Chapter VII (8)

"And did you eat it all?
My son, beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
And did you eat it all?"
"Only the half I eat;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
Only the half I eat;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"Where went the other half?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
Where went the other half?"
"I gave it to the dog;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
I gave it to the dog;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die?"

"What did you with the dog?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What did you with the dog?"
"It died upon the way;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
It died upon the way;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"Poisoned it must have been!
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
Poisoned it must have been!"
"Quick for the doctor send;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
Quick for the doctor send;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die.

"Wherefore the doctor call?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
Wherefore the doctor call?"
"That he may visit me;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
That he may visit me;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

* * * * *

"Quick for the parson send;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
Quick for the parson send;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"Wherefore the parson call?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
Wherefore the parson call?"
"So that I may confess;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
So that I may confess;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

* * * * *

"Send for the notary;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
Send for the notary;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"Why call the notary?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
Why call the notary?"
"To make my testament;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
To make my testament;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What to your mother leave?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What to your mother leave?"
"To her my palace goes;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
To her my palace goes;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What to your brothers leave?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What to your brothers leave?"
"To them the coach and team;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
To them the coach and team;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What to your sisters leave?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What to your sisters leave?"
"A dower to marry them;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
A dower to marry them;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What to your servants leave?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What to your servants leave?"
"The road to go to Mass;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
The road to go to Mass;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What leave you to your tomb?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What leave you to your tomb?"
"Masses seven score and ten;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
Masses seven score and ten;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

"What leave you to your love?
My son beloved, blooming, and gentle bred,
What leave you to your love?"
"The tree to hang her on;
O lady mother, my heart is very sick:
The tree to hang her on;
Alas, alas, that I should have to die."

At first sight it would seem that the supreme dramatic element of the English song--the circumstance that the mother does not know, but only suspects, with increasing conviction, the presence of foul play--is weakened in the Lombard ballad by the refrain, "Alas, alas, that I should have to die." But a little more reflection will show that this is essentially of the nature of an _aside_. In many instances the office of the burden in old ballads resembles that of the chorus in a Greek play: it is designed to suggest to the audience a clue to the events enacting which is not possessed by the _dramatis personae_--at least not by all of them.

In the northern songs, Lord Ronald is a murdered child: a character in which he likewise figures in the Scotch lay of "The Croodlin Doo." This is the Swedish variant:

"Where hast thou been so long, my little daughter?"
"I have been to B[oe]nne to see my brother;
Alas! how I suffer."

"What gave they thee to eat, my little daughter?"
"Roast eel and pepper, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What didst thou do with the bones, my little daughter?"
"I threw them to the dogs, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What happened to the dogs, my little daughter?"
"Their bodies went to pieces, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What dost thou wish for thy father, my little daughter?"
"Good grain in the grange, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What dost thou wish for thy brother, my little daughter?"
"A big ship to sail in, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What dost thou wish for thy sister, my little daughter?"
"Coffers and caskets of gold, my step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What dost thou wish for thy step-mother, my little daughter?"
"The chains of hell, step-mother.
Alas! how I suffer."

"What dost thou wish for thy nurse, my little daughter?"
"The same hell, my nurse.
Alas! how I suffer."

A point connected with the diffusion of ballads is the extraordinarily wide adoption of certain conventional forms. One of these is the form of testamentary instructions by means of which the plot of a song is worked up to its climax. It reappears in the "Cruel Brother"--which, I suppose, is altogether to be regarded as of the Roland type:

"O what would ye leave to your father, dear?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"The milk-white steed that brought me here,"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly._

"What would ye give to your mother, dear?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"My wedding shift which I do wear,"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly._

"But she must wash it very clean,"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay_,
"For my heart's blood sticks in every seam,"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly_.

"What would ye give to your sister Anne?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"My gay gold ring and my feathered fan,"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly_.

"What would ye give to your brother John?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"A rope and a gallows to hang him on!"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly_.

"What would ye give to your brother John's wife?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"Grief and sorrow to end her life!"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly_.

"What would ye give to your own true lover?"
_With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay._
"My dying kiss, and my love for ever!"
_As the primrose spreads so sweetly_.

The Portuguese ballad of "Helena," which has not much in common with "Lord Roland"--except that it is a story of treachery--is brought into relation with it by its bequests. Helena is a blameless wife whom a cruel mother-in-law first encourages to pay a visit to her parents, and then represents to her husband as having run away from him in his absence. No sooner has he returned from his journey than he rides irate after his wife. When he arrives he is met by the news that a son is born to him, but unappeased he orders the young mother to rise from her bed and follow him. She obeys, saying that in a well-ordered marriage it is the husband who commands; only, before she goes, she kisses her son and bids her mother tell him of these kisses when he grows up. Then her husband takes her to a high mountain, where the agony of death comes upon her. The husband asks: "To whom leavest thou thy jewels?" She answers: "To my sister; if thou wilt permit it." "To whom leavest thou thy cross and the stones of thy necklace?" "The cross I leave to my mother; surely she will pray for me; she will not care to have the stones, thou canst keep them--if to another thou givest them, better than I, let her adorn herself with them." "Thy substance, to whom leavest thou?" "To thee, my husband; God grant it may profit thee." "To whom leavest thou thy son, that he may be well brought up?" "To thy mother, and may it please God that he should make himself loved of her." "Not to that dog," cries the husband, his eyes at last opened, "she might well kill him. Leave him rather to thy mother, who will bring him up well; she will know how to wash him with her tears, and she will take the coif from her head to swaddle him."

A strange, wild Roumanian song, translated by Mr C. F. Keary (_Nineteenth Century_, No. lxviii.), closes with a list of "gifts" of the same character:

"But mother, oh mother, say how
Shall I speak, and what name call him now?"
"My beloved, my step-son,
My heart's love, my cherished one."
"And her, O my mother, what word
Shall I give her, what name?"
"My step-daughter, abhorred,
The whole world's shame."
"Then, my mother, what shall I take him?
What gift shall I make him?"
"A handkerchief fine, little daughter,
Bread of white wheat for thy loved one to eat,
And a glass of wine, my daughter."
"And what shall I take _her_, little mother,

What gift shall I make _her_?"
"A kerchief of thorns, little daughter;
A loaf of black bread for her whom he wed,
And a cup of poison, my daughter."

Before parting with "Lord Ronald" it should be noticed that the song clearly travelled in song-shape, not simply as a popular tradition; and that its different adaptators have been still more faithful to the shape than to the substance. It is not so easy to decide whether the victim was originally a child or a lover, whether the north or the south has preserved the more correct version. Some crime of the middle ages may have been the foundation of the ballad; on the other hand it is conceivable that it formed part of the enormous accumulation of literary odds and ends brought to Europe from the east, by pilgrims and crusaders. Stories that, as we know them, seem distinctly mediaeval, such as Boccaccio's "Falcon," have been traced to India. If a collection were made of the ballads now sung by no more widely extended class than the three thousand ballad singers inscribed in the last census of the North-Western Provinces and Oude, what a priceless boon would not be conferred upon the student of comparative folk-lore! We cannot arrive at a certainty even in regard to the minor question of whether Lord Ronald made his appearance first in England or in Italy. The English and Italian songs bear a closer affinity to each other than is possessed by either towards the Swedish variant. Supposing the one to be directly derived from the other--a supposition which in this case does not seem improbable--the Italian was most likely the original. There was a steady migration into England of Italian literature, literate and probably also illiterate, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The English ballad-singers may have been as much on the look-out for a new, orally communicated song from foreign parts, as Chaucer was for a poem of Petrarch's or a tale of Boccaccio's.

II.--THE THEFT OF A SHROUD.

The ballad with which we have now to deal has had probably as wide a currency as that of "Lord Ronald." The student of folk-lore recognises at once, in its evident fitness for local adaptation, its simple yet terrifying motive, and the logical march of its events, the elements that give a popular song a free pass among the peoples.

M. Allegre took down from word of mouth and communicated to the late Damase Arbaud a Provencal version, which runs as follows:

His scarlet cape the Prior donned,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
His scarlet cape the Prior donned,
And all the souls in Paradise
With joy and triumph fill the skies.

His sable cape the Prior donned,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
His sable cape the Prior donned,
And all the spirits of the dead
Fast tears within the graveyard shed.

Now, Ringer, to the belfry speed,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Now, Ringer, to the belfry speed,
Ring loud, to-night thy ringing tolls
An office for the dead men's souls.

Ring loud the bell of good St John:
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Ring loud the bell of good St John:
Pray all, for the poor dead; aye pray,
Kind folks, for spirits passed away.

Soon as the midnight hour strikes,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Soon as the midnight hour strikes,
The pale moon sheds around her light,
And all the graveyard waxeth white.

What seest thou, Ringer, in the close?
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
What seest thou, Ringer, in the close?
"I see the dead men wake and sit
Each one by his deserted pit."

Full thousands seven and hundreds five,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Full thousands seven and hundreds five,
Each on his grave's edge, yawning wide,
His dead man's wrappings lays aside.

Then leave they their white winding-sheets,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Then leave they their white winding-sheets,
And walk, accomplishing their doom,
In sad procession from the tomb.

Full one thousand and hundreds five,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Full one thousand and hundreds five,
And each one falls upon his knees
Soon as the holy cross he sees.

Full one thousand and hundreds five,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Full one thousand and hundreds five
Arrest their footsteps, weeping sore
When they have reached their children's door.

Full one thousand and hundreds five,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Full one thousand and hundreds five
Turn them aside and, listening, stay
Whene'er they hear some kind soul pray.

Full one thousand and hundreds five,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Full one thousand and hundreds five,
Who stand apart and groan bereft,
Seeing for them no friends are left.

But soon as ever the white cock stirs,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
But soon as ever the white cock stirs,
They take again their cerements white,
And in their hands a torch alight.

But soon as ever the red cock crows,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
But soon as ever the red cock crows,
All sing the Holy Passion song,
And in procession march along.

But soon as the gilded cock doth shine,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
But soon as the gilded cock doth shine,
Their hands and their two arms they cross,
And each descends into his foss.

'Tis now the dead men's second night,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Tis now the dead men's second night:
Peter, go up to ring; nor dread
If thou shouldst chance to see the dead.

"The dead, the dead, they fright me not,"
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
"The dead, the dead, they fright me not,
--Yet prayers are due for the dead, I ween,
And due respect should they be seen."

When next the midnight hour strikes,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
When next the midnight hour strikes,
The graves gape wide and ghastly show
The dead who issue from below.

Three diverse ways they pass along,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Three diverse ways they pass along,
Nought seen but wan white skeletons
Weeping, nought heard but sighs and moans.

Down from the belfry Peter came,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Down from the belfry Peter came,
While still the bell of good St John
Gave forth its sound: barin, baron.

He carried off a dead man's shroud,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
He carried off a dead man's shroud;
At once it seemed no longer night,
The holy close was all alight.

The holy Cross that midmost stands,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
The holy Cross that midmost stands
Grew red as though with blood 'twas dyed,
And all the altars loudly sighed.

Now, when the dead regained the close,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Now, when the dead regained the close
--The Holy Passion sung again--
They passed along in solemn train.

Then he who found his cerements gone,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Then he who found his cerements gone,
From out the graveyard gazed and signed
His winding-sheet should be resigned.

But Peter every entrance closed,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
But Peter every entrance closed
With locks and bolts, approach defies,
Then looks at him--but keeps the prize!

He with his arm, and with his hand,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
He with his arm, and with his hand,
Made signs in vain, two times or three,
And then the belfry entered he.

A noise is mounting up the stair,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
A noise is mounting up the stair,
The bolts are shattered, and the door
Is burst and dashed upon the floor.

The Ringer trembled with dismay,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
The Ringer trembled with dismay,
And still the bell of good St John
For ever swung: barin, baron.

At the first stroke of Angelus,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
At the first stroke of Angelus
The skeleton broke all his bones,
Falling to earth upon the stones.

Peter upon his bed was laid,
Ding dong, dong ding dong!
Peter upon his bed was laid,
Confessed his sin, repenting sore,
Lingered three days, then lived no more.

It will be seen that, in this ballad, which is locally called "Lou Jour des Mouerts," the officiating priest assumes red vestments in the morning, and changes them in the course of the day for black. The vestments appropriate to the evening of All Saints' Day are still black (it being the Vigil of All Souls'), but in the morning the colour worn is white or gold. An explanation, however, is at hand. The feast of All Saints had its beginning in the dedication of the Roman Pantheon by Boniface IV., in the year 607, to _S. Maria ad Martyres_, and red ornaments were naturally chosen for a day set apart especially to the commemoration of martyrdom. These were only discarded when the feast came to have a more general character, and there is evidence of their retention here and there in French churches till a date as advanced as the fifteenth century. Thus, we gain incidentally some notion of the age of the song.

Not long after giving a first reading to the Provencal ballad of the Shroud-theft, I became convinced of its substantial identity with a poem whose author holds quite another rank to that of the nameless folk-poet. Goethe's "Todten Tanz" tends less to edification than "Lou jour des Mouerts;" nor has it, I venture to think, an equal power. We miss the pathetic picture of the companies of sad ghosts; these kneeling before the wayside crosses; these lingering by their children's thresholds; these listening to the prayers of the pious on their behalf; these others weeping, _en vesent que n'ant plus d'amics_. But the divergence of treatment cannot hide the fact that the two ballads are made out of one tale.

THE DANCE OF DEATH.

The watcher looks down in the dead of the night
On graves in trim order gleaming;
The moon steeps the world all around in her light--
'Tis clear as if noon were beaming.
One grave gaped apart, then another began;
Here forth steps a woman, and there steps a man,
White winding-sheets trailing behind them.

On sport they determine, nor pause they for long,
All feel for the measure advancing;
The rich and the poor, the old and the young;
But winding-sheets hinder the dancing.
Since sense of decorum no longer impedes,
They hasten to shake themselves free of their weeds,
And tombstones are quickly beshrouded.

Then legs kick about and are lifted in air,
Strange gesture and antic repeating;
The bones crack and rattle, and crash here and there,
As if to keep time they were beating.
The sight fills the watcher with mirth 'stead of fear,
And the sly one, the Tempter, speaks low in his ear:
"Now go and a winding-sheet plunder!"

The hint he soon followed, the deed it was done,
Then behind the church-door he sought shelter;
The moon in her splendour unceasingly shone,
And still dance the dead helter-skelter.
At last, one by one, they all cease from the play,
And, wrapt in the winding-sheets, hasten away,
Beneath the turf silently sinking.

One only still staggers and stumbles along,
The grave edges groping and feeling;
'Tis no brother ghost who has done him the wrong;
Now his scent shows the place of concealing.
The church-door he shakes, but his strength is represt;
'Tis well for the watcher the portals are blest
By crosses resplendent protected.

His shirt he must have, upon this he is bent,
No time has he now for reflection;
Each sculpture of Gothic some holding has lent,
He scales and he climbs each projection.
Dread vengeance o'ertakes him, 'tis up with the spy!
From arch unto arch draws the skeleton nigh,
Like lengthy-legged horrible spider.

The watcher turns pale, and he trembles full sore,
The shroud to return he beseeches;
But a claw (it is done, he is living no more),
A claw to the shroud barely reaches.
The moonlight grows faint; it strikes one by the clock;
A thunderclap burst with a terrible shock;
To earth falls the skeleton shattered.

It needed but small penetration to guess that Goethe had neither seen nor heard of the Provencal song. It seemed, therefore, certain that a version of the Shroud-theft must exist in Germany, or near it--an inference I found to be correct on consulting that excellent work, Goethe's _Gedichte erlaeutert von Heinrich Viehoff_ (Stuttgart, 1870). So far as the title and the incident of the dancing are concerned, Goethe apparently had recourse to a popular story given in Appel's _Book of Spectres_, where it is related how, when the guards of the tower looked out at midnight, they saw Master Willibert rise from his grave in the moonshine, seat himself on a high tombstone, and begin to perform on his pocket pipe. Then several other tombs opened, and the dead came forth and danced cheerily over the mounds of the graves. The white shrouds fluttered round their dried-up limbs, and their bones clattered and shook till the clock struck one, when each returned into his narrow house, and the piper put his pipe under his arm and followed their example. The part of the ballad which has to do directly with the Shroud-theft is based upon oral traditions collected by the poet during his sojourn at Teplitz, in Bohemia, in the summer of 1813. Viehoff has ascertained that there are also traces of the legend in Silesia, Moravia, and Tyrol. In these countries the story would seem to be oftenest told in prose; but Viehoff prints a rhymed rendering of the variant localised in Tyrol, where the events are supposed to have occurred at the village of Burgeis:

The twelve night strokes have ceased to sound,
The watchman of Burgeis looks around,
The country all in moonlight sleeps;
Standing the belfry tower beneath
The tombstones, with their wreaths of death,
The wan moon's ghastly pallor steeps.

"Does the young mother in child-birth dead
Rise in her shroud from her lonely bed,
For the sake of the child she has left behind?
To mock them (they say) makes the dead ones grieve,
Let's see if I cannot her work relieve,
Or she no end to her toil may find."

So spake he, when something, with movement slow,
Stirs in the deep-dug grave below,
And in its trailing shroud comes out;
And the little garments that infants have
It hangs and stretches on gate and grave,
On rail and trellis, the yard about.

The rest of the buried in sleep repose,
That nothing of waking or trouble knows,
For the woman the sleep of the grave is killed;
Her leaden sleep, each midnight hour,
Flees, and her limbs regain their power,
And she hastes as to tend her new-born child.

All with rash spite the watchman views,
And with cruel laughter the form pursues,
As he leans from the belfrey's narrow height,
And in sinful scorn on the tower rails
Linen and sheets and bands he trails,
Mocking her acts in the moon's wan light.

Lo, with swift steps, foreboding doom,
From the churchyard's edge o'er grave and tomb
The ghost to the tower wends its ways;
And climbs and glides, ne'er fearing fall,
Up by the ledges, the lofty wall,
Fixing the sinner with fearful gaze.

The watcher grows pale, and with hasty hand,
Tears from the tower the shrouds and bands;
Vainly! That threatening grin draws nigh!
With a trembling hand he tolls the hour,
And the skeleton down from the belfry-tower,
Shattered and crumbling, falls from high.

This story overlaps the great cycle of popular belief which treats of the help given by a dead mother to her bereaved child. They say in Germany, when the sheets are ruffled in the bed of a motherless infant, that the mother has lain beside it and suckled it. Kindred superstitions stretch through the world. The sin of the Burgeis watchman is that of heartless malice, but it stops short of actual robbery, which is perhaps the reason why he escapes with his life, having the presence of mind to toll forth the first hour of day, when--

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.

The prose legends which bear upon one or another point in the Shroud-theft, are both numerous and important. Joseph Mace, a cabin-boy of Saint Cast, in Upper Brittany, related the following to the able collector of Breton folk-lore, M. Paul Sebillot. There was a young man who went to see a young girl; his parents begged him not to go again to her, but he replied: "Mind your own business and leave me to mind mine." One evening he invited two or three of his comrades to accompany him, and as they passed by a stile they saw a woman standing there, dressed all in white. "I'll take off her coif," said the youth. "No," said the others, "let her alone." But he went straight up to her and carried off her coif--there only remained the little skullcap underneath, but he did not see her face. He went with the others to his sweetheart, and showed her the coif. "Ah!" said he, "as I came here I met a woman all in white, and I carried off her coif." "Give me the coif," replied his sweetheart; "I will put it away in my wardrobe." Next evening he started again to see the girl, and on reaching the stile he saw a woman in white like the one of the day before, but this one had no head. "Dear me," he said to himself, "it is the same as yesterday; still I did not think I had pulled off her head." When he went in to his sweetheart, she said, "I wore to-day the coif you gave me; you can't think how nice I look in it!" "Give it back to me, I beg of you," said the young man. She gave it back, and when he got home he told his mother the whole story. "Ah, my poor lad," she said, "you have kept sorry company. I told you some ill would befall you." He went to bed, but in the night his mother heard sighs coming from the bed of her son. She woke her good man and said, "Listen; one would say someone was moaning." She went to her son's bed and found him bathed in sweat. "What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Ah, my mother, I had a weight of more than three hundred pounds on my body; it stifled me, I could bear it no longer." Next day the youth went to confession, and he told all to the curate. "My boy," said the priest, "the person you saw was a woman who came from the grave to do penance; it was your dead sister." "What can I do?" asked the young man. "You must go and take her back her coif, and set it on the neck on the side to which it leans." "Ah! sir, I should never dare, I should die of fright!" Still he went that evening to the stile, where he saw the woman who was dressed in white and had no head; he set the coif just on the side the neck leant to; all at once a head showed itself inside it, and a voice said, "Ah! my brother, you hindered me from doing penance; to-morrow you will come and help me to finish it." The young man went back to bed, but next day he did not get up when the others did, and when they went to his bed he was dead.

At Saint Suliac a young man saw three young girls kneeling in the cemetery. He took the cap off one of them, saying that he would not give it back till she came to embrace him. Next day, instead of the cap he found a death's head. At midnight he carried it back, holding in his arms a new-born infant. The death's head became once more a cap, the woman disappeared, and the young man, thanks to the child, suffered no harm.

In a third Breton legend a child commits the theft, but without any consciousness of wrong-doing. A little girl picked up a small bone in a graveyard and took it away to amuse herself with it. In the evening, when she returned home, she heard a voice saying:

Give me back my bone!
Give me back my bone!

"What's that?" asked the mother.

"Perhaps it is because of a bone I picked up in the cemetery."

"Well, it must be given back."

The little girl opened the door and threw the bone into the court, but the voice went on saying:

Give me back my bone!
Give me back my bone!

"Maybe it is the bone of a dead man; take the candle, go into the court and give it back to him."

It is most unfortunate to possess a human bone, even by accident. It establishes unholy relations between the possessor and the spirit world which render him defenceless against spells and enchantments. A late chaplain to the forces in Mauritius told me that the witches, or rather wizards, who have it all their own way in that island, contrived, after a course of preparatory persecution, to surreptitiously introduce into his house the little finger of a child. He could not think what to do with it: at last he consulted a friend, a Catholic priest, who advised him to burn it, which was done. We all know "the finger of birth-strangled babe" in the witches' cauldron in _Macbeth_; but it is somewhat surprising to find a similar "charm for powerful trouble" in current use in a British colony.

A Corsican legend, reported by M. Frederic Ortoli, should have a place here. On the Day of the Dead a certain man had to go to Sartena to sell chestnuts. Overnight he filled his panniers, so as to be ready to start with the first gleam of daylight. The only thing left for him to do was to go and get his horse, which was out at pasture not far from the village. So he went to bed, but hardly had he lain down when a fearful storm broke over the house. Cries and curses echoed all round: "Cursed be thou! cursed be thy wife! cursed be thy children!" The wretched man grew cold with fear; he got quite close to his wife, who asked: "Did you put the water outside the window?" "Sangu di Cristu!" cried the man, "I forgot!" He rose at once to put vessels filled with water on the balcony. The dead--whose vigil it was--were in fact come, and finding no water either to drink or to wash and purify their sins in, they had made a frightful noise and hurled maledictions against him who had forgotten their wants. The poor man went to bed again, but the storm continued, though the cursing and blaspheming had ceased.

Towards three in the morning the man wished to get up, "Stay," said his wife, "do not go."

"No, go I must."

"The weather is so bad, the wind so high; some mischief will come to you."

"Never mind; keep me no more."

And so saying the husband went out to find his horse. He had barely reached the crossway when by the path from Giufari, he saw, marching towards him, the _squadra d'Arrozza_--the Dead Battalion. Each dead man held a taper, and chanted the _Miserere_.

The poor peasant was as if petrified; his blood stood still in his veins, and he could not utter a word. Meanwhile the troop surrounded him, and he who was at its head offered him the taper he was carrying. "Take hold!" he said, and the poor wretch took it.

Then the most dreadful groans and cries were heard. "Woe! woe! woe! Be accursed, be accursed, be accursed."

The villager soon came to himself, but oh! horrid sight! in his hand was the arm of a little child. It was that, and not a taper, that the dead had given him. He tried to get rid of it, but every effort proved fruitless. In despair, he went to the priest, and told him all about it. "Men should never take what spirits offer them," said the priest, "it is always a snare they set for us; but now that the mischief is done, let us see how best we can repair it."

"What must I do?"

"For three successive nights the Dead Battalion will come under your windows at the same hour as when you met it: some will cry, some will sob, others will curse you, and ask persistently for the little child's arm; the bells of all the churches will set to tolling the funeral knell, but have no fear. At first you must not throw them the arm--only on the third day may you get rid of it, and this is how. Get ready a lot of hot ashes; then when the dead come and begin to cry and groan, throw them a part. That will make them furious; they will wish to attack your house--you will let them in, but when all the spectres are inside, suddenly throw at them what is left of the hot ashes with the child's arm along with it. The dead will take it away, and you will be saved."

Everything happened just as the priest said; for three nights cries, groans, and imprecations surrounded the man's house, while the bells tolled the death-knell. It was only by throwing hot ashes on the ghosts that he got rid of the child's arm. Not long after, he died. "Woe be to him who forgets to give drink to the dead."

The Dead Battalion, or Confraternity of Ghosts, walk abroad dressed as penitents, with hoods over their heads. The solitary night traveller sees them from time to time, defiling down the mountain gorges; they invariably try to make him accept some object, not to be recognised in the dark--but beware, lest you accept! If some important person is about to die, they come out to receive his soul into their dread brotherhood.

Ghost stories are common in Corsica. What wilder tale could be desired than that of the girl, betrayed by her lover to wed a richer bride, who returns thrice, and lies down between man and wife--twice she vanishes at cock-crow, the third time she clasps her betrayer in her chilly arms, saying, "Thou art mine, O beloved! mine thou wilt be forever, we part no more." While she speaks he breathes his last breath.

The dead, when assembled in numbers, and when not employed in rehearsing the business or calling of their former lives, are usually engaged either in dancing or in going through some sort of religious exercise. On this point there is a conformity of evidence. A spectre's mass is a very common superstition. On All Soul's Eve an old woman went to pray in the now ruined church of St Martin, at Bonn. Priests were performing the service, and there was a large congregation, but by and by the old woman became convinced that she was the only living mortal in the church. She wished to get away, but she could not; just as Mass was ending, however, her deceased husband whispered to her that now was the time to fly for her life. She ran to the door, but she stopped for one moment at the spot in the aisle where two of her children were buried, just to say, "Peace be unto them." The door swung open and closed after her: a bit of her cloak was shut in, so that she had to leave it behind. Soon after she sickened and died; the neighbours said it must be because a piece of her clothes had remained in the possession of the dead.

The dance of the dead sometimes takes the form not of an amusement but of a doom. One of the most curious instances of this is embodied in a Rhineland legend, which has the advantage of giving names, dates, and full particulars. In the 14th century, Freiherr von Metternich placed his daughter Ida in a convent on the island of Oberwoerth, in order to separate her from her lover, one Gerbert, to whom she was secretly betrothed. A year later the maiden lay sick in the nunnery, attended by an aged lay sister. "Alas!" she said, "I die unwed though a betrothed wife." "Heaven forefend!" cried her companion, "then you would be doomed to dance the death-dance." The old sister went on to explain that betrothed maidens who die without having either married or taken religious vows, are condemned to dance on a grassless spot in the middle of the island, there being but one chance of escape--the coming of a lover, no matter whether the original betrothed or another, with whom the whole company dances round and round till he dies; then the youngest of the ghosts makes him her own, and may henceforth rest in her grave. The old nun's gossip does not delay (possibly it hastens) the hapless Ida's departure, and Gerbert, who hears of her illness on the shores of the Boden See, arrives at Coblentz only to have tidings of her death. He rows over to Oberwoerth: it is midnight in midwinter. Under the moonlight dance the unwed brides, veiled and in flowing robes; Gerbert thinks he sees Ida amongst them. He joins in the dance; fast and furious it becomes, to the sound of a wild, unearthly music. At last the clock strikes, and the ghosts vanish--only one, as it goes, seems to stoop and kiss the youth, who sinks to the ground. There the gardener finds him on the morrow, and in spite of all the care bestowed upon him by the sisterhood he dies before sundown.

In China they are more practical. In the natural course of things the spirit of an engaged girl would certainly haunt her lover, but there is a way to prevent it, and that way he takes. He must go to the house where she died, step over the coffin containing her body, and carry home a pair of her shoes. Then he is safe.

A story may be added which comes from a Dutch source. The gravedigger happened to have a fever on All Saints' Day. "Is it not unlucky?" he said to a friend who came to see him, "I am ill, and must go to-night in the cold and snow to dig a grave." "Oh, I'll do that for you," said the gossip. "That's a little service." So it was agreed. The gossip took a spade and a pick-axe, and cheered himself with a glass at the alehouse; then, by half-past eleven, the work was done. As he was going away from the churchyard he saw a procession of white friars--they went round the close, each with a taper in his hand. When they passed the gossip, they threw down the tapers, and the last flung him a big ball of wax with two wicks. The gossip laughed quite loudly: all this wax would sell for a pretty sum! He picked up the tapers and hid them under his bed. Next day was All Souls'. The gossip went to bed betimes, but he could not get to sleep, and as twelve struck he heard three knocks. He jumped up and opened the door--there stood all the white monks, only they had no tapers! The gossip fell back on his bed from fright, and the monks marched into the room and stood all round him. Then their white robes dropped off, and, only to think of it! they were all skeletons! But no skeleton was complete; one lacked an arm, another a leg, another a backbone, and one had no head. Somehow the cloth in which the gossip had wrapped the wax came out from under the bed and fell open; instead of tapers it was full of bones. The skeletons now called out for their missing members: "Give me my rib," "Give me my backbone," and so on. The gossip gave back all the pieces, and put the skull on the right shoulders--it was what he had mistaken for a ball of wax. The moment the owner of the head had got it back he snatched a violin which was hanging against the wall, and told the gossip to begin to play forthwith, he himself extending his arms in the right position to conduct the music. All the skeletons danced, making a fearful clatter, and the gossip dared not leave off fiddling till the morning came and the monks put on their clothes and went away. The gossip and his wife did not say one word of what had happened till their last hour, when they thought it wisest to tell their confessor.

Mr Benjamin Thorpe saw a link between the above legend, of which he gave a translation in his "Northern Mythology," and the Netherlandish proverb, "Let no one take a bone from the churchyard: the dead will torment him till he return it." Its general analogy with our Shroud-theft does not admit of doubt, though the proceedings of the expropriator of wax lights are more easily accounted for than are those of the Shroud-thief. Peter of Provence either stole the winding-sheet out of sheer mischief, or he took it to enable him to see sights not lawfully visible to mortal eyes. In any case a well-worn shroud could scarcely enrich the thief, while the wax used for ecclesiastical candles was, and is still, a distinctly marketable commodity. A stranger who goes into a church at Florence in the dusk of the evening, when a funeral ceremony is in the course of performance, is surprised to see men and boys dodging the footsteps of the brethren of the _Misericordia_, and stooping at every turn to the pavement; if he asks what is the object of their peculiar antics, he will hear that it is to collect

The droppings of the wax to sell again.

The industry is time-honoured in Italy. At Naples in the last century, the wax-men flourished exceedingly by reason of a usage described by Henry Swinburne. Candidates for holy orders who had not money enough to pay the fees, were in the habit of letting themselves out to attend funerals, so that they might be able to lay by the sum needful. But as they were often indisposed to fulfil the duties thus undertaken, they dressed up the city vagrants in their clothes and sent them to pray and sing instead of them. These latter made their account out of the transaction by having a friend near, who held a paper bag, into which they made the tapers waste plenteously. Other devices for improving the trade were common at that date in the Neapolitan kingdom. Once, when an archbishop was to be buried, and four hundred genuine friars were in attendance, suddenly a mad bull was let loose amongst them, whereupon they dropped their wax lights, and the thieves, who had laid the plot, picked them up. At another great funeral, each assistant was respectfully asked for his taper by an individual dressed like a sacristan; the tapers were then extinguished and quietly carried away--only afterwards it was discovered that the supposed sacristans belonged to a gang of thieves. The Shroud-theft is a product of the peculiar fascination exercised by the human skeleton upon the mediaeval fancy. The part played by the skeleton in the early art and early fiction of the Christian aera is one of large importance; the horrible, the grotesque, the pathetic, the humorous--all are grouped round the bare remnants of humanity. The skeleton, figuring as Death, still looks at you from the _facades_ of the village churches in the north of Italy and the Trentino--sometimes alone, sometimes with other stray members of the _Danse Macabre_; carrying generally an inscription to this purport:

Giunge la morte plena de egualeza,
Sole ve voglio e non vostra richeza.
Digna mi son de portar corona,
E che signoresi ogni persona.

The _Danse Macabre_ itself is a subject which is well nigh exhaustless. The secret of its immense popularity can be read in the lines just quoted: it proclaimed equality. "Nous mourrons tous," said the French preacher--then, catching the eye of the king, he politely substituted "_presque_ tous." Now there is no "presque" in the Dance of Death. Whether painted by Holbein's brush, or by that of any humble artist of the Italian valleys, the moral is the same: grand lady and milkmaid, monarch and herdsman, all have to go. Who shall fathom the grim comfort there was in this vivid, this highly intelligible showing forth of the indisputable fact? It was a foretaste of the declaration of the rights of man. Professor Pellegrini, who has added an instructive monograph to the literature of the _Danse Macabre_, mentions that on the way to the cemetery of Galliate a wall bears the guiding inscription: "Via al vero comunismo!"

The old custom of way-side ossuaries contributed no doubt towards keeping strongly before the people the symbol and image of the great King. I have often reflected on the effect, certainly if unconsciously felt, of the constant and unveiled presence of the dead. I remember once passing one of the still standing chapels through the gratings of which may be seen neatly ranged rows of human bones, as I was descending late one night a mountain in Lombardy. The moon fell through the bars upon the village ancestors; one old man went by along the narrow way, and said gravely as he went the two words: "E tardi!" It was a scene which always comes back to me when I study the literature of the skeleton.

SONGS FOR THE RITE OF MAY.

One of the first of living painters has pointed to the old English custom of carrying about flowers on May Day as a sign that, in the Middle Ages, artistic sensibility and a pleasure in natural beauty were not dead among the common people of England. Nothing can be truer than this way of judging the observance of the Rite of May. Whatever might be the foolishness that it led to here and there, its origin lay always in pure satisfaction at the returned glory of the earth; in the wish to establish a link that could be seen and felt--if only that of holding a green bough or of wearing a daffodil crown--between the children of men and the new and beautiful growth of nature. The sentiment is the same everywhere, but the manner of its expression varies. In warmer lands it finds a vent long before the coming of May. March, in fact, rather than May, seems to have been chosen as the typical spring month in ancient Greece and Rome; and when we see the almond-trees blooming down towards Ponte Molle in the earliest week in February, even March strikes us as a little late for the beginning of the spring festival. A few icicles next morning on the Trevi, act, however, as a corrective to our ideas. In a famous passage Ovid tells the reason why the Romans kept holiday on the first of March: "The ice being broken up, winter at last yields, and the snow melts away, conquered by the sun's gentle warmth; the leaves come back to the trees that were stripped by the cold, the sap-filled bud swells with the tender twig, and the fertile grass, that long lay unseen, finds hidden passages and uplifts itself in the air. Now is the field fruitful, now is the time of the birth of cattle, now the bird prepares its house and home in the bough." (_Fastorum_, lib. iii.)

March day is still kept in Greece by bands of youngsters who go from house to house in the hopes of getting little gifts of fruit or cheese. They take with them a wooden swallow which they spin round to the song:

The swallow speeds her flight
O'er the sea-foam white,
And then a-singing she doth slake her wing.
"March, March, my delight,
And February wan and wet,
For all thy snow and rain thou yet
Hast a perfume of the spring."

Or perhaps to the following variant, given by Mr Lewis Sergeant in _New Greece_:

She is here, she is here,
The swallow that brings us the beautiful year;
Open wide the door,
We are children again, we are old no more.

These little swallow-songs are worth the attention of the Folk-Lore student, since they are of a greater antiquity than can be proved on written evidence in the case, so far as I know, of any other folk-song still current. More than two thousand years ago they existed in the form quoted from Theognis by Athenaeus as "an excellent song sung by the children of Rhodes."

The swallow comes! She comes, she brings
Glad days and hours upon her wings.
See on her back
Her plumes are black,
But all below
As white as snow.
Then from your well-stored house with haste,
Bring sweet cakes of dainty taste,
Bring a flagon full of wine,
Wheaten meal bring, white and fine;
And a platter load with cheese,
Eggs and porridge add--for these
Will the swallow not decline.
Now shall we go, or gifts receive!
Give, or ne'er your house we leave,
Till we the door or lintel break,
Or your little wife we take;
She so light, small toil will make.
But whate'er ye bring us forth,
Let the gift be one of worth.
Ope, ope your door, to greet the swallow then,
For we are only boys, not bearded men.

In AEgina the children's prattle runs: "March is come, sing, ye hills and ye flowers and little birds! Say, say, little swallow, where hast thou passed? where hast thou halted?" And in Corfu: "Little swallow, my joyous one, joyous my swallow; thou that comest from the desert, what good things bringest thou? Health, joy, and red eggs." Yet another version of the swallow song deals in scant compliments to the month of March, which was welcomed so gladly at its first coming:

From the Black Sea the swallow comes,
She o'er the waves has sped,
And she has built herself a nest
And resting there she said:
"Thou February cold and wet,
And snowy March and drear,
Soft April heralds its approach,
And soon it will be here.
The little birds begin to sing,
Trees don their green array,
Hens in the yard begin to cluck,
And store of eggs to lay.
The herds their winter shelter leave
For mountain-side and top;
The goats begin to sport and skip,
And early buds to crop;
Beasts, birds, and men all give themselves
To joy and merry heart,
And ice and snow and northern winds
Are melted and depart.
Foul February, snowy March,
Fair April will not tarry.
Hence, February! March, begone!
Away the winter carry!"

When they leave off singing, the children cry "Pritz! Pritz!" imitating the sound of the rapid flight of a bird. Longfellow translated a curious Stork-carol sung in spring-time by the Hungarian boys on the islands of the Danube:

Stork! Stork! Poor Stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it,
Hungarian boy will heal it,
With fiddle, fife, and drum.