of this belief, or whether a savage superstition has survived into Greek epic and idyll, and into modern ghost stories. Into Scotch legend, too, this faith in a mysterious and ominous fire found its way—

Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply.

Scott derives the idea from the tomb fires of the Sagas, but we have shown the wide diffusion of the belief.

[41] Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 43.

[42] “And all the house showed clear as in the light of dawn.”—Theoc. xix. 30-40, ed. Ahrens.

By way of ending this brief sketch of the comparative study of ghost stories, an example may be given of the recurrent tale which is told of different people in different ages and countries. Just as the anecdote of William Tell and the Apple occurs in various times, and among widely severed races, so, in a minor degree, does the famous Beresford ghost story present itself in mythical fashion. The Beresford tale is told at great length by Dr. F. G. Lee, in his _Glimpses of the Supernatural_. As usual, Dr. Lee does not give the names of his informants, nor trace the channels through which the legend reached them. But he calls his version of the myth “an authentic record” (p. 51). To be brief, Lord Tyrone and Miss Blank were orphans, educated in the same house “in the principles of Deism.” When they were about fourteen years of age their preceptor died, and their new guardians tried to “persuade them to embrace revealed religion.” The boy and girl, however, stuck to Deism. But they made a compact that he or she who died first should appear to the survivor “to declare what religion was most approved by the Supreme Being.” Miss Blank married Sir Martin Beresford. One day she appeared at breakfast with a pale face, and a black band round her wrist. Long afterwards, on her death-bed, she explained that this band covered shrunken sinews. The ghost of Lord Tyrone, at the hour of his death, had appeared to her, had prophesied (correctly) her future, and had touched her wrist by way of a sign.

He struck my wrist; his hand was as cold as marble; in a moment the sinews shrank up, every nerve withered.... I bound a piece of black ribbon round my wrist. The black ribbon was formerly in the possession of Lady Betty Cobb, who, during her long life, was ever ready to attest the truth of this narration, as are, to the present hour, the whole of the Tyrone and Beresford families.

Nothing would induce me to dispute the accuracy of a report vouched for by Lady Betty Cobb and all the Tyrones and Beresfords. But I must be permitted to point out that Lord Tyrone merely did what many ghosts had done before in that matter of touching Lady Beresford’s wrist. Thus, according to Henry More “one” (bogie) “took a relation of Melanchthon’s by the hand, and so scorched her that she bore the mark of it to her dying day.” Before Melanchthon the anecdote was “improved” by Eudes de Shirton in a sermon (_Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions_, 1877). According to Eudes, a certain clerk, Serlon, made with a friend the covenant which Miss Blank made with Lord Tyrone. The survivor was to bring news of the next world. Well, the friend died, and punctually appeared to Serlon, “in a parchment cloak, covered with the finest writing in the world.” Being asked how he fared, he said that this cloak, a punishment for his love of Logic, weighed heavier than lead, and scorched like the shirt of Nessus. Then he held out his hand, and let fall a drop which burned Serlon to the bone—

And ever more that Master wore
A covering on his wrist.

Before Eudes de Shirton (1081-1153) William of Malmesbury knew this anecdote, which he dates about 1060-1063, and localises in Nantes. His characters are “two clerks,” an Epicurean and a Platonist, who made the usual contract that the first to die should appear to the survivor, and state whether Plato’s ideas or Epicurus his atoms were the correct reply to the conundrum of the universe. The visit was to be paid within thirty days of the death. One of the philosophical pair was killed, a month passed, no news of him came. Then, when the other expected nothing less, and was busy with some ordinary matter, the dead man suddenly stood before him. The spectre explained that he had been unable to keep his appointment earlier; and, stretching out his hand, let fall three burning drops of blood, which branded, not the wrist, but the brow of the psychical inquirer. The anecdote recurs later, and is attached by certain commentators on Dante to one Siger de Brabant. Now this legend may be true about Lady Beresford, or about William of Malmesbury’s two clerks, or about Siger de Brabant, or about Serlon; but the same facts of a compact, the punctual appearance of the survivor, and the physical sign which he gave, can scarcely have occurred more than once. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the narrative vouched for by two noble families is accurate, and that the tales of William of Malmesbury, Henry More, Eudes de Shirton, and Siger de Brabant are myths—

Or such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.

Though this sketch of a new comparative science does not perhaps prove or disprove any psychical or mythological theory, it demonstrates that there is a good deal of human nature in man. From the Eskimo, Fuegians, Fijians, and Kurnai, to Homer, Henry More, Theocritus, and Lady Betty Cobb, we mortals are “all in a tale,” and share coincident beliefs or delusions. What the value of the coincidence of testimony may be, how far it attests facts, how far it merely indicates the survival of savage conceptions, Mr. Tylor and Mr. Edmund Gurney may be left to decide. Readers of the _Philopseudes_ of Lucian will remember how the Samosatene settled the inquiries of the psychical researches of his age, and in that dialogue there are abundant materials for the comparative student of ghost stories.—_Nineteenth Century._

THE GERMAN ABROAD.

BY C. E. DAWKINS.