Chapter IV: Part 4

The phenomena discussed are most frequently connected with
children, who may be regarded either as mediums or impostors,
conscious or unconscious. In _Proc. S. P. R._, iv. 25-42,
Professor Barrett gives the case of a little girl whom he
knew. She had raps wherever she went, even when alone with the
Professor, who made her stand with her hands against the wall,
at the greatest stretch of her arms, “with the muscles of the
legs and arms all in tension.” “A brisk pattering of raps”
followed Professor Barrett’s request. But he also mentions
a boy “of juvenile piety,” who “for twelve months deceived
his father, a distinguished surgeon, and all his family, by
pretended spiritualistic manifestations, which appeared at first
sight inexplicable, until the cunning trickery of the lad was
discovered.” The only difference between these cases is that an
“outsider” discovered trickery in one instance and not in the
other. This is a very ticklish kind of certainty, and it is plain
that children can do a great deal in the way of mere imposture.
The state of any young Wesley who might have been caught out
is unenviable. Verily Mr. Wesley would not have spared for his
crying.

_Note_ (_f_), p. lxii.—“The pricking of witches.”

It is pretty certain that some of there unlucky old women were
pricked “in anæsthetic areas.”

* * * * *

_Note_ (_a_), p. 8.—“These Arrows that fly in the Dark.”

The arrows are the ancient flint arrow-heads, which Mr. Kirk
later asserts to be too delicate for human artificers. On this
matter Isabel Gowdie, the witch, confessed, “As for Elf arrows,
the Divell sharpes them with his ain hand, and deliveris them to
Elf boys, wha whyttlis and dightis them with a sharp thing lyk a
paking needle; bot whan I was in Elfland, I saw them whyttling
and dighting them.” Isabel described the manner in which witches
use this artillery: “We spang them from the naillis of our
thoombs,” and with these she and her friends shot and slew many
men and women. The confessions of Isabel Gowdie are in the third
volume of Pitcairn’s _Scottish Criminal Trials_. They contain
little or nothing of the “psychical;” all is mere folk-lore,
fairy tales, and charms derived from the old Catholic liturgy.
The poor woman, having begun to fable, fabled with manifest
enjoyment and considerable power. It seems from her account that
each “Covin,” or assembly of witches, had a maiden in it, and
“without our maiden we could do no great thing.” On the other
hand, an extraordinary case of an epileptic boy, who was hurled
about, and beheld distant occurrences in trance, may be read in
Chambers’s _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, iii. 449. Candles used
to go out when this boy, a third son of Lord Torpichen, was in
the room. The date (1720) and the place (Mid-Lothian) prevented
any one from being burned for bewitching him. A fast was
proclaimed. The boy recovered, and did good service in the navy.
He is said to have been “levitated” frequently.

_Note_ (_b_), p. 11.—“Milk thorow a hair-tedder.”

Isabel Gowdie confessed to stealing milk from the cow by magic.
“We plait the rope the wrong way, in the Devil’s name, and we
draw the tether between the cow’s hind feet, and out betwixt her
forward feet, in the Devil’s name, and thereby take with us the
cow’s milk.”

Mr. Kirk, it will be observed, does not connect the Fairy kingdom
with that of Satan, as some of his contemporaries were inclined
to do.

_Note_ (_c_), p. 19.—“The Wreath (wraith) ... is only exuvious
fumes of the Man, ... exhaled and congealed into a various
likeness.”

What is this theory of “Men illiterate and unwary in their
Observations,” but Von Hartmann’s doctrine of “the nerve force
which issues from the body of the medium, and then proceeds
to set up fresh centres of force in all neighbouring objects
... while it still remains under the control of the medium’s
unconscious will”? See Mr. Walter Leaf on Hartmann’s _Der
Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus_, _Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 293.
It is amusing to find a learned German coinciding in scientific
theory with “ignorant and unwary” Highland seers. Both regard the
phantasms as manifestations of “nerve-force,” “exuvious fumes,”
and as “neither souls nor counterfeiting spirits.”

_Note_ (_d_), p. 23.—“Fairy hills.”

The hypothesis that the Fairy belief may be a tradition of an
ancient race dwelling in subterranean homes, is older than Mr.
McRitchie or Sir Walter Scott. In his _Scottish Scenery_ (1803),
Dr. Cririe suggests that the germ of the Fairy myth is the
existence of dispossessed aboriginals dwelling in subterranean
houses, in some places called Picts’ houses, covered with
artificial mounds. The lights seen near the mounds are lights
actually carried by the mound-dwellers. Dr. Cririe works out
in some detail “this marvellously absurd supposition,” as the
_Quarterly Review_ calls it (vol. lix., p. 280).

_Note_ (_e_), p. 30.—“Master Great-rake, the Irish Stroaker.”

Glanvill, in _Essays on Several Important Subjects_ (1675),
prints a letter from an Irish Bishop on Greatrex, the “stroker.”
He cured diseases “by a sanative contagion.” According to
the Bishop, Greatrex had an impression that he could do
“faith-healing,” and found that he could, but whether by virtue
of some special power or by “the people’s fancy,” he knew not.
He frequently failed, and his patients had relapses. See his own
_Account of Strange Cures: in a Letter to Robert Boyle_. London,
1666.

POSTSCRIPT.

It has been said that no trace can be found of a printed _Secret Commonwealth_ before 1815. The present editor is inclined to believe that in 1699 the work was still in manuscript. In a letter of Lord Reay’s to Mr. Samuel Pepys (Oct. 24, 1699), he says, “I have got a manuscript since I last came to Scotland, whose author, though a parson, after giving a very full account of the Second Sight, defends there being no sin in it.... With the first opportunity I shall send you a copy of his books.” This description answers very well to Mr. Kirk’s treatise, and to no other contemporary work with which I am acquainted, unless it be _A Discourse of the Second Sight_, by the Rev. Mr. John Frazer, minister of Tiree and Coll. There were, doubtless, other parsons busy with these topics; and the minister of Rerrick informs me that several MSS. by Mr. Telfair, author of the tract already quoted, were only dispersed about 1877. Examples of these clerical psychical researchers may be found in C. K. Sharpe’s prefatory notice to Law’s _Memorials_ (Edinburgh, 1818). Such an one is the Rev. Robert Knox, who writes from Cavers to the Rev. Mr. Wyllie on the case of Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. He dare not attribute the mediumship of Janet Douglas “positively to an evil cause.... _It is our ignorance of any natural agent_ that makes us impute the effects to evil spirits” (_Memorials_, p. lxxv). Moreover, Lord Reay writes as if his “parson” were still alive in 1699, whereas Mr. Kirk “went to his own herd” in 1692. “I am promised the acquaintance of this man, of which I am very covetous.” Lord Reay was at Durness, and may not have heard of the mishap which carried the minister of Aberfoyle into Fairyland. It may be added that Dr. Hickes writes to Mr. Pepys about neolithic arrow heads as “a subject of near alliance to that of the Second Sight, and of witchcraft, which is akin to them both.” He also speaks of “a very tragical, but authentic story told me by the Duke of Lauderdale, which happened in the family of Sir John Dalrymple, Laird of Stair, and then Lord President. His Grace had no sooner told it me, but my Lord President coming into the room, he desired my Lord to tell it himself, which, altering his countenance, he did with a very melancholick air; but it is so long since that I dare not trust my memory with relating the particulars of it” (June 19, 1700).

Dr. Hickes calls the first Lord Stair “John,” Scott calls him “James.” There can be no doubt that Dr. Hickes refers to the woful tale of the bride of Lammermoor, who died on September 12, 1669. Law, in his _Memorials_, says she “was harled through the house”—by spirits, he means. This “harling” or tossing about of a patient, probably epileptic, we have noticed in many of the old stories, as in the modern instance of “Mr. H.” Now, in his Introduction to the _Bride of Lammermoor_, Scott gives all the authorities at his command: Law, Symson’s _Elegie_, and Hamilton of Whitelaw’s _Satire_, which avers that Satan seized the bride and “threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed.” Sir Walter was unacquainted with Dr. Hickes’ hint, which actually produces the bride’s own father as evidence for a story which was plainly regarded as supernatural. It is most unlucky that Dr. Hickes distrusted his memory. However, it is something to feel assured that “a memorable story” was accepted at the time by the family of the bride, and was known to Lauderdale.[40] Lauderdale himself, by the way, was a psychical researcher, and accommodated Richard Baxter with some accounts of haunted houses, published in his _World of Spirits_. One story of a haunted house, where a spectral hand appeared, he gives on the authority of “the Rev. James Sharp,” afterwards the famous Archbishop. Lauderdale inspected the famed Loudun nuns, and saw only “wanton wenches singing baudy songs in French.” His letter to Mr. Baxter is dated March 12, 1659. His best haunted house is of the Epworth type.

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Note (_a_), p. 81.

[2] _The Testimony of Tradition_, p. 75.

[3] In Father Macdonald’s book on Moidart.

[4] A much odder case is reported. Two young men photographed a reach of a river. In the photograph, when printed, was visible the dead body of a woman floating on the stream. The water was dragged. Nothing was found; but two or three days later a girl drowned herself in the pool! As the Reports of the Psychical Society sometimes say, “no confirmation has been obtained;” but this is a pleasing instance of the Reflex, and of second sight in a photographic camera.

[5] It is also published in Mrs. Graham Tomson’s _Border Ballads_ (Walter Scott).

[6] Note (_b_), p. 81.

[7] Many instances may be read of in a little anonymous work, _Obeah_. The scene is Hayti.

[8] Note (_c_), p. 82.

[9] _Proc. S. P. R._, July 1891, February 1892.

[10] As far as the author has watched _séances_ personally, they have ended in nothing but “giggling and making giggle.”

[11] Some _séances_ were held at —— College, Oxford, about 1875. The performers were all athletic undergraduates. The breath of chill air was always felt “before anything happened,” and, when the out-college men had gone, the owner of the rooms, in his bed-chamber, was disturbed by the racket which continued in the sitting-room. But I know not if he had sported his oak!

[12] _An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences_, by Increase Mather. Boston, 1684; London, Reeves & Turner, 1890, pp. 101-111.

[13] _Diseases of the Nervous System_, iii. 249. London, 1890.

[14] _Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 160-173.

[15] _Op. cit._, pp. 173-189.

[16] _Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, by Adam Clarke, LL.D., F.A.S. London, 1823, pp. 161-200.

[17] Letter to Terry, April 30. Lockhart, v. 309.

[18] Scott to Terry, May 16.

[19] Susannah Wesley to Samuel Wesley, March 27, 1717.

[20] _Op. cit._, p. 193.

[21] _Op. cit._, p. 194.

[22] Note (_d_), p. 83.

[23] _Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, p. 198.

[24] Edinburgh: Mossman, 1696. There is a London reprint, of which I have a copy. The pamphlet is republished in Mr. Stevenson’s edition of Sinclair’s _Satan’s Invisible World Discovered_, 1685-1871, Appendix, p. xix.

[25] Compare similar phenomena in _Obeah_, and in Peruvian example, note (_c_), p. 82.

[26] Glanvil’s version is given in Sinclair’s _Satan’s Invisible World_.

[27] Note (_e_), p. 85.

[28] Note (_f_), p. 86.

[29] The “earth-houses” in Scotland and the isles, which seem to have been inhabited at an early period, can seldom be called hills or mounds; being built for purposes of concealment, they are usually almost on a level with the surrounding land. The _Fairy hills_, on the other hand, are higher and much more notable, and were probably sepulchral. This, at least, is the impression left on me by Mr. MacRitchie’s book, _The Underground Life_. (Privately printed. Edinburgh, 1892.)

[30] Note (_a_), p. 86.

[31] Note (_b_), p. 87.

[32] The _Death-candle_ is called DRUIG.

[33] Note (_c_), p. 87.

[34] Note (_d_), p. 88.

[35] Note (_e_), p. 88.

[36] Thus in the Manuscript, which is only a Transcript of Mr. Kirk’s Original. Perhaps M‘Intyre?

[37] The original Transcriber has added: “See the Rest in a little Manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk,” probably the author’s son of that name.—A.L.

[38] _The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon_, ch. cxviii.

[39] Mr. Hoole’s account, _Memoirs of the Wesleys_, p. 91.

[40] The letters to Pepys are quoted from his Correspondence, published as Vol. X. of his _Diary_ (New York, 1885).

Bibliothèque de Carabas.

_Crown 8vo Volumes, Printed on Hand-made Paper, with
Wide Margins and Uncut Edges, done up
in Japanese Vellum Wrappers._

The Prices are net for cash.

_THESE VOLUMES WILL NEVER BE REPRINTED._

=I. CUPID AND PSYCHE=: The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of
the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. Done into English by WILLIAM
ADLINGTON, of University College in Oxford. With a Discourse on
the Fable by ANDREW LANG, late of Merton College, in Oxford.
Frontispiece by W. B. RICHMOND, and Verses by the EDITOR, MAY
KENDALL, J. W. MACKAIL, F. LOCKER-LAMPSON, and W. H. POLLOCK.
(lxxxvi. 66 pp.) 1887. _Out of print._

=II. EUTERPE=: The Second Book of the Famous History of
Herodotus. Englished by B. R. 1584. Edited by ANDREW LANG,
with Introductory Essays on the Religion and the good Faith of
Herodotus. Frontispiece by A. W. TOMSON; and Verses by the EDITOR
and GRAHAM R. TOMSON. (xlviii. 174 pp.) 1888. _Out of print._

=III. THE FABLES OF BIDPAI; or, The Morall Philosophie of Doni=:
Drawne out of the auncient writers, a work first compiled in
the Indian tongue. Englished out of Italian by THOMAS NORTH,
Brother to the Right Honourable Sir ROGER NORTH, Knight, Lord
NORTH of Kyrtheling, 1570. Now again edited and induced by
JOSEPH JACOBS, together with a Chronologico-Biographical Chart
of the translations and adaptations of the Sanskrit Original,
and an Analytical Concordance of the Stories. With a full-page
Illustration by EDWARD BURNE JONES, A.R.A., Frontispiece from
a 16th century MS. of the Anvari Suhaili, and facsimiles of
Woodcuts in the Italian Doni of 1532. (lxxxii. 264 pp.) 1888.
_Nearly out of print._ The few remaining copies, 12_s._

=IV.-V. THE FABLES OF ÆSOP=, as first printed by W. CAXTON
in 1484. Now again edited and induced by J. JACOBS. With
Introductory Verses by Mr. ANDREW LANG. 2 Vols. (280 pp., 320
pp.) 1890. £1, 1_s._

“Ces deux volumes de la ‘Bibliothèque de Carabas’ (Bidpai et
Æsop) constituent l’examen le plus complet et le plus savant qui
ait été fait depuis Benfey de cette grande question de l’origine
et de la migration des fables, et la critique de l’auteur s’y
montre partout aussi sage que bien informée.”—M. A. BARTH, in
_Mélusine_.

“The degree and quality of the editor’s learning are not to
be doubted; it is varied, profound, and without a spice of
pedantry.”—_Scots Observer._

=VI. THE ATTIS OF CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS.= Translated into
English Verse, with Dissertations on the Myth of Attis, on the
Origin of Tree-Worship, and on the Galliambic Metre. By GRANT
ALLEN, B.A., formerly Postmaster of Merton College, Oxford. (xvi.
154 pp.) 1892. 7_s._ 6_d._

“The paramount interest of this book lies in its two
disquisitions upon the meaning of the Attis myth and upon the
meaning of tree-worship.”—_Speaker._

“As a contribution to folk-lore it is of real value and interest,
and to a considerable extent new in the line it takes.”—_Literary
World._

“This theory, in which ‘the ghost plays ... the same part that
guano and phosphates play to-day,’ when stated thus baldly sounds
strange, but when read in the author’s own vivacious narrative,
along with the excellent illustrations which he brings forward,
it is singularly attractive.”—_Bookman._

“Highly interesting, and at this time will probably fall in with
prevailing opinions.”—ROBINSON ELLIS in _The Academy_.

“Whether readers adopt Mr. Allen’s conclusions or net, all
must agree that he has propounded a most interesting theory,
and stated it in a manner forcible and stimulating to
thought.”—_Nation._

=VII. PLUTARCH’S ROMANE QUESTIONS.= Translated, A.D. 1603, by
PHILEMON HOLLAND. Now again Edited by FRANK BYRON JEVONS, M. A.,
Classical Tutor to the University of Durham. With Dissertations
on Italian Cults, Myths, Taboos, Man Worship, Aryan Marriage,
Sympathetic Magic, and the Eating of Beans. (cxxviii. 170 pp.)
1892. 10_s._

“Mr. Jevons’s essay is learned and interesting, and in some cases
he has probably found out the reason of behaviour which the
Romans could not account for themselves.”—_Daily News_, Jan. 10,
1893.

“All antiquaries and folk-lorists will thank him for enabling
them to peruse in a convenient form that part of Plutarch’s
‘Moralia’ which bears upon their science.”—_Daily Chronicle_,
Jan. 6, 1893.

“An admirable essay on Roman religion and on the characteristics
of Aryan religion.”—_Glasgow Herald_, Jan. 5, 1893.

“Holland’s quaintness and homely vigour make his translations
delightful reading. A most valuable and interesting introduction
is supplied by a sound scholar and shrewd thinker, Mr. F. B.
Jevons.”—_Athenæum_, Jan. 7, 1893.

“Holland’s translation, a delightful piece of Elizabethan
English, as Mr. Jevons says, provides a seemly garb for
Plutarch’s ancient reasonings. Mr. Jevons’s own contribution
to the volume is, as a help towards a true interpretation, of
scarcely less value than the translation itself.”—_Scotsman_,
Dec. 26, 1892.

“Mr. Jevons’s introduction is at once learned and
readable.”—_Times_, Dec. 22, 1892.

“The editor has supplied an excellent commentary upon some of
the most striking parts in a series of dissertations on Italian
cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, Aryan marriage, sympathetic
magic, and the eating of beans. The mere titles of these essays
show the curiosity and interest of the problems dealt with in the
text.”—_Manchester Guardian_, Jan. 10, 1893.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Except for the changes below, all spelling in the text has been
left unchanged.

Main text (probable printer’s errors):
Pg 1: ‘heretofioir going’ replaced by ‘heretofoir going’.
(befoir, therefoir and foirtell all appear in the text)
Pg 7: ‘by ws’ replaced by ‘by us’.
Pg 18: ‘unaictve State’ replaced by ‘unactive State’.
Pg 67: ‘bewixt the two’ replaced by ‘betwixt the two’.

Lang’s Notes and Footnotes:
Pg 86: ‘distingnished surgeon’ replaced by ‘distinguished surgeon’.

Publisher’s Catalog:
“de l’ateur” replaced by “de l’auteur”.
“Plutarch’s ‘Moralio’” replaced by “Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’”.